Jovus

Yeah, I get how it works. But how do I move from expertise to execution? As you can see, mass is already at the bottom. (Heat shield and payload bay.) And I can't put parts like goo cans up top on the capsule, because they explode without heat shielding. Does anyone have actual examples of working re-entry vehicles to share? I'm having a hard time believing I'm the only person who has a problem.

YAFIYGI

Not a bug. The engines do still have those thrust values - in vacuum. In atmo, their thrust is severely reduced.

Yeah, I know the tricks. I was less asking, "How do I tell?" and more, "I have designs that I know don't work, because I've tested them, but they used to, so I'm looking for new ideas because I'm obviously in a design rut if others aren't having this problem." I appreciate the advice, though.

Is anyone else having some trouble making stable reentry vehicles? Specifically, I'm using 1.25m parts, and it seems that the limit of what I can call stable is a Mk1 capsule with a 1.25m payload bay underneath. Anything more, and it requires SAS to keep properly oriented, or worse, goes point-first regardless. This isn't a complaint or a bug report. Rather, it seems the new changes have pointed out a flaw in my designs, and I'm looking for advice on what to do if I want to return anything more than just a capsule (without using a spaceplane). For example, has anyone found a way to bing back 3 Science Jr's? (I'm using Deadly Reentry as well.) I can provide pictures if that would be helpful.

An NG tube and whatever you can blend sufficiently.

Let's forget about quantum entanglement because it's irrelevant to the argument. The real problem is that human behaviour is not deterministic. Two people who are atomic copies of one another in precisely congruent situations will by no means be guaranteed to behave identically.

Of course, on the gripping hand, with our current suit designs, fingers aren't really that flexible anyway...

Zubrin says he's assuming infinite expansion/no nozzle losses, if that helps. (I know jack all about how to actually get theoretical Isp, sorry.) Interestingly, though, the numbers he cites in the text while pointing us to Figure 5 - the table in the paper - are lower (though in cases still higher than your calculations). For example, he says the Isp of CO2 at 2800K is 265s, where the table entry is clearly 283s.

They certainly make the most enthusiastic astronauts. Every single astronaut I've rescued has been female. This is not by design; I've taken every single available rescue contract. (Gotta fill out the ranks without paying the exhorbitant hiring fees, naturally.) There has been 28 rescue contracts so far. That, combined with the fact that Valentina seems intent on nearly killing herself every time I put her behind the controls, even in ships that Jeb flies just fine, makes me a little leery.

Gotcha. Your post is worded confusingly, at least to my mind. That explains why you reported lower number on the Mk2 and Mk3 as well.

Rocket fuel tanks emptied of oxidizer have a wet/dry ratio of 4.5. Rocket fuel tanks with oxidizer in have a wet/dry ratio of 9. That's huge, and given that the rocket equation relies on the ln(w/d) term, it's hardly surprising that that ratio would easily overpower the simply linear increase offered by the Isp.

Um, the wet/dry ratios of all LFO tanks is 9, not 8.

