undercoveryankee

Check out http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/70325-0-23-Baha-Parts-for-Extraplanetary-Launchpads-v1-2-%283-2-14%29 . Includes a dedicated surface sample drill. If you want to put surface samples on the same drill you use for kethane, it's still an example of a working config.

In the stock config files, the name of the resource is "ElectricCharge", not "ElectricalCharge". Try @RESOURCE[ElectricCharge].

If we can get the separate-module architecture, then it will be trivial to write a ModuleManager config with wildcards to put the failure module with default values on anything that has e.g. ModuleEngines but doesn't already have ModuleReliability.

There are a lot of mods that use ModuleManager to change values in ModuleEngines. If those changes load after you replace ModuleEngines with a subclass, ModuleManager doesn't know it's a subclass and doesn't apply the change, and somebody else's mod ends up broken. If there's a way to handle failures in a ModuleReliability that runs beside ModuleEngines instead of subclassing it, that approach would be better for compatibility.

KAS on the ground has a reputation as kraken bait. Even though it's gotten better, I can see why a non-KAS solution would be attractive.

Interstellar ships the treeloader plugin with it, but you may not be able to access all of Interstellar's parts unless you choose the Interstellar tree at game start.

Build 198 works for me in 0.23.5. If your MJ settings file was created in the previous MJ and KSP 0.23, try moving it out of your KSP folder and letting MJ create a new settings file. If the bug still shows up on a clean MJ install, post a .craft file where you're seeing the issue in case there's a particular characteristic of the staging sequence that triggers it.

Challenge: Land on Eve and return to orbit using pranked parachutes.

Unupgraded fission isn't great, but uses present themselves now and then. In the career I'm running, I have a probe planned for a low Sun flyby. It uses a 1.25m Kiwi burning thorium driving a generator, one stock jet fuel tank, and a 0.625m plasma thruster. KER claims about 12 km/s and about 1g of acceleration.

The "I" key toggles the thermal helper.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/63798 is a project to merge TAC and Interstellar water.

Here's a possibility: Keep a low-resolution version of every texture in memory so as long as the game runs it has something to display. Then opportunistically load full-resolution textures for nearby objects as memory permits. It would be complicated code, and someone with actual 3D programming experience will have to talk about the performance hit. But it could be the least bad option for getting more content into a 32-bit build.

Some designs have lower drag with FAR than in stock, so they go deeper into the atmosphere at higher speeds from the same entry angle and end up using more heat shield. So Manley backed off some of the settings to give himself more flexibility. With FAR and stock DRE settings, I can do Minmus returns with the built-in heat shield on the stock single-seat capsule, and with one 2.5m heat shield on a three-seat capsule. If you try it with stock DRE settings and you find that you can't land a design you want to be able to land, edit GameData/DeadlyReentry/DeadlyReentry.cfg and reduce "heatMultiplier" to taste.

In stock aerodynamics, where the most likely thing you would be staging off the side of a running engine is a drop tank, MJ's behavior is probably right for more builds than it's wrong for.

Unless you've already used that fuel before you land. Then you're top-heavy and even more fun ensues.

IIUC, generators first calculate the Carnot efficiency (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot%27s_theorem_%28thermodynamics%29 ) between your reactor core temperature and your radiator temperature, then apply their own efficiency as a percentage of that. So, upgrading the generator will get you closer to the thermodynamic limit, but the only way to increase the limit is to use a higher-temperature reactor or use more radiators to lower the radiator temperature. 50% isn't necessarily bad.

I built a ship that was supposed to re-enter with some odd-shaped cargo cans attached. (Uranium nitride cans from Interstellar. Not taking risks with anything radioactive.) It had a DR 2.5m heat shield attached directly to the bottom of the Procedural Fairings base. I make the delivery to the orbital construction project and make my deorbit burn. Pilots are Jeb and Bill (again, not mixing rookies and radioactivity). Around 30 km altitude I check on the heat shield and see "IsShielded: True." You can probably imagine the rest. I go in with a fraction of the drag I'm expecting. The fairing sides overheat and blow up first. The heat shield is still shielded. I fired the drogue chutes while I was still getting heating, hoping they would make some kind of difference. Note to self: they didn't last long. So passing through 10k where I would normally pop drogues, I'm still on the high side of Mach 3 with only the mains left. By around 5k, I'm down to around 400 m/s and I can fire the mains. Everything holds together and I splash down. Jeb and Bill didn't buy the farm on a low-orbit cargo run. But there were moments along the way where I was pretty sure they were going to. After that reentry, I stuck an S6 service compartment between the fairing base and the heat shield as a spacer. Haven't taken the new version up to orbital speed yet, but I did a launch escape system test and confirmed that the heat shield is now properly exposed. I'm curious, though: Does anyone know a way to make a heat shield directly under a fairing base work, or is a spacer the only way?

I seem to recall one of Manley's Eve or Bust series showing a Hooligan Labs envelope retracting into a bay in the vehicle. If you can get the weight to work out, you could recover the balloon by retracting it and taking it with you.

80km is a pretty high start for a body with no atmosphere. If your transfer stage can lower orbit and circularize around 15km, that might buy you another 100–200 m/s to use on the descent stage.

I would lean toward lowest fastest warp because the shorter-period orbit offers more frequent rendezvous windows.

The value of Minmus is that if you're producing resources there, it's cheap to deliver them to LKO. Laythe is far enough away from where you'd be building anything that colonizing it is mostly for RP purposes. I.e. the oxygen supply brings you closer to a self-sufficient colony that could survive an asteroid or ecological disaster on Kerbin. If there were another body with an oxygen atmosphere in our solar system, you can bet I'd want to see a permanent colony set up there.

I think the "Year 1, day ###" displays in-game and most add-ons that consider time use a 365-day year, though.

You get radial decouplers and support bracing about the same time you get standard decouplers. So it's a thing for your toolbox, but it doesn't bring you any closer to zero-science staging.

Why do Moho and Dres switch places in your second list? I didn't think you could aerobrake at either of them.

It's also possible for two open docking ports to bounce and tease each other if both ships are using active stabilization (SAS or autopilot). If that's what you're seeing, turning off SAS on one of the ships just before contact will get you docked quicker.