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Mission 6: Valkyrie 2.0 Outline: Well, the boffins at HQ have decided that they want to go to places like the Mun and Minmus. Unfortunately, the added complexity of these new spacecraft designs makes using a 1 Kerbal Moho spacecraft to deliver the crew in 2, maybe 3, launches far too expensive. Your job is to design a spacecraft using the new, more durable capsule. It's increased size makes it heavier and more cumbersome, so you will need to design a new launcher and Instrument Service Module. Also, the success of the Moho mission has boosted public morale and you have received limited donations from various rich Kerbals, including J. Rockekeller and Steve Kobs. Donations: 15k one time donation Available Tech: 1. Mk 1-2 Crew Capsule 2. Rockomax 200-32,16, and 8 fuel tanks 3. Rockomax Poodle and Skipper engines. 4. OX-STAT solar panels Objective: Put 3 kerbals into a 75km by 75km LKO and return them safely to Kerbin. Reward: Unlock Big Parts concept, which allows for adding mods that give you bigger parts. Must announce added mod, must unlock part first. 75k kerbits after successful recovery. +5k kerbits if you land in the water of the coast of KSC. +10k if you land in the KSC.

Name: Bellino World Pref.: I hate worlds C.V.: Launched and returned over 200 rockets Put 3 orbital stations up, but no docking (Think Salyut, but the crew along) Landed but failed to return from the Mun Flown planes, though very few Character Name: Chet Kerman Flys a plane decently, can land O.K. but enjoys orbit the most. Wants to command space station/ long term orbital flight

Well **** me, really? Didn't they say this game needed more CPU than GPU? Actually, my GTX 470 doesn't even work that hard (monitoring it with Afterburner), same for the cpu core the game uses, yet i can't fly anything bigger than 200 parts, with MINIMUM graphic settings. What up here? Why i run this game so badly? (while running, let's say, Battlefield 3 smoothly with high-medium details..? )