This 'add-on' is a pair of simple ModuleManager configs; one makes sure that all the stock liquid-fuel tanks have a wet/dry ratio of 9:1, and the other sets the LV-N with a switchable LOX-augmented mode with a vac Isp of 533 seconds and 90kN of thrust. The values are chosen to balance precisely against the stock LV-N. Why would you want this? Maybe you want to use chemical rockets and the LV-N on the same rocket. Maybe you want a higher-thrust alternative for moving heavy stuff around and don't care about the drop in specific impulse because you're using it as a Mun shuttle, not an interplanetary probe drive. To Install: 1. This requires Module Manager to work. Go download that, unless you already have a copy from another mod. 2. I highly, highly recommend also installing either Liquid Tanks, which creates a bunch of new LF-only tanks with rocketry dimensions, or Modular Fuel Tanks, unless you just want to build rockets out of jet fuel tanks. The stock rocket fuel tanks have a wet/dry mass ratio of 9:1, which is why I chose that ratio for the jet fuel tank readjustments. However, if you just drain the oxidizer out of them, they end up with a wet/dry mass ratio of 4.5:1, which will make the liquid-fuel-only mode on the LV-N useless by comparison with the LOX-augmented mode. 3. Copy and paste these configs into a .cfg file anywhere within your Gamedata directory or a subdirectory. Name them whatever you like. Be sure you're just copying and pasting and saving text, not some fancy-schmancy formatting with meta-data or whatever. (Don't use Word, mmkay?) @PART[radialEngineBody] { @mass = .1 @RESOURCE[LiquidFuel] { @amount = 50 @maxAmount = 50 } } @PART[nacelleBody] { @mass = .1 @RESOURCE[LiquidFuel] { @amount = 50 @maxAmount = 50 } } @PART[MK1Fuselage] { @mass = .09375 } @PART[mk2Fuselage] { @mass = .5 } @PART[mk2FuselageShortLiquid] { @mass = .25 } @PART[mk3FuselageLF_25] { @mass = 1.5625 } @PART[mk3FuselageLF_50] { @mass = 3.125 } @PART[mk3FuselageLF_100] { @mass = 6.25 } // MM Configs for changing the stock LV-N to switch between LiquidFuel and LFO // LV-N (stock) @PART[nuclearEngine] { !MODULE[ModuleEngines] { } MODULE { name = MultiModeEngine primaryEngineID = LFO secondaryEngineID = LiquidFuel } EFFECTS { empty{ } burn_hydrogen { AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = sound_rocket_hard volume = 0.0 0.0 volume = 1.0 1.0 pitch = 0.0 0.2 pitch = 1.0 1.0 loop = true } PREFAB_PARTICLE { prefabName = fx_smokeTrail_light transformName = smokePoint emission = 0.0 0.0 emission = 0.05 0.0 emission = 0.075 0.25 emission = 1.0 1.25 speed = 0.0 0.25 speed = 1.0 1.0 localOffset = 0, 0, 1 } MODEL_MULTI_PARTICLE { modelName = Squad/FX/shockExhaust_blue transformName = thrustTransform emission = 0.0 0.0 emission = 0.05 0.0 emission = 0.75 0.25 emission = 1.0 1.25 speed = 0.0 1.98 speed = 1.0 1.22 } } burn_lfo { AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = sound_rocket_hard volume = 0.0 0.0 volume = 1.0 1.0 pitch = 0.0 0.2 pitch = 1.0 1.0 loop = true } PREFAB_PARTICLE { prefabName = fx_smokeTrail_light transformName = smokePoint emission = 0.0 0.0 emission = 0.05 0.0 emission = 0.075 0.25 emission = 1.0 1.25 speed = 0.0 0.25 speed = 1.0 1.0 localOffset = 0, 0, 1 } MODEL_MULTI_PARTICLE { modelName = Squad/FX/ks1_Exhaust transformName = thrustTransform emission = 0.0 0.0 emission = 0.05 0.0 emission = 0.75 0.25 emission = 1.0 1.25 speed = 0.0 0.5 speed = 1.0 1.2 } } engage { AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = sound_vent_medium volume = 1.0 pitch = 2.0 loop = false } } disengage { AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = sound_vent_soft volume = 1.0 pitch = 2.0 loop = false } } flameout { AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = sound_explosion_low volume = 1.0 pitch = 2.0 loop = false } } } MODULE { name = ModuleEnginesFX engineID = LFO runningEffectName = empty directThrottleEffectName = burn_lfo thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform exhaustDamage = True ignitionThreshold = 0.01 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 90 heatProduction = 489 fxOffset = 0, 0, 0.25 PROPELLANT { name = LiquidFuel ratio = 0.9 DrawGauge = True } PROPELLANT { name = Oxidizer ratio = 1.1 } atmosphereCurve { key = 0 533 key = 1 223 key = 2 0.1 } } MODULE { name = ModuleEnginesFX engineID = LiquidFuel runningEffectName = empty directThrottleEffectName = burn_hydrogen thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform exhaustDamage = True ignitionThreshold = 0.01 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 60 heatProduction = 432 fxOffset = 0, 0, 1.6 PROPELLANT { name = LiquidFuel ratio = 1.0 DrawGauge = True } atmosphereCurve { key = 0 800 key = 1 185 key = 2 0.001 } } } Licensing and Support I don't care what you do with these configs. Download them, change them, include them in another mod, print them out and wallpaper your room with them. Claim them for your very own for all I care. I won't come after you; you'll just have to live with the knowledge that you're a liar. Of course I make no claims on ModuleManager or any of the other mods recommended in this post. I also make no offers of support. If this doesn't work for you, solve it yourself. If you can't, then you're SOL. If you can't figure out how to install it, I don't want you to install it. That said, feel free to report typos in the configs or suggestions for changes. I might have misplaced a bracket or something that makes it so it doesn't work. I'll fix or change stuff if I feel like it. Known Issues Right now, the rocket exhaust effects overlap the bell of the LV-N something fierce. I can't fix that, because the fundamental problem is that Squad still hasn't fixed fxOffset to actually do anything. That said, if you want to model two new exhaust effects and donate them to me so that it doesn't look like crap anymore, I'll be happy to update the configs and wrap it all up in a zip file while giving you credit. Be aware that if you install the stock tanks rebalance config, it will make your spaceplane tanks lighter when empty. This will change their performance in the atmosphere. I did this instead of giving them more fuel because a) the alternative method ends up with all kinds of weird, odd fuel amounts like 622.237 units, and stock airplanes are already way more dense than their real-life counterparts. I have little idea exactly how this will change things, but don't go bothering people about weird aero- or thermo-dynamic behaviour without at least telling them you have this installed.

You beat me by like, a day.

...so...so...so I can delete the stock heat shields? Please? (The shields themselves are decently pretty, but the way they attach to the rocket looks like crap.)

Something that's unclear from the OP: does Deadly Reentry make use of the stock heat shields? Does it have its own instead? Do we need to pick up a 3rd-party heat shield pack?

He said 'Kerballed' as in 'must have a Kerbal aboard'. Kerbal:Kerballed::man:manned

1. Yes. 2. Probably, but the Oberth effect is classical, and the relativistic effects are very relevant here. I'm not sure what the math would look like off the top of my head, but I suspect there's at least something you could point out as analogous.

When you say 'no rockets', do you mean simply 'as a main method of propulsion', or do you intend to disqualify RATOL designs?

I found out that the Kosmonaut Services of the United Soviet Kerbal Republics really don't like women astronauts. (I've had about 11 'rescue so-and-so from orbit' contracts. All of them have been for female kerbonauts.)

You might want to provide guidance on the area rule settings for FAR users; things are going to be quite different between 'high drag, strict ruling' and 'low drag, low ruling'. (Going from memory, so the labels probably aren't quite right.)

Go to the options and switch from a Kerbal day to a 24 hour standard Earth day. (Yes, I know that's not what you meant. But it's such a good setup, I couldn't resist.)

Have the wing-strength sliders been tweaked, or the way wing strength is calculated been changed? My wings seem weaker than before, but that might just be because I'm out of practice.

Here's the thread I was looking for. Turns out there's a more efficient way than just suicide burns as said earlier.