cantab

As far as requests go, have you thought about putting Urlum's moons in a high-inclination orbit like is done in the Sigma Mod Expansion? It's a bit of a compromise having to completely remove the body rotations and there are some wrinkles with Wal, but I think on balance it makes the system more interesting, adds an extra challenge for visiting the moons.

I'm not sure what that could do that the new stock aerodynamics doesn't. Other than maybe using the whole-vessel shape rather than the old-fashioned part based method that FAR moved away from but stock still uses. I believe FAR already lets you turn down or off some settings to make it less realistic and more forgiving, things like disabling aerostructural failures and diminishing the importance of area ruling.

I dunno. I think the limited time period factor could add some interest, and a highly elliptical and inclined orbit would make for a more challenging capture burn than the relatively circular orbit of Plock. The time limitation also isn't all that stringent for objects in Senda-esque orbits; Sedna itself currently 88 AU from the Sun and won't reach its closest approach of around 75 AU until 2080 or so. That said it's really more a body for Trans-Keptunian than for OPM. OPM already has a lot of places and plenty to be getting on with in terms of adding Neidon's moons and making an original surface for Plock.

7/10. Now that is a capsule!

Aptur is in a 1:1 orbital resonance with Kerbin isn't it? That would quite probably break all the usual calculations about transfer windows. I imagine you'll get similar results with Harvest in Kerbol Plus, which sits at the Sun-Kerbin L5 point (or the Sonnah-Kerbin L5 point if you have NH as well).

The lowest altitudes on Mars such as Hellas do have pressure higher than the triple point of water. But for liquid water to be stable depends on the partial pressure. Unless the air was 50% water vapour, which seems very unlikely, the water would evaporate.

There's your problem, you're trying to add violas to your spacecraft. It's guitars you play in space, haven't you seen Chris Hadfield?

Jeb arrives at the Space Centre one Monday morning to find it eerily quiet. The Launchpad, VAB, and a few other buildings are still piles of rubble like he left them after his last attempted tower buzz rocket launch. The rocket part storerooms have been left open, their insides bare. Nobody else seems to be around. Peeping into the Astronaut Complex, Jeb sees the lounge empty, and a notice pinned up on the wall. He walks over to it. NOTICE TO PERSONNEL Effective immediately we are moving all operations to KSC West to reduce building maintenance costs. Ensure you are booked on either the Saturday or the Sunday ferry flights. If you miss them you will HAVE TO WALK. - Werner von Kerman. As he walks back out of the Astronaut Complex Jeb looks up and sees the exhaust plume of a launcher circularising overhead.

Deimos...

Retrograde means a 180 degree AoA as far as Trajectories is concerned.

Phobos or Deimos.

It does. There's a plugin that can create a bodies file specifying all the planets and moons and their orbits, that the KSPTOT program can then read.

I credit/blame the change with that in the past patches were basically impossible on consoles and not easy to distribute on PCs. Developers had to get the game right first time, or free of serious bugs at the very least, even if that meant adding a lot to the development schedule.Nowadays developers know they can patch any issues after the fact, so it's a lot easier for them to cut short the testing if they want to rush the release out so they can start getting revenue sooner. And then once they have the money in the bank they might feel that it's less profitable to make bugfixes than to get on with the next game.

That result's no huge surprise based on what I've been hearing. I suspect the complex (and buggy) heating system is behind the worse performance. As for the rocket, the above design with the planes up top looks flippy. I'd be worried that any changes Squad make to the aerodynamic model could render it unlaunchable, plus people might want to try it in FAR to see if that has any framerate impact.

To me it doesn't really look any different to leaving the Mun for an interplanetary trip, or departing Laythe or Tylo to go back to Kerbin, in the stock system. Though I'll grant that NH's inclination will add some complexity. In particular I imagine identifying the ideal parking orbit inclination for IP transfers will require breaking out a spot of trigonometry.

Yeah, trajectories needs to be told the direction you'll come in at. And even then I don't think it can handle everything. What I usually do for caution when aerobraking is to put a manoeuvre node at my periapsis, find out how much delta-V it takes to just capture, how much it takes to capture into a low orbit, and then take the midpoint delta-V wise. The resulting orbit, which will have an apoapsis somewhat lower than half the height of the SOI, is what I try and capture into. I believe this gives me the maximum margin for error both ways. I can then make subsequent cautious aerobraking passes to lower my apoapsis. If you have the delta-V spare you could instead make a powered capture into an initial just-captured orbit, then make as many aerobraking passes as you like. Watch out for Ike though, you might want an inclined orbit to help stay clear of it.

That is a nice idea. And I wonder if it could be made to work with resource scanning for mod radioactive resources?

On landing leg mass, I think a good reference from a gameplay standpoint would be the mass needed to do the same thing with girders or i-beams. If the landing legs are significantly heavier than that then they become suboptimal to use at all.

Hmmmm. Probably GTA: San Andreas on the PS2. Considfering the scale and scope of the game I don't think it was unduly glitchy but there were certainly plenty of issues, and more than in GTA3 or Vice City. Especially in fast driving or flying when things wouldn't load up in time, possibly made worse by a worn out drive or disc - on many occasions I collided with an invisible object and then the game got round to drawing it.

Straight from SpaceX's website at http://www.spacex.com/falcon-heavy "Shortly after liftoff the center core engines are throttled down. After the side cores separate, the center core engines throttle back up to full thrust" As well as reducing max Q, in the non-crossfeed setup this will increase delta-V. In KSP you could use the thrust limiters, but with a nine-engine cluster you might be better off setting action groups to shut down some of the engines.

In real life there aren't clear SOIs with sharp boundaries where nothing but the primary affects your orbit. Objects can be weakly bound walking the edge between escaping and not escaping. Other planets and moons can perturb the orbit subtly. Tidal forces can play a role, in particular in making circular an orbit that starts out eccentric. Binary objects can have one member captured by a planet while the other one is sent flying off.

The ablator will quite happily boil away in deep space, whether because you've flown close to the Sun (a trip to Moho will do it) or because your ship is being hit by heating bugs.

Spent my time tracking down a mod-related framerate hit instead of really playing the game. Still not homed in on the cause but I have some suspects. #PCMasterRace

Could well be a mod bug. Any mods that mess with Kerbals are obvious suspects.

In many ways I see Serran as a "new Duna". Both are among they closest worlds to Kerbin, both have atmospheres but not necessarily enough to land with chutes alone, both require an relatively modest amount of delta-V to launch from. Serran seems to be somewhat more challenging, but that seems fitting.