Terwin

Sounded to me that the 1.1 update is still in the 'just a few more weeks' state. While this state can last for quite a long time for software projects, especially if you have moving objectives, there is no guarantee that the 1.1 changes won't just 'gel' and be ready for QA before the end of the month. Sounds more like they decided that 1.1 has already taken too long and they want to give their loyal fans something to be excited about while they wait(just in case the completion date continues to move out farther than expected). So they took a look at all these neat things that were ready to go, and would even work under the old version of unity and put them together as a release. Squad mentioned that the 1.1 release was still in the 'a few more weeks' stage. So, allowing 2-3 weeks for QA, I would not expect the 1.1 release before November, but any time after that is entirely plausible(perhaps even late October if everything 'just works'). I am looking forward to the active refrigeration in the radiator parts, even if it requires power to use. Might forgo the antenna range changes for my current game though, save that for my next game where I don't already have scansats headed for Eeloo.

As one of those that refuses to accept Kerbal deaths, non-lethal LS is the only option to have consequences that don't have me going outside the game to avoid them.(cheat menu, persistence editing, mod removal, etc). I have already copied my Caveman stock install and added the mods I plan to use, but I am still on the fence about using civilian population or relying solely on rescues to provide additional crew for my off-world bases... (my current game, where I am trying to finish an outer grand-tour prior to starting my new game currently has > 50 Kerbals all at 3+ stars(most at 4 stars), so I am suspecting rescues wil probably be enough, but may require much shuttling around to get everyone where I want them.(and I should probably add in that off-kerbal leveling mod so not everyone I rescue needs to visit Kerbin to be useful)

I like ISRU because it allows me to do things like Biome hopping on Joolian moons and to bring along an asteroid as a droppable fuel pod without needing to send out such pods from Kerbin. My rockets are probably not terribly efficient, and I can still do things like visit every solid body outside of Kerbin's orbit(not 100% sure about Lathe and Tylo, but I hope to verify it for Tylo tonight). I can also 'just go' and not need to worry about having enough fuel for the entire itinerary, so long as I can manage my longest expected leg.

Got a fair bit done since my last posting. First I took my 95 ton fully loaded ship and pushed a Dresteroid with 190 tons of ore(plus 15 tons of structure, Class C) from Dres to Jool with an acceleration of 0.11m/s (time acceleration does not work because it causes too much wobble, it is was a multi km/s thrust, so I left it over night with KAC to pause near the end of the burn. Unfortunately after leaving the SOI the target moved and it thrusted a while in the wrong direction... sigh. Fixed it and got to Jool in about 280 days instead of the original 200 days. Asteroid now around 140 tons of ore). Did a lot of braking at Jool periapps, letting me get a fly-by of Tylo to get me in close to Vall(the planned trajectory did not have a Tylo Periapps, and I did not notice that until I fond out why... fortunately I had a quick-save far enough back to fix things easily and close enough not to be frustrating). After I got a nice close orbit of Vall(~30km), dropped off the asteroid then visited a couple biomes(lowlands had ~1% ore, so I hopped to Midlands with ~5%). Refueled everything then waited for the Scansat polar orbit to be over-head and met up with that(had the scan sat use most of it's remaining fuel coming down to a lower orbit). Topped off the scansat and thrusted to an equatorial orbit to release it. Sent off the scansat to scan Tylo then landed back on Vall to visit the Highlands(another ~1% ore area) and refuel in the Midlands again. Got the scansat in a nice polar orbit of Tylo to start detailed scans and do an ore scan. Hooked my refueled Grand Tour back up with my asteroid (renamed to 'OGT Drop-pod 1') and headed over to Tylo for my next stop(did not mine the asteroid for this transit, but expecting to need it for next transit). Currently in a high orbit(something like 110x330) around Tylo, expecting to bring it below 50x50 before attempting a landing(and making a named save in case I miscalculated and this ship cannot get back to orbit) Scansat has finished Ore, Biome and low-res scanning and is currently at 750x750 to finish high-res scanning before heading elsewhere Jool image album(more to be added, may need to return to Vall as I forgot to take pics...)

