Jovus

Thanks for the explanation, Starwaster! (Also, I will not forgive the pun - I demand more!) This brings to mind two potentially-unintended, but to my way of thinking very cool (heh heh) use cases: 1) putting a cryogenic resource tank directly behind a heat shield in an attempt to protect the rest of your craft. Expensive, silly, and yet strangely alluring. 2) lack of boiloff at higher timewarps might very well make use of cryogenic fuels viable for interplanetary travel. I'm not sure if I should personally consider this an exploit, or a workaround for functionality that will be added later. (Added later in the whole RO suite, not necessarily in RF.)

What does this mean for boiloff in layman's terms? Over time, will it boil off more? Less? Roughly the same amount, but certain cases are now different?

KER will also give you orbital period; making this as close to 6h is your real goal. It doesn't matter if your orbit isn't perfectly circular.

No equants, no clicks. (Kidding of course. Neat idea.)

That there is the ramscoop.

Are there still anomalies (like the Mun arches) in RSS? I'm not asking where or what they are, just whether it's a waste of time to look for them.

What makes you think that?

Considering that taking off your shoe and throwing it is essentially the same operation as what makes a rocket go, then yes. Anything can be rocket fuel.

Yaaay!

I would be surprised if there were some technical reason that auto-rotation can't behave properly, because it seems to do a plenty fine job with solar panels. To me this sounds like a bug, and you should report it.

It also helps to realize that, for the game, your maximum attainable wet/dry mass ratio is 9:1. (practically speaking less, since this is the mass ratio of a fuel tank. Yes, I'm ignoring Mk3 tanks with their holier-than-thou 9.3) So using the rocket equation you can do a quick check of maximum possible delta-V for each engine in the game, which can help you with design decisions, though it is not the absolute optimization parameter.

Fortunately, you don't have to write a grant proposal and then successfully publish a paper in a peer-reviewed journal in order to unlock the next node on the tech tree.

Is there any chance of this getting indexed by CKAN? Having to search 10 or 20 pages into the forums is less good (and mind-boggling; how does everyone using CTT not use this?)

Should do. Doesn't. At least not for me.

I would highly suggest playing around with sandbox mode before career until you get the hang of the new aero and reentries.

As you've found out, that simply won't work anymore with the new aero. You must do a gradual turn if you want to start turning before space. While it's hard at first to pick up when and how much to start turning, once you get the hang of it a gravity turn's actually easier than the old manual model. With a well-built, well-understood rocket, you can hit the controls once and then watch your rocket get to space by hitting the spacebar. Generally, I aim for an initial TWR of ~1.4, then tip over about 5 degrees when my rocket's going 100m/s. Higher initial TWR means a smaller pitch at lower speed, lower initial TWR means a larger pitch at higher speed (not necessarily coupled). By playing around with those three parameters (TWR, speed, pitch) you'll get a feel for how your rockets like to fly, though there's always some variation from rocket to rocket. Some people say a good guideline is to be pitched at 45 degrees when you're at 10km, but for me this always leads to a too-shallow ascent.

I have a satellite in orbit with a perigee of ~148.5km. When not on rails, the perigee slowly decays at a rate of around 0.2m/s. Is this KSP being bad at floating point math, or something specific with RSS? At around 900km, the perigee begins going back up again, though more slowly than it decays closer to the planet. I can provide logs/modlist/etc on request, but I wanted to make sure it's not something stupid/obvious/known beforehand. Edit: I'm getting my numbers from KER, so that could be another source of error.

Back in the bad old days when I was still getting used to FAR, I was bringing a Mk2 spaceplane back from orbit. I pitched up a little too much and the airframe shredded itself completely. All I had left was the cockpit and one attached canard. I managed to put it in a strong enough intentional flat spin that it landed safely on the water.

Like this?

That said, while observing a ground detonation test, Fermi ripped out a page from his notebook, tore it into pieces, and did an order-of-magnitude calculation of the energy released based on how far they were blown by the overpressure. http://www.dannen.com/decision/fermi.html

I made a plane that went to space. In RSS.

English bends both ways. She's flexible like that.

I'm gonna have to go with UDMH/HNO3. Are there other, more dangerous fuels on paper? Sure. But tally actual deaths.

If we're waving magic wands, you could say that the device actually works via hyperspace folding (or whatever other magical technobabble you like) to simulate an infinite virtual membrane with a given charge density (or current density, if you still want to use magnetics instead of electrics). Then it'll drop off like 1/r.

I see. I can think of several mission candidates.