Search the Community

Hello, I haven’t started the game for a long time, but already at the beginning of the game I’m studying the very first technologies for fuel and engines, for example, “rocket science fundamentals”, I’m buying (developing) all the details, and when I switch to the assembly shop, the fuel tank is as if not bought again, and a copy of the old tank appears in the scientific department, and the development must be paid again, and so on ad infinitum. As a result, I can’t fly on anything other than solid fuel engines Image for example under the spoiler

So, I'm making a 2-stage to orbit craft. I got the launch stage down, and I'm currently making the second stage. So I've built the second stage and set things up, But I can't figure out how to get NCS adapters to have Oxidizer in them instead of just liquid fuel.. (I'm using them as the main fuel tank because A) They look cool and B) The payload is rather small, and they hold quite a bit of fuel for their size. I wouldn't be surprised if this is impossible to do in vanilla, but if that is the case does anybody have a mod that allows this to be done? (Doesn't need to be compatible with breaking ground or making history; only 1.9.1)

Ok, so I managed to rendezvous with a craft that had run out of fuel, and I planned to transfer enough fuel to it to deorbit (connected with a grabber claw), but I can't figure out how to transfer the fuel! I know I've done this before by holding Alt and right-clicking both tanks, but this doesn't seem to work now. Yes, I have upgraded my R&D to Level 2.

so, i don't know how much fuel to pack till duna, because if you pack too low amount, then for circularizing and for all that, you'll not have enough fuel, and if you pack too much, then your weight will be too big, and you will consume a lot of fuel for a small amount of deltav

Hello. I used to have my fuel setup to choose whatever fuel i wanted... i would see liq fuel + ox and click and it could change to liquid fuel. Now that i got Configurable Containers, i'm not a fan because you cannot fill the entire tank with 1 fuel source (liq fuel) ... you can remove the other fuel but the setup i used to have for a liqfuel+ox tank could swap to just liq fuel and the content would double, meaning all the tank was full of just liq fuel. with configurable containers, you 'cannot fill your tank with more than 1 fuel source' or something like that. can anyone point out the mod i might have been using? it was reall handy... you clicked the fuel and you could just scroll through different types without having to open another window and have to mess about with contents that way. Thanks a lot! Nick

