cantab

Pretty much this. The smaller cockpits have this almost sci-fi look to them. I know the stock parts don't have a universal look anyway but the cockpits are particularly off.

I failed at an aerocapture and had to finish on the engines, though it only took about 20 m/s to close my orbit. Does anyone know if asteroids have below-normal drag. Anyway, afterwards I got this shot, one of my favourites from my missions so far. (Which I can't embed right now because flickr is acting up) Duna, Bill, and Ike

Bit of an old thread here. In particular the previous discussion predated .23.5, which significantly buffed the ion engine to reduce the burn times. Anyway, they're good for low-mass high delta-V applications, where the LV-N is just too heavy. They're also good for extreme delta-V applications, though the part count will really spike if the ship isn't small. The LV-N's might be good for 5, even 10 km/s delta-V in a stage, but the ion can go north of 20.

Pretty much. Jeb may be BadS but he's not exactly smart, even by Kerbal standards. He just thinks "AAAAH! LESS BOOSTERS! I WON'T GO TO SPACE TODAY!"

This comes up from time to time. Indeed burning straight up is inefficient. Burning with a normal pitchover directly to your Mun transfer orbit, on the other hand, can be slightly more efficient than establishing a parking orbit first, because you can then use a transfer orbit with a lower periapsis. However stopping in a parking orbit is just plain easier. IRL, the parking orbit is time to check the spacecraft systems, and you can do that in KSP too - give your ship a look over to make sure you haven't forgotten any parts.

Virtually all hard drives have a partition table, either in the Master Boot Record or with newer drives and systems a GUID Partition Table (or for pre-Intel Macs an Apple-specific system). It is common for the partition table to have an entry for just one partition that uses all the remaining space on the drive, but that's not the same thing as having no partitions at all. Neither PCs nor Macs will boot without a primary drive having some sort of partition table.In any case, Windows since Vista will by default create a hidden partition as well as the C:\ partition anyway, used for recovery tools and for Bitlocker if you enable it. Many computer manufacturers also ship their systems with their own recovery partitions. If you open Disk Manager (right click on My Computer and click Manage) you can see these.

Who voted no??? Anyway, of course I'd go. Not sure what ship I'd want to take though. The Russians haven't been making themselves too popular lately so I'll decline the Soyuz, and Apollo was a bit raw and not really suited to passengers. Maybe I'll take the Shuttle, and request to join a HST servicing mission. There's risks in that flight but seeing the greatest telescope around up close would be truly special.

There are plenty of resources on how to build a cheap gaming PC. The "tweak" I would make for an indie gaming bent would be to take a bit of money out of the graphics card and put it into the CPU. Most indie titles aren't graphically-intensive but some (especially KSP!) are CPU heavy.

That is, IMHO, an incorrect assumption made by the Wiki. And even the Wiki says "assuming units are litres". Nowhere in the game does it say that. The overall volume of a fuel tank though can be determined from the game from its physical size, and is not in accord with the fuel and oxidizer units being litres - if they were, the tank would be about 80% empty space, which is just plain absurd.

IMHO the fuel units are gallons, or at least about the same size. Imperial or US, it doesn't matter too much since KSP's not ultra-precise. When the topic came up before I looked at candidates and came up with a combination that though unusual matches KSP's figures for fuel:ox ratio, best Isp, and fuel density quite well: Monomethylhydrazine+beryllium fuel and Dinitrogen tetroxide oxidizer. The addition of beryllium significantly shifts the fuel:ox ratio and boosts the Isp compared to regular MMH/DNTO. Previous thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/73997-What-kind-of-fuel-does-KSP-use-for-LiquidFuel?p=1049215&viewfull=1#post1049215

I agree with this, it seems the problem is off-centre thrust. That would account for the issue occuring in space where the wings are irrelevant.Possible solutions: Shift the engines up a little with the aid of cubic octagonal struts. Change the aerospikes to a gimballed engine like the LV-T45 or the RAPIER. Since the plane flies OK on the jets, this might be sufficient. Of course you'll lose a bit of delta-V. Add some radial engines on the top and tweak the thrust so the overall thrust is on-axis. Angle the engines so the thrust points through the CoM. I suggest sticking an RGU in front of the engines if you do this, so you can control from it to line up the navball with the thrust axis. Add more reaction wheels. Add more RCS (not a GOOD solution since you'll guzzle monoprop).