Careful, apparently the claw does not work on things with a SOI, so you will need to balance the ship on the drills(in their extended condition of course). Just be careful not to break them off...

Got my scansat around Moho and scanned with all 4 instruments(low-res, milti-spectral and hi-res from Scansat, plus stock resource scanner). Still has roughly 6km/s so I might be able to get elsewhere, but nothing closer than Dres needs scanning, so might as well leave it there to return temperature scans when data from Moho is contracted. Next I noticed that all of that science I was converting into Rep did not seem to do anything( 'aggressive negotiations' @ 100% said my rep was at 924, exactly the same as it was before I returned the Moho ship with science going to Rep at 100% as my only policy, also did lots and lots of lab returns at 250-320 science each since starting that policy), so I killed the 100% science-> rep policy and started a 50% science-> rep policy. (note: money has gone from ~62M to ~68M so perhaps it went there?) After that my Outer Grand Tour(only Kerbaled vessel at the moment) reached Dres. Landed in a couple biomes(lowlands had < 1% ore, so went elsewhere and found Ridges with > 6% ore), collecting data from each then lifted off. During this time I noticed that I could drop the production of my nuke plant down to 0% and then pop it back to 100% without a warm-up period, so I may do that while in a planetary SOI to save time, of course I also accidentally left it at 100% for a couple weeks while meeting up with the asteroid below and burned up 30 times as much uranium as I had previously used. Good thing I have plenty) Found a Class C asteroid in orbit and topped off all my tanks(well, I left a 10 unit margin of empty ore tank to avoid accidentally wasting any), and it still has 190 tons of ore. Identified a trajectory that will get me to Jool in about 200 days, it just needs about 5km/s of acceleration(and probably a similar amount of deceleration once I get there) Acceleration with the asteroid is a whopping 0.11m/s/s so that will be quite the burn(and I can't just leave it to burn over night as the fuel tank apparently only holds 1km/s of LH2 when hauling around this massive asteroid(largest I have ever captured actually, the others were a class A and a class ) Well, having too much ore on an ISRU ship is hardly a terrible thing, just inconvenient. Wonder if there will be enough left to use it as a refueling station among the inner moons of Jool...

I biome-hop, extensively.(all biomes on Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus done, all but one biome on Duna was done by the first ship to get there, that ship then did all Ike biomes. First ship to Eve scraped the atmosphere for an extra biome after visiting all the Gilly biomes, then went and got all but 3 Moho biomes[could not find them due to no scanning done before hand]) Even now, I am a bit uncertain about letting my ship in orbit of Dres leave without visiting more biomes(even with the community tech tree completley filled out and nothing left to spend science on). I already visited 2 Dres biomes and drained them of their data, then went and grabbed a class C to use as a drop-tank for my trip to Jool, and I am still looking back at Dres thinking about all those neglected biomes.

Lounging about the astronaut complex regaling all the 3 and 4 star Kerbals with tales of his visits to Gilly, Moho and and that dip into the atmosphere of Eve. (the 4 stars have already been to Duna, so no need to go over that bit).

