Scootaloo

I know they can open the solar panels on vessels that have electrical power, but can they manually open a panel on a vessel thats batteries have run dead? I landed a rover on Duna, and as I drove it toward the lander the crew came down in, it ran out of electrical power. When it finally came to a stop, I thought "ok, maybe I can walk a Kerbal over and manually extend the panel" since the rover didn't have the power to do it on its own. However the only option was to grab it, attach it, or no damage. No option to open it. So you say they CAN open panels on vessels without power? Cuz thats what I am talking about in this thread.

How many times has this happened to you? Launch an unmanned probe, only to have its batteries drain, and afterwards its too late to open the panels? Well, wouldn't it be cool if instead of having to abort the flight, to have the option of launching a Kerbal up to manually open the panels? Not only would it save otherwise wasted missions, but it would add a level of difficulty and challenge, because it would make satellite rescue missions a more viable option, especially now that money is no object. Fix a satellite instead of scrap it! So what do you guys think? Should Kerbals be able to mitten-crank open any panel on any vessel, with battery power or not? Also a little PS: How about the ability to fix broken solar panels in the same way we can fix wheels!

Not posting this in the support section because I'm sure it's been seen before, but I'm curious of this particular kraken has been named yet. It's the one where upon reentry into Kerbin, the ground never generates underneath the ship. In the distance it is still blurry as if seen from high up, but looking directly below you yields the square directly below you to be the black of space, with the blue glowing ball that represents Kerbin in map mode visible. No matter how gently you touch down, you explode, similar to entering Jool. Any name for this kraken?

Well I flew the Moho mission again. Good thing I sent the white suit to the surface instead of Bill, because guess who died of air toxicity floating over Moho, while attached to a fully functional fusion reactor? At least this one won't show up on the "missing in action" list. Before decoupling the ascent stage I plucked the solar panels off and put them on the main ship, just as a little insurance against TAC. But I'm scared because I have to leave the ship in orbit around Moho to do other things until the window opens up, and I'm worried next time I go to it I'll get word again that another kerbal died. Just to be sure I have the DT Vista completely shutdown, the reactor on and making tritium, and the ship oriented N/S so as long as its on the sun side it will get light to a panel. All I can do now is hope this is enough to keep these glitches away. My other DT Vista vessel coming from Dres is doing fine, because it has solar panels attached to it. Same for the one coming back from Eve. One thing I'm wondering is if I made a mistake by using DT cryostats instead of the hex cans. How much of a reactor's daily output of tritium do I lose to boil off? I'm also wondering how exactly deuterium and tritium flow around a ship. Do they depend on proper cross feed connections like LFO, or are they accessible everywhere as long as its attached to the ship like xenon and monopropellant? I have my cryostats on the other end of this big truss, not attached to the generator directly. It seems like they receive bred tritium, but do not pump-back tritium to be used for the reactor. Should I connect fuel lines between these cryostats and the reactor?

And another odd glitch or incompatibility has reared its head. Between KSPI and TAC Life Support. Ok so I have a functioning fusion reactor on a ship to Moho, powered with a DT Vista engine. Plenty of life support, plenty of electric charge. But suddenly I got the message "electric charge depleted." I came out of warp (time warp, not KSPI warp drive warp), and it filled up again, so I went back into warp, only to be interrupted with the message "[X Kermin] died of air toxicity". I know megajoules are different from electric charge, but don't reactors refill electric charge too? If I have a fully functioning fusion reactor attached to a generator (it didn't shut down and drained power, the reactor was running up until the moment the kerbals died), how could I have lost electric charge? Are fusion reactors an unreliable source of electric charge? Is the electric charge they provide somehow different from the electric charge provided by panels, and not recognized by TAC Life Support? Like literally there's no reason for it to do this. Waste heat was in limits, too. This isn't the first time I've had electric problems related to this combination of fusion reactor and DT Vista. It seems the problems come up when fusion reactors are paired with DT Vista engines. I don't know what it is, but any ship with a DT Vista attached seems to drain massive amounts of electric charge. Like literally it will start on the pad with drained batteries (a problem I had when launching the drive sections into orbit...this fusion reactor/DT Vista combo has become my workhorse). When I edited in enough power to start the main engine of the first stage (S3 KS-25x4), it still wasn't providing enough electric charge to refill the rapidly draining batteries, and the rocket died again. Like it was draining electric charge on the order of 25 units a second. Oddly it stopped when I cycled the beamed power receiver inside the fairing. Now, when I first launched a fusion reactor as a beamed power station (using a thermal rocket instead), I had no power issues. So it seems the DT Vista drains electric power instantaneously, even though it doesn't use electric charge in and of itself. Anyone else had this glitch? TL;DR - Fusion powered ship with DT Vista engine, both functional, loses all electric charge and kills the kerbals due to TAC Life Support. Do I have to shut down the engine completely between burns? Does leaving the engine active, even with no throttle, make it drain power?

