SabreRedleg

I've really enjoyed this thread. The detailed explanations of your missions and thought processes has been both entertaining and highly instructive to a KSP & BTSM newbie like me. I just started a couple of weeks ago and while there are a few changes I don't think you'll find the early game significantly different. FC did mention today though that he was getting ready to rewirk the beginnin of the tech tree again... Some ideas for a new career: Time Limit: bootstrap a space program capable of redirecting an asteroid on a collision course within XXX days. Terraforming: Redirect XXX tons of asteroids into a collision with Duna (pretend they're comets). Shuttle service: Develop a craft capable of reaching [some target] and returning with 100% reusable dry mass. Mars 1: Kerbals don't like to travel alone. Interplanetary manned missions must carry a crew of 6. Land and return a crew from Duna. For alphabetic naming conventions, any sufficiently large set of something should be suitable. Flowers, fish, birds, US states, state capitols, major rivers of the world, superheroes, etc. I assume you want to keep it alphabetic to make sorting easier, otherwise some other sets that would be easy to remember might be something like presidents in chronological order or elements by atomic weight.

Is there a way to save subassemblies that contain command modules? I'm trying to build an Apollo style rocket with detachable lander. I built the lander first and wanted to save it as a subassembly, but when I drag it to the drop zone I'm told the selected part is not detachable. Any tips?

Thanks, that helps.

Are there any handy cheat sheets with transit times to the various moons and planets? I'm playing the BTSM mod where managing power and life support requirements is important, and it would make it a lot easier to design my payloads if I knew how it should take to get where I'm going.

I don't remember the speed. Maybe 500 m/s? The heat shield temperature kept dropping after the ablative was depleted.

I observed some odd heat shield behavior in my game last night. First let me say that I'm new to KSP and Deadly Reentry, so it could just be my inexperience, but it didn't look right. Also, I'm playing the BTSM mod, which requires DE. Here's the situation. I'm returning a probe from Mun orbit which consists of a probe body, 2 goo cannisters, and a parachute, all sitting on a 2.5m heat shield. Total mass is 1900 kg. I plot a return trajectory with a PE at 40km and an AP at 9500km. I hit the atmosphere at over 3300 m/s and the PE drops to around 30km as I start getting air resistance. I burn through 150 points of shielding before the trajectory starts rising again. I assumed I'd pop out of atmosphere and make another orbit or two but the AP has dropped down to about 38km. So after a short ascent I start falling again. Shield starts to heat up again and I start but it through shielding. I think the temp topped out around 965. Here's the weird part - as I slowed and the temp dropped, it seemed like the rate of shielding loss increased. Eventually I burned through the entire shield (0/1000 remaining), temp at this point was a bit over 500 I think. But there was no impact to the payload. I expected them to explode or at least see some heating, but they remained steady at 60 degrees or so. The parachute deployed, the probe landed just fine, and I was able to recover the science. Does this seem like normal behavior? I was surprised to completely burn up the heat shield but have no damage got he payload, and it seemed odd to me that the shielding continued to burn off even while the shield's temperature was rapidly dropping off. But again, I don't have much experience.

I'm planning an Apollo style Mun mission in the BTSM mod, where life support and electric power will both be pretty limited on the lander. So I want to dock with the command module as quickly as possible on ascent. I've gotten pretty comfortable setting up a rendezvous between two ships in different orbits, but sometimes it can take several orbits for their relative positions to make a rendezvous feasible. Any tips on planning launch timing in order to make the rendezvous in the first orbit? Thanks!

I've been watching these videos today and think they're great. I'm having a small problem though - Part 4 of the Minmus video stops at 4:45 every time I try to watch it. I doubt there's a problem with the video itself, but I've tried several times now and it always stops in the same spot, so I thought I'd ask if anyone else had a similar issue. Edit: Nevermind, I got it to work.

I've seen a few threads where people talk about setting up their parachutes to deploy automatically during reentry but I can't figure out how to do this myself. The right click menu lets me change the altitude where the chute fully opens, but I haven't been able to get the parachute to deploy without first activating the stage. Is there something I'm missing, or am I just misunderstanding what people are describing?

Thanks! I made this change: MODIFIER_KEY { primary = LeftApple secondary = None group = 0 switchState = Any } That seems to have... mostly worked. I can't seem to duplicate parts in the hanger, but I can select multiple parts in flight mode now.

Hey folks, I'm new to KSP and while I expect this question has been answered elsewhere I haven't been able to find it. Is it possible to change the modifier key? I haven't found anything in the game settings yet to do so. Here's my problem: I'm playing KSP on an iMac, but using a Logitech G11 keyboard, which isn't really designed for a Mac. It has the standard CTRL - Windows - ALT keys of a windows keyboard. Of those 3 keys, the only one that actually does anything in game is ALT, which acts like the Windows CTRL key in KSP (throttle down, etc). In theory I can remap these 3 keys in OSX System Preferences to any combination of Control, Option, and Command I prefer, although the Windows key does not work in any application no matter how I map it. However, KSP doesn't seem to recognize how I've mapped the keys in system preferences. No matter how I swap around the modifier key assignments in OSX, the key bindings seem fixed in KSP. My ALT key is always throttle down, and I have no modifier key. I can assign my CTRL and ALT keys directly to bindings in the settings menu (where they display as LeftApple and LeftCtrl, respectively), but there doesn't seem to be any way to choose which key to assign as a modifier. Thanks for your help!