First I returned my Grand Training(training mission to Duna with 3 rescues picked up around Duna) safely to Kerbin, putting me at 51 kerbasl at the KSC, of which 4 have 5 stars, 17 have 3 stars and the rest have 4 stars(the two orange suits are of course at 5 stars, with the other two orange suits heading towards Dres) First approach was a bit off, as I realized I was going retrograde when I tried to get an equatorial orbit, so I kicked out to Mun where I landed(and topped off fuel, just to be safe) then came back and made a splash landing a couple dozen km from KSC. Next I captured my Jool scansat at Vall and started scanning the surface(low-res, multi-spectral and ore scanning complete, now just trying to finish up high-res scanning. Only a few hundred d-v left so I don't think I'll be able to take it to Pol or Bop before the Outer Grand Tour arrived to refuel it. After that I adjusted my refueled Duna Scansat's trajectory to hit the Eeloo SOI. I have a fine-tuning burn in another 6 years or so, then I should capture for a polar orbit of Eeloo for scanning. (also renamed it to Scansat Eeloo to prevent future confusion) Finally I did an inclination burn on my Scansat Eve(now renamed Scansat Moho), so it should be meeting up with Moho fairly soon to scan for those three biomes I missed on my first visit. I think I misread the 15K science converted to rep from the Grand Tour return, looks like it may have been 1500 or 15K rep, not science. I was considering sending off another training mission to get those 17 3-stars up to 4 or 5 stars, or to take those 30 4-stars up to 5 stars, but I think I'll just finish my outer grand tour and start a new game with the Extra-planetary launchpads mod(and none of those high-isp engines that I have been using so much of late), perhaps I'll even manage to land and return a Kerbal from Eve with that mod. (I may cheat a little and start with a copy of my caveman challenge save game to skip past any early grinding)

I am planning on switching out several mods for my next game(after my outer grand tour visits all the planets it can return from, which is hopefully everything with a surface outside Kerbin's orbit) Adding: Extra-planetary lunch pads(and affiliated mods) Some sort of life support(but not one that kills kerbals) Removing: sounding rockets(I abuse those cardboard science modules too much) Stage recovery(If I need the funds I can try for manual recovery) Atomic age(love the lightbulb but I over-use it) Near Future(might add it back in later, but want to see how far I can get without all those nifty high-isp engines)

I generally go with the 'come to a relative stop above your target position and slow your descent in two or more stages'(depending on how many m/s I need to bleed off). Does not work so well with an atmosphere, but great for most of the Kerbol system. If you have ISRU, you don't even need to worry about wasted fuel, you just need to make sure you have enough to land and you can get as much as you need. Also, if you end up away from your target destination, you can always do a ballistic trajectory, come to a stop somewhere in the top half of the arc and descend again(terrible on fuel I'm sure, but with ISRU you can do it easily if your ship has enough d-v to make orbit)

Nope, apparently even Kerbin orbit will be fine:

Got my Grand Tour vessel back home(went to Duna, Ike, Gilly, Eve's upper atmosphere, and Moho), just had to make a quick hop to Mun to finish a grand tour contract. Should have been paying more attention as I forgot to refill the tanks form the on-board ore before I went suborbital. Finally got a safe landing by dumping 2 of my 3 ore tanks and refining most of what was left while dropping from the sky. All topped up I headed home for a nice safe landing about 15km from KSC. Worried that I would waste a lort of the science if I did an immediate retrieval, I sent jet powered rover out to swap out the crew and return some of the science. Left the 'first copy of everything' data in the cockpit and took home some of the duplicate data(stored in the lab). Got over 14K science from the return vessel, for about 10K over and above what I needed for the last node on the community science tree(the 10K node), then I put 100% science-> rep(I have over 60M funds so not much need there, and my rep meter is not at 100%). Also gave all four of the grand tour crew(Including Jeb and Bill) their last 2 stars. Recovering the grand tour craft got another 15K science(but no obvious change in the reputation meter). After that my Jool scansat entered the Joolian SOI and after I captured, I realized I was close to retrograde(150 degrees), so I burned a lot of fuel getting closer to prograde, capping it off with a fly-by of Tylo which seems to have gotten me pretty much lined up when I had been > 45 degrees off. I am currently hoping to get into a roughly polar orbit of Vall with about 400m/s dv left to start scanning. I'll probably want my outer grand tour to visit there first so I can refuel my scansat and go look at the other Joolian moons before landing on them. I am hoping to bring a Desteroid with me to Jool as a drop-tank to leave in space in case I find myself without enough dv to get safely to Bop or Pol after launching from Lathe or Tylo.