I shudder to think about how the budget will effect my beamed power network. I imagine 3.75m fusion reactors will be hella expensive. Right now I have 3 in Kerbostationary orbit, one in a 300km orbit, one on the surface a few km from the KSC, and now a 3.75m fusion reactor up there too. Bye bye beamed power.

Editing the save file worked! ^^ Unfortunately another mission of mine went afoul. It was a mission to Eve with a landing on Gilly, and I used IR-tilting 1.25m plasma thrusters the same way that Scott Manley used IR hinges on nuclear engines on his Duna Express ship in Interstellar Quest. I had to abort into a flyby, I ditched the laboratory and put all the kerbals in the command pod to save weight, and when I returned to the ship later to do a burn to return it to Kerbin, I saw that something either glitched with IR, Interstellar, or both. The plasma engines were both floating in space about 30 feet to the right of the ship (one closer than the other, the further one was 30 feet out), and they were still apparently part of the ship. When I throttled up they would start up. I hoped it was just a rendering error, and that the forces would still be as if they were in their original position, but nope, the forces corresponded with the engines and it started spinning. It then began slowly oscillating before the engine section broke off. I deleted the flight. Apparently the Kraken just wanted it more.

There was a supply of tritium when I made that post. BUT I just went back and the resource bar went from full bright green since the last time I checked the ship, to a dull green indicating empty on both D and T. NaN is also effecting helium 3 now. It seems like its a cascading error that gets progressively worse every time I load the game and ship. I've never edited a save file before. How do I do it?

I'm running into a problem/glitch with the Tokamak fusion reactor. I have one on a ship to Dres and its running a DT Vista engine. Now, I'm using a beamed power receiver to reactivate the reactor prior to a correction burn. It's getting enough power to activate, because I've started reactors with less MW than it is receiving on other missions. But it can't start up in Deuterium/Tritium mode. It is able to start in helium-3 mode, but thats it (and since I had very little Helium 3, it shut down again quickly). Also, in the resources slider, the deuterium/tritium resource levels are called NaN/total capacity, and it is being consumed at a rate of NaN. Once I saw NaN I knew it was a glitch. So how do I fix it? Is this a save game-breaker? BTW it's using 4x deuterium/tritium cryostats instead of hex cans. I used hex cans on another mission and it is working fine, but decided to use cryostats on this one because I didn't know how much the DT Vista consumed and wanted plenty. Does that play a role? I also notice that a lot of times when I leave a ship with a running reactor, and then go back to it later, the reactor has shut back down. Is there any way to just keep it running full time? EDIT - Went back in and reloaded it. The reactor is producing MegaJoules, and is now working on D/T mode. However the engine is flamed out and says it is "Deuterium deprived"...though oddly the reactor is not. I'm confuzzled...

Does anyone else have a problem with thermal rockets giving asymmetrical thrust when placed in symmetry? I have them on a spaceplane getting beamed power, and using the in-line receivers (1.25m). I kick them on at high altitude and 100% of the time the plane spins off completely to one side. I have good coverage of beamed power, so they should be receiving the same power and producing the thrust. Can one really be getting that much more power than the other? Should I hold off until I have an onboard reactor to be using these in symmetry?

Sounds good. It does accelerate pretty slowly, so it does tend to loiter at that transonic speed for a bit. Guess I just need to give it a little boost with the rockets to get it past the sound barrier. What is the physics significance of struts? Do exposed struts contribute much to drag at the moment in KSP?

1 - No. Just the S2 one near the front. It's B9. 2 - No. But how do I do that? 3. I think thats the problem. Even with struts it wiggles though. I gotta check and see if Joint Reinforcement is installed. 3. I'm flying with fuel balancer. So no.

Ok I'm having a really head scratcher of a problem with my large SSTOs. According to the "Center Of Lift Behind Center Of Mass" Rule, they are stable, and indeed in the lower atmosphere it is indeed stable. However as I climb above 10km and over 300km, the aircraft begins to pitch and roll widely, going into a series of violent nose-up maneuvers, basically going belly-first into the airstream, then dropping the nose back down into the airstream, before repeating the process over and over again. Can someone explain why exactly this is happening? The airplane is stable, and at no time does the CoL go ahead of the CoM.

Should there be a pre-made Titan II, big G, and white gemini in there?