Search the Community

Mission Report: Space Truckin' ...or... If It's Crazy, but It Works, Maybe It Ain't Crazy I got a contract to build a space station in orbit of the Mun. I also already had one on deck to dock two vessels in Munar orbit. This gave me a crazy idea. If I were to position a station loaded with fuel in Munar orbit, it would expedite my Munar science collection efforts. I could dock a lander at the station and just make hops to and from various biomes on the surface. This may sound like a trivial task for most of you, but I'm still hardly what anyone might consider a qualified space program simulation administrator...or pilot...or engineer. I'm nothing if not perseverant, though, and I don't appear to have any qualms about throwing Kerbals into the danger zone. I'll leave the sorting of that one to my therapist. Almost giddy, I handed the project of designing a vessel that could get as much fuel as possible to the Mun to the Kerbal engineers. They seemed excited by the prospect. Then worried. Then scared. Then excited again. It's really kind of tough to gauge their moods at any given moment. Anyway, after hours at the drawing board, this is what those krazy little kritters came up with... It was clear they were working with house money, because at well over a quarter-million funds, this is by far the most expensive vessel we've ever designed. They assured me that it would be a success...or it wouldn't. I guess that's the sort of professional, educated projections I've come to expect from them. I'm sure there is a far more efficient method to go about this, but this level of precision is what I've come to expect for what I pay them. Out to the launch pad we go... Honestly, what were the chances this thing was going to make it to space in one piece, anyway? As it turns out, those chances were 1 in 4, because that's how many trips back to the VAB it took to get this monstrosity to avoid rattling itself apart by 1km altitude or just pitching over and making a beeline into the mountains/ocean/Space Center...well, you get the idea. Once I was able to get out of the atmosphere, things went pretty smoothly, though MechJeb doesn't seem to have ANY idea how to handle a vessel of this size, repeatedly missing burn windows. Nothing a minor correction burn or two wouldn't fix. Finally, here is my Munar fuel depot, quite surprisingly right where it's supposed to be. The mission was a success, and I now have a full 7,200 liquid fuel/oxidizer reserve, ready to supply some Mun hopping. My next trip up will include all the station science modules and gear and the Kerbals to run it. I feel like I actually accomplished something with this one.

I added the starlab to my life supported space station in Kerbin orbit today, it had 200+ days of each LS category plus recycler/converter/greenhouse attached and running. I had to restart KSP2 after docking in order for LSS not to kill a kerbal when I transferred them to the Starlab part. Couldn't find a similar report of the bug in here, so it could have just been a random glitch.

@AmanitaVernaYou were right! Compressing the 200+MB .log file into a .zip file had shrunk it down to a little less than 8MB in size. Anyways, here's the file download for those who'd like to view the .log file for further troubleshooting (which I'll probably delete later to make room for other files as needed).

