dualmaster

You probably did not install US correctly (I did the same thing). The US install is slightly confusing - when you open the zip it shows a folder labeled "US_Core_0.9.0.24". This folder SHOULD NOT be copied directly into your /Gamedata folder. Instead, go one level deeper and copy the "UniversalStorage" folder (and other ones) into your /Gamedata folder. Also, thanks to Dmagic for the great parts. It makes science collection much more interesting. And having US wedges for the Goo/Science bay is such a huge improvement. I had taken to leaving those parts behind just because they made my rockets so ugly.

Daishi's videos show exactly the behavior I experienced. I found that if I had less weight on the joints (i.e. stacking just the bays without anything in them) I could usually get somewhere from 10-15 of them before self destruction. I've had similar behavior when trying to stack a bunch of cubic octagonal struts together - sometimes it is stable, but other times it will vibrate itself to death. @ Paul Kingtiger - It looks like there is no mass at the top of the stack - maybe that's why you were able to get so many? I had at least an adapter, probe, and a few other things on top. I can't test it right now to see if just stacking the bays would make a difference. As for my machine, I'm running on an i5-2500k @ 3.8 GHz, 8 gig ram, GTX 570. Just a thought - I know there are parts out there where you can adjust their size using tweakables (increase/decrease diameters, increase/decrease nodes, etc). Would it be possible to apply this to the cores? You could choose how many bays you want vertically and the part would adjust the height and number of nodes. Then it would be treated as a single part instead a stack of parts. (Disclaimer - I know nothing about how difficult/possible that is to implement so ignore me if it's a bad idea) Anyways, it's a very cool mod and if I can only use a couple stacked at a time I'll take it. Although I did have a pretty cool satellite planned where all the bays were going to open and all the antennas and solar panels would deploy

The seams appear even with just a couple stacked on each other. With ~8 the seams are much more noticeable but it doesn't disintegrate. The gravity issue makes some sense - the less weight I have above it the more of them I can stack before self destruction. However, I tried using hack gravity from the debug menu as well as Hyperediting the stack into orbit immediately on launching. In both cases the larger numbers still disintegrate. PhysicsSignificance=1 is present in the config file. And yes, I am using .75 (just downloaded today). Also, I added a fifth picture to the album above - when I put one of the science bays in upside down, the textures don't line up the other ones. Don't know if that's just a graphical thing or what.

Hey, just started trying to use this mod and I'm having some problems. When I stack a bunch of the science bays on top of each other and then launch the vehicle the ship vibrates itself to pieces. It seems the science bays collide with each other some amount. This only happens with a large number of them stacked (8 worked fine, with 9 they self destructed). There's also something odd going on - when I stack the science bays like this it looks like they connect smoothly in the VAB, however on the launch pad visible gaps appear between the layers. See the pictures below. Note - this is using the 1.25m cores with science bays.

I expect I'll eventually go to just using NEAR instead of FAR. The extra challenge is good, but in the long run I don't want to deal with accidental disassembly just because I turned a tad too hard. I'll have to try strutting a little heavier. I hate how it looks but I guess the B9 invisible struts aren't too bad.

I'm using FAR+DRE and have experienced the same. If you dive into the atmosphere too quickly you burn up, but if you maintain enough AOA to limit your vertical descent you end up taking forever to slow down. I tried using some S-turns such that keeping an AOA just turns you to the side instead of lifting out of the atmosphere, but even with that it still takes 10-15 minutes to slow down to normal cruising speeds in the lower atmosphere. Additionally, I have a ton of trouble trying to land. In the lower atmosphere with zero thrust I can barely slow down below 200 m/s. At 1000m and 200 m/s, I'll glide tens of kilometers and still be going 120+ m/s. I can't even flair very hard because modest AOA causes the plane to break up from aerodynamic stresses. The only way I've been able to land a plane is using B9's air flaps to slow me down. I need to build some planes with B9 or stock parts and see if it is just an issue with SP+ parts.

This is what I tried the other night - connecting the top of the petal adapter to the bottom of the SM engine which auto generates the fairing. The problem I have is that the auto generated fairing won't disappear. Whether I use the decouple command on the petal adapter or try to manually "jettison" the fairing before decoupling, the fairing stays in place. So when I open the petal fairing the auto generated fairing remains fixed in place, attached to nothing. I can clip right through it so I can still turn the SM around and extract my lander, but it looks pretty silly.

Since the ISP of the ion engines haven't changed (I think?) I don't think it changes that much from a challenge standpoint. Although you can easily build a minimalist ion powered lander for Bop and Pol and I think even Vall.

I actually built the rocket portion (without jets/wings) in the VAB. The I copied the .craft file from the VAB folder to the SPH folder. The only weird thing that happened is if I did revert flight it would take me back to the VAB. But otherwise I didn't have any trouble. I think a few other people used the multiple aerobrakes into orbit - at least one or two of the minimalist attempts did that with their refueling tanks.

