Zosma Procyon

Nevermind. I'm going to accept the self flagellation of replacing it.

Through a flip up I can't believe I made I now have I-beams permanently stuck to the viewing cupolas on my newest mobile base. They were supposed to be connected to decouplers, but I seemed to have connected them directly to the glass. I've tried hitting them with freefalling kerbals, with no success. If I can't remove them, I've just going to cheat in a fixed replacement.

I'm trying to transfer Kerbals to external command seats via EVA in Gilly orbit. But when I have the Kerbals stationary and right up against the seats in question and right-click on the seat, the only option is to "Aim Camera". The "Board Seat" option doesn't appear. Is this a bug or a change in game mechanics?

Exactly. It had a good life. Drove almost 1000 km through the Eve highlands, produced around 10,000 science, and rescued two new Kerbals. But it was overweight, under powered, had two many parts (mostly comparably useless solar panels and small ore tanks), and since I built it before I learned to fully prevent the ground vehicle shimmy never really worked properly. It somehow had both too many wheels (because they were set up wrong) and not enough wheels (because the arrangement I chose left two few in contact with the ground with it was on uneven terrain). I'm probably going to send a successor mobile base in two or three Eve transfer windows. The next one might be a tripod, with two forward drive pontoons and one rear for better stability, or a hexipod. And it will certainly be smaller and have a more controllable reentry method. And it will have MANY more nuks, maybe costing in the neighborhood of 10 million because of them. I prefer the constant power output of those expensive little toys over the atmosphere mitigated solar cells. They just weren't worth the extra part count on Eve. I wish tank treads were a standard part of the game. I'm hesitant to try new mods on my touchy Macbook Pro.

I cheated to abandon and destroy my mobile base on Eve. I could have landed a rocket to lift the crew back into space (I've done that a few times before), but I wanted to give the Eve Crawler an heroic death. After three or four updates since it landed, it could no longer drive or gather science. Physics changes I guess. So I cheated it into Eve orbit, docked a retrieval craft with it, transferred the crew over, and pushed it into a suborbital trajectory and followed it down. Here are some snaps of its last ride. A real fish out of water. Docked with the crew return vehicle. The crew will ride home in a modified cargo bay. This is more mass efficient than a crew capsule, but less efficient than my usual strategy of packing crews in the 2.5 m cargo bays. I was busy watching the map during the deorbit burn, so didn't get pictures. Here is the return vehicle boosting back to a safe orbit. Atmospheric interface. This is the second time the Eve Crawler entered the overly thick atmosphere, but this time it doesn't have inflatable heat shields to slow it down. It started getting a little hot so I turned the radiators on. If I wanted it to explode more, I would have left the radiator off. It got so hot the wheels started exploding. Most of the explosions were too fast or my sluggish fingers to push the button in time. All of the wheels exploded. Then the mounting rails started to burn off. But it eventually slowed to a subsonic velocity. It performed what we in amateur rocketry call a "perfect lawn dart". Initial impact. And it's gone. At this point the game crashed, probably because all of the parts being destroyed. So I had to restart the game and deorbit it again. This time I didn't watch it die.

I don't see why it would. I don't know how the game is coded, but the lines of code that enable staging shouldn't be too dissimilar between every class of part, if not identical. That''s how I, as an engineer that can't seem to learn coding, would do it. So it should only be a matter of copying the code sections that allow certain parts that can be de-staged into every other staged part. And even if it isn't as simple is my ignorant notions say it should be, this is still a better use of the programmers time than changing the color schemes of older parts. No offense to Squad intended.

For the first time since the parts were introduced I have designed a vehicle using one of the service modules, in this case the largest one which is just large enough to conceal two of the large drills at either end. With the shroud in place the drills seem to "magically" protrude through the underside of the craft. Hey if the game allows it, a little magic is fine. But there is a problem with these components: The explosive doors are staged and therefore at some point have to be jettisoned, which makes attaching parts to them a bit tricky. In fact I just attached said parts (radiators and structural wings in this case) to other parts adjacent to the service module. And the doors are jettisoned in the first stage and the holes covered up by large panel radiators. But I shouldn't have to be tricky. If fairings can have their staging disabled via advanced tweakables, why can the service modules? And engines should be unstagable too! In fact every single part that can be staged should have the option to be not staged with advanced tweakabled engaged! That is the Kerbal way!