Single-Stage Stuff A while back I decided to make a Single-Stage-To-Orbit spaceship, since I had never made one before. At first I fiddled with some spaceplanes. This was the first time I'd ever visited the Spaceplane Hanger. I managed to kill more kerbals in 20 minutes than I've killed in years of game-time flying rockets, so I concluded that spaceplanes were not for me. So I went back to the VAB, and tried slapping some jet engines on a rocket to see if I could make that work. The image below shows the family of test vehicles I made in the process of finding out how high jets engines can operate before they flame out and start the ship tumbling around (since the two engines never seem to flame out at the same time), and what kind of flight profile is needed to get into orbit. The jet engines didn't seem to do much in the way of gaining a lot of speed (which I gather is what they do with a spaceplane SSTO), but they serve to get you above the thickest part of the atmosphere and give you a little upward and sideways velocity. Unless I'm doing this wrong. But it wasn't too hard to get my first ship into orbit, and to bring it back down intact under parachutes for a landing on its legs. Then I tried a bit more fuel...but ran up against the limit that the two jet engines could lift. I briefly tried four jet engines, which accelerated upward smartly, but had the embarrassing result that the ship broke apart under its parachutes (pilot Dilger Kerman was fine...but the KSC administrators did not appreciate getting bombed by the lower section of his rocket). I tried a little "air-hogging" by giving each engine two ram-air intakes, but did not carry this to unreasonably extremes that I gather some people have tried. And after getting a design that could reach orbit well, I tried to see how big of a payload I could deliver to orbit with the ship...first with a small science package satellite, and then with some fuel tanks. So here is the SSTO Test Version 1g, with optional payload attached. Three FL-T800 fuel/oxidizer tanks, and one FL-T400 fuel/oxidizer tank (important: the side tanks feed into the central tank). Two basic jet engines, each with two ram air intakes (since this looked reasonable). The ram air intakes were attached with the magic of cubic struts. One LV-T45 rocket engine, a standard sized ASAS unit, a single-kerbal capsule (which can separate and return under its two parachutes if necessary), two more parachutes mounted on the central main tank, one docking port, four heavy-duty landing legs, and three ladders in case the kerbal actually wants to get out after landing. Action groups were set up to toggle the two jet engines on/off, and the central rocket engine on/off. And a Jeb 9000 control interface was added to handle the precision targeting of the landing location. The first part of the flight is handled mainly by the jet engines. These need to be activated on the pad and allowed to spool up to speed before the launch clamps are released. These engines tend to run quite hot... the overheat warning is your constant companion during the boost. My first surprise came when I added more fuel tanks and the rocket got too heavy...then the jet engines struggled to the point where they exploded. Needless to say, this was also an unexpected surprise for Dilger, but he landed the ship handily on its rocket flame. The speed of the rocket needs to be kept above 80 m/s or so once the engines get hot...otherwise they will explode. It would be nice if I could give a little push with the rocket motor to help them along, but there is no separate throttle control for the jet engines and rocket engine, so it's a matter of briefly toggling the rocket engine on to speed up the ship and prevent the jet engines from overheating. Several intermittent bursts of the rocket engine can keep the jet engines sitting near the red line until the speed increases sufficiently that the rocket engine is no longer needed for this. I generally use an initial blast from the rocket engines just after I release the launch clamps to push the ship up to around 50 m/s... and then it can usually get to 80 m/s before the jet engines overheat and explode. With the two ram air intakes on each jet engine, the engines will operate to a little over 20,000 meters (this assumes the ship is moving more or less into the airstream, and not at too high of an angle of attack). You can watch the Air Intake resource to see when it drops down to 0.09, after which flameout will soon happen. I start the ship in a slight gravity turn starting at about 7,000 meters (about 10 degrees), and increase the tip over to 15 degrees at around 15,000 meters. The jet engines use fuel from the tanks, but not oxidizer...so you end up with an excess of oxidizer. But, the amount of fuel used by the jet engines is quite small. Still, it would be nice if I could choose to have less oxidizer or more fuel to begin with, since that excess oxidizer is just dead weight. At 20,000 meters, I use the action group keys to toggle on the rocket engine and toggle off the jet engines. I then start increasing the gravity turn to 45 degrees and beyond, keeping the apoapsis point safely ahead of the ship in the Map view. The jet engines are dead weight for the rest of the flight, but they apparently have helped enough to make this worth it. Alternately, I have had good results using a little more turn-over prior to 20,000 meters...but you can't turn over too much (since the jet thrust is holding the rocket up, unlike a spaceplane SSTO that has wings to provide lift). At the higher angles, I give occasional bursts from the rocket engines for a few seconds to keep the upward momentum going. At 18,000 meters, I turn on the rockets engines and keep them on after that. This more-angled trajectory allows the jet engines to operate longer, so it gives better efficiency. I have tried the Turbojet engines instead of the regular jet engines, but I do not get as good of results with the Turbojets. First of all, they are heavier. Secondly, the ship spends most of its time on the jet engines at lower altitudes (again, unlike a spaceplane SSTO) where the regular jet engines are more efficient -- it flies through the high-altitude region of the jet engine operation rather quickly. Here are two views of the SSTO ship in orbit at 105 km. The ship can reach a circular orbit of 500 km altitude and still have enough fuel to deorbit. But that would use up almost all of the fuel onboard, and your only landing option at that point would be to use the parachutes. From a low orbit, the ship has enough fuel that it can return and land on its legs using rocket power. I let MechJeb target the ship into KSC, and then either MechJeb or I can land it on its flame. Dilger can easily handle the ladders, which is good since a fall from that distance might be deadly. This particular landing was from a 105 km orbit, and the ship still had 86 units of fuel left after landing. It typically takes about 35 units of fuel to deorbit the ship and target it for the KSC. If the ship goes out to a 500 km orbit, or if it carries a substantial payload into orbit, then landing on rocket power is not an option. In the picture below, the SSTO is lifting a small refueling pod into orbit. The refueling pod is made up of a FL-T200 tank, a FL-R25 RCS tank, a QBE probe core, two small solar panels and a battery pack to power the probe core, RCS thrusters for maneuvers, and docking ports on each end. The SSTO ship can put this refueling pod into a 125 km orbit and have enough fuel left over to return for a parachute landing. When making a parachute landing, the two chutes that are mounted at the top end of the main fuel tank are deployed first. The timing of this deployment depends on whether the targeting for the landing location appears to be going a little long (deploy early) or short (deploy late). Do NOT deploy the two parachutes on the capsule yet. If you deploy all four chutes high up, the force of full-deployment at 500 meters can pull the ship apart. The pilot will survive on the two capsule chutes, and the lower part of the ship can probably also survive on its two chutes, but it looks embarrassing on the Kerbal Nightly News. When the ship reaches 500 meters AGL, the chutes will fully open. Then the two chutes on the capsule can also be deployed to help slow the descent. And now would be a good time to lower the landing gear. If you have some fuel left, you can use the rocket engine to brake to a gentle landing. But be careful not to slow to a stop in the air, or your chutes will vanish... and then you better hope you have enough fuel to complete the landing on the engine flame. I've cleverly had to do this few times. And while precision in landing is a great thing, you CAN get a little too close to the launch pad. In the flight shown below, the ship came down near the edge of the launch pad structure... ...and barely managed to not tip over. This was the closest Dilger came to getting blown up in this series of test flights. Later Update Below is the slightly modified 1he version. It has a probe body attached so that the ship can take a kerbal to orbit and then return empty (or vice versa). The option of separating the capsule has been eliminated (I now trust this design...and the abort mode for a problem during launch is just to cut engines and deploy the chutes in sequence as needed, then land on the legs with a little rocket assist because the ship will be heavy with fuel). RCS quads have been positioned so they don't try to cause rotations while doing translations (which save on RCS fuel) for space station docking. I have been able to get this version into a 120 km circular orbit with just over 500 m/s of delta-V remaining. This was accomplished by flying the more-angled trajectory described earlier. 