To clarify: in stock you can just go for it. You don't even need an antenna to control the probe, only to transmit science back, and the antennae work where-ever the probe is.

Unless you have a very unusual setup, each of your drives has at least one partition. /nitpick

Yup. Well, not straight. First I'd sent a tug out to rendezvous with the asteroid in solar orbit, and playing with manouvre nodes found I could adjust the Kerbin flyby into a gravity assist on to Duna, so I met it during said Kerbin flyby with a load of stuff to take along. (And also rotated the original crew out, only to kill them on landing back at Kerbin).I posted it before, but this was the ship during its flight to Duna. As mentioned I had to move the Hilton module round since but it's all the same bits. 2 Bill is about 68 tons, so not the hugest thing but it looks the part. I've also got another similar-sized asteroid that I put on course for Eve in a similar fashion. I'm not sending anything with that though, because I'm making it an impactor. Indeed, at least in .23.5 (and I've not heard of it changing in .24). Just like any experiment, asteroid samples give different results for different celestials and situations.

I think that "payloads that permit it" factor is the key. FH is planned to get maximum payload when using fuel crossfeed. That will make the core go much further, while the boosters don't go as far, compared to not using crossfeed. A configuration using crossfeed, returning the boosters, and ditching the core would seem natural and might work well.

Not by Volkswagen. I agree the engine mounts look flimsy, and it also seems like there's not enough wing for the body. And no vertical stabiliser? That's asking for issues. Really I don't think it will ever get off the ground. There are frequently cool-looking air cargo ideas and nothing ever comes of them.

You might also want to consider the angle of incidence for the wing - how it's tilted compared to the fuselage and, assuming they're mounted straight, the engines. Most people build their planes with zero angle of incidence which works fine on Kerbin and Laythe, but by altering it you can vary the angle of attack independently from the angle between engine thrust and prograde.

No, but I store my data on a different partition. (Well, technically a different volume, since I invariably use LVM). This is even more important now I have an SSD, the /, /boot, and swap partitions are on that (and the Windows partition) while /home is on the mechanical drives. At the moment my steam folder is in its default location in my home directory. I should move it, KSP doesn't care but other games might prefer being on the SSD.

The more graceful way of handling part removals would be to replace the affected ship with a post-it note saying Quit using the museum items as fuses. They are important cultural artefacts! - Indiana Kerman

What's your current spec? If you have very little RAM, like 1 or 2 GB little, then the stock game may be needing too much, but the demo with fewer parts takes less. If that is the case, you might find a mod like Active Texture Management helps. Or just delete some stock parts, if only as a proof of concept that the problem's there and not somewhere else.

Reached Duna's SOI in my asteroid-ship. Did a correction for aerobraking then noticed a concerning shaking in the claw joint between hab module and asteroid, so opted to unclaw and move the hab module to a regular docking port connection, hopefully that will head off the destructive glitches. After that ran the usual science program, including asteroid sample collection

Record videos, upload from public PC.

More places than I've been to. But Duna+Ike and Laythe both have crewed landers on the way, and if things go well I reckon my multiplanetary flyby probes (currently en route to Moho) can get to many places.

Honestly? Start by playing stock. You'll soon find little annoyances or shortcomings in the game, and that's when you should look for a mod to resolve the issue.

Some quick tests with a modified Aeris 3A suggest it's less of a problem. With vertically-stacked engines immediately cutting one turbojet caused a sudden pitch change but the plane remained controllable and strong pitch trim returned it to stable level flight. With side-by-side engines things were worse though it didn't completely spin out. I admit these are fairly low-altitude tests and things may be different higher up, but I think most planes have stronger pitch control authority which will help them handle vertically off-centre thrust.