Excerpt from Pathé news Monday 14th November 1955 “In another exchange deal with the Americans, Puck Aerospace once again launched one of their Bailey cameras on a Yeti II rocket from Merrit Island in Florida. Travelling over 540 km north from the launch site, it took detailed high-altitude pictures of the mainland US beneath it. “Chief Administrator Mr Vincent Glasgow said afterwards that he believed that they had probably extracted as much information out of these suborbital camera tests as they were going to and that the focus of the organisation would now switch to developing and testing an orbit capable launch vehicle. The first test flight of the first rocket is expected to take place in March or April next year.” Excerpt from Pathé news Monday 2th April 1956 "PUCK AEROSPACE READY TO TRY FOR ORBIT" “Anyone who has been paying attention to the news, knows that there have been rumours for a couple of years now of programmes underway in both the Soviet Union and United States of America to place an artificial satellite in orbit around the Earth. Recently, there has been a new contender, Puck Aerospace, the brainchild of excentric multimillionaire Peadar Ùisdean Cameron Kincaid. In November last year they announced that they were moving on from the suborbital rockets they have flown so successfully lately to make an attempt to build an actual orbital launch vehicle. “Today at a press conference in his offices in Kourou, French Guiana, Mr Kincaid announced that the rocket is now ready and is undergoing final testing on the launch pad prior to a planned launch of Wednesday. The members of the press were taken on a tour of the launch facility a few kilometres north of town, culminating in a look at the rocket itself standing proudly on its launch pad. “Standing just over 24 metres tall and, according to the engineers, weighing in at a little over 25 tons, it certainly looked impressive in the blue, white and black livery that has become familiar from other Puck Aerospace rockets. Hidden away inside a protective cowling at the very summit of the rocket, we were told, sat the satellite itself. A small half metre cone of metal, weighing a mere 50 kilograms, most of that being the batteries that will power it. “While carrying some scientific instruments, the chief engineer Mr Monty Scott, admitted that the batteries would only be sufficient to power them for a few hours before they would need to be shut down to conserve energy and allow the satellite to continue transmitting regular radio beeps to allow it to be tracked by observers on the ground. Even in this low power configuration, he said, the satellite would only be able to send out its signals for a few days before falling silent forever. “I think I can speak for everyone present when I say that we are all eagerly looking forward to the launch on Wednesday.” Excerpt from Pathé news Wednesday 4th April 1956 "WORLD'S FIRST ARTIFICIAL SATELLITE LAUNCHED" “’If I have seen further today, it is because I stand on the back of giants.’ Starting his press conference today in Kourou, French Guiana, Peadar Kincaid was in a jubilant mood as he quoted Sir Isaac Newton’s famous saying from three centuries ago. Why was he in such a good mood you might ask? Because his little upstart aerospace company had just achieved something that had eluded the might of the American and Soviet space programmes. Today, they launched the Earth’s first artificial satellite. Circling the Earth, high above our heads is a small metal cone packed full of batteries and electronics, triumphantly proclaiming its presence to amateur radio operators all over the world as it passes overhead. Elaborating on his company’s achievement, Mr Kincaid acknowledged the considerable contributions in skill, technology and experience that they had received from many countries around the world, especially from Hawker Siddeley who manufactured the engines used in today’s rocket and the manufacturing breakthroughs that had allowed the construction of much lighter but still immensely strong fuel tanks. He further explained that it was his conviction that it had been through working as a small team with a single unified goal that they had been able to achieve what had escaped the grasp of the more fragmented efforts of their larger competitors…” Excerpt from Pathé news Friday 27th April 1956 “Puck Aerospace, today announced that they had hired French pilot Marguerite Laurent as their first test pilot for their fledgling X-Planes programme. Marguerite has several years’ experience as a test pilot for Avion Marcel Dassault (a French aircraft manufacturer) and will initially be trained in the handling of the Hawker Siddeley experimental rocket planes. The training is expected to take a couple of months after which she will be taking HSXR-02 Nessie for its first flight and attempting to break the sound barrier and achieve some (company) speed and altitude records. Excerpt from Pathé news Tuesday 19th June 1956 “A heavy transport plane took off from the new 4800m extended runway at Kourou in French Guiana today, carrying a most unusual cargo. Tucked under the right wing was a small plane, and not just an ordinary plane either. This one was the second Hawker Siddeley eXperimental Rocketplane – the HSXR-02 Nessie, fitted with a powerful rocket engine that was intended to take it through the sound barrier and high up above the ground. The first HSXR plane was flown three years ago from the Woomera Royal Air Force base in southern Australia by RAF Flight Lieutenant Peter Simonson. “Alas, it was not meant to be, as pilot Marguerite Laurent discovered when she dropped away from the carrier plane and pressed the button to ignite the rocket engine. Despite performing flawlessly during a ground test just the week before, on the day, something went wrong and the engine just failed to ignite. Cycling the systems and making a second attempt got no response whatsoever, so Marguerite was left with the sad realisation that she didn’t have enough height or speed to glide all the way back to Kourou and would need to ditch the plane in the Atlantic. “Fortunately, the weather was calm, with only a moderate swell, so as she eased the plane down at a little less than 200 kph, only moderate damage was done to the airframe. The failed engine would have needed to be replaced anyway, so submerging it in salt water was not an issue. “A support boat was dispatched from Kourou harbour to collect Mlle Laurent, and a barge will be sent to recover the plane.” Excerpt from Pathé news Friday 3rd August 1956 "THIRD WOMAN BREAKS THE SOUND BARRIER" “Mademoiselle Marguerite Laurent again boarded her experimental rocket plane at Puck Aerospace’s Kourou facility in French Guiana today. The carrier aircraft once more took her 350 km off shore before she released the X-Plane from under its wing and ignited her rocket engine. This time, unlike the prior flight, the engine lit without a problem and Mlle Laurent began picking up speed and gently pitching up into a shallow climb. She reached a peak altitude of just over 20 km at 535 ms-1 before levelling off and throttling down to hold her speed between 450 and 520 ms-1 as required by the pre-flight planning. “Roughly nine minutes later, her fuel was exhausted and she pitched down to glide safely back to land at the Kourou runway, travelling at a comparatively sedate 51.5 ms-1. “Mlle Laurent is the third woman to break the sound barrier, following in the footsteps of American Jackie Cochran and Jacqueline Auriol from France who both flew faster than sound in 1953. She is however, the first woman to do so in a rocketplane.” ==== Gameplay notes and screenshots:

Well, the calcs show that Baltimore loses up to 200 mil a day idling and the new bridge would cost 1000 mil, so...