3-Kerbal Crew Carrier My original version of the SSTO ship used a single-kerbal capsule and two jet engines, so the upscaled Crew Carrier was built using a 3-kerbal capsule and six jet engines. As before, each jet engine has two ram air intakes (since it fits and seems physically reasonable). The original used one LV-T45 vectoring rocket engine, so the Crew Carrier uses three LV-T45 engines. It has RCS for orbital rendezvous and docking. It has parachutes and landing legs and MechJeb targeting for landing back at KSC. The test flights for the ship were conducted by Commander Nedmy Kerman, Pilot Merfred Kerman, and Flight Attendant Rodgan Kerman. Just kidding, Rodgan! Oh, how the guys had such fun picking on Co-pilot Rodgan. While the ship is still safely secured in the launch clamps, the throttle is pushed to maximum and the jet engines are activated by pressing a switch with a big "2" on it. After the jet turbines spool up to full speed, the launch clamps are released at the same time the rocket engines are fired by pressing the button with the big "1" on it. The rocket engines are only on for a short while as the ship clears the tower and speeds up to 50 m/s, when the "1" is pressed again to switch off the rockets. Then it's up to the fuel-sipping jet engines to very slowly accelerate the ship, and, more importantly, lift it above the lower, dense layers of Kerbin's atmosphere. At 10,000 meters, a 10-degree turn is initiated. At 18,000 meters, the rocket engines are turned on and kept on by pressing the "1" button. At 20,000 meters the "2" button is pressed to shutdown the jet engines before they flame out. Then the gravity turn begins in earnest. Depending how how good the pilots are that day, the ship could have anything from 300 to 500 units of fuel left after circularizing a 120 km orbit. At least this was true of the pilots used to test-fly this ship. Below we see the Crew Carrier 1 about to dock with the ancient Tanker Station 1 in a 200-km orbit. Depending on how much fuel the Crew Carrier made it to orbit with, it can reach an altitude of 400-500 km or so. Just be sure you keep enough fuel to deorbit (it takes about 130 units of fuel to deorbit from a 120 km orbit). The other ship that is docked to the Tanker Station is a "Fat Man" crew transfer vehicle that was launched long ago on an expendable launch vehicle. On board are Kelby Kerman, Dunsel Kerman, and Lembart Kerman, who got assigned to this mission when they kept coming up in the rotation instead of the crew I wanted. I suppose I should let them out of purgatory soon. There is no crew in the tanker's capsule, since they were extracted years ago when the second tank docked (and had a landing capsule for them). After retro fire a clever MechJeb-assisted distance away from the KSC, the Crew Carrier drops backwards onto KSC property. If you have sufficient fuel and the skills of Jebadiah Kerman (or his software equivalent), you can land the Crew Carrier on its rocket engines. But that's more excitement than I typically care for...and we've carried along all these darn parachutes, so we might as well use them. The chutes anchored the the top of the lower main tank are deployed first so that structural component can take the main deployment stress when the chutes fully open at 500 meters. Then the other two sets of chutes at the top of the upper tank and on the capsule are deployed to slow the descent. (I have two chutes on the capsule because the abort procedure for this ship is to simply shutdown all engines and deploy chutes in a judicious manner...and I wanted to be sure there were at least a couple on the capsule in case things come apart.) Although the ship can land safely under the chutes, it's polite to return it bent as little as possible (otherwise the ground crew gets all snotty and is less likely to share their Beemans with you), so any fuel left in the tank should be used to cushion the touchdown. The ladder is a bit circuitous, but even if the kerbal is clumsy and manages to exit the capsule without holding on to the ladder (we're looking at YOU, Rodgan), their fall is cushioned by the apparently-soft ram air intakes, so they can survive. A second varient of the Crew Carrier was also tested. It incorporates a 4-kerbal hitchhiker container in case the need arises to move seven kerbals at once. This varient can make it to 120 km orbit and return (parachute landing only, of course...there will not be fuel for a rocket flame landing), and it should only be sent to retrieve kerbals from higher altitudes if there is also some fuel there that it can have for the return. Both versions of the Crew Carrier were also constructed in probe-controlled variants so that the ship can be launched empty to retrieve kerbals from orbit. Laythe SSTO Most recently, I've been testing a version of the SSTO for my upcoming long-term mission to set up a base on Laythe. I originally planned to send one of the 3-kerbal Crew Carriers there to shuttle kerbals down and up from the surface as needed, but the 3-kerbal SSTO is a fairly heavy ship, and I wanted something lighter (just to make it easier to ship it to Laythe). I considered using my 1-kerbal version of the SSTO, and make multiple trips (it turns out that three trips with the 1-kerbal version uses a bit less fuel than one trip of the 3-kerbal version)... but more trips is more tedious flying for me, and more chance of accidents. So I considered stacking extra single-kerbal capsules on top of the original SSTO... at 0.8 tons each, that would be an additional 1.6 tons, which the vehicle should be able to just barely handle. But then I thought, why use a total of 2.4 tons of capsules (three of the single capsules), when I could use a 2.5-ton Hitchhiker Container and carry FOUR kerbals? So I tried it out: The version above can BARELY make it into a 90-km Kerbin orbit ...and Laythe is a bit easier, so it should be able to make the trip down and up starting with a full load of fuel. But it looks too non-aerodynamic to suit my tastes (and adding tapering transitions makes it too heavy to reach orbit. So I built an intermediate version of the SSTO with four jet engines and two rocket engines and a Hitchhiker Container: The intermediate version above can make it into Kerbin orbit just fine. There is a bit of a problem with flying these Hitchhiker versions compared to the capsule versions: the ship no longer has capsule torque to help you steer it. As a result, the Hitchhiker versions must be flown using RCS control. The ship above has four RCS tanks down underneath by the two rocket engines (to decrease the frontal area and decrease drag...once the program actually cares about such things. But I'm trying to be more aerodynamic here). But it's flyable with RCS. When I have a successful SSTO, I always try LESS FUEL to see how it works. The version below can barely make it into a 90-km Kerbin orbit (although the return might be iffy because there is not a lot of fuel left to target your reentry). But computer simulations indicate it can handle the Laythe run down from orbit and back up to orbit with some fuel to spare. It weighs in at 30.72 tons fully fueled, and only 14.72 tones empty... which my Interplanetary Tug should be able to handle nicely for a delivery to Laythe. Note that when using this as a Laythe shuttle, it leaves the Laythe orbital space station fully fueled, and then uses some fuel to deorbit and target the landing. With all eight chutes deployed, it comes down at just over 10 m/s with all that fuel on board, so some additional fuel must be used in a short braking burn just before touchdown. But at that point the ship still has enough fuel to return to an 80-km orbit around Laythe with fuel to spare. Brotoro's KSP Web pages.

