G Addict

Anybody else getting NullRef errors from their launchpads? I've noticed it happen while timewarping, this goes away if you toggle timewarp again. Both the launchpads I've got to the Mun have thrown errors shortly after landing, causing low framerates and all built ships to spawn in contact with the munar surface, intersecting the pad and exploding. Could it be an incompatibility with the Lazor mod? Have I installed wrong? The pads appear to work fine for a while, but after they've been around a while (or maybe experienced a timewarp?) they break and do this. Edit: This happens with both the Hooligan Labs pad and the one included in this pack, I am using the 0.21 compatible DLL.

Hm, from kepicness' NISP line it seems like my problems with the Bifurcator design are a lack of wing and possibly piloting skill. Our planes are pretty similar in mechanics by the looks.

I find three high stacks of the big fuel tanks are best efficiency wise - three empty large tanks weighs as much as a big engine so once you get three it's actually best to have another stage with a new set of engines (or even better, make it so that you can use the same engines while jettisoning the empty tanks). OT, when your rocket makes like a concertina on launch due to crushing itself with engine power.

Asparagus staging is where you have several radial fuel tanks + engine stacks all feeding fuel into the next stack via pipes, discarding each stack (or more usually pair of stacks) when it runs out of fuel. Say you have six stacks around a central one. Two of those stacks will feed into the two next to them, which will then feed into the next two, which will feed into the central stack. Only one (or two) two fuel tanks will be used at a time, and you discard any empty fuel tanks with non-burning engines as soon as they run out, optimising thrust-weight ratio and delta v.

Since thrust is kilonewtons according to mechjeb, I'd say masses are in tonnes, which makes sense considering the relative size of the rockets. No way those masses are in kg.

Am I the only one who uses the Poodle because it looks nice on a 2m command pod along with a 2m halftank? As has been said a few times already, the Mainsail is wonderful for getting those big payloads off the pad without building a stupidly huge cluster of smaller engines and inviting lag. Sure it's inefficient but it's easy. Most of my 3 kerbal rockets use a trio of 3x2m tank+mainsail stacks to get them to a reasonable height. One even uses mainsails all the way up to orbit! Efficient? Nah. Hassle free and ridiculously fast? You bet.

I'll just try get another mission off with a full screenshot roll. I have screens of landing, but no ascent and only late reentry (at 10km, after aerobraking to reasonable speeds). Any chance of getting by with an already semi-proven plane? I'll attach the screens I do have.

Why am I such an idiot? Just pulled a perfect orbit and land with an old version of the Bifurcator XN, which lacks the nuclear engine (imaginatively called the Bifurcator X), instead feeding that fuel to the aerospikes. But I failed to take screens of the whole takeoff and orbit stages, only remembering during reentry. Reflexive kicking ensued.

Think you should swap the scores for Eve and Duna - Eve's massive gravity makes powered landings incredibly hard, while duna's got relatively weak gravity.

Fair enough. I present to you, the Bifurcator XN nuclear spaceplane! It was actually just a test flight which I expected to fail very quickly, so I didn't take any screens until - against all odds - it managed orbit. After that, I think I had all criteria. I'm an idiot and landed on the wrong continent. Should remember for next time: it's the one that looks a little bit like Africa... Screen 6 shows the 72x77 orbit, 7 is during orbit, 9 is post reentry and 10&11 depict the landing procedure. The NERVA provides a good amount of delta v, but very slowly - it nearly dropped out of orbit. Staging is the two jets for ascent to about 8km, then the two aerospikes for leaving atmosphere, then the NERVA. I would've had better results from firing the nuclear engine while in the upper atmosphere instead of waiting for the aerospikes to burn out, but see above with relation to idiocy. I think it should be able to make a much higher orbit safely, but the Mun is stretching it. There's another variant without the heavy NERVA which pipes those fuel tanks behind the cockpit into the aerospikes. Didn't test that one, but it should orbit more easily due to having more readily available (but less overall) delta v. Once I iron out a few problems (like the jets being barely able to lift the thing) I'll go for the piloting awards - it's more than capable of pulling off a runway landing, even as-is.

Is this completely dead or will entries still be accepted? I have an eligible 0.17 plane if they are.

I've had a peek and come up with nothing, but apologies if chickenplucker's already explained. Why does the Bigtrak require cartcommand.dll instead of tosh's cart.dll? All it seems to do is cause clashes with the other cart mods. Something to do with the Bigtrak/Liltrak being command pods? And can I modify cart.dll based rovers to work with cartcommand? Is development still ongoing with this mod? Not a lot's happened in quite a while... On a more KSPish note, I've landed a Bigtrak on both Duna and Eve, both using a landing system based on RCS. After asking about it before, I completely forgot about the Puddle Jumper so used RCS in its place. Eve is really hard on the bigtrak - I was crawling up a 6km mountain at a painstaking 14m/s from my landing site, and my thrusters had been decimated by a hard landing. It was night, and everything was a deep purple. Very atmospheric. I also have one on Duna, whose RCS lander engines worked a lot better and touched down intact but were knocked off by my bad driving before long. That one's rendesvoused with my first interplanetary lander.

Is there definitely nothing that could get in the way of the exhaust? If there's anything blocking it, even partially, you'll lose all the thrust from the engine which is blocked.

Made it to Duna twice, first with a conventional one kerb lander then with a three kerb rover for exploration. Landed in a giant basin, mainly because it looked reasonably flat. I reckon I could get either spacecraft to Eve or Jool, but the innermost planet seems iffy. Need a lot of delta v to get that close in. Funnily enough, both of my Dunar landers would've been captured by Ike if I hadn't intervened, but I was most interested in the planet itself. The moon can come later. Next mission will probably end up being to Jool.

My default altitude is 12km, as this seems to work well for all sizes of plane. As a rule, light planes with a lot of wing area are best going high, while ones with less wing or more weight will prefer lower altitudes.