RidingTheFlow

Personally I use Mk3 adapters for 3.75-to-2.5 http://imgur.com/bK8NTSi Though I always thought that having separate parts for "with fuel" and "without fuel" is a bit silly since they've made tweakable fuel amount. Why not just leave only adapters with fuel? If people don't need fuel inside, they always could just set it to zero.

Did more testing, definitely look like a bug. I've used HotSpot mod to visualize the heat flow & temps. If timewarp is x1, it all works fine: However, as soon as I enable just x2 physics warp, I notice that *conduction flux* starts getting crazy on cargo bays (even on actual *outside* parts) - it oscillates like crazy between extreme values. Looks like some physics solver experiencing extreme instability. This visible as rapid flashing of parts via HotSpot overlay: And looks like that heat flux going crazy eventually causes bay temp & parts inside (parts inside even more) to raise - since parts inside heat more, this cause them explode first. Since this looks like a definite bug, can we move this to bug reports forum? Thanks

Its not down do ascent profile... With 1.0.3 you need different TWR/deltaV distribution between airbreathing/rocket thrust (note that now ISP for jet engine is worse too, so need more fuel for same dV).

Well, there will be always simplifications. E.g. cluster of working nuclear engines should act like a "mini-sun", actually heating up *everything in sight* purely by radiation - even without exhaust touching them. Now, however, parts only do emit radiation, they never *receive* heat radiation from other parts (like engines).

Maybe its timewarp bug. At least I think at the moment - haven't managed to repro it without warp, maybe its just too slow. However, if bay is open, it seem not to overheat even in a 4x warp.

I do have large fuel tank (adapter) before the bay, and its still has lower temp than payload. I can't see any heat source close to payload which can cause it to overheat. Edit: I've did more testing and it appears to be caused by 2 factors: - bay must be closed - physics warp must be active

Last I've checked, heat goes from hotter part to cooler part, not other way around. How come parts inside bay become hotter than the bay part they attached to? There is no heat pump inside attachment node.

Ok, so I have a cargo bay with payload inside: - fuel tank - docking ports Please explain, where heat comes from making temperature of inside parts raise and eventually exploding? Unless there is heat producer *inside*, parts should never get *hotter*, they must only cool, even if slow. But they get hotter for me, esp. if I timewarp during burn - looks like they somehow receive more heat from engines than manage to dissipate, and then boom. If I open cargo bay, then their temperature starts dropping, so it definitely tied to open/close state somehow.

... and I wondered why my payloads in closed bays started exploding after long burn. You do realize that even when bay is closed, parts within must radiate *towards bay walls*? This way there would be no way for parts to be much hotter than bay walls at outer space temperature (unlike it seems to be now - appearing like when you close the bay it also becomes stuffed with magical mineral wool). Update: it seems to be worst during physics warp - I can confirm that warp of 4x causes payload temperature skyrocket during burn if bay is closed (and if warp is disabled, temperature actually starts dropping). Something weird is going on here.

It does cool. It has same high emissive constant as radiators. Pre-1.0.3 I've used it to cool LV-Ns without need for any extra cooling (and probably still will considering that its matches LV-N in size and carries some fuel for it too - without need for extra radiator part).

No, completely stock (or maybe not completely - I use stock module bugfix mod, but I don't think it affects mining). Maybe it has scale to it based to planet size and too overblown for dwarf moons like Gilly or Ike.

I was doing refuel on Gilly using one "flag" resource-rich site as reference and after ~two times of full tanks drill said "resources depleted" and I've noticed on map massive "gap" in resource density appeared around landing site. I roughly estimate radius of this "depleted area" was tens of kilometers (looks like its size of one "pixel" on planetary resource grid). Not sure if resources "respawn" - if not, eventually it would technically be possible to mine entire planets (or at least smaller asteroid-like moons) dry, which sounds a bit silly really.

Solar panels already act as radiators (its even in the description). Also engine pre-cooler acts as very effective radiator (just a lot of people don't know that it works even in vacuum and on any kind of engine, not just on air-breathing ones as description state - perhaps better description is in order).

