Reactordrone

The gravmax has always recorded 9.81m/s^-1 at sea level but the delta v calculation always used 9.82 for some reason.

After playing with the docking tutorial I though Jeb might like a little recreational orbital skydiving........it did not go well.

The training scenario uses the stop/start method. Once your speed is zero relative to the target you point at it and increase speed, if you drift away you zero out again and then point at the target and speed up again. It does get you there but it's not very efficient and the tutorial isn't terribly clear.

Landing and taking off will take more delta v than just reversing direction by burning retrograde but if you were going to land anyway then it's essentially free. if you don't need to land, then pushing out the AP and doing the inclination burn when you're going slow will be cheaper than just reversing direction at your current altitude.

Are you taking into account the higher air pressure on Eve reducing the engine's thrust below the Kerbin ASL levels?

You'd be better off with a poodle, at least a quarter of a tonne lighter than the 4 LV-909s and with more thrust and better Isp.

Always a good idea to manually drop your time warp before approaching the atmosphere if you have a high periapsis to maximise your time in atmosphere under physics. At high time warp you can be fairly deep into atmosphere before the game drops you out warp by itself. 40km isn't too bad for a periapsis. When I return from Minmus my first braking pass is usually at around 38km and that will get my apoapsis down to about 5-6000km.

Despite the look on Tamgie's face this is a perfectly safe landing attitude for an ore extraction/retrieval ship. See, a perfect one point landing.

Actually the only liquid fueled engines that are more efficient in space in 1.02 compared to 0.90 ar the LV-1 and LV-1R. Even the poodle's weight loss doesn't compensate for its reduction in Isp in most cases.

You also have the option of using the airbrakes and braking parachutes to slow yourself down before and after touchdown now. Parachutes don't detach on ground contact like they used to and the radial mounted drogue chutes are very small and easy to mount near the tail of the aircraft.

Yeah, for some reason decoupling the ships summons the kraken. I even tried EVAing Jeb over to the stranded ship after the rescue ship spontaneously disassembled itself but as soon as he tried to manoeuvre it that ship also disassembled itself and flew off into space at high speed

I recover the second stage on my satellite launcher. It makes it outside the atmosphere but not into orbit so I just have the parachutes staged with the decoupler and set to 0.34 atmosphere pressure, then finish the orbital insertion burn of the satellite, switch back to the debris and ride it down.

The KR 1x2 booster also gets pretty warm in the upper atmosphere. I haven't had one explode but they glow a nice red near the end of the burn.

She's babysitting a science team on the space station at the moment.

In terms of practical application the pressure switch can be set up to deploy the parachutes at a specific altitude range (0.34 gives about 5km) regardless of whether there's a crew or probe core left on the vehicle to open them. Opening altitude may need to be increased in thin atmosphere's such as on Duna to give time for the fully deployed chute to straighten you up for a vertical landing.

I think in the current version atmosphere ends at exactly 70km.

I noticed some fuel flow weirdness yesterday as well. I made a base with a hitchhiker as a root part ( basically 2 hitchhikers, a cupola, hex probe core, 4 rockomax tanks and LV-909s ). Ran some tests on it this morning and got the same fuel flow issues even if the root was changed but no fuel flow problems if the hitchhiker wasn't used as the root part in the initial construction. There are no fuel lines, each engine should run off its own separate tank. Not a massive problem in my case since they were draining symmetrically but if it's a similar problem it might help.

I've had rescue contracts for three females and four males so far.

You have to leave the science junior open. If you reset the bay it discards the data.

A single mission works fine since the next record contract auto generates after you complete the previous one.

I noticed that today too. I made an air launched vehicle and saw that it was drawing fuel from the external tank through a TT-38K which was attached to a Mk 2 jet fuel fuselage. ETA- Just ran a test on the launch pad. Attached to a rocket fuel tank there was no fuel flow through the TT-38K but when I stuck them onto a jet fuel tank there was fuel cross feed from the external boosters.

Could be a stock bug. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/117856-Random-Exploding-Space-Rendezvous It may have been fixed in the latest patches.

Threw together another MiG-21 inspired design to test in the new aero. Hit mach 1 before the end of the runway and may have overheated a few things on the climb out but Gwenemma managed to bring the remaining bits of the aircraft down safely. Lost both horizontal tailplanes, a couple of air intakes, the ventral strake, both wingtips and both ladders. Much more successful second test flight with a bit more throttle control.

If the engines are set up to pull rather than push the thrust may be blocked by the asteroid if the engines are too close. A picture would be helpful in troubleshooting.

0/360° gives a 90° inclination heading north (ignoring the planet's rotation vector). 270° heading gives a 0° inclination to the equator but retrograde, called 180°.