Well, I finally gave up on my recent minimalist attempt. Some physics glitches pushed me over the edge. I still figured I would post the attempt. Hopefully someone (with more patience than me!) can take the ideas and put together a good run. I think my setup is pretty close to capable of completing the challenge although a few of the fuel margins are a little slim. The mission plan involved a single ship traveling to Jool. Upon entering the sphere of influence, it splits into 3 parts - our Kerbal rides the Laythe lander directly to Laythe. The Vall Lander aerobrakes directly to Vall orbit while the Tylo lander, return stage (with lander can), and Bop lander go directly into Tylo orbit. After landing on Laythe, our Kerbal rides an ion powered transfer stage to Vall -> Pol (EVA to surface) -> Tylo. After landing on Tylo he rides the return stage to Bop before returning to Kerbin. The previous minimalist challenges demonstrated the importance of moving as little mass as possible between moons - an unnecessary mass being moved is wasted dV. Thus the strategy of the Laythe, Vall, and Tylo landers going directly to their moons. Also, for the return stage an ion engine makes the most sense, but I wasn't interested in the looooong burn times. Interesting note though, ion engines are getting a significant boost to their thrust in the next patch, making this much more viable. Anyways, here are some pictures. At the end of the album are VAB pictures of the individual landers for those interested. In particular I like my Tylo lander idea - for descent it uses the atomic engine that was used for the transfer and capture. I think most other attempts I saw were just throwing it away. This makes good use of it. From a low orbit, it has enough dV to come to a hover just above the ground - the upper stage then detaches and makes the actual landing thus avoiding having to make a really tall lander with the atomic engine. I gave this a few test runs and it's actually a pretty easy landing.

I haven't conjured up the patience/time to complete my most recent low mass attempt - currently a 24.33 tonne ship that should have all the delta V to complete the mission. My first run with it unfortunately ended badly due to glitchy physics related to cubic octagonal struts (resulting in undesirable spontaneous disassembly). If I don't get around to fnishing it soon I'll at least post some pictures so others can glean some ideas.

I got around to making a few cargo capable SSTOs this weekend using some of the B9 parts. Light Lifter This is my favorite of the bunch - it is nicely balanced and handles very well with or without a cargo load and on full or empty tanks. It has an 8 meter long cargo bay and can carry 8-10 tonnes to LKO. The cargo bay diameter is a really nice size - it can handle 1.5m parts with attachments and can just barely fit a lander can. This makes it good for launching a variety of probes as well as lightweight Mun/Minmus landers. Medium Lifter This was my first (successful) attempt at a cargo plane with the wide-bodied cargo bay. It turned out ok - the weight capacity is a bit low at 12-14 tonnes, but the cargo bay now has space for 2.5m parts with attachments. This will probably be nice for space station construction. Heavy Lifter This is my first pass at building a plane using the HL parts. It has an 8m cargo bay and can carry ~35t to LKO. I'll be revamping this to add a longer cargo bay when I have a chance. Overall it flies pretty well for a larger plane. Refueler This is a stock plane I made a little while ago. It's capable of putting a full orange tank and a large mono-propellant tank into LKO.

The Laythe landing was the toughest for the reason you mention. I had to keep it pointed perfectly retrograde during the landing to avoid it flipping over. My first attempt at an ascent left me well short of an orbit so I reloaded and improved on the ascent profile and got pretty close to orbit before ditching it. And the rounding wasn't a problem - I simply misread it!

Minimalist challenge completed! 50.969 tonnes. I made 3 major mistakes: 1.) I misread the mass for the current leader, thus ended up .050 tonnes heavier than the leader (didn't realize it until half way through the mission). A little frustrating since I could have easily been less given: 2.) I brought waaaaayyyyy too much fuel. I had at least 4 tonnes too much. 3.) I forgot solar panels on my last stage. This forced me to keep my last lander attached, which could have been used for more landings (as it was it was just dead weight the entire trip). Mods: MechJeb (only used for checking delta v stats) Landing order: Laythe, Vall, Tylo, Bop, Pol, Duna (had to do something with all that extra fuel!) Unique features: Separate lander for each moon, no RCS or docking ports For landers, I used a command chair with a small probe to provide SAS. Since the lander weight consisted mostly of fuel, I decided against a reusable lander in favor of separate ones. This eliminated any need for RCS or docking ports. I don't know if it actually saved weight overall but it was certainly easier to not have to dock after each landing. It also allowed me to fine tune the delta V of each lander for the specific landing. My Tylo lander in particular was nice - good TWR on the landing stage made the landing very easy. The ascent stage was minimal and had plenty of delta V. My Laythe lander was actually the worst. I didn't use a parachute and my lander wanted to tip over. Fortunately I happened to land on a high spot at 3500m because I didn't quite make orbit during takeoff. Jebediah had to jetpack it to make it back to the main ship. With so much extra fuel I decided to land on Duna on the way back. It took me a whole bunch of quick loads to get the landing right (I landed a very tall ship that rested directly on my nuclear engine). Eventually got it though. I returned to Kerbin with over 900 delta V still in the tanks. I could easily have landed on Minmus with the right aerocapture maneuver, but I was growing tired of it at that point so I just landed. Given how this mission went, I think a 45 tonne ship is possible.......not sure I have the patience to give it another go though. It was a good challenge though and I learned quite a bit about making efficient transfers.

So is there any consensus on the most efficient mission plan for this? Is it best to work sequentially from the inside out? Are you better off using Jool to aerobrake or just going for a direct Laythe capture? I took an initial crack at this but severely underestimated my fuel requirements for getting around in the Joolian system. I'm working on a second attempt but am trying to figure the best mission plan.

Here is my Hogger Refueler at 100 km orbit with almost a full orange tank and a large RCS tank. Can't seem to figure out the right tags to get it to show up here. Anyways, it obviously abuses air hogging and also has some clipping via cubic octagonal struts (mostly for the sake of appearance rather than necessity). Still, it flies pretty well and was fun to make!

This is actually something I've been working on for a little while - I want an SSTO that can put an orange tank and one of the large RCS fuel tanks into orbit. Thus far I've come pretty close - I've managed to rendezvous without ~80% of an orange tank remaining. Unfortunately, it requires some excessive air hogging which I find kinda lame. Without air hogging it will be pretty tough. I don't have any pics at the moment, but I'll see if I can get some later.