Why bother ferrying at all? I just make autonomous tug ship, which when it runs low on fuel, lands on the nearest moon, refuels, then docks back with payload "trailer" (or whatever its towing). "Alien" anyone? Making it able to aerobrake was the trickiest part. BTW I don't think building mining bases on ground would be effective, since I've noticed that resources in given local surface area deplete relatively fast.

Engine precooler works well enough as "dedicated radiator" for me (and yes, it works perfectly to cool LV-N engines in the vacuum).

Problem is, I never assigned "extend" to airbrakes. In fact, I never manually assign actions to them - stock assigns "toggle" on "brake" action on default. And this was the way all already flying ships had. But after I installed this add-on, default action in editor became "extend" and also *assigned* action changed to "extend" on all already flying ships. It reverted back when I deleted the mod.

I've installed latest version, and it now assigned "extend" action to all airbrakes instead of "toggle"? This made airbrakes stick after first time you engage "brakes" action and never retract (unless you retract them manually). Most annoyingly, it seem to have applied to all active ships

To make cost of tank approach cost of actual LV-N you need lot bigger tank. OP example is hardly the proper design, because to get optimal efficiency (both in dV and in cost) 1 LV-N needs amount of fuel/weight of about 1 small Mk3 tank. Its not suited for medium TWR/low-mass scenarios. For small probes tiny chemical or ion engines are more appropriate.

You supposed to use solar panels as radiators to dissipate this heat (note new solar panel description mentions that it has radiators on reverse side). Also to do this correctly you need to attach nuclear engines *directly* to parts with good thermal capacity & conductivity (e.g. fuel tanks).

I understand this now, thanks. Unfortunately, achieving precise eccentric orbit with aerobraking looks extremely difficult even with save-load, since any m/s at periapsis aerobraking makes massive difference in apoapsis height. I have controllable airbrakes on spaceship so can control amount of braking, but its still difficult because I don't see predicted path... Probably I am not going to bother for ~300m/s of dV saving (esp. if whole budget couple of thousands).

Not necessary. You can dump spare fuel from returning missions (if some end with too much spare dV). Though technically you don't really need fuel tanks on the station, all you need is well-designed docking hub.

It says insertion dV is 513 m/s for me, how did you get 988? And I would use even higher orbit, more likely about 40Mm+, to be *outside* eccentric Gilly's orbit to rendezvous. However, assuming with aerobraking we get eccentric orbit of 110/31500 I've checked cost of raising periapsis to 31500 and its about 220m/s. So, yes, its more efficient than pure insertion though not insignificant by any means (e.g. calculators can't really "omit insertion cost if aerobraking is available"). Tricky part is getting apoapsis you need with aerobraking so you will only need to raise periapsis. Getting aerocapture that simply does not smash you into ground is fairly easy, but making it achieve precise orbit is much trickier - and with more eccentric orbits it becomes more tricky.

Raising periapsis just above atmosphere is not expensive, true. But this leaves you either with low circular orbit or highly eccentric orbit. Afterwards it did cost me about 1 km/s to raise periapsis for Gilly circular rendezvous eject orbit, then do transfer and capture. That's why I thought it was mostly wasted effort. It appears that aerobraking only worth an effort if your final goal orbit is relatively low.

In lot of tutorials & discussions floating around I almost universally see suggestion that you *should* aerobrake if possible (basically any time you want to slow down while under SOI of body with atmosphere). However, yesterday I played "make orbital station @Gilly" contract, built specially designed craft to withstand Eve aerobraking, did several attempts to find proper braking altitude, etc. And after quite some time spent I now suspect it was wasted effort - why? Because I had to spend a lot of dV on *raising periapsis* after successful aerobraking (and Gilly is in quite high orbit). I now suspect that I would've been better just capturing to high orbit by burning. I googled it a bit but cant find any previous guide/discussion on topic,- basically when it makes sense *not* to aerobrake? (because it will be less efficient this way). Anybody encountered/discussed this issue before?

Not much of an option. At this weights/thrust (at least for spaceplanes) it will be very tricky to build assymetrically balanced propulsion system, which must stay balanced during whole course of flight (without using several mods - but if I use mods, I may as well just use mod with cargobays).