Fuel and ISRU rebalance mod [FIR] Source: MIT AeroAstro presentation "Utilizing Molten Regolith Electrolysis Reactors to Produce Oxygen on the Moon", 2015. The Installation shown above is designed to make 10t of oxidizer per year. What is this mod about? Brief summary: FIR is a mod that rebalances prices of stock fuel (cheaper) and mixture mix used by stock engines/fuel cells (3:1 instead of 1.1:0.9). Additionally it makes behaviour of stock ISRUs a bit more realistic (can only produce oxidizer from ore + work much slower + other tweaks). The mod aims to approximate KSP stock behaviour to reality and thus be a middle ground between the stock game and mods like RO/RealFuels. Detailed description: This is a mod that rebalances couple of things that limited my gameplay and at the same time the learning value of KSP. 1) stock ISRU can only produce oxidizer now. And it is a very slow process (however faster than in reality). ISRUs, scanners and ore tanks are moved earlier in the tech tree. Rationale: Oxidizer only - Making oxidizer of any kind from ore (regolith) is broadly researched in many working papers concerning both Mars and Moon. It's decisively simpler than making all parts of propellant and can be done virtually anywhere by 'just' heating feedstock to a high temperature (in a process called Molten Regotlih Electrolysis). It also doesn't require any inputs except energy. Conversely making both oxidizer and fuel out of ore or even water is quite complicated (taking into account all requirements that accompany off-world manufacturing) and energy intensive process - to such an extent that even known papers about it seems to not get past theoretical stage (G. Landis and others). For now the most advanced in testing, simplest and reliable technology assumes making only oxidizer part of fuel. Lower processing speed - the most advanced MRE ISRU designs currently tested (on the picture above) are able to make about 10t of oxidizer a year assuming continuous operation (on the picture above).In comparison a small stock ISRU is able to churn out the same amount of oxidizer in an hour (0.55 unit/s * 5 kg per unit * 60 * 60 = 9.9t). Therefore my mod is going to rebalance small and normal ISRU's LOX production to about 28t and 160t per Kerbin year (1.2 and 6.6 jumbo tanks accordingly). Increased weight - in reality MRE regolith>oxidizer making system (so ISRU+tanks+power source) has a weight efficiency of about 5-7 (measured as a weight of oxidizer production per year divided by ISRU system weight). Therefore meeting production quota above (28/160t) would require much heavier ISRU units. Again I'm happy with approximation to reality so the mod make small ISRU weigh 2t and large 8t. Moreover large ISRU is much more efficient so there is a reward for bringing larger ISRU to the planet's surface. Lower technology requirements - by moving tech requirements earlier the main difficulty is moved from researching the technology to actually making it work. So the player would need to send and ISRU system in advance to produce fuel (so similar to assumptions of some current MARS/Moon missions). It should create interesting situations when player can utilize ISRU before upgrading science compound in a career game. Therefore with careful planning he can extend the range of lower tech rockets and reach further planets so the gameplay could be more interesting in early career compared to late game. Energy demands for small isru remain unchanged at the moment. Standard ISRU however has 4x higher EC demand (4x bigger size and 50% better efficiency = heating more regolith to a higher temperature). 2) Changed fuel mixture ratio for stock tanks, engines and fuel cells to 3:1 (from 1.1:0.9). This is a compromise as to what stock LiquidFuel might be since sometimes it acts as RP-1/Kerosene (jets, big engines) and sometimes as liquid hydrogen (LV-N). Rationale: 3:1 ratio seems to be a good compromise and generalized mixture ratio that encompasses different fuel types: Typical oxidizer to RP-1 mixture ratio = 2.56:1 (RD-180 2.72:1) Typical oxidizer to methane mix ratio = 3.2:1 Typical oxidizer to liq hydrogen mix ratio = 5:1 *(from 4:1 to 8:1) So we can see that no matter what popular fuel mix we take they always use more mass of oxidizer than fuel. This means that player can refuel now a significant portion of a fuel (75% of mass) in the form of oxidizer. Also 3:1 ratio means that it's easier to make quick calculations by seeing whether you have more than 3x times more oxidizer than liquid fuel. 3) Liquid fuel, oxidizer, monopropellant and solid fuel are much cheaper now. So player using SSTO or recovering stages gets much higher cash bonus than before. Rationale: I didn't like how my big SSTOs or rockets still used quite a lot of fuel even though they were recoverable. In stock KSP - depending on your design - fuel costs can comprise even 10-20%+ of a spacecraft or almost 40% of a stock tank. In reality fuel costs are about 0.4% in case of a space shuttle so very little compared to space vehicle costs. Since the parts' total cost remains the same, the parts' dry cost is relatively higher while fuel price is So now player that invests a lot more time to build recoverable parts or/and fly SSTOs is rewarded with higher percentage of recovered funds. 4) - for people using Atomic Age mod by porkjet - I've changed fuel mix and isp value for LANTERN engine in Atomic Age Nuclear Propulsion mod by porkjet: Using stats from this page: http://www.nss.org/settlement/moon/LANTR.html and reducing isp to stock values, I've increased slightly isp in LOX augmented mode to 500isp instead of 455. In reality isp for 3:1 fuel mix is expected to be in range of 631-647s. Isp for LF mode only remained unchanged (720s). LOX augmented mode uses now 3:1 fuel mix. Therefore LANTERN engine has now the highest isp (500) from all engines that can be refuelled with an oxidizer (since LV-N can't be refuelled with new ISRU mechanics). Aside from more challenging and (imho) interesting gameplay this rebalance increases educational value for KSP; a player: - can see that oxidizer is making a bulk of the rocket fuel (similar to real world) - observes that ISRU can extend range of the rocket by making only oxidizer however implementation of it requires planning ahead (similar to real life). Also it's rather not viable as a part of a spaceship due to system mass (heavier) and rate it produces oxidizer. The main purpose of it is now to sit on a surface of a planet and produce small amounts of oxidizer for the long time. - can note that fuel costs in rockets are very small thus researching and developing reusability is a key point to savings and extending the space program. And the last point - if you still reading -this mod will be a basis for my next mods which involve low-tech/low-isp alternative isru fuels/propulsions that were researched extensively due to the ease of implementation compared to more advanced/complicated and therefore less viable solutions. No download link yet, the project is on the drawing board at the moment. I welcome all suggestions and discussion about the mod and ISRU stuff in general:)