Yep, and it turned out I needed much fewer of them. I use a set of the largest "Big-S" aerorons on the forward float/crew capsule, and two sets on the smaller delta wings on the rear floats with no flaps. The trick was having the connecting structural wing on the forward float (much) longer than those for the rear floats; so that when the hydrofoils were all sitting on the surface, the nose was already held up out of the water. The tail connector parts I used on the fore and after of the floats on Hyperboria proved unnecessary, and the smaller more aerodynamic and useful NCS adapters and small nose cones represent less dead weight. Although if there aren't autostucted, they can and will break off during a water takeoff. I should point out that the two big turbofans do not produce enough thrust to keep the seaplane moving "on the plain" for long, so I need to engage the RATO Vectors to get it up and out. Also this design is not space capable, so once it's down its staying down on Laythe.

I've been experimenting with seaplane bases again. I stumbled on a trick for getting seaplanes back into the air from the water that, as I am a real astronautics engineer, I really should have thought of while building my first seaplane base which is currently on Laythe. The trick: RATO. Rocket assisted takeoff. Carry one or two of the smaller diameter rocket engines, Vectors in this case, and burn them just long enough to get the plane back in the air. This is the first seaplane base, now designated "Hyperboria Base", on Laythe making science. This is my 5th RATO seaplane base experiment. It has almost everything a base needs (missing antenna and docking ports), half the wingspan of my first seaplane base, fewer engines (although by changing from 8 vectors to two of those big turbofans it has the same thrust), more fuel, fewer floats, fewer moving parts, a few more crew seats, and two vectors for RATO. The run up distance for a water takeoff is way shorter too. It also flies better than the first one. And unlike Hyperboria Base this experimental flyer has it's drills stored internally. I figured out I could use the 3.5 m service module to conceal drills.

I'm only using the stock solar system, but I do have a space station on an extremely long period orbit that goes way into deep space. It has about an 80 year period, I got it there by using what was at the time the largest rocket I had ever built with over 350 meganewtons of thrust at liftoff (it totally wrecked the launch pad). On the way out of Kerbin's SOI it performed the closest flyby of the Mun I've ever done (the altitude was under 2 km ASL at its lowest point when I initiated the escape burn). This gave it enough velocity that when it left Kerbin's SOI it was effective motionless in space and falling toward the sun. Then I refueled with a tanker I had waiting, boosted inward towards the sun with a perigee well below 2000 km over the sun. Then I refueled with another tanker, drifted inward toward the sun, and then did a burn at perigee. This put it on an intercept trajectory with long period asteroid I wanted to build on. So my answer: Eyeball it and burn huge amounts of fuel.

A more recent cause of much swearing and reloading the game from backups was my attempts to put a six spoke ring station in orbit of the Mun. I discovered a rather unique method to summon the kraken. I like to have multiple labs and converters in my stations, and a while back realized that a great place for them was in the spokes. While designing this station I noticed for the first time in my 155 years that the larger ISRU converters, the only ones I use, are both heavier than the labs (4.25 tons vs 3.5 tons) and shorter, which of course makes them denser. And since this is the first space station I've launched built with enough reaction wheels to reorient itself without using RCS jets (It has 6 of the largest wheels in its central core; the launch vehicle didn't even need fins!) I figured that the denser components should be placed nearer to the core to make it easier to reorient. Well imagine my constrination when during my first two attempts to place it in its final orbit around the Mun and dock with its asteroid fuel source ended with the most spectacular explosive krakens I have ever seen mere seconds after I jettisoned my "patented" radial bracing system. The station didn't so much shake itself apart as fly apart and crash the game. In the second attempt I double checked the autostructing and added even more standard structs, and used the invincibility cheats, but it still kraksploded. So I did some more experiments and eventually discovered that my launch pad testing where I spawn the station on pad with the ring supported by launch braces didn't last long enough, and if I waited about 45 seconds it started doing the Kraken dance. So I tried several new configurations, and eventually discovered that putting the labs closer to the station core than the converts solve the problem. This is the same order of components I used in every ring station up to that point, so i wonder if I discovered this problem once before and forgot about it.

