tater

I prefer it in the game directory, as I have multiple installs for different mods.

11? I have about 500 science fiction titles. I started when I was a kid, but most are now in storage, even though my house has about 250 linear feet of book shelves (all filled with books). This is since my own reading has tended towards history, plus my wife and kids get some shelves as well... Gotta move some good sci-fi back so my kids can discover it, actually.

Yeah, I know, but it's not like a lander can would try to reenter alone with no other parts (except for those stranded kerbals everywhere in career ). Pods are pods, basically, and you have to work pretty hard to manage to ver have a fatality in KSP. Internal temp, perhaps.

I just tested the SKY mod with a 3.7x Kerbin, and reentered at 4200 m/s. In a mk1 landercan. mk1 lander can, 1 FL-T200 tank with a 909 under it, and 3 LT-1 legs. Easily survived (didn't brake with the engine past a reentry burn), and I landed under power. The heat bars showed up for the (retracted) legs, but only about 50%. So much for the part description.

Nice mod, makes me wish there was a space race, and we could pick a team with a career start

This is an RSS cfg, and RSS is not updated yet.

I tried this, and the size is nice. I'd at least like a choice for standard KSC location for testing as I am used to it vs doing a roll, then pitch. I think such a default might also get people who are new to scaled up systems less confusion (and this size seems ideal). I tested reentry, and it is much more reasonable now (as in it could possibly be dangerous, unlike stock). I dumped this in my test install, and I think I need a clean one with minimal mods to test well, as I'm worried about it crashing. Nicely done.

So I tested in the SKY mod, which ups a Kerbin (and some other worlds) by 3.7X. LKO reentry was uneventful at 4100 m/s (used some heat shield, as one would expect). I tried an 11 km/s reentry as well. Burned off the heat shield on the mk1-2 pod, and then dangerously heated the remaining spacecraft. Without the shield it would have been toast for sure, it ha dthe little heat bars come up about 80% full, and the chute started to overheat. I think a nominal direct Mun return in that mod is around 10km/s, so it actually looks pretty decent for a scaled up Kerbin as this is basically our Apollo CM. I think with a scaled up Kerbin, there would actually be a non-zero chance of reentry failure.

You might try tissue paper, it's easier to carry around.

I'll have a look at this when my son stops playing minecraft (which likely means when he's in bed, lol).

Jharkot, Nepal.

If they make one, maybe it can be less ugly than the stock ones

I did some testing with a mk 1-2 pod, and set periapsis to 20km. I tested so far at a max velocity of 11km/s (that was at about 500 km alt, I forgot to check at 70km, so above 11km/s). Heat shield burns up in no time (2 s?), and craft never exceeds 1374 K. All the max temps listed in the VAB (assuming they are correct) need to be seriously nerfed, IMO. The issue with spaceplanes… dunno, I don't do them. The trouble is that either reentry is not a thing for capsules, or it is, and spaceplanes need some other solution. Perhaps aircraft would be better off with a larger kerbin to bleed off some velocity?

A General thread about reentry heating got me experimenting (a mk1-2 pod can happily reenter at 11km/s, shield instantly burns away (2 seconds), then slows and lands without exceeding 1375 K). All the parts are vastly overpowered in this regard. The lander cans are set to 2000k? The Shuttle had the areas of maximal heating designed to withstand that kind of heating, and that included a margin of error. The lander cans should be very weak in every regard. If impact tolerance cannot be reduced, maybe heat tolerance should be. A lot. From 2000 to maybe 700. The mk2 can be set higher to have the mass make more sense.

Anyone suffering from reentry has to be trying REALLY hard. 11km/s, no problem. I didn't test with no heat shield, but honestly, I don't think they are needed at all. I still think the scale needs to be larger, because LKO reentry likely cannot be made dangerous without unwanted consequences, still, it's pretty terrible as it stands. Shuttle was built to withstand just under 2000 K (hottest it got was apparently actually under 1800), via the RCC portion looks like. The craft itself, however was not. The Columbia disaster had a failure in the HRSI section, which was for temps under 1533 K. So the crafts need to have acceptable heat reduced substantially, IMO. instead of 200, or 2400, maybe 1000 k. Then the heat shields are required. DRE includes g forces, which should also be in the system.