Is anyone available to help me diagnose this fatal crash-inducing bug? I'll also include some snippets of the 200+MB .log file (I've got dozens of mods installed, if not at least 100) that mention the part 'reactor-0625' in the hopes that they would help further in troubleshooting the problem:

24/01/2024: Important update 0.2.0! Major performance fixes! Read the two sections below "Download" for more info. APP (Avalon Planet Pack or Avali Planet Pack) is a planet pack for KSP, built to tell not the story of Kerbalkind’s first venture into space, but that of the Avali, the avian alien species known from the popular Starbound mod. Avalon comes bundled with a mod to replace some of the Kerbal models in-game with Avali, and some flavour texts have been changed to include Avali references. APP has you start from the Avali homeworld of ’Avalon’ (hence the mod’s name), which isn’t a planet, but a moon orbiting an Ice Giant! This means an abundance of early-game destinations and science, but it’ll only get harder after that. Avalon is orbiting Solakku, a high-mass star near the galaxy’s core. Having a more massive star means planetary orbits are scaled up compared to the stock Kerbin system. Transfer windows are rare, transfer times long, and antennas don’t reach nearly as long as you might want them to. To make it far, you will need to plan ahead, and get the most efficiency you possibly can out of each launch. ISRU will be a heavy part of any playthrough, and Avalon is ready, with complete configs for CRP, SpaceDust and Kerbalism resources. There is also three interstellar destinations in the pack: Crest, a red-dwarf directly orbiting Solakku. Karat, a dead white dwarf a medium distance away from Avalon, and Amber Light, a red giant flying by the rest of the systems, luckily quite far away. Avalon Radius: 0.75 Kerbin Radii Gravity: 0.25g Atmospheric Pressure: 1.5 atm Orbiting: Valaya, ice giant Avalon is difficult to launch from, due to the intense atmospheric drag, through an optimal location for building SSTOs (you can break orbital velocity at sea level or eject to escape velocity using only jets), and, being a moon, also provides an increased difficulty for navigation. Its surface is covered in oceans made not out of water, but of a mixture of water and ammonia, as the mean surface temperature is a round -30°C. It does still posses an ocean of liquid water, but deep underground, warmed by tidal forces. Its surface is additionally cooled by the constant presence of a cloud cover blocking light from reaching the surface. Its perfectly habitable conditions for the Avali, an ammonia-based life form. It shares the sky of Valaya with 5 other moons, some easier to reach than others. They will be your most valuable locations for early exploration, and good spots for fueling up. The journeys between planets here will be long and fuel-intensive. System Layout Full map of all solar systems in the pack (names only, no image spoilers): Map of just the Solakku system, with images of each celestial body (slight spoilers!): Screenshots (spoilers) Tips for playing Build relays! The stock antennas aren’t anywhere powerful enough to reach even the outer planets, so you will need to strategically deploy relays not just around the planets, but also orbiting Solakku itself. Over-do transfer burns! Even getting to the nearest planet to Avalon takes over a decade. Getting to one of the outer planets takes up to 200+ years. It is basically required to burn additional dV on each transfer to get to where you’re going in a reasonable amount of time. Near-Future electric engines are really good for this. Launch multiple missions per transfer window! A few particular windows only come around every few decades (the window to Edith being the longest, only once every 20 years), so you really need to launch all the missions you can for each. ISRU is your friend! SpaceDust is a heavily recommended install. The other moons make for really good places to fuel (or build, depending on your mods) interplanetary crafts. If in science mode, set science rewards slider to 40% in difficulty settings for a more balanced experience. Bundled mods These mods are required, but included with the pack download, and you shouldn’t need to install them individually. Better Skybox (custom-made for this pack, License: MIT) Tholin’s PQS Additions (custom-made for this pack, License: MIT) Required mods These mods must be installed before the planet pack. Kopernicus Kopernicus Expansion Continueder Scatterer KSP Community Fixes (see "Known Issues" below) Heavily recommended mods! The pack will technically load without these, but may be unplayable past a certain point. I designed the pack with these mods in mind. Avali Space Program Near Future Technologies Far Future Technologies Though KSP-IE should also work Community Tech Tree JX2 Antenna EVE In general, you will benefit from having a large set of mods while playing this pack. Mod support Additional, APP supports the following mods, if you have them installed: Community Resource Pack SpaceDust Planet Shine Distant Object Enhancement EVE Rational Resources Kerbalism (resource configs only) Known Issues You will need to install KSP Community Fixes and disable the stock manouver tool in its settings, or else the game will lag heavily, and eventually crash when orbiting one of the other three stars. This happens even when not currently using the manouver tool, as its code is always running in the background. This is a stock KSP bug, and not something I appear to be able to fix, unfortunately. Distant Object Enhancement may interfere with my custom skybox shader, which will appear in-game as the skybox being way too dark. To fix this, go to the Distant Object Enhancement settings in the toolbar, and disable the option for Max Skybox Brightness On some of the smaller moons in the pack, placing a flag will occasionally result in the flag spawning displaced far above the surface. Not technically an issue, but nothing in the interstellar star systems has been playtested in science or career mode yet. Expect typos in flavor texts, broken science rewards, and low terrain detail. Note on upgrading When upgrading versions, always make sure to completely uninstall (delete) the previous version first, or you may end up with duplicate files that break the mod install. Download From SpaceDock Config File A config file exists in GameData/Avalon/0-settings.cfg (as of version 0.2.0). Here, you can change some settings including disabling the interstellar destinations if you have little RAM (it won't disable the stars themselves, but their planets). If you are daring, you can edit GameData/Avalon/2-Contracts.cfg where I had to put the lines forcing Kopernicus' on-demand texture loading on. Only set this to false if you have 32GB of RAM or more. Will provide a really good performance boost when on or near a celestial body's surface, though. 24/01/2024: Update 0.2.0 Introduced the config file Now forcing on-demand loading on so the RAM requirements of the pack are no longer astronomical Download size reduced by almost 2GB Fixed Musoya deleting any vessels in its SOI Asteroid belts added around all stars and some planets I switched to a new kind of custom PQS node for 16-bit heightmaps. This doesn't reduce RAM usage of the mod, but reduces download size, install size and load time significantly. Source Source codes for the plugin components of this pack are available on GitHub: BetterSkybox - Tholin's PQS Additions Source for the pack itself is here! Special thanks Various people in the Luna's Mods discord server, for helping me fix issues in the pack. Techo, for his contributions in the form of the moon Ghorun, and Avalon's cloud textures. Everyone who playtested the pack before release! License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0

