dvp

In low-ish gravity environments, and heck, even on Kerbin, it seems like the ground is awfully slippery. This was true in KSP1 as well. (Rovers spinning out and flipping over, spaceships landing and then proceeding to slide down the inside of a crater, Kerbals bumping into a ship and sending it flying.) My obviously-SWAG is that this is a combination of physics krakens (no way Jed should be able to knock over a 50t Mun Rover) and maybe not modeling friction at all? Adding some combination of tent stakes and anchors to the tech tree that "stick" a spaceship to the ground and keep it from wiggling around (Turn it into terrain from the perspective of the physics engine?) would be a nice QoL enhancement, and would probably cut down on "bug" reports from frustrated players as well.

Confirmed here. After all the trouble I went to to recover Valentina after she magically was flung away from a station during an EVA, and then reappeared at it again, then disappeared, and then the station teleported itself into a higher orbit and nosedived into the ground... Well... having them missing from the crew roster is the perfect ending to the perfect day, I guess.

Confirmed here too.

Glad I'm not the only one.

Sorry, I wasn't sure. Thank you.

Sorry if this is the wrong subforum. I'm trying to build a fusion-engine-powered ship with Interstellar tech, and I'm running into something that I think is weird, but maybe somebody has some tips? Or maybe it's supposed to work this way and I'm needing to design around it better. I have the ship in the screenshot below. The problem is when I throttle up the engine. The reactor and generators will gradually come up to the power level needed to run the engine at the selected speed, but this dips into my MJ reserves. Now that would be fine, except when the reactor/generators catch up, they only reach equilibrium, and don't actually produce any power to replenish my batteries. Same problem with the radiators, but in reverse - my WasteHeat will rise until the rads panels catch up and begin dissipating the heat, but they never work hard enough to bring my WasteHeat back down (which means my part temperatures go up, which means my generator efficiency drops, which means the MJ drain is bigger the next time I tap "Shift" to bring the throttle up a little bit more.) I was able to get this design up to maximum throttle by opening the throttle in very slow increments, but that's kind of annoying. How do I tell my generators and radiators to actually do their jobs (replenish my MJ reserves and cool the ship)? Or am I somehow using the wrong combination of parts? I have KAS, KIS, TweakUI (hence the giant radiators), Procedural parts, and a couple other mods installed. Is it possible one of them is conflicting with Interstellar somehow? Thanks in advance.

Even without costs, you still have an incentive (a LOT of incentive) to keep your part count low and be efficient with mass.

I swear that station I had orbiting Duna just disappeared.

You mean when you're re-entering Kerbin's atmosphere? That's weight distribution and aero. All things being equal, you enter heavy end first. But if one end is particularly more aerodynamic than the other, you'll get flipped around that way. Sort of like how raindrops work. (But instead of deforming to minimize drag, your ship seeks its lowest-drag equilibrium.) Setting SAS to the opposite of the natural position, and enabling RCS, or otherwise inducing a tumble, is actually good, as it will slow you down faster. If you're after stability, move fuel around to shift the center of mass towards the end you want pointing down, and if that isn't enough, add airbrakes to the end you want facing up. A few drogue 'chutes on the "this end up" end of the ship will also get you pointed right-way-around, once you've reached a sufficiently low speed/altitude. As long as your re-entry angle isn't too steep, you should be able to enter the atmosphere in most any orientation and slow down enough between 50km and 70km to not explode. (Although you might lose a solar panel or something.) If you can, save a little fuel and burn retro to guarantee your surface speed is under 1.9km/s at 40km altitude. Then you should be fine. Numbers will be different for other plants w/ atmosphere. (Jool, Duna, Eve, etc.)

See, if I'm going to cheat, I'm going to cheat and just enable infinite fuel. It's easy to justify, too, when you're just a few m/s short of your goal - "IRL, the people planning this mission would have been smarter than me. This is like a handicap in golf." or "Well, if I hadn't insisted that my first orbit be perfectly circular, or if I'd used a gravity assist better when I left Kerbin SOI..." or "Well, I'm not as good a pilot as Scott Manley." Making the "cheat" tedious is just punishing myself, and a game is supposed to be fun.

Well, you just have to do a flyby. So it's actually not all that bad - coming back from Eeloo or Jool, drop your Pe enough, and aim it just right so you pass the moon too.

Man. What I wouldn't give for a Halo-style "Flip Vehicle" button. But I guess this isn't that kind of game.

2-3 years isn't even enough time to get to Jool! :-D

One of my space stations just flat out disappeared. Four Kerbals lost and no small amount of science/data, too. RIP, guys. I'll send a followup mission someday.

S.S. Minnow. /I'm old.