undercoveryankee

If you want parts that are useful at stock scale and balanced against stock, the rule of thumb is about a 64% linear scale. Things like mass and volume generally go as the cube of the linear scale, so a 64% scale of your booster would have about 1/4 of the full-scale fuel load. A 45-ton SRB would fit nicely between the stock solids and KW Rocketry's big 2.5m solids.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/Features/UP_Aerospace_SL9_launch.html#.VJDGiuDF-ao The rocket rides along a rail on the launch structure until it's up to speed.

The commit to update the version number in the stable branch doesn't get pushed to the development branch unless somebody manually merges it. This won't be the first transition where development has carried a lagging version number for a while because the maintainers have had bigger bugs to fry.

The ModuleManager patches that rebalance the stock jets are in a separate .cfg file from anything else in the mod. I don't have the name in front of me, but I remember it being pretty obvious when I looked at the B9 folder which .cfg was for stock engines. Move that .cfg outside of GameData to return to the stock engine configs.

We have the radial stick for angled launches, but what we don't have that might be cool is the type of rail that several RL sounding rockets launch along. From what I've heard about joints and Unity, "detach only in the direction that it slides" would probably a harder behavior to code than it is to talk about.

After I did a Mun/Minmus/Ike/Duna tour for a Reddit challenge, I discovered that I had enough fuel left to stop at Gilly on my way home.

:NEEDS[squad] means "run this patch if 'Squad'" is present", and :FOR[squad] means "This patch is part of the 'Squad' distribution and should run between :BEFORE[squad] and :AFTER[squad]". Neither one limits what parts the patch applies to. I found where Paul Kingtiger requested the same feature of selecting on folder name in September ( http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55219?p=1444521&viewfull=1#post1444521 ). Never got a response, probably because he asked right before KSP 0.25 dropped. For now, all I can think of is look for some feature that the stock parts have in common inside their config files.

Saw something similar to this a few days ago. Seems to happen if the "master" ModuleSPU is on a part that isn't the currently valid control source. Couple of questions: Are both the Soyuz orbital and reentry modules command parts? Do they both have ModuleSPU, either because HGR configures them that way or because you've added a config to add it? What is the root part of the vessel? Which module are the kerbals in?

The old Vanguard EVA Parachutes included a part that would eject all crew with an action group. It's reported compatible up to 0.25 without needing any updates, although I don't want to guess what it will do in 0.90 if you eject before unlocking EVA.

Trust the author that RealChute does turn the plugin off if it detects an incompatible version in Compatibility Checker. Most likely there's a maximum height to the CompatibilityChecker dialog and RealChute just got pushed off the bottom by everything else. And the stock parachutes being converted to use the disabled plugin? That's ModuleManager. All ModuleManager knows is "on these parts, delete ModuleParachutes and add this MODULE node for RealChute". It has no way to know whether the plugin that provides that module is happy or sad; it just applies the patches the way they're written.

What's the structure ratio on the big KW monoprop tanks? The KW SPS might do better if you can give it a better tank.

The "previous" branch that you're on has been updated from 0.24 to 0.25 in anticipation of the new update on the "current" branch.

0.25 moved to "previous" branch on Steam. We're go all the way!

Builds are going to Steam scratchpad. In rocket-launch terms, we're past the last planned hold with an hour or two on the clock. I'm leaning toward "today."

Biome names and locations are always read directly from the game. It will work just like biomes injected onto those planets with Custom Biomes just work now.

RT changelog says versions 1.5.0 and higher respect FAR shielding for antennas. Looks like they've closed those issues.

If a PartModule throws an exception during vessel loading, the exception breaks out of a loop in Squad's code and prevents the parts later in the file from being processed. Some versions of kOS are famous for doing this. Replicate the issue and quit KSP with Alt+F4 or Command+Q so it's near the end of your output log, then share the log so we can see what module is throwing the exception. That will give us a better idea whether it's caused by an installation issue or a bug in the module.

If you're using AVC, it's nice to have all of your updates in the same place instead of having to check AVC and some mods' internal update checkers.

There are two random-failures mods that are at similar stages of development and popularity: DangIt! and Kerbal Mechanics by IRNifty. I think he's saying that he prefers Kerbal Mechanics at the moment for the wider range of failure types and affected parts, but if they were equal in that respect he prefers the other features of DangIt!.

The deployable panels are supposed to be okay as long as they're closed, but break if they're opened while moving in atmosphere. Usually happens to me if I've accidentally assigned the panels to the "Stage" action group. Could something have been opening the panels underneath the fairing?

Your log shows that you were updating the cache for the next texture, KerbinScaledSpace300. Some of those planet textures may just be slow enough that you think it's frozen, but it may come back later. I also saw exceptions from incompatible versions of KSP Interstellar, Distant Object Enhancement, and KolonyTools. I know Interstellar and MKS have versions out that are compatible with 0.25. Wouldn't hurt to remove or update those just to limit the amount of weirdness going on.

Yes, all of the parts are available in the tech tree. The tech tree has been around for enough versions of KSP that nobody writes sandbox-only parts any more.

A selector inside a :HAS[] can look for either a subnode or a value, depending on what punctuation you use. I think the right spelling for your selector is @PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleCommand]:HAS[#minimumCrew[0]]].

It is possible to get a net force out of a thermal gradient. Solar heating of a rotating object sets up thermal gradients that transfer net momentum perturb its orbit in what's called the Yarkovsky effect. Similar thermal-gradient forces are now generally believed to be the cause of the Pioneer anomaly. As an intentional propulsion system, the "front" wouldn't be so much absorbing photons as minimizing what it emits. Absorbing a photon that hits the front still transfers some momentum in the wrong direction, but you would cool the front surface to reduce its self-radiation and darken it to minimize reflections because reflecting transfers more momentum than absorbing. The rear would be the opposite: heated and surfaced to maximize radiation, and designed to reflect as much ambient as possible without compromising its emissivity in the fat part of its emission spectrum. The laws of thermodynamics limit how steep a gradient you can set up: active cooling generates waste heat that has to be radiated from somewhere, and the bigger the temperature difference between the cold and hot sides, the less efficient the cooling becomes. You might be able to accelerate by about 1 m/s per year without excessive wasted energy. At most, you could bend an orbit enough to save yourself a midcourse correction.

If you solve Maxwell's electromagnetic field equations for the speed of an electromagnetic wave, the figure that we call c pops out. There's nowhere in the math to correct for the motion of the source or the observer. If the speed of an electromagnetic wave were ever not c, Maxwell's equations would no longer hold. Einstein postulated that the apparent oddity was not an accident or omission, but a law of nature -- that space-time has a structure in which that speed itself is the constant. He worked out what math would govern a structure that had that property and what some of the other consequences would be. All of those predicted consequences were confirmed by experiment as soon as experiments that could distinguish those predictions from the alternatives were designed.One of those mathematical consequences is that every mass, no matter how fast it goes, still has a speed less than the fundamental speed relative to every other mass in the universe. The equations all imply each other. A philosopher who asks "why relativity" could equivalently ask "why do light and electromagnetism exist in the forms we observe"? There's a partial answer to that in the form of the anthropic principle -- it's hard to imagine any alternative laws of physics that support a rich enough variety of interactions for intelligent life to function -- but as far as observational science is concerned the answer is "because there's no good way to model these observations that doesn't imply these other things."