I just installed planetary bases systems, Near Future Tech, cyro rockets, and all the other stuff that Nertea makes, which come bundled with a bunch of probably outdated config mods like b9 part switch, dynamic battery storage, etc. I am in 1.5.1. Have a feeling it's because of the b9 part switch thing that lets me modify the tanks' contents conflicting with something. I don't know how to make it stop. It stopped randomly once but it's happening again. It might be a hotkey that toggles this behavior. It's also freezing a lot, once every 0.25 seconds, staying frozen for a full second, as I hover over the big fuel tank/decouplers. I have editor extensions redux, as well as a lot of other mods I had prior to installing Nertea's stuff and PBS. Please don't come here to give me a lecture on how bad 1.5.1 is and how stupid I am for trying to use certain mods at certain times for certain versions or whatever. Just help me. I've noticed that I can use different levels of symmetry on a part that I placed on a rocket with a specific level of symmetry; i.e. I placed a decoupler with 3x symmetry but when I put the fuel tank on it with 2x (the only symmetry level I can use for fuel tanks at the moment for some reason) it has radial symmetry about the single decoupler that I am hovering over with the part. I have tried pressing F and it does nothing.

So I have sent some probes to Jool and Duna, but I was wondering if anybody has some tips on getting Kerbals back from Duna, which I am going to try first. Whenever I get there, I never seem to have enough fuel to get back to Kerbin. I sent a probe Rover to Duna that I successfully landed, but there was no hope of getting back with the fuel and dV I had left. Any tips on making ships more efficient? Thanks!

WetterWings is a small module manager patch I wrote for myself a while back to add fuel storage to all the stock wings. As a bit of an airplane enthusiast in real life, I found it very odd that only a few of the largest stock wings were capable of holding fuel. Most planes, of all sizes store fuel in the wings, it's just a great place for it! To that end, this adds a very reasonable amount of liquid fuel storage to all the stock wing pieces. Since they are so thin, I've kept the numbers on the low side. I think you'll find the values are quite balanced, as I calculated each wing's total storage capacity as a function of it's lifting surface value. Changelog- Version 1- First release. Dependencies- Module Manager of course! Download- https://spacedock.info/mod/1665/WetterWings (Also available on CKAN) Instructions- Toss it in your "Gamedata" folder. License under spoiler: As always, feedback/comments/criticism are all welcome!

Is my game bugged? What happened to kerbodyne fuel tanks? They don't seem to fit into anything anymore, I don't recall having this problem with older versions of the game. [snip] this is very upsetting to me. Even the biggest engine in the game is too small for kerbodyne fuel tanks right now. I'm so triggered right now that I went out of my way to creat a forum account just to report this.

Hey, Just like the title suggests, I think a fuel toggle should be included with the engine plates. Side note, and most likely to my own stupidity, for some reason the engineer's log says that when I install the engine plate, that it is the wrong direction, but I seriously can't figure out how to get rid of the message! Use an engine plate and check the log... I'm not crazy! Man I hope not. Space Monkey