Now the 35 science points for 200 ton to Minmus is fixed in minutes, changed to 300 Docking ports might be harder, but on craft load game should check if docking port is docked to something and if not set it to ready to dock.

By “next” manned launcher, I mean the next space agency in the world to achieve manned spaceflight after the Russians, Americans, and Chinese. By the way, I looked up the Apollo Command capsule and found that the capsule itself without the service module only weighed 5,800 kg. The Apollo service module provided the propulsion for entering and exiting from lunar orbit and wouldn’t be needed for missions just to LEO: COMMAND MODULE Crew size: 3 Length: 3.5 m Maximum diameter: 3.9 m Habitable volume: 6.17 m3 Total mass: about 5,806 kg (structure 1,567 kg; heat shield 848 kg; reaction control system 400 kg; recovery equipment 245 kg; navigation equipment 505 kg; telemetry equipment 200 kg; electrical equipment 700 kg; communications systems 100 kg; crew seats & provisions 550 kg; crew mass 216 kg; misc contingency 200 kg; environmental control system 200 kg; propellant 75 kg) Reaction control system thrusters: 12 x 410 N propellant: NTO/MMH specific impulse: 290 s total impulse: 257 kNs L/D hypersonic: 0.3 Power: Ag-Zn batteries; 3 × 40 Ah each, 28 V DC; 3.4 kWh; inverters produced 115 V AC Environment: pure oxygen at 340 mbar http://www.braeunig.us/space/specs/apollo.htm Also, surprising is how little mass is required for the environmental control system, at only 200 kg out of the 5,800 kg. Bob Clark

