Jovus

My favorite thing with sepratrons is attaching them to my station's escape pods for emergency reentry.

Small correction: while the original plans call for the use of the 1937 lighter, it was lost in a testing accident. Instead, for the life of the STS program, they used a 1919 Solingen 'zippo' lighter from the Gemini program surplus locker. Unfortunately, while very good for their time, even Solingen's lighters were somewhat unreliable, which was the #1 cause of scrubbed launches until the end of the program. There were several plans to upgrade the ignition hardware throughout the life of the Shuttles, but unfortunately they were all blackballed forever when the only one that made it to operation, 'intern with an acetlyene torch' (praised on paper both for its reliability and its savings in this era of NASA budget cutbacks) was associated with the Challenger disaster.

I guess that depends on the scope and intent of the mod. Namely, if the purpose here is to provide a (fairly) realistic historical tech progression while possibly making concessions to playability, then I'd say no, don't try at all and leave it how it is. If the purpose here is to take RO/RSS and make a playable career mode out of it with a passing nod to history, then yes, it might be worth a try. In essence, the difference between the two is a difference of emphasis. I'm not coming down on either side, by the way. It's not my mod, and I think too much user input on the matter of scope and intent to a project results in a feature-creepy mess. I'm just pointing out what seems to me a reasonable rubric on which to decide the issue.

That said, if this calculation is correct, you should still be able to save the Kerbal without too many shenanigans, if only just. An EVA pack has ~550 m/s, and low Tylo orbit costs ~2300m/s. If not, and you both don't need to worry about the mothership's delta-v to within a km/s and are feeling daring, you could always try a suborbital rescue. Burn the return stage as much as you can at the right time, then slow the mothership down to catch your kerbal. After he's caught, reattain orbit.

Are the A-4 parts from the Taerobee pack really supposed to be part of the Start node? I ask because it's fairly easy to hit orbit without upgrading tech at all, if so.

Just checking: have you tested whether or not you really are better at things while drunk by examining yourself after sobering up? 'cause otherwise this might easily be explained as beer goggles.

Actually, while this is Scott Manley's face, the description of the mod is deceptive. This isn't Scott Manley's face overlaid on a Kerbal. This is what all the Kerbals look like, underneath their lovable green exterior.

FWIW, if you need to insure clean separation, you can probably use an asymmetric fin arrangement instead of a sepatron.

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride.php

Slam_Jones, what mod(s) are you using to put together that colony? Those parts look amazing.

Yep, just figured that out about an hour ago. Though there was the confounding issue of not realizing what the tech development upgrade was for, either. Thanks! First time with RSS/RP-0. I'm having a blast.

Just found what you were talking about; I was thinking the Development Upgrade under R&D was gaining new science per year rather than increasing research rate. Thanks!

Going through trying RP-0 out for the first time, and I've noticed that my research times are pretty extreme. (Over 1200 days for Early Orbital Rocketry, for example.) Is this completely intentional? Is there some way to increase research speed that I've just plain missed? Using KCT in a stock install allows you to increase research speed on the Upgrades tab, but that doesn't seem to be the case in RP-0. Thanks!

And the safety rating of Jebediah's favorite rocket. Sorry, I know it's mostly untrue. I couldn't help myself.

Gotcha. I misread your original post and thought you were saying the rocket equation only held for M >> m.

Why is it only true when M >> m? I didn't see anything obvious in the derivation to make that the case...does it have something to do with the assumption that exhaust velocity is constant?

Are you interested in a technical explanation? Because I can give that. It's all a consequence of conservation of momentum. The system that involves the rocket and the fuel has the same momentum before the rocket tosses the fuel out the engine as it does afterward. So, given that the fuel afterward is travelling in one direction, the rocket (minus that amount of fuel) must be travelling in the other in order for the momentum of the whole to remain the same. Yes, you can model this as a consequence of Newton's Third Law primarily, but it's easier to model it as conservation of momentum out of which Newton's Third Law emerges.

Gotcha! Thanks, Ferram; I'll take a look at changing my rocket designs.