The challenge is simple: fly as far as you can while using the least amount of fuel as possible To make this interesting, here's the rule: -stock only, no mods (FAR, technical readout and graphic mods are okay), no cheating -you can freely design your craft, but your craft must be powered by "engine assembly", which consisted of: Intake (allowed intake: circular, adjustable ramp and shock cone intake) - mk1 fuel tank - jet engine (allowed engines: panther, wheesley, whiplash, rapier (jet mode only)). You can attach at maximum of 3 engine assembly (1200 units of fuel), but you are not allowed to attach other engines, or intakes outside of that assembly -if using fuel-carrying part, such as big-s wings or large airplane wing, the content must be emptied. The only fuel source must be from mk1 fuel tank in engine assembly -do not leave atmosphere, do not use solid rocket, lf/ox, ion, monopropellant engines, or any other glitching shenanigans for propulsion. no staging or destroying part, no dropping parts/engine assembly, the plane must land/ splashed down intact How the scoring works: (Distance travelled) / (amount of fuel used) note: if using FAR, your final score will be increased by 10% mk1 fuel tank have 400 units of fuel, so for example, if I traveled for 360km, and used 40 units of fuel, then the score will be: 360 / 40 = 9, if I make it farther, say 390km with 40 units of fuel, then the score will be 390 / 40 = 9.75. This challenge is focused towards flight skills about gliding the plane to make it as far as possible with the least amount of fuel as possible. Your flight is considered ended when your plane has landed/ splashing down. The scoring will be divided according to the number of engine assemblies used Leaderboards: -1 assembly: -2 assemblies: -3 assemblies: Good luck, and may the sky has silver lining from your flight (or trail of debris, if you're unlucky)

The title says it all. How do I get engines to use real fuel?

I've noticed the fuel mass ratio on some of the new tanks seems off. The little R-4 has a terrible ratio (and is incredibly huge for it's 10 liquid fuel) of 1.33:1 The R-11 is much better, but a bit off at 8.18:1 The R-12 donut is a spectacular 31:1 The classic tanks are 9:1 still it seems (full mass:dry mass) The RCS values are also all over the place, although that's the way it's always been (the R-10 is 5:1, the R-25 is 7:1 and the FL-R1 is 8.5).... I only mention this as I recall something about them being updated with new consistent values. Much data entry. Such error. Much ratio. Wow!

Friends, I have just published the long-awaited v2 upgrade to the venerable Minotaur Super Tanker at KerbalX [link]. The Minotaur v2: it chops, it dices, it slices, it mulches, it mows the lawn, it walks the dog -- and it boosts 39 kilo-kallons of LF to LKO. [It does not play the piano.] And now with nosecones!! (Ja, Werner was right all along...) It has the grunt and an ample top deck for heavy-lifting of additional payload. It can go inter-planetary. You can even build a super-ugly orbital gas station unpainted in a dull, orange, anti-knock safety color (thoroughly tested by Kerbals) from the first two you send up [subject of next video]. It has a power train for Massive Ion Drive. Get yours now as there are only a virtual number remaining...

The challenge is simple: fly as far as you can while using the least amount of fuel as possible To make this interesting, here's the rule: -stock only, no mods (FAR, technical readout and graphic mods are okay) -you can freely design your craft, but your craft must be powered by "engine assembly", which consisted of: [Intake - mk1 fuel tank - jet engine] (allowed engines: panther, wheesley, whiplash, rapier (jet mode only)). You can attach at maximum of 2 engine assembly (800 units of fuel), for those who needs extra power for their craft, but you are not allowed to attach other engines, or intakes outside of that assembly. It doesn't matter how or where you put those 3 components on your plane, but a plane must have either 1 tank, engine, intake or 2 tanks, engines, intakes -if using fuel-carrying part, such as big-s wings or large airplane wing, the content must be emptied. The only fuel source must be from mk1 fuel tank -do not leave atmosphere, do not use solid rocket, lf/ox, ion, monopropellant engines, or any other glitching shenanigans for propulsion. no staging or destroying part, no dropping parts/engine assembly, plane must take off from the ground How the scoring works: (Distance travelled) / (amount of fuel used) The distance is using "ground distance travelled" in F3 menu note: FAR User have their own category, since the flight mechanic is FAR more different than stock ones (pun intended) mk1 fuel tank have 400 units of fuel, so for example, if I traveled for 360km, and used 40 units of fuel, then the score will be: 360 / 40 = 9, if I make it farther, say 390km with 40 units of fuel, then the score will be 360 / 40 = 9.75. This challenge is focused towards flight skills about gliding the plane to make it as far as possible with the least amount of fuel as possible. Your flight is considered ended when your plane has landed/ splashing down. The scoring will be divided between single-engine craft and dual-engine craft Leaderboards [stock aerodynamic]: -1 assembly: @Cunjo Carl=41,967 -2 assemblies: @neistridlar=56,029 Leaderboards [FAR Aerodynamic] -1 assembly: -2 assemblies: Good luck, and may the sky has silver lining from your flight (or trail of debris, if you're unlucky)