Same here. Ran several rehearsal missions, actually, and several involved dropping rovers. Here's the overview: 1) Hellrider 7 mission - this one landed in the wrong crater and ultimately had to abort. I was using the debug window for navigation instead of KER, and the debug windows lies about longitude. 2) Hellrider 7 mission - this one overshot by 40 kilometers. Again, I was navigating by debug window. This one I was actually able to drive to the NAM eventually and prove the ruggedness of the Hellrider design - it maneuvered 36 kilometers before it sustained tire-popping damage. Fixed it and drove it to the NAM in a subsequent mission. 3) Cerberus 7 mission (later known as the Tranquility mission). Used KER for navigation, landed within six kilometers of the NAM and delivered three baby rovers to the area; this was the first mission in which I spotted the NAM from a distance in 0.21. Unfortunately the baby rovers couldn't handle the ruggedness of the terrain; I lost all three on the downhill headed towards the NAM. Ultimately hopped the lander to a final position about a klick-and-a-half off. 4) Hellhound 7 mission (the Bullseye mission). Using Tranquility as a beacon, I dropped the first deployed Hellhound 7 rover seven kilometers off. Drove it 50 meters away from the NAM on two busted tires (didn't park closer because the NAM fed a rover to the Kraken in 0.20 and I didn't want that to happen again). 5) Fireball 7 mission. Sent Jeb to the area to fix Bullseye's tires and plant a flag. He drove Bullseye up to Tranquility and then back to the Fireball, then took off. Put Bullseye back where it was originally. 6) Tartarus 7 mission. This one was a live test of the lander and science package delivery systems designs; put a lot of crap in the area, including another flag directly on top of the NAM. This one had the most accurate landing, about 200 meters from the NAM. Helped me iron out problems with the lander design, too. Of course, it also convinced me to stop using baby rovers - the CR7 would ultimately come equipped with a modified Hellhound instead. 7) Apocalypse 7 mission. This one was sent to where the second Hellrider had broken down to fix its tires. Jeb rode the Hellrider to the NAM and came back on Bullseye. 8) Castle Romeo 7 - the actual mission. Having a nav beacon set in place helps tremendously.