I'm on the spectrum and have motor control, so I can't do manual docking. That is actually why I started using Mechjeb. Anyway MechJeb makes game play more like real space and air travel: computers actually do most of the work and humans are only there to do science and take control if the computer gets in over its electronic head. Man does not need to be in the loop most of the time.

Cheat. Open the debug menu and use the "set orbit" feature to plop your capsule back in a safe orbit. There is no problem with occasional cheating, especially when you or the game screw up.

Are there any established ways to just install individual parts from larger addons, like one or two the engines from the Near Future propulsion or the rumored electric props from the zeppelin parts pack?

Wasn't the B-24 one of the more Kevorkianesque American WW2 bombers? How do you keep the separated prop craft from just popping out through the fairing? I would love, more than you can imagine, to put two of those engines on a floating boat base with two science labs, drills, and an ISRU converter, and send it to Eve., but I have never succeeded in making an electric prop engine work. They always either just push through the fairing or whatever components is supposed to hold them, or shake themselves to pieces. I'm really hoping the devs just give us an electric or nuclear propelled prop engine that works on Eve. I'm great at building huge space stations and mobile bases, but useless at making things like your masterpiece work. In fact I'd be willing to bet a small amount of purely hypothetical money that if I loaded your craft file, It would just fly apart the moment I try to make it go. I wouldn't make it as a Pakled.

How do you keep the drive system craft from just "magically" popping through the fairing?

Have any of you KSP gods ever used powered rover wheels to drive your props rather than reaction wheels? It seems to me that if the wheels were all oriented the right way so that pressing the forward key rotated the drive shaft forward, MechJeb might be fooled into making rover guidance work. Also you wouldn't have to switch to an undocked draft partially inside your main vehicle to adjust the speed. And regarding your systems where the prop has to be detached from the main vehicle and treated like a separate craft I have three questions: (1) Do any of the cheats have to be on to make them work? (2) Should parts in either subcraft be rigidly connected or autostructed? (3) How do you get a reaction wheel to keep spinning on a Mac with a Mac keyboard. I've tried using alt plus either the E or Q keys and it didn't work. 23 tons Part count 186 Total 60 large reaction wheels in 2 contra-rotating engines Total 60 RTGs Bearings: Stayputnik and M-1x1 structural panels 4 x elevon 3, 8 x elevon 4 Spinner 377 is still experimental. When the project is complete I will upload the craft to Kerbal X. Meanwhile, please enjoy these images of the craft in flight and in the VAB: Spinner 377 So the drive system is just flopping around the inside of the fairing? How do you keep it from "magically" popping through? Is that the "klaw method" of building electric props? How does it work? Craft File?

Do you have a craft file link i could have? That drive system could be the answer to my quest to build an electrical fan propelled boat for Eve. Of course I haven't been able to make anyone else's stock electric parts work, but maybe yours will.

I'm considering installing the Scatterer addon, but need to know if it will adversely affect the in game loading speed on my Mac. Will it?

In the real world they're much better than the pathetic little capsules we're degenerating to, but in the world of KSP they require more effort than I want to use for my fun time.

Definitely the asteroid shape glitch that cause asteroids to randomly change shape every time you logged in. Before it struct I had almost 20 asteroid stations with about 45 Kerbals on them. Some of these were massive, with upwards of 10 modules. Well they all ended up encased in there asteroids and had to be destroyed when the glitch was finally fixed. Even worse I couldn't extract most of the Kerbals on the stations because the airlocks were all covered with rock and I could focus on crew modules to transfer them to rescue craft. So about 38 crew, some of my oldest and most experienced Kerbals at the time, died the death of deletion. And because of a glitch in my saved game, they never resurrected.

You should try building your own wings out of the structural wing parts. Those premade wings aren't very good. I'd love to see you send this beat to Laythe.

No it worked fine with all the mods. It was a gradual slowdown over about a week. It is a pretty old saved game, dating back to around 1.3, but I don't want to start over. And I have about half a terabyte of HD space vacant.

Is there a way to speed up 1.5.1 on a Mac running the most up-to-date OS? It was running really sweet for about a week after I updated, switching between craft and buildings in seconds rather than minutes. But now it's slowed it down again. I am running 4 mods, but I'm told they don't usually affect the game's speed. This might need to be moved to tech support, but I'm about to leave this computer for the day.

I would really love more odd numbered radial symmetry options, at least 5 and 7 way.