ShadowZone

I know the concept, however I would not know how to predict when to make a grav assist using the mun to get to Jool and then use Tylo to get captured. If I did that, I would eyeball it all the way and probably end up burning a lot of fuel to get the necessary encounters, spending more than I would like. Is there a mod or calculation program/website to get grav assists right, especially when using it for really long range travel?

could you maybe expand on that? I find it difficult to get gravity assists. Usually they happen totally random to me.

That is so true. Sad to see the old IVA mod gone

I had a few giant launches... The "Joolishka", my Jool-5 Mission craft. The Starhammer, a multipurpose carrier. And most recently, the Ringo Gigante:

I made a follow up to my original post, since the original experiment was flawed.

Thanks for making yourself loook pretentious in order to make me aware that I am looking pretentious In all earnesty: thanks for the advice, I have modified the original post. On the other hand, the conclusion that (if used correctly) only one radiator part (used multiple times) is enough for your nuke needs is still correct in my opinion. I can get >20 minutes burn time out of my nuke cluster without the folding radiators.

Aha! Well, time for more experiments, then Udpate: started two test craft. both probe core, mk1 tank, nuke engine. one hat the large radiator, the other the extendo-thingy. in this case the craft with the extendo thingy kept cooler. That still leaves three questions: 1) why are cubic octagonal struts the best insulator in the world? if you use them to attach engines, they explode without transfering any significant amount of heat to the "mother part". In this case placement still matters, because even if you have radiators on the fuel tank, the attached engines (and before them the strut parts) will overheat. 2) what is causing the spontaneous overheating when putting radiators on cubic octagonal struts that got engines attached? 3) when using the giganto-panel and regular large panel: why is the part with the giganto attached to it staying hotter than the one with the single panel? if the cooling is supposed to happen evenly, then this should not be the case.

I did some experiments. And as it turns out, the "large Radiator panel" is more effective at cooling than the huge extending panel radiator. Mind you, this is not me complaining. I am very greatful to Roverdude for those new radiator parts and I am glad I can now once again use vehicles with multiple nuke engine clusters without blowing up. It just seems that those parts might need some rebalancing Update 1: it appears I came to a faulty conclusion, see my post below. Update 2: I made a follow up video detailing what went wrong with some additional observations. See page 2.

Have you tried aerocapturing a 300ton cruiser in Jool's atmosphere yet? Or Eve's?

Yeah I also made an interplanetary ship based on similar calculations. Looks a bit funny but does the job

The feeling after finishing my first Jool-5 mission, back in 0.21 or something like that. Built a ridiculous cruiser and tried to send it to Jool just for the hell of it. Back then I didn't use KER to calculate dV or anything and it was all eyeballing the approaches and landings. Sent a lander contraption after the main ship, then some refuelers and managed to land on all 5 moons without ever planning to do that in the first place. That was really something.

I feel your pain. Happens to me all the time

Anyone else here read "The Martian"? There was an interesting concept in there, the MAV (Mars Ascent Vehicle): It lands empty and creates its fuel while on the surface waiting for the astronauts wanting to get back up into orbit (they land in a different vehicle). So I tried it out. Turns out, my >200 ton Eve return vehicle weighs only a little more than 100 tons after emptying it and slapping a refinery and drill on there. This makes getting it into space from Kerbin easier. It reduces dV requirements for transfer burns and it reduces risk during Eve descent. I am pretty sure you can use this concept on other planets with big dV requirements as well (Laythe comes to mind - or Tylo). So here's my attempt of utilizing this concept for an Eve vehicle:

Be that as it may, but if HarvesteR's great writeup had been accompanying the PS4 announcement a lot of concerns would have been alleviated. Updated OP to include the article.

Why not? There is no fault in porting KSP to the PS4. I am in principle fine with that and I guess a lot of people are. Abusing the dev notes for the anouncement and then not providing context and relevant information is a clear communication failure.

Since when was KSP about being easy Oh I am pretty sure there would have been some negative comments, but not thet many and not that vehemently. There are a lot of things you can do in communication to prevent backlash like this. The Round-8 was different because they wanted to take away something that was established and apparently loved by a lot of players. New aero model is "just" a change in how the game works.