The 2 x MPL (Mobile Processing Lab) actually turns out to be a mod (StationPartsExpansionRedux) and therefore may not be compatible with this mod. I do not have a craft file because I just dragged out some parts to test but I can get one by redoing the weldment. I do not have a log file but I can get one by redoing the weldment. Realistically though I am not sure anyone would weld those together and lose the hatches. Anything with a hatch I do not weld anymore. You may be able to skip this one unless you feel like fixing it. Here is what I was going to post: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First I would like to say I really appreciate the mod. It has helped me get a 700 part ship down to under 200 which means I can add more and more stuff to it. I have learned a lot about the mod and it's behaviors and worked around them. Sorry for the following wall of text. I would like to offer feedback and knowledge of the problems I have run into. Some of these may not be listed on the OP. Some mod conflicts may not be listed on the OP. KSP v1.12.5.3190 Making History v1.12.1 Breaking Ground v1.7.1 Affected mods: - UbioZur Welding Ltd. Continued (v2.5.4) - Near Future Launch Vehicles (v2.2.0) - CryoTanks (v1.6.5) / CryoTanks Core (v1.6.5) - Patch Manager (v0.0.17.6) - Entire mod list is inside archive / folder below I made a skylab (science station) and created a nuclear transfer stage for it. I separated the transfer stage and removed the engines and extendable ladders from it. I welded together the remaining fuel tanks, reaction wheels, rung ladders, and struts. This rocket is SO big you need the "Hangar Extender" mod. Things I've noticed: - Extensible Ladders are not OK - but rung ladders are OK (in my testing) - There appears to be an issue when making a weldment containing a "nflv-fueltank-75-1.cfg" cryotank from "Near Future Launch Vehicles" (fixed by manual edits to part file) - There appears to be a graphical glitch (not terribly important) (not important) - There appears to be an issue when making a weldment containing a reaction wheel(s) and/or electrical storage / batterie(s) (turns out this is problem with Near Future Electrical Systems) I'll go one by one and explain: Ladders: "nflv-fueltank-75-1.cfg" cryotank from "Near Future Launch Vehicles": "nflv-fueltank-75-1.cfg" cryotank from "Near Future Launch Vehicles" graphical glitch: Electrical storage & Reaction wheels: Notes: - Struts are wonky, sometimes/always will get disconnected leaving a gap between strut and tanks - "Procedural Tanks" are "Procedural Parts" therefore not really supported - Procedural / Modded parts may be incompatible (unless made compatible) - RUNG / INLINE ladders are OK - extensible ladders are NOT OK. - Cannot contain both batteries (electricity storage) and power sinks (parts which use power) in same weldment (still need to confirm this) - These tanks are technically "procedural tanks" as I have found out inspecting the part files which falls under "procedural parts" I believe. They work, just some bugginess. For now I can use it the way it is with the cooling system working and the reaction wheels drawing 0 EC/s but it would be nice to at least know how to manually fix it, and a mod update would be even better. I have included a link to a google drive folder with everything needed to debug. Save game file is there, ship file is there, welded part file is there, parts list file is there, logs are there, mod list and ckan file are there. There is also a rar file uploaded to discord if you prefer that. The ship name has a prefix. "uw" is signifying that the part/ship is NOT welded. "w" is signifying that the part/ship is welded. Example: "skylab-0008n-uw" is the entire ship no welded parts. "skylab-0008n-w" is the entire ship with welded part added. "skylab-0008n-uw-0001" is the first and only part that I welded. I removed extensible ladders and engines / thrust plate. GOOGLE DRIVE: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-3bA4_eJ4t2ubyduhHQXLHb4esmFRlrk RAR FILE: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/618884275542032404/1221894315937370225/skylab-0008n.rar?ex=66143cc2&is=6601c7c2&hm=6883c79eea4c38d9aee3517ce4121d22bb9e0ff6f258b132e2d8e50573c02b83& P.S. the welded part file is modified to remove the "ModuleCryoTank" section, and I think I increased the reaction wheel torque and EC rate. Everything else is as it was after weldment. This is a half manually fixed file the only problems with it now are the reaction wheels consuming 0 EC/s. P.P.S. Note to others: I've included ship & save files - no rocket shaming Complaints about choices of parts etc can be sent to my DM/PM inbox and I might get to them at some point. Please do not clutter the thread with these things. Please respect the OP. Thanks Images: Update: You can ignore this report if you like. - The graphical glitch is not that important. - The reaction wheel EC problem actually exists outside of the weldment and is related to Near Future Electrical I guess the only thing you get out of this report is that rung/inline ladders actually do work unlike the extensible ladders. I would also add the mods "CryoTanks" and "Near Future _________" as incompatible mods. Sorry about the inconvenience I am finding a lot of this out as I go. I've left my OP just in case you wish to debug the issues with NF tanks even though they are procedural tanks and not supported.

Yep, that's precisely what they meant. Superheavy takes 3,400 tonnes of propellant while Starship takes 1,200 tonnes of propellant. Fully loaded, that would be a total of 4,600 tonnes of propellant. Yet SpaceX said "fully loaded with more than 4500 metric tons of propellant"; we can therefore pretty readily deduce that "fully fuelled for this mission profile" meant 100 tonnes LESS propellant in Starship than in an orbital mission profile.

Internal RCS Monopropellant and Liquid fuel RCS thrusters without encasement, so they can be placed everywhere and don't harm aerodynamics or smooth shape of your spaceship Download: Spacedock KSP 1.3.X - 1.4.X Thrusters have 90, 60, 45 and 30 degrees nozzles (monopropellant with polished metal, LFO slightly bigger and full black) MP thrust - 1.5kn ISP 100-240 (stock) Cost - 200 LF thrust - 4kn ISP 140-260 (stock) Cost - 400 Now you can add RCS to almost any part and any small vessel that don't have enough space for stock modules also they can be hidden inside stock wings Some placement required precise rotation and movement so RCS Build Aid mod can be very helpful Little more images here

anyways heres a new one for you guys my kerbal after i blow apart my space station (i didnt start my burn in time and smashed into it at 200 m/s)

That'd be the Pulsed Magneto-Inertial Fusion: https://www.scientia.global/dr-john-slough-fuelling-the-next-generation-of-rockets-with-nuclear-fusion/ I remembered this because the D-D Fusion Magneto-Inertial Reactor is a key card in High Frontier 4 All, and a favoured way to build a rocket. (If you're a rocket nerd, you need to play this boardgame.) The Appendix helpfully listed the specs (0.1 Hz firing rate, Q of 200, 510MWth and the person responsible, John Slough, though its version uses a "350kW solar-powered initiator".