Still better than what mine was.. If I remember correctly I was only getting around 150-200 LF depending on how well I did in optimizing my rendezvous path. Not really worth doing... Though I did still use them somewhat so I could scale down my landers and land near the drilling probes and refuel directly from them rather than running it up to the station. That is the plan.

Plenty of people are crazy, but that doesn't mean that you can create a viable industry to cater for any kind of craziness. You need to have a viable market and an economical business model to fund the investment in infrastructure to cater for the crazy people. Sure, and how do you 3D print rocket fuel, consumables, lubricants, seals, clothes? A 3D printer is nothing more than a simplified CNC machine. You are still going to need heavy machinery and workers to extract and process raw materials. Then you will need facilities and workers to assemble, test, and operate the machines. You are going to need more people to provide food and basic services for all those workers. A self sufficient colony is going to require thousands of workers and billions of tons of equipment and machinery. It's science fiction and has nothing to do with MarsOne or any current technological capability. A small colony of a dozen people is going to rely on supplies from the outside to survive. Without supplies, they will either die, or they will barely survive to live a miserable life inside their tin cans. Yes, but a superfreighter costs a lot more to build than a land rover. Economies of scale are only possible when there is demand for a large volume. Large-scale interplanetary space transportation will arrive when there is a need to transport large volumes of freight between planets. This will only happen if there is a business case that involves that kind of requirement AND if the investment is justified. For the foreseeable future, there is no such business case. Until then, you are again in the realm of science fiction. ...Or flying cars, the cure for cancer, moon bases, immortality, and teleportation. That's a typical fallacy. Plenty of stuff that "was going to happen" didn't, and lots of stuff that people couldn't even imagine 50 years ago, like the Internet or MP3 players, happened too. Just because you can dream something up doesn't mean that it makes sense or that it will happen one day. And vice versa. You can't fly 6 people to Mars on a reusable F9. The F9R won't be able to carry a Dragon to LEO (it will have a reduced payload compared to the non-reusable F9). A DragonRider can't carry life support for 6 people on a 1 year trip. It's designed to carry 6 people to the ISS with life support for 1 week. Where are you going to put the supplies? Where are they going to sleep and exercise during the journey? A RedDragon can only land 1 ton of equipment and supplies on Mars, by launching on a F9H. That is not enough to keep 6 people alive indefinitely. It's not even enough to land a proper ECLSS module like the one on the ISS, let alone the greenhouse tents and had modules, the ISRU equipment, the power generators and batteries, the excavating equipment, the radiation shielding, etc... The ISS needs 3 or 4 resupply flights every year to keep the astronauts alive. Each flight carries 10 or more tons of supplies. You will need dozens of RedDragon flights every year to maintain an equivalent supply line. That is a totally subjective view. You need to take a step or two back. We have only been on this planet for 200 000 years. We have had writing and agriculture for only 3000 years. 500 years ago we didn't even know that the Earth was a rotating around the Sun. Powered flight was only 100 years ago and we went to the Moon 30 years ago. In the grand scheme of things, we are far from stagnating. Also, nothing implies that we must be on that exponential curve forever. We are likely to reach a plateau and stagnate for various reasons, or decline and rise again, like we have in the past. We also try things, fail, and figure out what is practical and what isn't. It's called learning. Right now, colonizing Mars is not practical. So let's concentrate on stuff that is practical.

Alrighty then. I shall prove my point and start off the new challenge by putting my money where my mouth is. As I don't seem to be able to post my pics on here (fraps goes in the to hard basket for now), Im providing links... ...so this is how I launched my craft. Completely ssto although it took all the fuel I had, bar about 200 kerbal measures to get it into orbit. You will notice in this shot I have 3 LV-45s (think that's what they are called) on the main fuel tanks. I wasn't happy with those so I swapped for one big mainsail which you will see in the landing images. https://www.dropbox.com/s/o7rwbxx5glpnk2n/screenshot14.png I launched it a couple of days ago and have been reluctant to fly home for fear of failure! lol So to deorbit I used every last drop of liquid fuel. Fortunately, I had crap loads of jet fuel left to assist my landing! This next file is a GIF I thru together of afew screenies I took on re-entery...I took heaps! Just click on download in the upper right corner of the "dropbox" window to download or view the gif. https://www.dropbox.com/s/f1t4wq9rohim66o/ssto%20landing.gif Got it on the running safely with nothing broken and Bob safe and sound. Landed it first go!! I couldn't believe it!! ...and yes I now concur, I will only be building larger craft for runway landings in the future. Ill be interested to see how big we can go before a huge failure!! This beauty came in so easily I was amazed! I think I must have fluked the build design lol. I repeated the landing a second time to make sure I hadn't fluked the landing. Sweet as pie! ...So, screenies don't seem to hard to take! lets see some of those big suckers landing!

I should probably chime in here. I've been thinking about a mapping replacement for a short while, and the geodesic grid code could definitely come in handyâ€â€although not necessarily the way you'd expect. Icosahedral grid cells are roughly evenly distributed around the surface of a sphere, so they're useful for data storage. In particular, icosahedral grids don't suffer distortion at the poles. Even if you end up rendering a 2D map, storing the data using a geodesic grid has advantages; on a rectangular map, polar data will look a little more stretched, which helps latitude perception. The grid can also be used to build a spherical mesh (smooth, not with individual hexagons) that can be textured without polar distortion. Alternatively, you could use a vertex shader and crank up the subdivisions. You can easily adjust the mesh to fit the shape of the planet this way. A hex-based approach with a detailed view could also work. A big advantage here is that you don't actually have to store as much data. You can just store a level of detail for each cell, and then sample terrain levels when you want to render a detailed view. Quick myth-busting: it's not impossible for a satellite to scan while unfocused. It doesn't happen automatically, but you can pretty easily code a way around it. (It definitely has absolutely nothing at all with Unity, where did you get that idea?) I urge people to avoid comparisons with Kethane's gameplay. The underlying technology is very flexible. (To the poster who doubted my code can handle levels of detail per hex, that sort of thing is trivial. You can store any data at a hex coordinate.) There's no reason a mapping mod that uses some Kethane code has to work the exact same way. The biggest limitation is actually PQS (the game's terrain system). It's computationally expensive to query for terrain details, so it's important to be careful with storing and caching that data. For reference, on my i7-3770 system, ten thousand altitude queries takes around 200 milliseconds, so you can only perform a few hundred queries per frame before you really kill performance. (Note: given the nature of the PQS system, it may be possible to perform these queries on another thread; I haven't investigated this at length.)

