Crook

That's interesting, thanks. I thought this was a case of a routine check of a crackpot theory by the peer-reviewed equivalent of a couple of interns. I had no idea NASA took it that seriously. In terms of future developments, what's the general consensus? Are most people who understand what's going on expecting the uprated tests to continue showing thrust, or are they just waiting for this to be shown to be an error so they can get on with other things?

Forgive me if this has been covered before, but I want to make sure I have a reasonably accurate picture of the story so far. As I understand it, some random guy had a design for a reactionless drive, and was widely ignored. Then a Chinese team supposedly verified his results, though not in vacuum. This interested NASA (or a subsidiary of NASA) enough that they asked a couple of guys to check. They guessed nothing would happen, so they got no real budget (and quite right too). This team (Eagleworks lab) verified that something was causing thrust in air, although it was orders of magnitude lower than previously reported. Collective media starts running around screaming about Star Trek and warp drive. Eagleworks then reran the tests in vacuum, and found thrust persisted. However, the measurements were marginal, and the components they were using weren't rated for vacuum. Currently, they hope to scale up the experiment so that the thrust observed is large enough that other labs can be called in for independent verification (at which point, we likely find the results don't pan out). The most recent piece of news is that light was being interfered with very slightly in the test chamber, in a manner that might possibly maybe be consistent with very minor warping effects. Is that about the story so far?

It doesn't seem to be a problem with the firespitter switching as such - welding parts from the firespitter parts pack seems to work fine, although that might be because that's just a texture switch rather than a mesh one, so the game doesn't try to fit several part models into the same space. I suppose it would be theoretically possible to create a second identical part that only had one model, but I lack the skill to change the .mu files. Looks like that space carrier will have to wait, unless anyone has any way of only calling one model variant from a .mu file in the config. Crook

When I try to weld the HX parts together using Ubiozur's welding tool, it appears to break the Firespitter texture/part switcher. Any HX parts with switching capability show that strange white shimmering texture you get from clipping parts inside each other. Also, the welded part contains only one part's worth of fuel. I'm not expecting a fix for this mod, but would appreciate if someone could tell me how to edit the welded part config to remove the texture switch (I can already change the fuel amount easily enough). Simply deleting the MODULE lines doesn't fix the issue. Crook

So essentially, the technological side of things looks reasonably promising, and it's possible we'll see things like the precooler tech in other applications, but the project as a whole is unlikely to succeed economically? Thanks for the help, guys!

My mistake. The search function turned up the latest thread, which I thought was more of a 'If it works, what then?' rather than a 'Is the project likely to reach its goals?'. Looks like I missed the other threads, so please merge/lock this - as you say, it'll bring nothing new to the table.

Does competition actually drive the creation of alternatives? I know it did during the Space Race, but these days competition seems non-existent. After retiring the Shuttle, US astronauts just rented Soyuz, for example. If Falcon works, I'd imagine the ESA would just pay up and borrow it. Is there something I'm missing?

As the title says. On the one hand, there are the stories of funding from the British government and the ESA (admittedly, only a small fraction of the total project cost), and the successful engine tests. On the other, the very long list of previous cancelled SSTOs, many of which ran for years before they finally died. So, where does Skylon fit? Are we likely to see it become operational? Apologies if this has been covered before. Crook

I have plans for four vessels of the Courageous-class aircraft carrier - HMS Daring, HMS Valiant, HMS Intrepid and HMS Ballsy...

This is due to the saveIDVessel module in the IFF tag part config. Removing it (after saving a copy) fixes the exploding on load issue, but means that vessels with damaged parts are deleted on returning to the KSC. Still, this will let you fly bombing runs against autoturrets without problems. Also, ID is changing the save system in the next update, which may -hopefully - fix this.

So, after the problem I reported earlier with clipped vessels exploding when a new vessel is launched, I did some fiddling around with part configs. Adding only the relayIFF module to the part config of the vessel cockpit eliminated the problem, so I assumed that it was an issue with the saveIDVessel module. Sure enough, cloning the IFF tag part without that module seems to fix the issue of exploding, although it does result in damaged aircraft disappearing on return to the Space Center, since the game no longer knows how to save a damaged vessel. This second part clearly isn't a bug - I deleted the code that would make saving work, and surprise! it doesn't work - but means that the workaround I've come up with isn't a solution so much as a diagnosis tool. With the updated save system ID is introducing, this may no longer be a problem, but I thought I'd post my findings anyway.

That's actually brilliant. I never got the hang of docking, so I kind of forgot docking ports were a thing, but now I'm kicking myself... It would still be nice to have dedicated hardpoint tanks, for the aesthetics as much as anything, but this works if that's impossible/not worth the coding effort/breaks the reast of the mod. Thanks!

You're right, and that's what I've been doing so far. However, Skillful allows you to have one craft do many different missions, reloading after each one, which means you can maintain a base/carrier independent of the KSC. The current drop tanks are a one-mission-only solution, and don't allow you to fly a mission without drop tanks to hit a close range target with more ordnance, resupply, then hit distant a target using drop tanks. You may well be right - as I said, I have no experience with this sort of thing. However, I thought I'd throw it out there on the off chance it is possible.

Evening all! Been lurking here for a while, and thought I should say hi. This is probably the best game I have ever played in terms of sheer depth, and I can't think of a single game that is still fresh after the many, many hours I have played KSP. Part of that (other than the devs building an awesome game) is the great support from the community, so I just want to say thanks guys, and keep on doing what you're doing!

Hi, long time lurker first time poster here. Just wanted to say that I love this mod, and combined with B9 and Firespitter it's meant that the S in KSP has been neglected for a long time... There's a couple of things I'd like to bring up, however. Firstly, I've encountered an issue when using the IFF tag on clipped vessels, such as my kinda-replica Harrier and F/A-18. The craft launches fine, and can be flown without problems. However, if you land, switch back to the KSC and launch another craft, the existing craft detonates; parts of it are destroyed entirely in explosions, and the remainder is scattered across the landscape. There is no problem at all if no IFF tag is attached, and the craft explodes every time with tags attached. I suspect it's due to the tag saving the vessel in a way that causes the game to notice the clipping, and try to resolve it as a collision. I have no coding experience, however, so I could be (and probably am) wrong. Secondly, I was wondering if there were plans to implement fuel drop tanks for the bomb hardpoint. This would allow you to refit an aircraft to carry out longer-range missions from a secondary base, such as a carrier, without forcing you to always have them present, as you would if using the Firespitter drop tanks. I don't know if this is possible, but it might add an additional level of strategy by allowing trade-offs between weapon load and range. Thanks again for the mod! The IFF bug is (for me, at least) the only real issue in an otherwise great addition to KSP.