The mohole mission was easier than I expected, overbuild with an two stage lander and rcs. Now I knew the mohole mission would come up later, I went to Moho before arriving at Duna so I landed unmanned and left the lander there. This way I could return to lander to get the reward. My other two landers could not dock because a bug so only two landings. Now the lander down there saved me on my second Moho mission I was doing radiation science and the missing biomes, last landing was the mohole with my standard lander. Now it looks like its an but with some Discoverables and medium rover wheels and some landing legs. The tiny had no issues but the larger ones does. My lander started jumping higher and higher, tipped over and ended up on the side and I could not get it upright, if I did it would probably just start bouncing again. But I did science and went for the other lander, after installing the kerbal headlight mod so I could see anything. Walked 200 meter to other lander and got out of there. But another bug If you collected and handed in surface samples from The Croissant you can not complete the gourmand mission, yes I collected surface samples again but it did not count. Now I think the gourmand should be before the mohole mission as you need precision landing to pull that off. For the other locations I just put rover wheels on lander instead of legs. But two things are very different from KSP 1: First in KSP 1 you wanted to farm science out of Mun and Minmus to unlock the tech tree fast, Then building up my Minmus refueling base, then launch interplanetary missions while doing contracts withing Kerbin SOI, tourist ones was great as you combined this with leveling up kerbals. Land on Mun, get out of Kerbin SOI, return to Minmus to refuel and drop off astronauts, aerobrake into LKO, dock with shuttle or ssto transfer tourists and other missions. So it took forever for fist interplanetary ship to arrive. And I only launched bases, they could refuel other ships like landers and tugs. In KSP 2 dropped first try because so much wrong. Second time I launched two ships at Eve at day 9. First was an nuclear probe carrier with two Eve landers and an Gilly lander, second was the manned part who would return. I should sent 6 probe rovers and an atmospheric probe, manned mission should carry the Gilly lander.

day 82/83 does work at the first several years of a new game. While as time passes, it looks like the actual day will drift. I am planning a transfer from Kerbin to Moho at about year 200 kerbin time, and I have to wait until day 100 to start burning, rather than day 83. Any ideas what is happening there or am I missing anything ?

Sorry to necropost but this is a pretty bad issue and I experienced it recently. So I had this problem, and it just kept getting worse and worse. My rocket was blowing up before the launch scene even loaded with no input at all. No staging, no SAS, nothing. The rocket flew MANY times successfully before so I knew it was abnormal. Here's what I tried that did not work: Installed this mod (the problem appears to be different than this mod can fix) Moar Struts (removed after didn't work) Launch Clamps tweakscaled to 200% (removed after didn't work) Separating halves (both halves blew up) Then I had an idea from when I had launch clamp and strut issues. What ended up working for me , was to change my root part to the top most part, then open advanced -> subassemblies and create it into a subassembly. Then load a new file. Select the sub assembly and it will load into the new file. Change the root part back to your probe core / capsule. Save as new ship. Launch. If works delete the old files and leave the working file, and carry onwards I am not sure if anyone has this problem, but the fix (or a fix to try) is here. I am not sure if the OP is still working on this project and can somehow make this functionality into the mod. Maybe the steps above could highlight what is wrong between the old and the new file. I can share the broken and fixed version, just ask for "satlauncher-0010" and "satlauncher-0011" and mod list will possibly edit and add upload - don't laugh at my rocket no rocket shaming Update: when I went back to "satlaunch-0010" the file/ship with the problem, the problem happens no more on the old file. So unfortunately if I add two ship files, neither of them is broken anymore. At least I know what fixed it (above) so no files will be uploaded.

Chutes for 100 and 200 ton vehicles would be HUGE (heavy). They'd also need to be cut for propulsive landing. Starship terminal velocity is thought to be ~70m/s I think (have to watch old SpaceX animation). That's about 2 tons of propellant.

Reported Version: v0.2.0 (latest) | Mods: none | Can replicate without mods? Yes OS: Windows 10 | CPU: Intel Core i7 9750H | GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 | RAM: 16 GB The goal of mission is to deliver over 200 tons to Minmus as one craft. Its absolutely complex and not trivial task, it's not like deliver another craft, it's 200 tons. For comparison the biggest methalox tank S4-51200 has weight 256 tons. Obviously player must to go to great lengths to win a ridiculous 35 points award. I believe this mission must be at least 3 tech level and have comparable to the number of science points in a node of that tech level is the reward

So, math time ( again). Let's say 17 tons of dry mass for the BO lander and 3 tons of payload to the moon. For a trip from NHRO, to land, and back to NRHO you need around 3.9 km/s of DV, with margin let's say 4km/s. Let's say that the B3U has 410s of ISP, quite high performance but not insane. With a total mass "usable" of 20 tons and 35 tons of props, so total mass of 55 tons you have 4.1 km/s of DV. How do we throw 55 tons to NRHO? We need to give this payload around 4km/s from LEO. A single raptor vacuum with 380 of ISP, and 25 tons of dry mass between tankage and engine ( wayyyy too heavy, but I want to be conservative), with 170 tons of props gives yoo 4.2 km/s. So a launcher that can loft into orbit 250 tons can get a fully fueled Blue moon lander to NRHO, so it can go and do his mission happily If the dry mass of the raptor stage is 15 tons you get down to 210 tons into orbit. If the B3U has a 450s Isp the mass of the lander goes to 50 tons, and the total stack needed into orbit is 200 tons.... We might actually arrive at a point were you can launch a Blue moon lander fully fueled with a reusable Starship. The world is not ready. Edit, ok I used the wrong data ( direct transfer), so all above works for an Apollo style, not for Artemis