I go 100% When I see the needle going up near 200 (not sure what it is... m/s?) I throttle back until it stops gaining speed. When I hit 6500 I throttle up a little as I start my gravity turn. When I hit 10,000m I throttle all the way up.

They're usually the first thing I build when a new update comes out, and building a good one usually eats up a good five hours plus. I even used the pistons and hinges from Damned Robotics and the cab from TT's Modular Wheels pack to make a pretty decent replica of a Liebherr LTM 1150 as well as an LR 1550 (?) in previous builds. The LTM was next to useless, due to the way struts react to the Damned Robotic parts, and the multiple docking ports necessary to make the telescopic boom work weren't the most stable joints, but it looked pretty cool. The LR on the other hand, worked great and had an amazing capacity (I think it was ~200 tons on Kerbin), as it used a great deal of winches from KAS and only loose hinges. I'd post some real life reference pics, but imgur isn't accepting my uploads right now... Anyway, here's the only one I've made in .21 so far (I've been on a bit of KSP break for the last couple weeks). EDIT: For the record, the one in the foreground is my modular Kethane/Ore hauler.

I'm working on a 'roleplay' project with a Kerbal theme, and I need to draw up regional borders on a map of Kerbin, and name them all. Given that my creative juices are a lil' viscous, is anyone willing to help? Bare in mind that there needs to be about 200-300 regions! The blank map that needs regional borders: (Below & black and grey for editing purposes) You can help in either one of two ways; - Leave a suggestion for a regional name/s below! - Let me know if you want to get more involved with the map creation! If you want to get more involved great! Please make sure you have a working mic, have teamspeak 3 though. If anyone wants more information on the project, PM me and ill answer any questions.

Drove all the way there and got to 5219m. I probably could've got back, but the whole drive took nearly 2 hours (with crashing and reloading) so I didn't really feel like trying to get back. Besides, I'd been moving along at a steady 23m/s (or 92m/s with warp) on the way to the mountains and the 4-5m/s I was limited to during ascent wasn't much fun. That's 4-5m/s without warp. Physics warp did crazy things on slopes. There was 1 mod part on the rover and that was the MechJeb thingy. I forgot to remove it after I'd noted down the mass and figured it would give me some numbers to look at on the way. No autopilot functions were used, promise Altitude: KSC Runway = 67m Altitude achieved = 5219m Altitude Score = 5152 Bonus: Kerbals - 3x10 = 30 Road Trip bonus - 1x100 = 100 No damage - 1x60 = 60 Weight bonus (6.83t) - 1x10 = 10 Total Bonus = 200 Total Score = 5352

It does seem erratic at times. Sadly I have not seen much activity on the ioncross page. I have been on the road since yesterday so I can't do much testing I only use my laptop to building ships it usually cant run 200 part or greater craft. I will mess with it tonight when I get home.

Gonna try with lowest textures available, fact is my pc runs smoothly stuff as Battlefield 3, but just can't run Kerbal I can't even launch a 200 parts rocket Actually, with ZERO graphic settings, it even stutters in main menu, after clicking "start game" it moves the camera to the right, and it lags and sutters.. I know the game isn't optimized and so on, but as i play it it's unconceivable to even think building large stuff..

What has helped me considerably is two things: 1) Ditch the conventional design. I design with my orbital stage in the center at the bottom. Often a nuke drive or low thrust high vacuum efficiency motor - 3.75m fuselage. Surrounding that are 3-6 (depending on size and design of payload, but usually 4) large boosters. These are usually either 3.75m or 5m single or dual stage with a TWR of 1.5-2.0 and a combined dv of about 4500. Atop the uppermost booster stage is a truss that extends vertically to the height of the payload. This arrangement reduces the height of the rocket considerably by lowering the orbital stage as low down within the boosters as possible (I cut the height of my rockets by 30% or so), and provides additional means to strut the top end of the payload to the main booster stages (much less wobbling). If designed properly, the upper booster stage will run out of fuel at the orbital insertion with a periapsis within the atmosphere. The boosters then break away (sepratrons) and can reenter and be reclaimed, but it keeps the entire craft rigid and stable until its out of the atmosphere. The orbital stage can then do the last 100-200 dv to circularize and go from there. You can use the orbital motor as part of the lift if that helps (usually it does) and have the boosters feed fuel to that tank so it arrives topped off. I can reliably launch 140t with this setup including 50m long station parts. 2) On those boosters add a small rocket to each pointing radially outward at about 45 degrees. I use 20-75 power rockets (like the little orange guys) for this. They use very little fuel but by moving some of the thrust inward along the center of lift axis, it helps with spin and attitude control - just enough to help the gimbals. Make sure they are pointed dead center using the snap adjustment, though. I also add some movable canards on the outer surfaces. They're light and help with attitude control early in the lift but don't help much up around 30KM which is when a lot of large rockets tend to go off - as the terminal velocity really increases.

