michal.don

@Phineas Freak @Starwaster Thanks for the clarification guys. So if I understand correctly, the "service module" tanks should be better for longer time of storage, and the "cryogenic" tanks for Hydrolox stages fired in the first few hours of the flight, because of their lower mass? Or is there another aspect that I am missing? Michal.don

Oh, apparently, you are right. I did some testing, and the service module tanks perform much, much better. while the service module lost about 16% of LH2 in ten-ish days, the cryogenic tank lost more than 78%! That leaves me curious, what is the point of cryogenic tanks, when their cooling abilities are this bad? Isn't the better cooling the purpose of these tanks Thanks, Michal.don

I sent a few interplanetary probes in my RO/RP-0 career. Even without visual enhancement mods, I find the sights of RSS beautiful Michal.don

Hi, I have an issue concerning Liquid hydrogen boiloff. I am playing a 1.1.3 RO/RP-0 carrer, and I'm designing a 3-man spacecraft for LEO/Munar operations lasting about 10 days. I need three fuel cells to produce enough electricity, and their description says they should need about 41 litres of LH2 a week, each, including boiloff. So that should be around 150 litres. But in my test flights the LH2 disappears much faster. I found out I need almost ten times that much, just to keep my fuel cells running. I am using cryogenic tanks, and I tried to shape them to minimize the surface/volume ratio. The orange tanks are all just for LH2/LOX, and it is still not enough. What am I missing? Thanks, Michal.don

If I recall correctly, this does nothing in a stock game. It is supposed to allow modders to implement upgrading of parts (for example improvement of ISP/thrust for higher "versions") into their mods. I don't know whether stock part upgrades are planned in future versions. Michal.don

It looks it did the job, thank you very much! No more lonely Kerbals in LEO Michal.don

Thank you very much, a-schack. Do I understand it correctly that I create a FASA folder in the GameData, and insert just the pod files? Michal.don

Strange, my Tantares folder doesn't have anything named like this. And there is no Gemini pod in the 2nd generation tree node either. It could be an issue in my install, I might try to reinstall the mod. Thanks, Michal.don

Tantares has a 2-seat Soyuz capsule, but unfortunately, it's in the same tech tree node as the 3-seat Apollo capsule. And the last version of FASA is for 1.0.5, and will probably upgrade straight to 1.2, or so I heard. So no luck for me, until 1.2

Hi, I would appreciate your help (once again ). Do you know about a mod that adds a two-crew capsule, that works with RP-0? Ideally something Gemini-like, I reached the point where I fly crewed LEO missions, and I would like to send two astronauts instead of one (and the three-kerb-pod is still quite far down the tech tree). I run the 1.1.3 RO install. Thanks, Michal.don

My first docking of two vessels in Realism Overhaul. Waaaay more complicated than in stock. I'm pretty proud of myself Michal.don

Hi, similar thing recently happened to me, too. I guess it's some kind of a bug, restarting the game should help (at least it did in my case). Michal.don

Oh, a badge!!!! I always like a shiny new badge to my signature, shame I noticed it after such a long time after my mission submission And nice to see more missions have been added, I'll probably try these rather sooner than later. Michal.don

Yeah, my shuttle has similar issues. It is nicely stable in high atmosphere in high speeds, almost too stable (like a brick) in low atmosphere, but has a tendency to misbehave around 15 kilometres. Like the people before me said, this is an inevitable problem with all the STS replicas. But two things that already had been said help reduce it greatly: - disabling roll/pitch od the tail fin (if not disabled, it tries to "help" you in roll maneuvers, and sends your mission to hell doing so) - adding a fuel tank to the front part of the vehicle - you rarely land completely out of fuel, at least in the STS challenge missions. You can than move your CoM quite significantly, and use it to stabilise your shuttle in the most critical part of the approach. Even a bit of fuel helps a lot. This is my shuttle, Kolumbia, that I used in all the mission (with slight modifications). It's not an exact replica, but looks similar to the original shuttle. And after I got used to it, it flies really great. As you can see, there is a LF/Ox tank in front of and behind the cargo bay and lacks the monoprop OMS. other than that, looks, shuttle-ish enough. Of course, you can design your own shuttle, that likes nothing like the original (in fact, most of the people in the STS challenge do), but I like the additional challenge. It's worth the extra effort. Never give up Michal.don