Dropping Ferram's reply here because it seems relevant to your interests: So it sounds not so much like a bug (in the sense of malfunction) as (possibly) a call for different usability parameters. Not that I'm expecting you to change your calculations for my sake, just that I thought you'd want to hear Ferram's opinion because it pertains to the issue. Meanwhile I'll be changing my rocket designs. Thanks again for your help!

I was having some trouble with re-entry using FAR and DRE where my craft would blow up high in the atmosphere (around 50-55km): (The craft is a Mk1 pod with Science Jr underneath and a heatshield on the bottom.) After helpfully digging into it, Starwaster pointed out: ...and I just wanted to check with you guys that that seems reasonable behaviour, since my experience of FAR/DRE is a bit dated. If so, I'll work on re-organizing my rockets, though I'm curious if there's any way other than oversized heatshields to return anything more than just a capsule. Thanks!

That squares with my experience, I think. I'll ask the FAR gurus if they think that's reasonable behaviour and redesign my rockets if so. My one further question has to do with the Mk1 pod exploding before the Science Jr. Why is that the case? I would think that the pod should have more thermal mass than the experiment, but maybe that's not the case? Thanks for all your help.

My apologies. Both fixed in the original post, and I ran the test again with a completely fresh Player.log just to make sure. Craft: http://kerbalx.com/Jovus/Reentry-Testing-Craft Player.log: http://justpaste.it/nx8p There were actually three files named Player.log; I picked the one from the Kerbal Space Program folder, rather than the unity3d folder or the Launcher folder. Let me know if you need either of the other two.

I've gone back and verified that this problem persists on a completely fresh install of KSP using just FAR v0.15.5.1 "Hayes" and DRE v7.2.2 on KSP v1.0.4 x86_64 for Linux. (More information on precise Linux setup can be supplied if necessary.) Please let me know if you need more information or if you think I should be posting in the FAR thread instead/as well. Reproduction steps: Download http://kerbalx.com/Jovus/Reentry-Testing-Craft. This craft is the craft used for reproduction. Get that craft into a 75km x 75km orbit. I prefer Hyperedit. Activate the engine to bring the craft down to a 75km x 25km orbit. Activate the decoupler. Keep the craft pointed retrograde through reentry. It's a bit unstable, so you'll need SAS. For best results, don't just use the 'hold retrograde' setting, as that will drain battery too quickly. To make the problem appear more rapidly, use physics acceleration, but this should be unnecessary. Player.log here

Thanks Starwaster; I'll go see if they've found a solution with FAR or if I should just drop back a version. Found this over on the FAR thread: Note I'm not using RO or any of those things, and I am on the latest version of FAR (0.15.5.1). Also, as a point of interest, suborbital flights don't seem to be a problem; possibly because I don't stay in the 50-70km range anywhere as long? I'll do some more digging and get back to you once I have more detail. At this point I'm just posting so you're aware, in case you get other reports. ETA: Without FAR, reentry works fine, with skin temp on the capsule hovering around 450. The shield gets to a skin temp of around 1000. With FAR, first the Science Jr starts heating, quickly. Facing absolutely dead on into the atmo stops the heating, but otherwise it continues receiving heat. Around 58km, the skin temp on the mk1 pod mirrors the phenomenon described above; viz. the skin temp begins to rise considerably, until the capsule blows with skin temp at about 1000 somewhere between 48-53km (depending on exact periapsis and careful flying). If I had to guess, and I do because there's nothing in the debug log to indicate misfunction, I'd say FAR has an occlusion issue. I'll dig around some more and see if I can't replicate it with different parts - e.g. a payload bay instead of a Science Jr, the pod itself (sans ablative), etc. Let you know what I find.

Reentering on a 75x25 profile with a mk1 pod, a Science Jr. and a 1.25m heat shield causes the pod to explode at about 50km. Is this intended behaviour? That's a real question; it's been a while since I last used DRE - before the stock skin temp support change. If so, what would you recommend as a reentry profile nowadays? If not, I can do some more digging to figure out the actual problem; I've already re-installed DRE twice. Before I do are there any known mod conflicts/funny interactions? I'm using FAR, RealChute and KSPI, too, along with a bunch of informational mods.