The Nexvulch Wars Chapter 1 The launch It was late at night. The SPQK\'s announcement was just made and we had to get to Nexvulch\'s capital in time to rendezvous with our allies. I was one of the soldiers chosen to go to Nexvulch to assure they don\'t go mad. I don\'t understand that decision. They should\'ve left them alone, they didn\'t know what was coming... I was at Neapolis Space Center ready to go into the Mk1 Space Shuttle. It was a class B - the transport class. It had less fuel in the main tank to have more space for soldiers or supplies. About 40 soldiers would fit in one, but that would be excluding the needed supplies for them (munitions, mountable machine guns, kits for the field medics). The standard for one military flight was 20. I was heading up the ladder in the launch tower and was going to then enter the space shuttle through it\'s big, square door. I then clung to a ladder and the pilot instructed me to go to seat 6. I immediately recognized his voice as being Jebediah Kerman. We all knew of his crazy mind and his even more crazy contraptions (some say he even helped design the Mk1 Space Shuttle, and I might agree) After the shuttle was filled we heard our commander: 'You know your orders. You aren\'t going there to assault Nexvulch, you are just going there to assure they don\'t decide to declare war.' After that we heard the countdown. 'Three... Two... One... LIFTOFF' The moment we heard liftoff we were pushed into our seats with high G forces. Not a pleasurable experience, believe me on that. The shuttle wobbled a bit then straightened as the thrust was corrected. 30 seconds later the boosters stopped and detached, as well as the extra tank. We were running on the main tank to get to orbit. A few minutes later orbit was completed and all we had to do was wait about half an hour until we would deorbit, along with the 4 other shuttles taking soldiers to Nexvulch. Chapter 2 The landing The thrusters were pushed at max once again as the shuttle was deorbiting. Thankfully it took only about 10 seconds for this. We were on a course for Nexvulch\'s capital. As we reentered the athmosphere we couldn\'t see anything other than a bright fire. Then we dropped at 200 m/s and started gliding towards where we were told the capital was. It was night but we didnt see any lights. Suddenly we felt the shuttle rocking. I looked outside and saw that we were being fired upon. 'WE ARE HIT. I REPEAT WE ARE HIT. OUR LEFT WING IS GONE' Indeed, our left wing was gone. We had to go in for an emergency landing, which involved parachutes. Unfortunately half of our parachutes were destroyed along with the left wing and we would experience a hard landing. As we approached the ground I saw a big.. thing... It was like nothing I saw before. It was big, brown and furry but I couldn\'t distinguish anything else since I passed out when we hit the ground. Chapter 3 The Long March I woke up. The sun didn\'t rise yet. I hear friendly voices speaking in laatin: 'He\'s alright. Look, he got a heartbeat and everything. Oh, look. Our friend woke up.' They didn\'t know who shoot us, though they were thinking it might be Nexvulch\'s army. The SPQK rendezvous point was a few miles north from where we landed, but we had to tend to the wounded first. I wasn\'t experienced in medicine so I couldn\'t help. It was a long wait, but we had the best military doctors with us. After a few hours the one who talked earlier came to me and said: 'I think we haven\'t been properly introduced. I am Sarminus Kasius. Pleased to meet you. Do you know how to repair a radio? You are an engineer by the looks of it.' 'Yeah', I quickly responded 'Good, our radio\'s down and we don\'t really have anyone here who\'s an engineer other than you. Do you think you can repair it? It took me about 10 minutes to repair the radio, but when I tried using it nothing happened. It was clear to me that our battery had ran dry. I came out of the shuttle and said: 'Radio\'s functional, but our batteries offline. We better get going to the rendezvous point.' I then started ordering people around who should carry what. Out of the wounded only 3 couldn\'t walk on their own, so I assigned 6 people to carry them. Another 3 I assigned to carrying the MG and I ordered the rest to carry the supplies. After about an hour of walking and being tired we got to the rendezvous point. When we saw it we could count 4 shuttles of Niveusan origin, but as we approached it became clear they weren\'t in what would be called 'perfect condition'. They were torn apart by something very powerful. I was scared. 'Could it be one of those furry things I saw when we landed?'. The answer probably was yes. Feeling the smell of liquid fuel leaking from the shuttles, Jebediah quickly got out of his targe like nothing had happened to him. He remarked: 'This place is kind of like a desert. They promised me mounds of liquid fuel tanks filled with liquid fuel and MOUNTAINS of boosters. Not going to trust the Niveusan governement again any time soon' We would have laughed if the situation wasn\'t disastrous. To be noted, I was the highest in rank on the shuttle, so I had the right to order people around. So I did. I ordered them to search the shuttles for survivors and supplies. We rescued another 9 people out of the 80 which were in the shuttles. Every one of them was horrified. They described 'something huge, like that \'mammoth\' described in the \'Mystical Realms That Never Existed\'. It was horrifying believe me! It had big claws and destroyed all the shuttles, killing many people. Avienne\'s Expeditionaries didn\'t manage to even scratch it. It was horrible. Thank god you came' I feared an attack by such creatures so I ordered all MG\'s to be mounted around one of the shuttles and that they take the anti-tank rounds out of shuttle 3, since we might have needed them. Meanwhile I was trying to find a working radio. It was a long day....

