Patrick Kerbivan

Thanks again for the explanation! I agree that either of those options would be more practical in reality, but then I run into the complication of building a mod sensitive to its proximity to liquid water or polar ice, which is beyond my skill at this point; for now I'm just making use of the same "requires O2 astmosphere" check used by the existing air-breathing modules to limit operation to Kerbin and Laythe. I'll do a bit more research on realistic extraction rates for atmospheric water generators and test out the values to see if they're actually useful in play without having to take too many sci-fi liberties with the device's efficiency. For future endeavors a polar ice collector mod would actually be a pretty cool idea though! (bah-dum-psh)

Thanks for the thorough explanation! Taking it a bit further... With a sea level atmospheric pressure of .8 bar and an approximation of 5 mBar water vapor partial pressure, would it then be reasonable to calculate the portion of water vapor in the atmosphere as 5 mbar / 800 mbar = 0.0625%, ie 62,500 cubic centimeters of water vapor in 1 cubic meter of atmosphere? If so, how much further is it from there to determining what volume of liquid water at a reasonable ambient temperature that would equate to? The moisture extraction is primarily intended to offset entropy in the water cycle I'm setting up, i.e. losses due to conversion of consumed H2O into other chemicals by both kerbals (who I'm assuming are metabolically identical to small humans) and the food-bearing plants in the hydroponics lab I'm creating (still have to decide what sorts of plant/s to model that on). I still have to work out exactly how much H2O that would be, but if it doesn't stray too far from what could be reasonably extracted then I think I have the makings of a scientifically-plausible self-sustaining outpost on Laythe!

Based on established KSP lore, would it be possible for there to be appreciable moisture in Laythe's atmosphere? According to Laythe's page on the KSP wiki the presence of liquid water despite the planet's sub-freezing temperatures is most likely due to the presence of salt or another ion in the water. Would these conditions counter-indicate the presence of H2O vapor? To provide a little context, I'm starting preliminary work on some modules intended for long-term colonization of Laythe (based on TAC life support's resource system), but I'm trying to stay as "lore friendly" as possible. One module I'm considering is a moisture extractor to create clean water from intake air, but I don't know if that would actually be possible in terms of realism.

Keep up the good work!

The physics easing may help, but there could be other unexpected consequences. As far as I've been able to discern, KJR reduces flex in joints so a particularly tall rocket is less likely to bend over one way or the other, but it doesn't seem to actually increase their strength (and may actually reduce them, especially in the case of the US quad-cores, since by default it seems to calculate joint strength based on surface area). I don't know exactly how realistic the physics simulation is, but typically when you reduce something's flexibility you increase the chance of it snapping entirely...

I'm not terribly knowledgeable about the underpinnings of the contract system (yet), but the one thing I can think to suggest would be changing the name of the vessel again, maybe to something that doesn't contain slashes to be extra-safe, then change the name in the persistent file to match and see where that gets you.

Are you returning/transmitting the results? I believe the data has to get back to KSC for those items to complete.

I found the problem! I had made one attempt at this contract with another vessel that ran out of fuel before attaining the necessary orbit, so I left it to drift (in case I wanted to go for an ambitious equipment recovery mission ). That vessel was still named in the persistent file's contract parameters for angle and eccentricity! I changed the name in the parameters to the vessel I'm using now, loaded it up, and they lit up. A quick warp through 420 days of orbits and ta-da, the main orbital requirement was completed! So, in summary, it looks like if a vessel that could potentially fulfill contract parameters is launched first it will "claim" that contract and prevent subsequent vessels from being able to fulfill it. If you'd like I can restore the backup persistent file I made and see if destroying the first vessel frees the contract so the second can complete it without any tinkering in the persistent file. Thanks for the guidance on sorting this out, hopefully this will be useful for bug-squashing!

Both parts online and reporting! I've closed the game entirely and revisited the vessel more than once now without change as well. Are you using the same system for contract parameter checking that the standard contracts use, or did you need to cook up something special? If you've got some special checking going on I'm wondering if maybe some other mod I'm using is interfering with your mod's ability to scan the ship for the requisite parts or properly monitor it for orbital conditions. All other contracts (including some of yours that just required the recovery of specific experiments from specific biomes) haven't shown any issues though!

Nope, eccentricity and inclination are within the specified parameters but they aren't turning green. Also, I slightly typo'd earlier, in case it makes a difference: the stated parameter was an orbit of at least 45 degrees and I've got an orbit of 45.5. The eccentricity is well over the minimum though, somewhere around 0.6 currently.

I think I may have found a problem - or maybe somewhere additional info is just needed - with a magnetic survey contract. I'm instructed to orbit the sun for at least 420 days with an eccentricity of at least 0.39 and at least 45.5 degrees of inclination. I've met all those criteria and have an RPWS and magnetometer boom on board, but I'm not getting those points cleared on the contract. My high orbit magnetometer and RPWS scans were accepted without issue, though they were actually performed my a different vessel than the one I'm using now (but I ran them again just in case). The one point where I may be going wrong is that the orbit I was able to establish with this particular probe does not pass close enough to be considered "low orbit". Thoughts?

Is there anything in US that could be tweaked to increase the strength of the connection between the 1.25m hub and parts stacked above and below it? My problem is likely due to combining US with other mods, particularly FAR and Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, but my orbiters are regularly disassembling on reentry with the failure stemming from the 1.25m hub shearing away from the stack parts above or below it under circumstances in which the orbiter holds up if I leave out the hub. Any advice would be appreciated!

Would tweaking part costs be covered by this and something you're interested in approaching? I haven't done any long missions that required use of the O2 regenerator (or anything fancier than just slapping on some extra O2 tanks for that matter), so the uniform price for all ECLSS parts is the biggest "break" I see right now.

I see that in the .75 change notes it's mentioned that some changes were made "to prepare for better FAR support". Should I be interpreting that to mean that if I use US parts with FAR I may have unplanned rapid disassemblies, but that will be less the case in the near future?

I must not be paying enough attention, but I hadn't heard of this save corruption and have been using KAS lightly since 24.0 (just moved some small parts around, haven't actually had any parts added by the KAS pack on any of my ships) and my save has been fine...

Just to clarify, is running the currently-downloadable version of the mod still going to function (aside from the caveats BigNose mentions above) and just require you to dismiss the version incompatibility warning, or will KSP choose not to load/activate any KAS functionality because of the bad version tag?

Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a pleasure riding this hypetrain of madness with you!

(Duplicate from when I thought a 502 ate my last one) ><

*closes KSP and promises himself that he will not start again until the update arrives* For the last two days I've been deleting my saves in anticipation of a fresh start, then a few hours later giving in and starting up again. I've been through the tech tree twice since Tuesday morning... And my class tonight just got cancelled! Please let it be a glorious day!

Lurker here, just posting to say that while I'm not really active in the community I am very, very pleased to see that my fellow fans of KSP feel that the appropriate response to development delays is to order the devs pizza!

Looking forward to First Contract, I'm wondering what experiences others have had with recovering unmanned/uncontrolled stages of their spacecraft, and if it seems like it will be possible to mount parachutes on boosters and recover them after launches. It seems that anything that drops off my vessel with parachutes deployed ultimately gets treated as having crashed into the planet unless I remain close enough to watch said part until it has safely floated all the way down to the surface (which isn't really going to happen during a proper launch) and I'm wondering if I'm just doing something wrong or should be planning on jettisoned boosters always being total losses.