Good day, all. I am facing a challenge with the fuel feed system and am hoping to receive some expert advice! This link is to an unmodded .craft file for KSP 1.3.1. The craft is the B payload for Operation Beach Head loaded atop a standard Aquila launcher/transit vehicle. Problem Statement: The lowest 3 engines ignite during the lift-off stage and are intended to burn out together. To make this work in KSP versions 1.0.5 (which it did), fuel lines had to be run from the lower tanks to the next-level higher *engines*, rather than the tanks above. (This was due to one of the peculiarities/flaws of the original KSP fuel feed system.) Since 1.2.1, 1 tank on the lower deck runs out before the other two. I investigated this in 1.3.1 with the fuel feed overlay system and verified that the fuel lines are all correctly attached and everything seems fine. In addition, I can see no way with the new fuel priority system to prioritize this any differently. Any advice, insight, expertise will be greatly appreciated and acknowledged! [And yes, I did promise that Aquila is the ugliest ship in the Kerbal universe. If anyone has created an uglier Gorgon, I'm sure we'd all enjoy seeing it!!]

For my career playthrough, I built a small rocket to explore Kerbin. It would travel on a suborbital trajectory, and after reaching the target biome, release the scientific payload (a materials bay, mystery goo, thermometer), and land, to be recovered for science. On it's first mission, I managed to get all the way to Kerbin's north ice caps. on the second, I tried to get it to the big desert (not that far away from the KSC). Instead, I ended up in the highlands for some reason. I've been trying to reach the desert, but seem to fail. So, should I A) Add more fuel B) Reach a higher altitude to then cover more distance C) Cheat and put 'Infinite Fuel' on. I was able to reach the ice caps, but can't reach the desert (which is closer to the KSC). Does anyone know why?

Happy New Year, everyone. I am overhauling my fleet and I'm in the market for ideas about orbital fuel dumps (OFD). Let's define an OFD as an orbital vehicle (Kerbin or elsewhere) that serves the sole two purposes of: refueling visiting vessels; (possibly) keeping mission components docked together awaiting final (low orbit) assembly; (not looking beautiful [in Space, nobody can see how Ugly you are]) I gave up on space stations as anything more than a fuel dump long ago. I've recently upgraded to 1.2 and then 1.3 and find auto-strutting -- which is just a way to defeat the ugly side of the Unity physics engine (as best I can gather) -- does actually help. But I still can't risk docking very much to the OFD (pictured). And have to remain very observant with the Warp key lest tragedy befall. What have people found is the best way to put a pile of fuel into orbit and keep it stocked?? Pictured below, (BEWARE THE UGLINESS), I assemble the following from bits left over from two super-tanker launches. Each super-tanker lofts 165 kilotons of LF up to the OFD. You can see this OFD has two weak links, at the hubs. I find that just maneuvering a ship near it can cause it to get the shakes. Even auto-strutted. And I'm not terribly sure which kind of strutting (Root, Parent, Grandparent, Heaviest) ought to work best... Please post screenshots of your Orange Fuel Dumps...!!

HELP I am building a stock replica of the USS ENTERPRISE, I don't know how to show a picture of it. My problem is that my engines are not powerful enough/ don't burn long enough. I want it to have fair twr (from 1.00 to 0.50) and a long burn time (from 1h to 30m) I can't get this but I see giant stock sstos online and on youtube... I only need it to burn for 1 hour and I can refuel at my station. But it keeps running out of fuel. For instance I went to Duna once and I had enough fuel to go from low-kerbin-orbit (LKO) to intercept of duna but no closer. I tried many engine configurations and many different fuel and thrust values but I always go the same distance The fuel makes the engines last longer but makes the thrust less due to its weight. I need a solution to this problem and I can even give the craft file if you want. No memes or unrelated content plz, and no useless content either... Thanks in advance - A FAT KERBAL

I remember seeing suggestions of adding fuel scoops some years back but never have come across anything. I'm talking of scooping fuel from Jool for use in nuclear fuelled rockets. Setting up a mining and storage facility at Jool would be a very good idea I would have thought? So did they? I've searched but not found anything unfortunately?