I agree with the people stating it works. It may not be perfect. But accents for me are great, landings are pretty decent(depending on ship and location of landing site). Docking takes forever but usually still works. To ASW122: Accent works pretty well for me. One thing i noticed on larger rockets is you need more RCS than you used to. MJ doesnt use SAS during takeoff(that ive noticed) to get into orbit. Thus if you have no RCS and your ship tends to be either top heavy, or just big in general. To where it tends to not stay pointed straight up. You will end up turning over. As MJ just cant control it, without having a bunch of RCS to work with. Also I dont change many settings. Final orbit 100 or 200. and i change my curve start to 10k meters. instead of 8. Hopefully this helps you

Ok, I dont know what I have done wrong, I installed according to post no. 200, also tried the trick fom post no. 206, and I still do not get the KCM Icon in flight/launch mode.

Seriously, how the hell did you build something that big? And i don't mean because of it's projectual difficulty, but because the game is barely playable with 200 items on screen, that **** must be like 10 times mine And my pc runs Battlefield 3 smoothly (i know Kerbal isn't optimized.. so WHY you and others are able to build stuff like that? are you masochists playing with 5 fps?

Quick complete log of issues I found while testing submarines: - Collides with ground when restarting from tracking station ("lower to surface" issue). May resolve by now allowing landing while underwater, only "splashed". - Buoyancy control did not start on a rover with no engines whatsoever. Had to add a useless Ant engine to get it to start. May resolve by having ballast tanks with canControl == 1 forceActive() at start. Here is info for light penetration at depth: http://oceansjsu.com/105d/exped_briny/13.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abyssal_plain only 44.5% of the surface light reaches a depth of 1 meter (3.3 feet) 22.2% of the surface light reaches a depth of 10 meters (33 feet) 0.53% of the surface light reaches a depth of 100 meters (330 feet) 0.0062% of the surface light reaches a depth of 200 meters I'm not finding easy guides to how deep each color goes, but I think blue goes deepest, yellow half as f Don't want to lose this... found code for making it darker as you go deeper. http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/32007/change-ambient-lighting-over-time.html Something like this... LateUpdate () { // Simple approach RenderSettings.ambientLight = Color.Lerp (RenderSettings.ambientLight, Colors.black, depth); // More complicated (might look wrong as underwater textures are already set to look... underwater? Also liquids on other planets would have different attenuations) RenderSettings.ambientLight.b = RenderSettings.ambientLight.b/depth; RenderSettings.ambientLight.y = RenderSettings.ambientLight.y/(depth * 2); RenderSettings.ambientLight.r = RenderSettings.ambientLight.r/(depth * 4); } Finally, fog. We could implement a linear fog based on the visible range at distance. http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/RenderSettings.html Unfortunately I'm not finding any data as to how far light travels depending on depth, it seems to be strictly due to sediment. So in theory even in the deepest water you could see far.

I have had about 300 debris between 120-200 km orbits, where I typically park planet crafts before transfer orbit burns. Then I can sometimes see something in range where game shows nearby things (is it 100 km?). However, I have never noticed distance below 10 km, so that I think than possibility of collision is negligible. I think that during normal playing it is impossible to get such amount of stuff in orbit, that there would be real danger. There is no real Kessler syndrome in KSP, because colliding parts disappear in explosions instead of disintegrating to thousands of centimeter sized particles like real parts do.

That's pretty impressive, but I think I'm figuring it out on my own. Lifting my first 150 ton payload as I type, pretty sure I can manage 200.

Is it possible to get 200 tons to orbit using stock parts without enabling parts clipping? What is the parts count I should expect? I can get 100 to orbit regularly with confidence, but I have a need to push three orange tanks to the outer reaches of the Kerbol system and the tug is enormous. In fact, if I could get 300 tons to orbit I could simply consolidate the tanker into one launch...

Losing speed when you enter rocket mode isn't usually a problem if you're pointing in the right direction. When you make the switch you need to be going at least 150-200 m/s vertical speed. You'll then shoot up into the thinner layer of air and quickly regain any lost overall velocity. Normally I aim to get at bit more out of the air breathing engines. Around 1500 m/s at 27000m and then dip down and back up to increase the vertical speed before switching to rockets, but I spam air intakes until my planes look ugly.