Starman When you look up into the sky at night, there are hundreds upon hundreds of little points of light glittering above you. Each one is a star fusing elements, supporting planets, and maybe other forms of life. But some of those points of light are a bit bigger, and they aren’t just stars that might as well be forever away. They are the planets of our solar system. Mars, glowing just enough to see it, with an orange-ish hue, sits above the horizon. It's sat there for billions of years. We’ve looked at it first with our own eyes, and then through telescopes. Now, we can look at Mars through the camera lenses of our spacecraft. None of these spacecraft more extraordinary, than the ones heading toward the Red Planet right now. Magellan 1 is just hours from entering the orbit of Mars, and there is controlled chaos back on Earth at JSC in lieu of this moment. You would be forgiven for thinking that they had just discovered alien life with how many people flooded in and out of each building. Press vans zip through the parking lots, reporters rushing to affix the right lenses to their cameras as they are hurriedly ushered inside. For them they had waited months for this opportunity, it took almost a herculean effort to get press access to Johnson Space Center on this day, the 2nd of May, 1993. Some had waited outside since before sunrise to get a front-row seat at the coming press conference. The press weren’t the only ones being eroded away by the stress and monumental nature of the day. The controllers at JSC had nearly pulled an all-nighter as a series of errors with the MMETV’s star trackers nearly made it forget its own location in space. The primary star tracker had been improperly targeted onto the star Canopus, which nearly resulted in several errors during an attitude control adjustment. On top of this, one of the computer units in the MMETV had experienced an integer overflow as it was trying to assume the spacecraft’s rotational velocity. This took some time to resolve, and the other 5 Redundant Computing Units (RCUs) had to take over during that period. With all of the drama and stress, the press and those working in the control room at JSC were awaiting some good news as the Orbital Insertion Maneuver began at 1:23 PM. It would last a total of 11 minutes, as the series of nuclear thermal rockets on the MMETV slowed the behemoth craft down enough for it to be captured into an orbit around Mars. This orbit is different from the intended future ones, as future missions aim to have flybys of Phobos and Deimos, which are not objectives for Magellan 1. The seconds slowly ticked by at JSC, everyone sitting in utter silence as they watched the expected velocity change graph be followed by the real time telemetry line. Closer, and closer to a nominal insertion. 11 minutes felt like 110, if it had been any shorter amount of time some in the room may have tried to hold their breath all the way through. But alas, they wouldn’t need to. At 1:33:24 PM, the MMETV sent back a telemetry packet that perfectly correlated to the expected orbital velocity. Everyone in JSC erupted into cheers and applause. Those in the control room who had been working for hours and hours felt victorious and liberated from the seats they had been glued to since yesterday afternoon. 3,388 days had passed since Ronald Reagan and John Young announced the Magellan Program on the steps of the National Air & Space Museum. In those 3,388 days, NASA had achieved insurmountable progress and put themselves a lot more than one small step closer to landing humans on Mars before 2000. This was simply the beginning. But the mission was far from over, a herculean effort to demonstrate the critical components of a successful crewed Mars landing lay ahead. A few weeks would be given for a dust storm on the surface to clear, and then the automated landing demonstrations of the Ascent and Descent Vehicles would begin. Those few weeks would prove to be rather uneventful, and as the dust storm cleared, the Ascent and Descent Vehicles had arrived in their joint pairing just a few days before the MMETV (they were launched on a higher velocity trajectory) and had stayed linked together until the dust storm cleared. The Ascent Vehicle undocked and made its way to the surface without issue, and the Descent Vehicle performed a rendezvous with the MMETV as it would on crewed missions to retrieve the crew for the landing on the surface. The components that were not to be demonstrated on this mission, the rover and the habitat, would also be landed beforehand on future missions. Once the Descent Vehicle docked to the MMETV, a “simulated” crew transfer would take place. Essentially just waiting an amount of time that was predicted based on crew training would be needed for a full crew and equipment transfer. Once this was complete. The Descent Vehicle undocked, waited another orbit, and performed a de-orbit burn to land on the rocky plains of the Martian equator. "2,000 feet, nominal descent rate." "1,000." "800." "500." "200." "50." "25." "10." "CONTACT!" "CONFIRMED LANDING ON THE MARTIAN SURFACE." On this descent, there would be some issues that had been seen during the landing of the Ascent Vehicle that were also seen on the Descent Vehicle. Most notably, the landing legs. They had to be deployed individually by an emergency command from the guidance system (with a 20+ minute delay to Earth, the guidance system has to be as redundant and self-regulating as possible, as any commands from Earth will be practically pointless) after the altitude trigger did not work. Then, upon a thankfully successful landing, the landing pads did not level out to the terrain and stayed at a rather uncomfortable upward angle. The cause of this was unknown, but it may lead to a new landing leg design for Magellan 2. Despite these landing leg issues, it was still a successful landing, and NASA could breathe easy that the guidance system performed beautifully and handled issues quickly and effectively. The successful landing was met with thunderous applause and cheers in Houston, and the pictures of the surface from the landing cameras covered the front page of TIME the next day. NASA had at last, reinvigorated itself, with a new bold spirit that was determined to put people on Mars and to push beyond what it had already achieved. NASA was finally, truly, ready to go beyond Earth with humans. Even further beyond, NASA’s deep space robotics program finally had some funding freed up with the completion of the Mars collection, and they were ready to make some headlines. On October 3rd, 1993, at a JPL press conference, the Pluto Fast Flyby mission was announced. The mission would be targeting a 2000 launch window, with a backup in 2001. It would be a quite small and light spacecraft so the launch vehicle required would not be the same one required by components of the MMETV. The spacecraft was intended to carry two cameras, a high-resolution black-and-white alongside a lower-resolution color camera. On top of a suite of spectrometers, a magnetometer, and a small mapping camera. The instruments would actually be a significant portion of the weight of the spacecraft. Pluto Fast Flyby was truly intended to be a bang for the buck mission, and NASA’s new leadership wanted bang for the buck in many areas to preserve funding for human exploration. With NASA under the new leadership of Administrator Ken Mattingly, who had retired from the Astronaut Corps in the late 80s, and was selected by President Bush upon his inauguration to replace John Young, who had finally taken his long overdue retirement from NASA. Young had steered NASA through one of its most tumultuous, controversial, and successful eras. He had preserved the integrity of the organization as contractors and internal feuds threatened to pull it apart. Mattingly would be facing similar challenges, alongside balancing and preserving the international partnerships Young had built. But Mattingly was more than up to the task, he had garnered the same respect from astronauts, the higher-ups, and the public alike. He would be the man who would bring NASA to Mars at last. On top of Pluto Fast Flyby, NASA’s flagship Iapyx mission received a 5-year mission extension at the same press conference. It has uncovered dozens upon dozens of details about Saturn and its moons and was still operating in good health with plenty of propellant, so the extension was given. With all of these developments centered around beyond-Earth exploration, 1993 caps off as a truly exciting year. 1994 will see a return to normal operations for Orpheus, the return of Magellan 1’s MMETV to Earth, and perhaps… The beginnings of America’s next manned spacecraft.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t much care if we’re on either - and I don’t recall mentioning Bezos at all, so the point is moot. But what I meant is that, whilst IFT was impressive and a big step forward over IFT2 and IFT1, there’s a way to go yet before it’s a workable disposable rocket, let alone the fully reusable, chopstick landing (or whatever method ends up working), in-orbit refuelling, Artemis landing beast that it’s intended to be. Yes, yes, test flight, iterative improvement etc etc. I’m well aware of all that. And, with their track record, I’m certainly not betting against SpaceX to deliver all of the above eventually. But what I don’t give a damn about is Elon vapourware about the next super-duper-double-the-payload rocket, because it doesn’t make much difference if your rocket carries 200 tons or 400 tons if you can’t get it to point the right way. Frankly it feels like a distraction tactic and judging by the shift in comments on this thread it’s worked beautifully.