Are the wheels spinning forward? Right hand rule. If so, the wheels are exerting a torque, and the set farther from the CM has a longer level arm.

Reentry heating is not necessarily broken. Unless you have tested in a 10X Kerbin, you cannot say it is broken. Alternately, hit the kerbin atmosphere at 9 km/s, and report back how that works (hard, I know, since to get any sort of slice of the atmosphere you'll need to set periapsis near sea level, lol). Kerbin has the rough stats of Earth---except for its tiny size. If you jack up shock heating such that 1500m/s is nasty, what will happen to aircraft and spaceplanes? The obvious solution is rescaling. - - - Updated - - - OK, just tested a mk1-2 with periapsis on Kerbin at ~20 km, speed 8500. Heat shield blew, but craft survived. Of course it was not an unreasonable reentry. Same happened at 11 km/s, the heat shield blows in 2-3 seconds, then the pod happily reenters at 8+ km/s and doesn't overheat. Temp of mk1-2 got to 1374. That's a lunar reentry kind of speed.

Actually, scaling KSP up to maybe 3X makes the game far more fun. I played a number of RSS scalings (Kerbol system at 2x, 3.2x, 6.4x) in career, using FAR/DRE/etc, and stock parts (some stock alike, all made for stock though). I think 3.2x would be ideal for stock, and it might solve some of the aero/reentry issues. I find 1.0.2 contracts to be pretty odd right now. Too many rescue and tourism contracts, and I do not reliably see any "explore" contracts. Current save I got no Mun or Minmus explore contracts at all, for example. - - - Updated - - - The arbitrary scaling is why reentry is not dangerous, and if you make it actually dangerous arbitrarily, then space planes will have a problem flying at all since 2km/s is not actually that fast. Convenience is a non-issue, IMO, as we have time warp. A small rescale to 2-4x doesn't substantially slow the game down, and I think it might be possible to have dangerous reentry in there someplace, without killing space planes (for people who like them).

Note that I was playing RSS cfgs up to 6.4X kerbol system using nothing but stock parts (FAR/DRE/KIDS), and some mod parts meant for stock (so scaled to tiny kerbin). 6.4x was really fun, actually, finally felt like a space program in career (I had KCT going as well). 3.2x was the best candidate for a stock replacement, IMHO. It actually looks better than stock terrain wise.

Kerbin is too small. That is the problem. The result is that orbital velocities are tiny, and the craft decelerate to safe speeds very quickly. Danger requires longer duration in the atmosphere at high velocities. This is why upping the heating kills spaceplanes. THEY have to fly longer at high speed in the atmosphere, so they can see way more heating than capsules. The thing to do is to text scaled up Kerbin when that is available, and see what reentry looks like with a 2X kerbin, 3X kerbin, etc. (this is why those of us in the "err on the side of realism" camp think the way we do---when yo make an arbitrary planet that breaks physics like kerbin, things don't work as one would expect. The real test of the aero model is to try it on a 10X Kerbin and see what it looks like.

The simpler solution would have been to scale up the Kerbol system such that dv to orbit was the about the same as 0.90 given the new aero. I think ~2X works well (I think I recall regex and ferram discussing it in a thread a long time ago and stating the specific number). Having played different RSS scaled Kerbol systems, 3.2X is not substantially harder than stock, and actually makes the early game fun/realistic, since you actually have to mess with some sub-orbital rockets for a few launches, instead of going to orbit on the 2d or 3d launch. As soon as RSS is out I'll dumb stock again, though the current nerf might require an RO cfg now.

You don't even need to touch controls til you are nearly in space now. SAS off, give it a tap east, then hands off. I'm not seeing a problem.

The poodle is so awful looking I almost never use it, honestly.

Right now my personal limiting factor is wanting them to fit in reasonable fairings, or an interstage for an apollo-style mission, though in fact I do Kerbin orbit rendezvous ---> target (Mun/Duna/whatever) orbit rendezvous, usually, so it is mostly fairings, and I prefer a reasonable look to them.

Say I have a 1.25m LV-T30 stuck to a 2.5m tank on my CSM. It would be awesome to put the 2.5m stack separator on there and have it make a 2.5m fairing, instead of a 1.25m one (which means I have to then also make an interstage, adding a bunch of parts to the rocket for something I am throwing away, anyway).