davidpsummers

So I'm orbiting Jool with my probe, enjoying the view and dealing with the fact that I didn't know that solar panels are _almost_ useless that far out with 1.0. And my ship just explodes out of nowhere! The mission log said it overheated? https://www.dropbox.com/s/1f52a2clj5z0xgd/Screen%20Recording%2063.mov?dl=0 But no engines are running. Its not like I was close to the sun. What the heck? Anyone know what it up? It actually seems repeatable!

That's the tricky part I was looking for help on. The game is stingy one showing closest approach info, esp. if you aren't in a position to align the orbits before hand. It is hard (and can require non-trivial luck) to get an intercept by just trying trajectories.

I'm doing the Ike 4rally mission. I would like to enter they Duna system, slingshot off Ike, and then go on the Eve. So I need a trajectory out of Duna/Ike that will get me to Eve. However, Alex Moon's planner only covers a burn to escape a planetary orbit. And I find the game doesn't give the distance of the closest intercept unless thing are already kinda lined up. So I doubt just moving things around will let me find a rendezvous. Any help? - - - Updated - - - Note: Of course it doesn't have to be specifically Duna to Eve. If one knows how to slingshot past the Mun to any planet, that is the same thing.

I needed a wing with a shorter based and I like the wings I don't have to piece together, I stuck it on and it worked. I did suspect I was overkill (a lift of 2x5 was working OK). So I may revisit that. Someone said there was a rule of thumb that you could use 1 rapier for every 15 tons? Is there one for wings like that? As to using side mounted engines. They are all behind an intake which I need to get air. If I put them on the back, I'm just going to have to add intakes someplace else? (and the radials get no love). I may look at NERVs. I'm daunted by their weight. Though I could go pure liquid fuel with them....

Well now. For some reason that hadn't occurred to me... :-). I might even be able to attach them directly to the fuselage above and below wing. While your suggestion seems the way to go, here is a picture. I'm thinking of replace the lone turbojet with an aerospike. The turbo make a nice assent profile easier, but it occurs to me that I spend a lot more fuel on the push up to orbit...

Well, I got my plane to my space station. The idea that I had too much drag and didn't need as many engines allowed me to know what to look at. A question, I was going to just tweak it, but I moved the side engines/tanks to fuselage mounted. (One thing lead to another and it also ended up a lot shorter to keep from having to many tanks, but I didn't have a problem with the length either way.) That lead to wings being attached to the side tanks. Now I am having some problems with wobbly. I assume, even under the new drag rules, a few struts are still in order?

I've tried some incremental changes. (Like I say, it almost achieves orbit in my hands and incremental changes let me see how it works.) A bit less fuel, loose the in-line rapiers. This brings up two questions. a) The engines below the wings aren't lined up with the COM, how do I keep them from pitching the plane up? Do you need to use that silly, long nosed, "tail connector" at the back tip to reduce drag, or will a standard nose done work?

Put 4 in-line in the back? I think I know how to do that, but where do I put the intakes? I won't have anyplace to mount anything except radial ones. Are shock cones better than Ram intakes?

I don't seem to have any lack of thrust when I switch over to rocket mode. I think if I have too many airbreathing engines, I should just take them off? - - - Updated - - - I can reach >1300 m/s at above 25 km before switching over, I just don't have enough dV at that point. I can try adding more wing and less engine. It doesn't have a bad angle of attack when flying, by maybe that is why I can't climb quickly on four engines. - - - Updated - - - I played around with Turbojets. They just didn't seem to give much power, what do the offer over a rapier?

Well, I thought four should be enough, but with four I got a slow climb (I can do maybe pitched up 30 degrees and, if I spend some time gathering a bit of speed before I climb, 200 m/s), I understand you still want to get out of the lower atmosphere briskly. It was also slow in gathering speed in the middle atmophsere. In the end, the extra two engines seemed to use less fuel getting up to the final push, but then the over all performance wasn't much better. Maybe I'll try going down to five (one in the middle back). - - - Updated - - - It seems to, unless I'm missing something. It is sluggist, I may fixe that latter but its not my main problem right now.