This, also being able to do an capture burn inside the SOI but that is hardly an problem. This require splitting the burn up into multiple parts. Been thrown stuff all day at Eve. an .3 twr nuclear engine looses less than 200 m/s over doing must of the burn on an mammoth 2 core stage. one single burn. For landing KSP 2 nodes give us an tool who can have you moving slowly at low attitude, make an braking burn but also with an up vector who end your burn 1-2 km above surface. Move at some speed as the Tylo moves you need to adjust for this at end of main braking burn. But again the tuba will loose against nuclear engines but it might be restrictions on them in future like radiation and getting uranium. But its not like you use up an nuclear thermal engine unless its designed for an short lifespan. You don't design jet engines for cruise missiles to last for thousands of hour

Thanks for that. An expendable SH/SS could get in the range of 200 to 250 tons to LEO. That would be well more than enough to do its own single launch mission to the Moon or Mars, no SLS required. Keep in mind such an expendable launch is only in the $90 million cost range. While not at the $10 million aspirational rate Elon wants for full reusability, considering the amount of payload it could loft, it still would be a major improvement over what we have now, and literally orders of magnitude cheaper than the SLS. By the way, suppose as a SpaceX exec once suggested the Starship HLS would need “10ish” orbital refuelings. At the $10 million per launch rate for a fully reusable SH/SS that’s still $100 million. Then the single launch expendable approach would actually be in the same cost range as the fully reusable approach, anyway. See the calculations here: SpaceX should explore a weight-optimized, expendable Starship upper stage. https://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2024/03/spacex-should-explore-weight-optimized.html Bob Clark

I like to use prop cars. My best one can go about 200 m/s.