RocketBlam

It's definitely RSS. It's impossible to reenter. The only other mod I have installed is MechJeb. I can't get below 80,000 meters without the craft exploding. The heat shield is completely gone by 90,000 meters.

Nobody else is having this problem? Not being able to return from orbit is a pretty huge problem.

I'm having a problem. I don't know if it's RSS or FASA, but I have a Mk. 1 command pod with a heat shield on the bottom. The heat shield burns off before the capsule even starts to exhibit any reentry effects (the orange glow). Before I get down to 70,000 meters, the craft explodes because the heat shield is completely gone.

I'm having a problem. I don't know if it's RSS or FASA, but I have a Mk. 1 command pod with a heat shield on the bottom. The heat shield burns off before the capsule even starts to exhibit any reentry effects (the orange glow). Before I get down to 70,000 meters, the craft explodes because the heat shield is completely gone.

I was just hanging outside my capsule in low Earth orbit (yes, I'm using RSS). I right-clicked on a Mystery Goo unit (the FASA version, not stock) and I had the option to "experiment", which I've never seen. Not sure if this is new, or part of FASA.

is anyone using a plugin for clouds with RSS? I was using EVE, but it was causing the sky to flash in a very obnoxious manner.

The reward could be a lot of reputation, and/or an achievement. Currently the tech tree is the reward system, I agree. That's the problem. As I said, the fundamental problem is once you have all the tech, when you can finally make everything, the reward system goes away.

I like the new aerodynamics and heat system. In most ways, building spaceplanes is easier with the new system, because the wings and bodies provide more lift. In fact I was never able to build a large SSTO spaceplane until this patch came out. The heat system works well too, with the obvious reservation that the heat indicators are buggy and cause the game to crash.

I've played through the tech tree at least four times now, three in beta and one in 1.02. So I've got a pretty good feel for the game. Of course I love the game, I wouldn't have put this much time into it if I didn't. I've achieved pretty much every feat that is supposed to be possible - I haven't ever "landed" on Jool, but I've done pretty much everything else, including returning a Kerbal from the surface of Eve, and hauling a Class C asteroid into an orbit around Bop. So here is my observation: the game loses focus at the end. After you finish the tech tree, there is really no incentive to do anything else. I mean, since KSP is a sandbox game, you can always continue, but every time I get to the end of the tech tree, I lose interest because there's nothing left to "earn." This kind of sucks, because when you get access to all the cool stuff, you should really want to put it all to use. Of course there are some (maybe even most) who don't have this problem, but I've noticed it with me. So my suggestion is that there should be kind of a final "Grand Campaign." This should be a series of missions that only true Steely-Eyed Missile Men will be able to achieve. Some ideas for this, just off the top of my head: 1. Return a material sample from Eve. This will of course require landing a Kerbal on the surface. 2. Return a material sample from Tylo. Landing on Tylo was the second hardest mission I ever did. The combination of Delta-V and TWR was really hard to pull off. 3. Build a fully reuseable space plane that can ferry four Kerbals to an orbit of the Mun and return them. These are just ideas. The point is, when you finish the tech tree, there should be some incentive to do something grand, rather than just "oh, I guess I'll go land on Tylo... not sure why, but... meh..." Does this sound like a good idea? And what kinds of missions would you suggest?

I'm agreeable to editable tanks, and also agreeable to procedural tanks. But I'm also agreeable to just having a 2.5m part that is fully LF. I mean, they have smaller parts that are LF, and big spaceplane parts... it doesn't seem to be out of the ordinary.

It's all a compromise between weight, how much docking you have to do, etc. I've made landers that could refuel another vehicle, which then took off, but I like the simplicity of having it mostly self-contained.

This isn't for Minmus, but it's an ISRU getup I've been working on. It's designed to work around the Joolian moons (Vall, Bop and Pol). It has the TWR to get off of Vall with full fuel and ore tanks. In that configuration it has about 2000 D/V, but of course once you're out of fuel you can process what's in the tanks and have about 3000 more. It also includes a tail tank, so you can leave some fuel in orbit somewhere. The tail tank has a couple of tiny engines for docking and if you really need to send it somewhere on it's own... full it has about 5400 D/V by itself. With the tail tank attached. On the top is a small vehicle with enough D/V to get into a polar orbit, scan the planet, and return to the ship. This is with the tail tank detached. It can drive around pretty well, it helps if your tanks are mostly empty. It handles moderate hills alright. It has enough solar to drill on Vall under full sunlight. You need to start up the attached fuel cell to convert the ore though, when out in the further reaches of the system. The tail tank. It doesn't obstruct the engines.

