Supraluminal

I just had the bad ymax issue recur myself (mine is currently: <ymax>-633</ymax>). I don't know if it happened immediately after the last time I updated or not, but it might have done. Got this one time before as well.

Thanks, this worked. If it's possible, it might be nice to include something in the next release to handle this automatically for those who use CKAN.

Hey @Youen, thanks for all your work on this, it's still one of my favorite mods. However, the latest version isn't working for me. The window isn't opening properly in map view. It just comes up as a weird thin rectangle. It kind of looks like the window is zero width and negative height with just the border visible: I have the mod installed via CKAN. It did this after initial upgrade, then again after I removed it and reinstalled it. Hope there's an easy fix for this one! I'm looking forward to getting it up and running again after the latest FAR upgrade downtime.

I'll second this. I'm really looking forward to having FAR and Trajectories playing nicely together again!

Also really hoping this mod makes a comeback. My best memories, proudest moments, and favorite projects in KSP pretty much all revolve around activities that are essentially impossible without it.

From a quick skim of the last page or two - it sounds like this mod is not currently compatible with FAR in 0.90, but work is underway to get it there? Is that correct, and is there an ETA on a compatible release?

I'm not sure how to measure the shortfall. It seems like multiple tens of kilometers or so? In any case, 10km is kind of a large margin of error for rover deployment - that's around 15 minutes of drive time at 10m/s just to get to the survey area. I fully understand that it may not be possible to make it much more accurate, however. I do all of the reentry phase using the lander only, so the prediction is not looking at any other stages. Generally they're deployed from a carrier that sits in a polar orbit; the drop pods each have ~1300m/s dV to change planes and deorbit. I'm fairly certain I have the orientation right. Like I said, I use MechJeb to keep the pod oriented along its prograde surface vector during reentry, and everything (navball, pod) lines up as expected. The rover's probe core is oriented 90 degrees off the main axis of the pod (the bottoms of the wheels face the point of the fairing), so if it were controlling from there nothing should work right. Nonetheless, I'll take a second look to make sure on this point.

For reference, by "long" I mean the reentry phase lasting something around 1/8th of an orbit or even less. I'm not trying to predict a landing a full orbit ahead or anything. What do you mean by "wings with stock aerodynamics?" All the wing parts that come with stock KSP...? Like I said, I'm using FAR. The OP says "It works with FAR, NEAR and stock drag at this time ; stock wings are not simulated (but FAR/NEAR ones are)," which I took to mean that all wings are simulated when FAR is enabled. I'm also using procedural fairings, if that has any effect. I'm going in nose-first. I'm aware of how the AoA settings should be used. I'm not using Deadly Reentry or any RCS. Specifically, most recently I've noticed this issue while trying to drop-pod rovers onto Fine Print survey sites. Here's what the pods look like: Payload fairing at the front, 48-7S on the back and four of the delta-deluxe winglets to stabilize.

I've been having problems with inaccurate trajectory predictions. It's mostly a problem with long/shallow reentries; it pretty consistently overestimates the length of my flightpath (i.e. my craft lands well short of the initially-predicted impact site). This is with FAR, using MechJeb to keep my craft pointed dead-on to my surface velocity vector and without moving any of the Trajectory AoA sliders off of zero. Am I doing something wrong? Is this a bug? Just an unavoidable limitation of the mod? Great mod overall, though! Even inaccurate predictions are better than none, and it's generally pretty good when my reentry is on the steep side.

Just a quick note to say I've also been having a lot of trouble with inaccurate distances for recovered stages. They're often coming up at ~500-600km distance from KSC when they should be reporting maybe 50-100km at most. I was thinking the same thing. I don't know what the trajectory mod's license looks like, but maybe you could steal stuff from it for this purpose.

This has been a pretty widely used workaround for a while, but personally I've never had much luck with it. It usually makes my lower stage (followed very rapidly by everything above it) explode as soon as I fire the engines. Possibly lowering the throttle would help, but depending on the design that tends to leave me stuck on the pad simply due to a lack of thrust.... My preferred workaround is to simply mount a sizable number of engines (usually SRBs) above ground level, out of contact with the pad. That seems to work well.

Good luck! You're probably going to pick up a lot of speed at that distance. If you want advice, I suggest you aim for a relatively high orbit to begin with... it's much less stressful to drop down to a lower orbit from a controlled situation than it is to burn like crazy to avoid crashing into the planet.

It's a fun challenge, to be sure, but there's a bit of a loophole in that it's completely possible to boost a pretty sizable craft into orbit, then re-enter with a bunch of fuel left. All you have to do at that point is use your copious fuel reserves to fly to the KSC and bail out on the VAB roof. You could specify 'no thrust below 30km' or something to make it harder, but I don't know that there's any way to verify that people are following the rules.

Is it really worth stacking 8 liquid fuel tanks? Have you tested this with the top stage split into two 4-tank stages, or even one 4-tank and one 3-tank stage? I would imagine that the ability to jettison 4 empty tanks halfway through your final burn might make up for the weight cost of one more engine and decoupler. Looks like some of the lower stages have very tall stacks as well....

