Martin_Baker

Hi Picard98, there is probably no reason for helldiver to create a manipulator arm, there are already several available. I use romfarer's Buran Robotic Arm but modify it's config file slightly to apply a rescale factor = 0.7. As soon as you do that, it fits neatly inside the cargo bay. Here's an example of something I've been playing around with:

Are you stacking the shuttle on top of a very big rocket? Prior to launch with 6 kerbals and a payload, I'm sitting on the launch pad with approximately 4000 m/s atmospheric delta v, definitely not enough for my mad piloting skillz to get me to 300 Km orbit. Flying manual, the best I can achieve is out of gas in a 121 km x 56 km orbit. Using MJ gets me to my 102 x 98 orbital gas station with 50 delta v to spare.

Hey FREEMANtsinq, just out of interest what sort of orbit do you have your space station in? As far as getting 6 kerbals and a payload into orbit, this shuttle has excellent fuel efficiency, but this means I little room for error when it comes to fuel management. I have an orbital Gas 'n' Go in a 102 km x 98 km equatorial orbit, and by the time I dock with it I've got about 30 - 50 m/s delta V remaining which is not enough for a deorbit burn. This is why I dock and take on more gas. I'm just wondering what sort of orbits and remaining delta Vs other people are achieving?

Nazari and FREEMAN, wow thank you for your very detailed posts. Nazari I apologise you've had to repost, I did search but wasn't able to find it. I'll refine my search skills. I'm not so concerned about duplication of an intensive texture. With the number of mods I've got installed I'm already running 1/4 res, low res textures and texture compression just to keep out of memory CTDs at bay. But all this helped, I went from running at 3.9Gb RAM down to 2.4Gb. It runs smooth, just not pretty. This is an awesome mod, KSP is all the better for it existing.

Mmm ok thanks. I have no idea what a tweakable feature mod is, it sounds like it's beyond my limited confuser using abilities. No matter, I will just continue to use this awesome Shuttle as it was intended. Thanks for your help.

Is it possible to get all four christening names for the shuttles to coexist at the same time? For instance can I have four shuttles docked in orbit to the same station at once, each having a different name? I'm hoping to get a screenshot shot of the family of shuttles on station in orbit at once, but haven't worked out how to do this. I apologise if it's been discussed, I've searched but turned up nothing.

+1 I put two RC drag chutes (one on either side) on the aft of the airframe, immediately below the vertical fins as far back as you can attach them on the side of the integral fuel tank (just in front of the OMS engines). In this position, they will survive when using Deadly Reentry if you maintain the usual ~10 deg AoA during atmospheric reentry. I haven't tried zero AoA to see if they still survive as I never do atmospheric reentry with zero AoA.

Hi antimatter, I find there are two things that help immensely with this problem. The first is to ensure that only reaction wheel is active on your space station, two or more tend to start fighting each other and it introduces divergent oscillations that progressively worsen until things fall off. The second is to install a mod called Kerbal Joint Reinforcement. You'll have to google it, I can't link it as I'm typing this on my phone. Anyway I've found that since having the combination of these two things, I've never had any problems with any part connections, docking ports or otherwise. I hope this helps.

The easiest way I've found to do this is build up your payload separately by starting a new build in the VAB, then when you're happy with it save your entire payload as a subassembly. Then load the orbiter shuttle and attach a clamp-o-tron to the cargo bay. You should then have no trouble bringing up the subassembly tab and attaching the payload subassembly to the clamp-o-tron in the cargo bay. It works for me first go every time doing it this way.