Jovus

Completed my Mariner 1 flyby of Venus, garnering around 300 science despite the fact that the probe was crippled and operating on internal battery only. [img]http://i.imgur.com/7bXrF79.png[/img]

Does a ferociousBoiloff = false MM config still apply to this version?

I trimmed down my Venus flyby to juuuust avoid kissing the atmosphere. Sadly my probe is suffering from not enough power generation, so I've only been getting it there by husbanding the battery. But it should have enough for transmissions before it dies.

That's a [i]really extreme[/i] reentry profile. I don't think that qualifies as 'reentry impossible'. My advice would be to change your playstyle so you don't rely on such extreme reentries.

You're missing that they do have that kind of storage. Each system is on a different server slice. The game has literal millions of players paying $20/mo; data storage is cheap.

In fact, geosynchronous orbit is a bad solution, since your LKO sats won't be able to reach your KEO sats with a single Communotron 16 by default. But it looks pretty, is easy to define, and feels like an accomplishment.

The basic problem is probably that your center of pressure (or center of lift in KSP) is above your center of mass. You can both push your center of mass higher up the rocket, and push your center of lift lower down the rocket. First, for the center of mass: you've mentioned that your payload is small. Rockets fly best when the mass is concentrated (as much as possible) at the nose. Paradoxically, a heavier payload would fly truer. Second, for the center of pressure: there are a lot of suggestions here. First, you want to minimize drag on the front of the rocket. This involves, as other posters have said, getting rid of that unsightly divot where you drop to 1.25 up at the top. If you have the Procedural Fairings mod, use a structural fairing. Otherwise, I'm afraid your choice is limited to either redesigning the rocket to do without that upper stage, or using a 2.5m engine. In addition, you want the fairing to be as small as possible while still not causing a disconnect in diameter between itself and the rocket. If you can, shrink the fairing. Further, a teardrop shape is less drag than any other, whereas you appear to have something more akin to a bullet shape. (Disclaimer: I fly FAR, and don't know if stock KSP properly models coefficient of drag according to such shapes.) Finally, you can employ bigger fins: try sticking the small delta or even regular delta on the bottom with a control surface, rather than the AV-R8s you have. As an end note, you can also get around this problem by keeping SAS on, having sufficient control authority, and being careful not to deviate too much from the prograde vector. This is how most orbital lifters actually do things, since fins are extra mass.

I'm at least as ignorant on the matter as everyone else here, but I think I remember some mention of the fact that stock hinges would involve handling parts of a vessel colliding with itself, which is to be avoided.

That is indeed what I meant. I agree also about my ballistic reentries; the poor Kerbals I've put in my Mercury capsule have pulled over 9(!) Gs on reentry, though this is in part due to having to use a solid retromotor. One further thing: the sources I've found for man-rated G requirements say 3gs is the target, not 3.5. Do you have some other source you can point to, or are you (quite understandably) just a little looser?

Out of curiosiy, do you bother to man-rate your crewed rockets, Gaarst? I've found the process to be very fiddly, at the least, and my best attempt has them pulling 3.1 Gs at one point.

You do not recall correctly. Precession is a perfectly Newtonian phenomenon, and frankly usually to be expected in all but the simplest situations. (Two bodies attracted to one another by an inverse square law is one of those simplest situations.) As to whether or not the OP's 'problem' is merely that the code correctly predicts a precession he didn't expect, or if the program's calculations are incorrect...well, I can't answer that without seeing the code.

Eh. It also makes your stall envelope smaller, and makes stalls less recoverable.

I finished my geostationary commsat ring.

And here, ladies and gentlemen, we have the disconnect between the so-called 'iPhone compulsion' and typical enterprise adaptation strategies. Nothing says you have to update. Indeed, it's generally saner to only update after the early adopters are all saying, "Come on in, the water's fine." You might make jokes about how some places are still on Windows XP, but at least they're still in business.

Put up the first and second of my GeoSat comm network in RSS. Things got a bit sticky with the second one. Turns out I don't have enough power on the thing unless I point the solar panels juuuuust right. Oh, and the structural pylon likes to explode on launch due to a thermal bug in 1.0.4. But it works okay if I turn off max temp and conduction until I hit orbit.

Wow, the TWR right off the pad is impressive! Looks something like a 1.6-1.8 Also, amusing slip on the part of the English announcer: you need ~9.5km/s to reach orbital velocity, but orbital velocity itself is ~7.8km/s I was also surprised at exactly how high the altitude is where fairing separation occurs. I wonder why?

Re: LOX boiloff - check two posts above your own.

Careful what you wish for. One 'solution' to this would be to make it so that all non-accepted contracts ding your rep when they expire...

I suspect that, all told, a NERVA wouldn't be any more dangerous than certain rockets that used hypergolic propellant upper stages and were man-rated. The main difference, methinks, is that we're used to the former, and not the latter. (Which isn't just 'radiation scary', but we've done the engineering and testing for man=rated hypergolics, but no-one's ever ridden a nuclear thermal rocket.)

If you still have the craft file, and want to post a link to it, I'll be happy to make the necessary changes in everything but the payload, get that thing to orbit, and then explain how I did it, if you think that would help.

Absolutely. No question. If Squad still wants to keep the guess and check method that they've mentioned liking so much in the past, the solution is simple: provide delta v stats for the rocket, but not for tasks. (Like getting to orbit, transferring to another body, etc.) At least that way people can replicate their results and understand what variables on which they operate.

Finally made my first space-plane after the engine changes to 1.0.x Gone are the days when I could push turbos up to 30km...but it was weirdly easy after playing RSS all week.

Also, string theory has no basis in reality. (That is, it has not predicted any observable results.)

Land on the Moon and return. No, not the Mun.

Amusing hypothetical: "Here's a new engine for you to certify for use in fulfilling your contracts. Yes, it looks remarkably like an RD-180, but that's purely coincidence. You can see from the serial numbers and from this well-documented R&D process that we manufactured it ourselves. What's that? The R&D process looks very short? Well, yes, I agree it's usually longer, but our head engineer had the design come to him in a dream. It was almost like he had a prototype to work from."