Phylan

Was in a bit of a stagnant spot with middling technology in career mode so I decided to do a crewed grand tour of the Jool system, with Jool aerocapture using the 10 m inflatable heatshield. Did not plan out any orbits but managed to finagle some maneuvers to get close passes of Laythe, Tylo, Valle, and Pol. https://imgur.com/a/xxQnM

This was indeed the issue. Thanks!

Of course, sorry. Didn't think to do so since it wasn't causing a crash (well, not a software crash anyway) https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8pmvqXqfluEa0ZaX1NrbUhnbEE/view?usp=sharing

Has anyone had trouble with parachute deployment on reentry? It deploys initially, but fails to unfold fully before the thing smacks into the ground. I thought it might be my reentry profile but I've tried a few different ones and the same thing keeps happening. I don't think it's a bug but probably some feature of FAR that I haven't adapted my craft design to account for. Any ideas?

OK I fixed this one, the Auto-Saved Vessel .craft file was corrupted and only had like the first 5 lines in it, which must have happened during the previous crash. I deleted the craft file from my save folder and the load button works again.

^^^ to your question about the shroud, the only way I know of is to put an interstage or payload fairing base underneath the engine, and then attach lower stages to that Has anyone had the issue where the load vessel button in the VAB just stops working? Like, you press it, and no window comes up to load a vessel? This is happening to me now, and restarting the game has not fixed it. I can make new vessels, and save them (I think), and all my in-flight vessels are still where they're supposed to be, and all the CRAFT files for them are still in my save folder, I just can't load anything. It's completely maddening. I don't know if this is RO specific. edit: bonus issue, does anyone know why this would happen with textures? EVE Overhaul issue maybe?

I've been thinking about boil-off because the Atomic Age nuclear engines are pretty nifty and I would love to use them on long duration missions. Few thoughts I had -- There is a radiator part, I'm not sure what mod it comes from, that says "not supported by RO" in the description, but I was wondering if it might help slow down boil off anyway. Initial experiments with launching a tank of liquid hydrogen into orbit with a bunch of radiators on it were inconclusive. Boil off still occurred but I couldn't tell if it was slower than usual. At least one of the nuclear engines, the lightbulb, also takes liquid methane, liquid ammonia, and water, in increasing order of ISP penalty. I'm guessing water doesn't boil-off at all, or hoping anyway, but does methane/ammonia boil off any more slowly, or not at all? Also wondering if there's a life support loop solution. One of the TAC recyclers, I think the Sabatier, produces liquid methane from CO2, which might be a solution. Another produces hydrogen as one product of a reaction, but it doesn't specify liquid hydrogen, so I'm guessing it might not be usable in an engine?

oh, duh, I'll give that a shot, thank you. Not sure why I didn't think of that.

Does anyone know of a lighter-weight mod than Pingopete's RVE that gives Earth a bit of cloud cover? I love what he's done, but the in-atmosphere stuff from RVE is just too much and slows the ascent down to a crawl. I don't really need mega realism, just maybe some clouds to look at when in orbit.

Ah! Found the operative one. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8pmvqXqfluEaEZBR2NXYTR5aUE/view?usp=sharing New to looking at these but it looks like the NullReferenceExceptions are the hang up. It looks like the spontaneous deletion of the launch stability enhancers is encompassed here as well.

That sounds plausible. The game doesn't crash, though, the rocket just explodes. So I don't think it generates an output_log.txt, right?

Two weird warp bugs: Immediately after entering the highest warp settings with a craft on the pad (usually waiting to launch into the plane of something), any launch stability enhancers just disappear, leaving the rocket to tip over and explode. Separately, after a short time at the highest warp settings, the rocket and almost every part explodes, and the aftermath report lists almost every part as having exploded due to overheating.

Yes, that was the piece I was missing, thank you. Couldn't figure out what SLT stood for. Great continuing work on this.

Is there some sort of adjustment or patch to MechJeb that's required? I'm building rockets that show an initial TWR of 1.1 or 1.2 that just fall right back to the ground, or accelerate far more slowly than they should.

