Bowman

Landing on Mars - Kerbal Near-Future-Style As mentioned in my last post I run a RSS-KSP-Career-Save on SMURFF and with the Near Future Propulsion / Electrics Mod. Now it's time to bring Kerbals down to Mars and safely back into orbit with a single-stage-lander.

Mars Expeditions - Nuclear Greenman Style After more than thousand KSP-hours I want you show my current career-gameplay in RSS (1.1.3). Instead of the great RO I decided to join the SMURFF-guys to keep the game in its harsh reality a bit more gamy. My approach: Kerbalkind should get its hand on every possible body of this solar system. To reach their destinations I think near future technologies are just great. The cryogenic engines mod and near future propulsion allows, combined with ore-mining, relatively handy spaceships and leads to not-monster-launchers. If you want a headline for my crafts: keep it functional, keep it modular. At this second Mars-transfer-window I launched two 100t-Mars-expedition-crafts (100t in Mars-orbit), driven by nuclear power as EC-charge and lithium as fuel. The crafts propell stations, a mining-facility, an empty Mars-lander for three kerbals and a small orbiter. Please stand by for my next post. Three Kerbals will put the first green feet on Mars.

I'm into KSP since 0.18, where the game loaded for 3 minutes and crashed at every second time, someone pushed the "launch"-button. It's hard to believe what has happend in the last few months. Once there was a time we were awaiting devnote-texts by every developer and thought to know everyone who works on the game. This changed - first slowly. Then Harvester left and the house of cards seemed to fall. Just before Maxmaps leaving, this great charakter in messing up at the weekly squadcast, have had to be a sign for the communitiy. Remember the days when we get informed about the marriages of devs. - But Squad just seem to pay redicolously low wage compared to the spirit and fascination for the game that comes from the community. This article from May 2016 explanes it just too impressive: https://www.develop-online.net/news/squad-devs-blast-kerbal-space-program-studio-for-high-crunch-and-low-pay/0220059 A long time ago (one years or two) the devnotes were about "multiplayer backend", which was coded at this time. A thing I'm waiting, waited for. Also clouds and other environmental stuff, or a second gas giant, where mentioned here and there. Yesterday KSP felt a bit spirit-less. Harvester would have put the comet 67P and the ability to land on it into the gabe. Today KSP feels more vital then any time (1.2) and dead at the same time. It feels like there was some kind of internal crush between 0.90 and 1.0 which lead to the plan: "Bring KSP out as good as possible, do not disappoint the community. But leave this place, if you can." And there we are now at 1.2 and the core team, the still-left-minds behind KSP, are leaving. Or are forced to leave. We don't know. May this be an uncontrolled reentry or just another burn prograde, we aren't able to see in this dark hours. It's time for me, stuck in an RSS-Save with nearly 1k+ KSP-hours, to say thank you for the great work of every single devoloper who did their jobs - even in the (LINK above) mentioned circumstances - with the hope to bring us players the best KSP-experience we will ever have. I can understand everyone who misses Felipe Falanghe more than ever. We can now imagine he didn't left his baby "KSP" in the best mood. Maybe the community has to take on the responsibility for Kerbal Space Program one day. (Elon Musk will send humans to Mars. He'll need money and space-enthusiastic people all around the globe. We all in this community know that there's just one way to achieve this goal within hours: playing KSP. Elon should buy the game and put it back into the right hands) Cheers everyone.

Hey everyone and thanks for the great mod. I really enjoy the Real Scale Space travelling by now. But I've got something like a Problem. (I play with SMURFF, no RO is installed.) My earth-texture is (in 8k) something like this undetailed green landscape we can see in the screenshots of the opening pages. On streams I often saw way more detailed maps and I can't anything about it. Maybe you know what I'm talking about and are able to help me out. Thank you!

Thank you again. This works very nice and powers my contracted station to it's mars orbit.

Thank you! It worked out pretty well. Theres just a feature I noticed: It's not able to fully shutdown the engine. Is this correct?

Does anyone know if this engine works under 1.1? I found it on ckan for 1.1 but can't find it in the VAB. Maybe anyone can help. Thanks.

I've got the same problem with KER and Real Scale Boosters. The F-1 engines show 99% of their vacuum-stats in the "atmospheric"-calculation, which leads to the problems described above.

Hey! Thanks for your update. Unfortunally I'm getting still the 3 errors while loading mentioned aboce. Besides that it seems like the ISP of the engines didn't change. Is this intentional?

I'm so happy to see your Skylon-replica and the adjusted Sabre-engines. Would it be possible to get access to your config-file of the Sabre? Does it still work under 1.1? Thank you!

anyone an idea?

Dear all, I'd like to create spaceplanes in RSS to achieve an orbit and stuff like that. What problems I found out by now using ksp-stock-sized related mods: ksp-fuels are way too dense --> spaceplanes don't produce lift enough at normal angles of attack (more angle - more lift - more dragg) ksp fuels are way too dense --> runway collapses jet engines and the rapier are adjusted for kerbin atmosphere and kerbin airspeeds Thoughts to come by these problems: using C7's Sabre Engine (2.5m) of the B9 pack and adjusting it to: use intake air / liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen in the correct ratio adjust it in size and weight to the planned sabre engine from Reaction Engines Limited adjust performance-values to work at mode switch conditons (~30km @ mach 5.x) Unfortunately I'm not a modder and don't know how to destroy adjust the configs correctly. Do you know: someone who created the piece of code I am looking for? a link to the modpack I am looking for? which values have to be adjusted? how to adust those values? do you know someone who is developing a jet-engine pack for RSS/real fuels? If you have other ideas to get a proper technical base for spaceplane engines, I'd like to read your suggestions. Thanks, Lukas

I've got the same problem: In the moment of leaving the atmosphere the game keeps crashing. I reinstalled Kopernicus, but that didn't work out.

Thoughts: A simple lifter (5m + 3,75m parts) with your parts as main stage allows me to push 250t into LKO. Remember the pure 2,5m orange-octagon-asparagus-monster rocketera. This was not even possible without a very good computer. I'm just asking if it's usefull to get the ability to lift maybe 1kt into LKO, which would be possible with 7,5m and 10m parts. I play career in hard mode. These heavy (5m) launches are very expansive, not to think about 250t payload. If I would play real solar system or x6,4 those parts could be useful. But in kerbalsize Kerbin I don't see a reason. There will be players who love that "extreme heavy rocketry" - I like your thoughts to put it into a seperate parts-pack. spacey heavy lifter has a good part count at the moment. Keep the really big things optional. By now I didn't use your single engines because there are accurate stock versions with better isp. But that's individual, too. What I see: there is a lack of high isp upper stage engines. All poodles are a bit weak in power. But the current designs are lifter atmo engines. So change the values making them fit for upper stage could be too easy.

Your single engine thrust-plates work nicely. But I have found one possible optimization: Give them several nodes to attach the decoupler. So we can adjust the length of the shrouds to our attached engine. For example: putting a poodle under a nerva-sized shroud looks a bit weird and makes the rocket even longer as it has to be. This system is used in some fairing-mods for example. All in all: thanks for your work. Now are my rockets more aestethik and also more economic.