If I understand correctly, your issue is that (for example) all the engines placed in four-way symetry mode have, and must have, the same thrust settings. There is no way around that. But it is possible to place the engines in two-way symetry mode, and create multiple pairs of those. Each pair can have the thrust tweaked independently. I hope this answers your question, Michal.don

Not just allowed, i think it is pretty much necessary Michal.don

Thanks for you ideas guys, it seems it won't be as easy as I expected, and I'll have to look for some fuel mods. This is the rocket I'm struggling with: It looks Saturn-ish enough for me, but some fuel tank clipping was necessary to secure enough fuel to reach the Moon in three stages. I'll try to look for some lightweight solution, but I guess the RO-time is slowly coming for me Michal.don

Four Rapiers. Two wings. Two intakes. Simple RCS system. One docking port. It's not the most efficient design, nor a sophisticated one. But it's a simple one (40 parts, ~100 000 funds) and it does the job just fine - around 500 delta-V left in a 90 x 90 orbit, with a sloppy flight profile and plenty of LF left for landing maneuvers in case the reentry is not very precise. It could be tweaked to perform even better, but it is fine as it is. Michal.don

Well, I would prefer some kind of a mod that is not wildly unballanced. I could increase the ISP, but I'm afraid that this might make the ongines over-powered, because of their weight or thrust. Also, I have no idea about the real engines ISP/atmosphere pressure reation. I don't want to make it too easy for me, I just want it to be possible Michal.don

Hi guys, I'm trying to make an Apollo-like mission with a Saturn-like rocket in Real Solar System, using SMURFF (no realism overhaul). But even using the 5m and 7,5 SpaceY fuel tanks ang engines, I lack a bit of delta-V to get to Moon with three-staged rocket. I looked up the specs of Satur V and found out that while the first stage engines had ISP of about 260 s (pretty similar to the first stage engines in KSP), second and third stage had ISP of about 420 s, which is much more than all the chemical engines in KSP. And that is huge part of why I can't reach the Moon. Do you know about a mod that adds engines with more realistic values, but that use the stock Liquid fuel/Oxidizer mix? Or should I ditch SMURFF and start learning the whole Realism Overhaul thing? Thanks, Michal.don

@Speeding Mullet, I just noticed the "temporary" picture in the mission description, so as the first one to land on Laythe, I would like to nominate this one: If, for any reason, you don't like this one, feel free to choose another one from my mission album. Michal.don

Well, I consider it close enough The first Kerbal hired to my starting RSS/SMURFF/Historical contracts career playthrough. He sure as hell isn't going anywhere unsupervised Michal.don

Yeah, the same thing happened to me, too. Even auto-completing the contract through Alt-F12 did not work, it just offered the contract again. Agter a while, I found a bypass - open the contract files in GameData/contracts etc etc, find the Gemini 6 and 7, and just delete the orbital and rendezvous requirements. It's not the most elegant way, but it allowed me to continue. This one small bug aside, I love this contract pack so far, great job Michal.don

Well, because of the gravity-assist-billiard I played in the Jool system, I had enough fuel to enter a stable Laythe orbit before aerobraking and landing, so it wasn't really intense. I had to practice precision landing a bit, but it isn't that different than on Kerbin. Thanks for the badge, and I'm quite curious what is next - each new mission it's more and more complicated without modifying the shuttle too much, so we'll see if I'm finally forced to design something new for the next one Michal.don

Sorry for spamming this post so often, but I can announce that the Laythe mission is succesfully completed. The base and the atmospheric plane have been deployed on the surface of Laythe, and the crew and the shuttle are home safe and sound. Not everything went according to the play, but with improvising a bit, all went quite smoothly. By using the suborbital rendezvous and refueling, I didn't have to modify Kolumbia a whole lot, I just had to add a bit of fuel to reach altitude of ~kms to have enough time to dock. For deploying the base, I used the "drop it and pray nothing breaks" method, that seemed to be the easies one, and it worked just fine .The album is quite picture heavy, I included all the maneuvers both of the crafts made. https://imgur.com/a/4ooOs (where did the embedd album button go? I'll edit it as soon as I find out how to add the album) I hope everything is properly documented, Thanks for the challenge, Michal.don