I love love love this mod. Even after I figured out how to get into orbit in RO, I was still ending up in these highly elliptical orbits at engine cutoff, with a super high apoapsis, so I started pitching down dramatically when my perigee started to approach 0 and above during launch, to prevent my apoapsis from shooting up rapidly. This seemed wasteful and unsatisfying until I was watching a replay of an Orbital Sciences launch and realized, holy crap, they do the same thing: http://youtu.be/T9lGYQUQpXM?t=8m16s That video is a great source for real life data on ascent if anyone is looking for it. Helped me a lot. I've also found this guy's attempt at simulating a Saturn V launch to be very useful both for ascent data and rocket construction: http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/saturnV.htm. The one thing that I wish existed, but does not, and is no fault of RO, is something that displays the orbital ground track of a target for you. This would be a huge assist in launching into the plane of objects you intend to rendezvous with, since in RO basically nothing is at a friendly equatorial inclination. I was having a hell of a time trying to eyeball my moon launch from Canaveral just in map mode.

It does, but it appears that they stick at 14 minutes and change and remain stuck there as long as you're on the ground, or at least they do for me. Thanks cremasterstroke, I'll give your method a shot as well.

The version of the LEM descent engine in RO, if I recall correctly, is deeply throttleable, in fact the most deeply throttleable engine in the game I think.

Thanks, I was thinking ascent guidance would do it. I'd like to perform the actual ascent manually, especially since auto-ascent in RSS can be er, dicey, but I think I can do that by choosing launch into plane and then using the option to display the ascent path on the nav ball. The other issue I was having is that my vessels sitting on the pad will only allow physics warp for some reason in RO, not normal warp. Can't figure that one out for the life of me.

Does anyone know of a mod that gives some display, anywhere really, of the orbital ground track of a target? Or alternatively, a quantitative method for launching into the orbital plane of your target? I'm trying to do a moon mission and I'd rather not do a plane change while in orbit. I'd like to to launch right into the plane of the moon, but it's impossible to just guess from the map view when you're under the target orbit. I'd appreciate any suggestions. It's not a big deal when Kerbin is the planet and everything is roughly in the same plane, but launching from Earth obviously changes things quite a bit.

Yeah that's a good idea, I had half a mind to build a Falcon 9 anyway. I've also come upon a ton of useful data here http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/saturnV.htm (and elsewhere in that domain); primarily my goal is to reliably launch into a roughly circular orbit, rather than fighting with the launch vehicle on the way up and ending up in a 300km x 1,200km orbit. Thanks for the tips everyone!

Thanks, I was using fine control. And yeah, tapping for very short control inputs has been my method. I've had trouble limiting stage burnout TWR even for stages that have the desired starting TWR (I've been aiming for 1.4 - 1.7). I'm thinking about using action groups to turn down the thrust limiters approaching the end of the stage. From what you're saying I'm mostly on the right track and just need to design better rockets, so I'll push onward. Thanks!

This is more of a philosophical question than a support question for users of this mod in general, so apologies if this doesn't belong here. But are there any good tips for controlling a launch vehicle during atmospheric flight in RO/RSS? I find that gimballing the engines on the high thrust or clusters of medium thrust engines imparts too wild a motion and tend to eventually shake the vehicle apart. especially with SAS engaged. I've had some success with winglets, but there's still a period where the air is too thin for control surfaces but where RCS doesn't really do the job. I've stacked a few Advanced SAS modules on top of one another and that hasn't really been enough either. I'd be grateful for any advice. And thanks RedAV8r for a great mod.

Thanks, done. Jupiter and Venus are still weird but city lights are fixed and the other planets look gorgeous. Might try a fresh install anyway as some of the RO stuff is behaving a bit oddly at the moment. Thanks again for all the hard work.

Ah, thanks for the tip on the .png file, will dump that in and get rid of the TGA. I *think* I picked up EVE from the Realism Overhaul thread (2nd post) but I'll check. I take it I want the overhaul version?

This mod is incredible and has totally renewed and supplemented my love of this game. I searched the thread a bit and I didn't quite find what I was looking for, so apologies if this has been asked a billion times: The citylights config file in the OP is a .png file, whereas the citylights file in my Boulder folder appears to be .tga. As a result, I'm still seeing the Kerbin lights transposed over Earth. I'm also encountering what I think is called Z-fighting with Jupiter, in which you can see the Jupiter texture but there is substantial Jool green-ness overlapping it, and with Venus, which is entirely Eve-purple at the moment. Is this an issue because I'm using EVE 7.whatever? I'd be very grateful for any guidance. And thanks again for this mod.