I've been playing since March(0.90), and last night I recovered a ship landed safely on Kerbin that had visited Gilly, Eve's upper atmosphere and Moho(after a quick stop on Duna/Ike). (first craft to return from somewhere other than Duna or asteroid fetching(not counting Kerbin SOI and training visits to Kerbol SOI)) I also took a scan-sat probe around the Joolian system a bit, finishing up with a slingshot around Tylo that has set me up to try and capture around Vall for some scanning while I wait for my manned ship(currently heading to Dres to drop a flag and make off with an asteroid-drop-tank)

If you have unlocked the Lab module, you can store as many iterations of the same experiment in the same place as you like. (ISRU is great for letting you visit every single biome without worrying about having enough delta-v to get home) On my first visit to Duna I collected all the data from every biome(Duna and Ike) except for one that only exists at the edge of the pole and the lowlands(canyons perhaps?). multiple goo, multiple surface, multiple seismic, etc. (I got the canyons one after my scansat finally arrived and gave me the missing biome locations) If you want a good use for all that extra science from outside the Kerbin SOI, I recommend the community science tree, my inner grand tour finally arrived back on Kerbin(with ~30K sceince as I got gilly, moho, and even the eve upper atmosphere), and that finally allowed me to get my last CST node(the 10K one), as well as starting my science-> rep mod and putting ~15K science into rep(with 8K science in the bank for future changes in the business center)

Step 1) save when you are close to the object but not close enough for it ti start falling Step 2) move into physics range and check if it fell into the body it should be resting on Step 3) if yes, load and return to step 2 Step 4) recover as normal. I had a rescue and recover mission but the first time i got close the pod fell on the kerbal. I loaded a few times until I could get the pod not to kill the kerbal, and that time the pod actually stayed on the surface, letting me do a full recovery. So apparently it is hit or miss as far as falling through the surface. If possible, it may help to switch focus to the object in question as soon as it comes in physics range.

Landed my outer grand tour on Ike, planted flags, fully filled all tanks and headed out to Dres, not using any sort of window, so it will take about 250 days before intercept. My Duna sacnsat was finally in a position to thrust for Eeloo, should hit the SOI in a little over 6 years. Had to loop a bit outside the periaps due to Eeloo still being a bit away, but I should still have more than 500m/s after I capture, and that should be plenty to fully scan the entire surface. Looks like I may not have much to do for the next 100 days besides tend to the labs on my various interplanetary craft.(Training craft returning to Kerbin from Duna, Grand Trour(inner) returning to Kerbin from Gilly(First ever Moho visit complete), Outer Grand Tour heading from Ike to Dres). Wonder if I will finish that last 10K science node in the community tech tree before my Grand Tour vessel returns to Kerbin... that would be a lot of Rep if I have 100% of science going to rep...(All Gilly biomes, one or two Duna biomes, 9 of 12 Moho biomes, skimming of Eve's upper atmosphere) I wonder if my Dres and Jool scansats will arrive before my outer grand tour... should probably check my KAC entries...

Indeed, after I realized this LH2 thing in my IRSU was compatible with the near future VASMIR engines, I built an outer-planets grand tour vessel using the largest VASMIR as the main engine.(I also have 8 thuds in the hopes that I can return from Lathe and Tylo, but that is not tested as of yet) It would be nice if ISRU could produce Xenon or Argon, but I suppose that would be fairly unrealistic. (perhaps they could be produced by an ISRU exposed to an atmosphere?)

Successfully collected my High Duna and low Ike orbital rescues that are funding my Outer grand tour ship, turned out to be a couple scientists, so now I get to resume my original plan to bring a couple extra scientists to level them to 5 stars. Landed everyone on Duna, did not bother with parachutes as I had full fuel for my thuds(hopefully enough to get to Lathe orbit). Refilled all my tanks and planted flags for my new scientists and my pilot(only 3 stars). Launch from Duna was fairly inefficient, using roughly 60% of my thud fuel, but that should only make it easier to land on Ike using only the low-thrust VASMIR engine(but with plenty of liquid fuel for emergency operations) May need to use a bit of liquid fuel to launch from Ike after I refuel, but I doubt I'll need much for my planned Dres landing(and hopefully I will get a nice, high ore desteroid as a drop-tank to take with me to my next destination, perhaps Tylo orbit...)