I hope they haven't stopped work on bug fixes so they can focus on Unity 5, because there are a lot of bugs... Just what I can think of off the top of my head: - Pol is still bugged, landing is sometimes impossible - Game doesn't remember your action group settings if you edit the engine/object, so every time you adjust your engines, or anything that they attach to, you have to go back and redo all of your action groups for that object. DRIVES ME NUTS. - Turning off crossfeed in docking ports is not remembered. If you reload a save or switch to another craft, when you come back, crossfeed is back on. - Crossfeed does not get disabled on ports inside a cargo bay. Also, decouplers do not block crossfeed. - Temp indicators cause game to crash, and are on by default... and come back on if you reload. - Navball prograde/retrograde indicators sometimes do not point to correct point.

The atomic engines can be more efficient than regular engines... but usually only if you carry a ton of liquid fuel, and leave the oxidizer behind. This should be fine - it should balance out, and become a net positive over regular engines, and it does, when you include a LOT of tanks. If you just use the regular, liquid fuel tanks (like are used on airplanes), you have to include a bunch of them. And though they are lighter in weight, this is counterbalanced by the huge bulk of all those tanks in the numbers you need. So you might choose to use the regular fuel tanks, and just take out the oxidizer before you launch, but that's a problem too. Now you have huge tanks that are half empty, and will always be half empty. One thing we need, I think, is some 2.5m tanks that are dedicated to liquid fuel only. Then we can use the whole tank volume for LF instead of launching a huge, half-empty tank. I know we have the large tanks for spaceplanes, but they can be troublesome to use in vertical, VAB rockets (having to include adapters, things don't attach in the same way, etc.)

This is the first thing I thought. - - - Updated - - - Get one of these guys to make you a custom job. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/66763-Custom-hardware-simpit-repository-For-people-who-take-KSP-a-little-too-far

This seems to have a limit. The first harvester I launched had 4 solar panels instead of 16, and it just won't harvest when time warped. It runs out of electricity almost immediately. Also, if I switch to another vessel or go back to the Space Center, it will stop pretty quickly and harvest nothing.

Nuclear power?

I assume it is a similar amount at any of the Joolian moons. 16 panels. This number of Gigantors, all with good visibility of the sun, will provide enough power to mine ore at Vall, with one drill. Two will require double this number of panels (30 +). Refining the ore will also require double this number of panels, unless you want to use a fuel cell. Use the big one.

Every time I launch now, I get asked if I want to send anonymous game data to Squad. Can you just do that maybe, once every 10 games? It gets old having to answer the same question over and over.

I'd be curious to see this done in 1.0x + also. I don't even know what D/V you would need with the new aerodynamics.

If taking off from Eve is more difficult in 1.0x than it was in .90, I don't see how 8500 d/v will get you to orbit from sea level. That would barely get you to orbit from the highest mountains on Eve in .90.

So for the umpteenth time I launched a spaceplane and forgot airbrakes. I tried to re-enter once, and actually managed to keep most of the craft intact (at least the lifting and surviving parts). Then, since I had forgotten to turn off overheat indicators, the game crashed. On my next attempt, I decided to try something. Rather than just point prograde the whole way down, I turned on SAS and angled up about 10 degrees above prograde. The effect was, frankly, shocking. I managed to fully re-enter the atmosphere and enter flight mode with no damage, and the reduction in heat buildup was immediately obvious. First, this is what it looks like while just flying prograde until the craft slows down enough. Notice how much of the heat effects there are. What you can't see in this image is parts of my craft exploding and filling me with angst. Ah, here are the explosions... 20,000 altitude and 1500 m/s. Now, this series shows the various altitudes on the second pass, when I angled up 10 degrees on re-entry. You can see what altitude I am at. 35,000 altitude, re-entry heat begins. 2086 m/s. 33,500, angled up at about 10 degrees. 1950 m/s. I've come up about 1,000 feet, and heat effects stop altogether. 1730 m/s. When you start to pick up heat, you angle up a little. If you've gotten rid of the heat, angle back down. This actually works a lot better than airbrakes. Of course, this assumes your craft is moderately controllable at high speeds and can manage that kind of angle of attack, but if it's not, it's got other issues. Anyway, I hadn't seen this mentioned. Hope it helps. The first time I forgot airbrakes, before I did this, I just jumped out of the remains of my spaceplane and jetpacked to the ground, since that plane was impossible to re-enter without destroying itself.

I have made two different space planes recently that do a great job getting into orbit. One has four Rapiers, one has two with a turbojet. The key to the Rapiers is that they want to be going as fast as possible. When I take off, I accelerate until I start to see the mach/compression effect. Basically, if you aren't seeing those white glow effects, your not going fast enough. Both of these ships achieve orbit handily, and I don't even have to level off, let alone dip to gain speed. I can post them if you want.

Sorry, I looked for that and I couldn't find it.

OK, so what do I do next time? NVM, I see what you did. This post was really more in the way of a bug report. I could just fill the tank up when I reached orbit (which is what I ended up doing). I am just letting Squad know that it's bugged.