Okay, situation: Been trying to carry my vastly oversized Duna lander to, well, Duna. The mission objective: do it in about as silly a manner as possible, more or less. The conundrum: This is about my fourth ship I have build for the purpose, the third fundamentally different design. I thought I could be clever by arranging fuel-tanks in a train-like manner, so that I could just run the engines from the one at the and and drop that once it's empty. AGX and very many click-clicky sessions on the flow-priority buttons, the old Drainex fuel meter from SmartParts, that should sort it. 'xcept it don't. As you can see in the video, the fuel drainage is ridiculous. LH2 fuel is drawn from the tank with flow priority 0, while oxidizer gets drawn from buggerifIknowwhere. And the tank at the end, with flow priority 90, parts with not a drop. Explanation I have for it: inertia is, of course, shoving the fuel away from my engines here, and the fuel pumps can't keep up. Only solution I could think off, open TAC Fuel Balancer, set the tank I wanted to drain to "transfer out", and set ALL other tanks to "tranfer in", set the transfer rate to 100 and try dialing the throttle back until the fuel tanks can keep up ... has failed. I thought of it while writing this and just tried it, no joy. So, have I indeed seen the error of my ways, is Dunacraft III - The Cryo Strikes Back just an idiotic design that I really should have used hyperedit to test before spending hours assembling the damn thing in orbit? Or is there ANY way of making this work? Like I said, I wanted to do it in as silly a manner as possible. Pretty sure there are ways sillier ways of doing it. But this one, hauling that trainload of disposable tanks, I kinda like that. And, fully expecting that, as usual, I only get things right when I try and work out what I got wrong earlier, am already mentally designing Dunacraft IV - The Last Cryo. But I really kinda like this one ... any advise is welcome!

I may be entirely daft here - it's likely, but I have my space station set up, with its fuel tanks. I have 3 tanks for monopropellant, and 3 tanks for Liquid fuel and oxidizer. I filled them all up at launch with monopropellant. Now 3 are empty - i want to convert these empty tanks to hold Lq and Ox. How do I make it do this as it won't let me transfer LQ and OX into them Below is a picture hopefully explaining what i mean... P.S. I have interstellar fuel switch installed.

I have a large rocket with multiple stages and I am trying to do a modified asparagus staging. As you can see from the pics the plan is for the two "A" tanks to feed into the "B" tank which feeds into "C" and then into "D", jettisoning each letter as they dry up. It works fine once I launch, the "A" tanks start to drain with no fuel being used from any of the other tanks. Once the "A" tanks are empty the "B" tanks start to empty, with no fuel being used from "C" or "D". But once the "B" tanks empty I start to use fuel from the "C" and "D" tanks which is not right...the "C" tanks should empty while the "D" tank shouldn't. It's not an issue of two tanks feeding a single tank because there is no problem with the two "A" tanks feeding the single "B" tank. And I'll note that all the decouplers have their crossfeed disabled. I have a bunch of mods installed but nothing that should affect fuel flow. GameData folder is in the album above. Is this a stock bug that I am seeing? Thanks! P.S. Guess embedding Imgur albums is broke again...

I've built a vessel to mine fuel on Minmus and return it to a tanker in LKO. I did my mining, flew back to LKO and transferred all my fuel into a big orange tank - all fine so far. I now want to transfer a small amount back to my mining vessel, equally distributed between some radial fuel tanks (with equal amounts of fuel and oxidiser) but this seems very difficult to do. I only want to transfer enough back to get back to the surface of Minmus, but it seems fiddly to get an exact balance of fuel between tanks so that weight distribution is equal. Any tips? I'm using stock and career mode. Ideally, I'd like to able to predetermine the amount of fuel/ox to be transferred into a specific tank... Thanks!