In perfect world, this would have happened: 1) Squad would have released the PS4 announcement in the proper "Announcement" section of the forums. 2) The announcement would have had not only a picture, but also the following information: The port will be produced by a different company, control issues will be adressed during the port, the port will be released 2016. It would also mention that additional console sales would help PC development. 3) There would have been a separate Dev Note (linked to in the announcement), reassuring the community that the PS4 port will not affect PC development. It would also mention that 1.0.3 is still very much in development and everybody is working hard to get it released. It would also mention that Flying Tiger (the company doing the PS4 port) have already supported Squad in doing the Unity 5 revamp. 4) HarvesteR himself would have assured the community in the Dev Notes that PC development of KSP would always be the main focus and that there will be no dumbing down of the main game to accomodate console input or performance issues. 5) The community would have congratulated Squad on their efforts, reacted happy to the mention of 1.0.3 and the fact that new money will help the development of their favorite game. Besides 4 and 5 all the relevant information was provided, but only in tidbits scatterd across 3 different platforms (Forum, Twitter, Reddit). And I am still hoping for 4 to happen, so 5 could be possibly reached... Update: 4 happened! See Edit below. The lesson here is: Communication is key. It's as simple as that. Edit: THIS is what would have alleviated everybody's concern. Thank you, HarvesteR!

Not sure if this was already mentioned, but RCS also doesn't work when decoupled inside a fairing.

I managed to get 20.781 science points after returning from my Jool-5 mission:

I don't think Sony Vegas' price tag is crazy for what it is offering. I used to edit with Window Movie Maker and compared to that, Vegas is really lightyears ahead. Except for one thing: WMM allows you to speed up to 64x - Vegas only up to 4x. So I still use WMM to speed up clips of long transfer burns or other tedious maneuvers that would probably bore my viewers to death

Hi there from a fellow YouTuber to an aspiring YouTuber, here are my answers: 1+2) I use Bandicam and have paid 39 USD for the license, but I have heard of a lot of people using OBS, which is open source and free. Both are simple to use. Just be aware that you will record a lot of overhead and will need quite the amount of hard drive space. I am using Audacity to record voiceover, which I maily do after editing. 3) Regarding mic ... it depends on what level of quality you want to achieve. I have bought an Audio Technica AT2020 USB after my first videos using my cheap headset mic were unbearable (for me). Be aware that you will probably need to clean the audio anyway if you want it to sound good (which is why I use Audacity). Happy video-ing

So, has anyone of you have managed to successfully use Jool's atmosphere to capture your interplanetary ship in an orbit around the big green giant? I have tried many times yesterday with my current design for a deep space exploration vehicle (250 tons). Suffice to say, I failed... hard... I was NOT using heat shields and the probably would not have helped, since one of the parts that exploded first was smack in the middle of the spacecraft - a Mk3>2.5m adapter, facing the direction of flight with the Mk3 edge first (apparently that caught a lot of Jool's atmosphere - I had 2.5m parts connected directly to the Mk3 side of it - I thought it looked cool... Maybe it was the velocity or angle? Maybe the Periapsis height? I had an orbit of 900.000.000 Ap and 190.000 Pe - entered the Atmosphere at 8000m/s After many many fails I hyperedited myself into Jool's orbit and set the orbit to an extreme eccentricity to have the maximum possible stress on the vehicle... that was the reason for this weird orbit. So, what are your experiences with Jool's atmosphere? Have you managed to use it to shave dV off your capture burn? Suffice to say after my plight of yesterday, I do not think the current aero model is too forgiving for reentry

I use mods like KER, KAC and some other enhancements, but I prefer to build stock craft. Why? Well, for the challenge, really... "Okay, I could easily do this with Infernal Robotics, but is there a way to pull it off in stock as well?" gets my brain working and the reward for being able to overcome that challenge is really what makes this game special for me.

I have an i5 2500K myself, 8GB RAM and an AMD R9 280X. The game runs at 2 FPS with this beast.

Forgot to mention: The MAKO's wheels were increased in size with Tweakscale. I am not sure if this breaks the .craft file when opening it in a pure stock game. Could anyone provide input on that?