Nice, but does that not also allow free fuel? (build a ship with empty tanks, attach one or more refueling launch clamps, wait for tanks to be full, launch) Another option might be adding a fuel reservoir to the launch clamps, that way you still pay for any fuel used. (may not always take from clamps first if your staging is wonky though)

Unless I have missed something, the updated tools with U5 *MAY* allow a reasonably stable 64bit version to be created. I have seen no guarantee or declaration from Squad that 64bit is going to be coming with the U5 update, I have only seen comments that U5 finally has the tools needed to allow squad to do useful amounts of QA on a 64bit build. If anything I would expect a 64bit version with the same features to be released after the 32bit version is released, as the 32bit engine has had many more builds with the benefit of useful debugging tools. Without 64bit I would not expect more memory available for mods.

It seems like a disintegrating craft around your rods would make them fairly randomized in where they hit, if you are going to have a number of atmospheric penetrators like this, why not just do the Rod of God approach where most of your targeting stays up in orbit and you launch highly accurate rods one at a time at specific targets?

Meh, I just give an update on what I have done since my last update, usually 2-3 a week depending on how much play time I get. Managed to get my Grand Tour vessel back to the low-delta-v domain of Gilly from Moho. After many burns, I finally decided I had to do my ejection burn using my nuclear engines, and using up a lot of that fuel might improve my acceleration using the VASMIR. After doing 80% of the ejection burn on nukes, I flipped the ship and finished up with the low-thrust VASMIR engine(now at 0.24 m/s/s instead of the 0.22 it was before I used all that liquid fuel) Inclination burn, Eve Capture burn, all the way up to Gilly capture burn were done with the high-isp engines of the rescue vessel(VASMIR), then I refilled all the tanks from on-board ore and left the rescue probe in orbit of Gilly should there be a future need. A bit of refueling, refueling the Eve Scansat in orbit over Gilly(eve and Gilly both fully scanned now), and then I sent my Grand Tour vessel back towards Kerbin for it's triumphant return(with a fly-by of the mun for contract purposes) Then I sent my Eve scansat off towards Moho so that should I return I can find the lowland and canon biomes I did not see in my first visit. (Mk2 body with a single nuke engine, Mk2 drop-tanks with additional fuel on the sides. Drop-tanks(~5km/s) were enough to get to and scan Eve then head towards Gilly, so just kept them in place during the Gilly scan so the Grand Tour could refill the probe to the full ~12km/s and I could then send it off to Moho) Outer grand tour arrived at Duna and is now on an intercept course for the high-orbit rescue before heading over to Ike for the other rescue and a refuel stop.

You need large solid pieces with plenty of mass if you want them to survive reentry in the real world, otherwise they would just burn up in the atmosphere. I think the 'falling debris' involves multi-ton chunks of rock which heat up enough during re-entry to melt/ablate large chunks of its surface, heating the rock substantially. As this would effectively be large chunks of semi-melted rock landing over large areas, I can see why it would cause lots of fires... I can't see a man-made craft having enough mass for this to be a useful mode of attack, especially when precisely guided 'rod of god' style attacks would be so much more effective for less cost.

I think the exponential fall-off that was mentioned recently should address this.(I forget if it was in the squad-cast transcription of the dev notes) The current problem is that when you enter a dense atmosphere, you transition from space to quite a lot of resistance(and heating) instantly. When they add exponential fall-off to the atmosphere the transition should allow higher heating values over-all without killing everything that touches a dense atmosphere. This should make aero-braking much more feasible, at least for small changes. This should also make the atmospheric transitions much 'softer' so that there are fewer magic number altitudes.