Thanks! The program is cjameshuff's orbit calculator. Many thanks to him for creating such a useful tool! His table of circular orbit speeds and periods is great, but the calculator is a real step up in flexibility, especially since it'll tell you if your elliptical orbit is going to crash into the planet or not.

Sure! It's attached to this post. Beware, it's a little finicky. At a couple of points it may try to pitch/yaw/roll or just generally wobble on you, but with SAS on it should be easy enough to keep under control if you babysit it during launch. Also, most importantly, give the initial liquid-fueled booster stage enough time to fall away before you ignite the second stack of liquid engines and solid boosters or the whole thing will blow up. I recommend 4 or 5 seconds of delay. (This is the stage 7 -> 6 -> 5 transition according to the in-game stage numbers.) This is also the point where you'll get the worst yaw imbalance, so be prepared to lean on your D key while the SRBs are firing. That's the last hurdle, though; once they drop off you're in the clear!

Because I did it with all stock parts. What's the top speed at vertical burnout on your ship? The one I used can manage 7661m/s. I suspect yours would be much, much higher. I think you misread - he wrote '10K,' meaning 10,000km.

Haha, yeah, a full-length video of that trip would be incredibly boring. 5% coverage of actual maneuvers, 95% me trying to fill dead air with awkward jokes and personal anecdotes. Or watching me answer emails and debug websites while the game runs minimized in the background, to be completely realistic. If/when I try something like this again (because I'm definitely not doing exactly this again!), maybe I'll see about getting Fraps or some other video recorder set up. Assuming they can easily be turned on/off during play I could do a highlights reel or something I suppose.

Yes, it definitely is. Your prerogative as to whether you want to be abrasive or not, I suppose. Just be aware that you are in fact coming across that way.

Eh, I think it'd be more accurate to say gases are considered 'fluids,' which also includes liquids, but that's semantics. However, there is an important distinction to make in that gases are generally highly compressible, unlike liquids.

Speaking of pedantry, I just can't let this one go! I'm also not an expert on this stuff, but some cursory Wikipedia skimming will clarify this for you. Naturally-gaseous rocket fuels are in fact stored in cryogenically-liquified form in the tanks, because they take up vastly less space that way. Liquid oxygen is 861 times more dense than gaseous oxygen, for example.

Exactly. I won't speak for Reflector, but I was neither trolling nor being hateful, let alone hate-trolling. More just being pedantic! By all means, mod away. Do whatever you think will make the game more fun. But if you say you're making the game more realistic, be prepared for some scrutiny.

Success! Total mission time of about 7hrs, 40mins. Many, many photos below: My vehicle of choice. Manages about 7660m/s on a straight vertical burn. Shortly after liftoff, the first stage of boosters is gone. Burning into orbit. Cruising across the dark side. It ended up being a pretty eccentric orbit; we're over 375km here. Here we are crossing over the KSC, finishing up our first orbit. Time to get out of here. Accelerating to escape velocity at periapsis. Past 1000km, we're on our way! Even brought the second-to-last stage along with a tiny bit of fuel remaining, which I hadn't really planned on. A bit over halfway there.... 10,000km reached. Time to turn this pig around. Alright, retrograde burn done, heading back at 500m/s to start with. It would have been much more efficient to simply drop back below escape velocity and let gravity do the rest of the work, but that would have taken foreeeeever. Over halfway back! <1000km to go. Here's where things start getting tricky. One of many maneuvering burns made to end up in something like a stable orbit. You may just barely be able to make out a few pixels of KSC on the coast near the horizon here. Passing over KSC. It's not really visible, but you can recognize the landmass and confirm with the pink directional indicator (pointing just about straight down). Apoapsis on the dark side. That allowed me to plot my current orbit. Eccentric, but stable! Passing directly 'under' KSC, as shown by the directional indicator. Halfway around! Obligatory sunrise shot. Periapsis after another burn to circularize at a lower altitude. The new orbit. Pretty good! Passing directly over KSC a second time. Alright, orbit done! Time to park this thing. Hopefully we'll end up in the water on the other side of the KSC landmass. Farewell, faithful steed! Jettisoning that stage after all we'd been through was actually kind of bittersweet, if you can believe it. Hmm, that coastline's coming up pretty fast.... Welp, looks like it'll be a bump rather than a splash. At least we'll have a nice view from this ridge! Unfortunately the capsule clipped through the terrain on landing. Later on I rolled it around until it resurfaced for a better photo op, but this is exactly where touchdown occurred. Stats! Our intrepid Kerbalnauts at rest with a nice oceanside view. Overall a fun challenge. I still think going all the way out to 10,000km was a little over the top, but in combination with the lack of a game-saving feature it did have the effect of ratcheting up the tension as I was managing my orbital insertion on the return! So, is there a prize, or...?

People have made a couple of different calculators you can use out to any distance. Check the first few posts in this thread.

This seems like a test of patience more than anything else. Just get up to escape velocity, drift outwards as far as you like, and burn into orbit.