As long as I don't spam the pitch up key, it works OK.

I made a decent small SSTO and now I'm trying to make a mk 2 sized one that can carry 6. But I'm kinda stuck. I have one that can make a 75 km orbit (barely, without fuel for retro burn) but I need one that can get to my station in a 250 km orbit. It is pictured below (and below that is the link to the .craft file for those who might want to look at that). I added the second set of engines under the wing, not knowing if they would help or hurt (it seemed underpowered, but weight is weight, it turned out to make little difference), but now I don't know what to try next. Suggestions? https://www.dropbox.com/s/2wv7ny3cypm4niq/Icarus%201e.craft?dl=0

Well, what I really want is fewer clouds. I'll check out your cloud pack.

One thing I would like to change is the amount of clouds on Kerbin. I would like to make them a bit less. I've tried looking through the thread, and I get the impression it is possible. But I haven't been able to find what you change and where?

Well, thanks. Fortunately, I hadn't done a _lot_ since my last archived save. I guess the Kerbals will have to put in overtime to make up for the loss!

The game won't load my saved games. I get to the "Start Game" menu, click on "Resume Save" and the window comes up. I select my save and hit "continue". The button depresses until I release, but nothing happens. 1-I quit and restarted. 2-I rebooted. 3-I generated a new game, that would load, but the old ones wouldn't (but see below) 4-I reinstalled while keep my "saves" and "GameData" folders and my settings.cfg file. 5-I removed all my addons. Nothing worked. Except that removing all my addons preventing the game I generated in #3 from loading. I'm running 1.0.4 on a MacBook Pro with OSX 10.7.5 I can't find a file called outpupt_log.txt or player.log. I did find one called KSP.log... https://www.dropbox.com/s/zghj6n7pz3pgliz/KSP.log?dl=0

Yeah, for this problem I need to know the angle to the reference direction for the sun. I take it for Kerbin, the reference directly is the location of KSP at some time (presumably Year zero).

I use Kerbal Engineer and I couldn't find it. What the term?

Yeah. Sometimes it works, but sometimes you just need to move the different directions back and forth and then it does work.

I've trying to do a solar orbit satellite contract and I would like to do better than just eyeballing where the maneuver nodes go. However, the target orbit can't be designated as a target. The contract gives you orbit parameters. However, to use them you need to know where on your orbit your vessel is with respect to the reference direction. I mean, you know that the angle for the burn you want is 132 degrees with respect to the reference direction, but unless you know where you ship is with respect to the reference direction, that doesn't help you. How can you know your current angle with respect to the reference direction?

In such a situation, I've had a heck of a time setting it _anywhere_. I click close to the vessel. I click close the encounter. I click everywhere else. At times I have given up. Either this needs to be fixed, or there needs to be a way to create a node x hours in the future.

I readying my first Eve mission. My experience is that aerocapture is going to be impossible without a heatshield and lowering the orbit by aerobraking will be too tedious. So my lander has both a heat shield and fairing and I'll aim for about 30km above the surface. This will certain stop me and I'll rely on the heat shield. Then it is just parachutes on down...

I like the G-force meter and I do try and keep my Kerbals from getting too many Gs. No point in removing it.

Well, in my previous campaign it was abort escape system and sheer luck. I had a rocket explode on the pad only to leave the capsule sitting safely on the launch pad....

I came in with a periapsis of ~43km. (Think it was 42.6km, might have been 43.6). Couldn't have taken much more heating and only lowered my apoapsis from 46,000 km to 20,000 km. (About 60m/s by my reckoning). A smaller ship (Midsized Rockomax tank, Poodle engine, and a three man capsule). Got down to 37 km and lost about 240 m/s. But it also was mostly empty in fuel and smaller (less weight for cross section area) so I figure it just works better for smaller craft. One the ship pictured, the middle tanks were full.