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Make sure you have the correct download - initially I installed the latest version without realising that I needed CommNet Manager for it to work.

Thought I'd share a ship design I've just built on orbit. It's now heading for Jool. Playing with JNSQ (x2.7 scale and expanded system). Thoroughly enjoying using DSEV. Warning! The plume on the Nuclear Saltwater Engine is huge! Gotta love Explodium

26th of March, 2013, v0.19.1 Actually I can’t quite believe it’s almost 8 years!

Thanks. I checked the stock 3-kerbal pod and it’s maxTemp is 2400, so just a little higher than the MRK Yes, the Ariane in particular is perfect for JNSQ. The Ariane 44L and MRK work seamlessly at that scale.

So I feel like a complete idiot! Tested again from Munar orbit reentry, with a 45km periapsis, but this time aligning with the surface retrograde marker instead of the orbital marker, and had absolutely no problems. Heat was fine, and still had a little bit of ablator left over. So its all working fine and no alterations to the configs necessary! In my defence I haven't played KSP for over a year, and its been at least 3 years since I had RSS or any other mods that changed the size of the plantes/orbits etc, so I'm a bit rusty! Anyway, hopefully this can be used as a Public Service Announcement for people who need help with deorbiting: align with the surface marker, NOT the orbital marker, lol! As an aside, this is my current small space station, using KNES parts and parts from Universal Storage (one of my other favourite mods). Station parts launched using Ariane 1 and Viking launched on a Bacchus. It was at this point that I realised that carrying out Science was going to need a lot more power!

Glad to be of service About to have dinner now with the family, but I’ll be back online later this evening. Planning to run a few more tests with different retrograde alignments (surface vs orbit) as the temperature dropped significantly when the craft rolled. I think you might be correct that heat is bleeding round the side of the shield. I’ll also try out the same reentry profile with the stock 3-kerbal pod just to see what happens as the maxTemp is a little bit higher for that pod iirc. I’ll make notes of the parts that fail and let you know in detail what I find.

Ok, a couple of quick tests carried out with an MRK returning from the Mun... Using KER to monitor thermal loads on the spacecraft. At 75km altitude, critical part switches from heatshield to MRK temperature (limit 2200K) Test 1: Periapsis 65km... MRK critical skin temperature limit 2130/2200K... survived its journey through the upper atmosphere but carried on through into a highly elliptical Kerbin orbit Test 2: Periapsis 62.5km... MRK critical skin temperature reached 2200K... craft burnt up. Test 3: Periapsis 85km... Used all fuel in the service module at periapsis to reduce apoapsis from Munar altitude to 5000km, then used monoprop at apoapsis to reduce peri to 60km and jettisoned the service module. MRK skin temperature maxed out at 2160K at 60km altitude. Craft survived and skipped out of the atmosphere with an apoapsis of 3500km. It looks like the MRK won't survive a deorbit reentry from much above Low Kerbin Orbit due to the 2200K limit on the part.

That's why I was asking Pushing things to the limits is very Kerbal! If coming back from the Mun is too much for the poor MRK then I'll just have to rethink my strategy... I'm already doing an Earth orbit rendezvous between two Ariane 44L to marry the MRK with a transfer stage (I haven't unlocked enough Ariane 5 parts yet to upgrade my launcher) so maybe I need to find some more delta v so that I can decelerate into LKO before doing a normal orbital reentry. Hmmm, thinking about it, that would give me a reason to rendezvous with my space station to generate more data for science!

Hi Well, thanks for the reply. It was a clean install of 1.8.2. I will check the difficulty setting tonight when I get into the game, but I’m not using FAR or anything else that would change the reentry (of course I will double check just to make sure!) I’ll start a sandbox save as well and run some test launches just to make sure it wasn’t a screw up on my part - it wouldn’t be the first time! Lol

First I’d like to take the time to say that this mod is brilliant. It has a wonderful combination of parts that adds huge flavour to the game. Thank you for the time and effort that goes into its development. Second on to a quick question: I’m currently using KNES with JNSQ and had an unfortunate return from my first Mun mission with the MRK... namely the capsule burnt up at an altitude of 55km killing the crew. I’d tested it from low Kerbin orbit, but this was the first time from such a high orbital velocity. Have other people noticed problems with returning MRK from the Mun or Minmus? Or did I just get the angle of reentry to steep? Edit: I should add that I’m playing with v1.8.2 in KSP 1.10

I've been testing the mod out for the past couple of weeks and it is really good! It's going to form the basis of my next career save and will hopefully work well with JNSQ at 2.7x scale.

Here's the Munar Gateway Station from my current career... Phase 1 Serviced by an orbital tug on the far right and featuring a habitation module, utility module, cupola, airlock, station core module and additional life support equipment and docking node. Currently two of the 2-Kerbal Proteus spacecraft are docked along with a 2-Kerbal lander Phase 2 Serviced by a couple of orbital tugs (one is on a fuel delivery mission) and featuring an additional habitation module compared with the Phase 1 station. The station now features a 3-Kerbal lander (nadir port) and is now home to 5 Kerbals on a long term mission (Bobwig's crew is about to spend 30 days on the Munar surface in the big lander Mods used on the Station: SSPXr Universal Storage 2 Near Future Solar

Just wanted to say what a great mod this is. It has really reordered my thinking about how to go about the early career. I also wanted to share a little album highlighting this, and a post I made in a KSP facebook group I'm part of... Using Probes before Crew means that access to 3-Kerbal capsules comes a lot later than normal in a career. But for my first manned journey out to the Mun I wanted a Pilot for flying, an Engineer for fixing things that might break and a Scientist for resetting various experiments. So I had to get creative! imgur 1st Munar landing with PBC album

Get's my vote!

Today I made a spaceplane using the Mark IV mod...

I gave it a quick go on my laptop the other day - seemed fine

Just thought I'd show my latest creation. Running KSP 1.05 64-bit on an iMac in case anyone's wondering. The Mark IV multi-mode spaceplane (not very imaginative I know, but I'll name it later!) Mark 4 parts for the main body and intakes, Mark 2 parts for the lateral fuselage sections. Stock wings, control surfaces and tailplanes. The only other items are the dorsal strakes on the main hull and aerospikes on the lateral fuselage, which are both from Novapunch. The spaceplane is designed to get into orbit whilst using the KScale2 mod, which makes planets and orbits twice as big as stock, so delta-v to orbit is around 4,600 m/s, making the ascent and descent tricky from a heat management perspective. It can seat 16 kerbals, and has a small cargo bay fitted out with additional electrical storage, life support (TAC LS) and even a deployable solar array. I haven't worked out its full cargo capacity to LKO yet, but I suspect it will be approximately 5 tonnes, so nothing to write home about. Really enjoying making spaceplanes with this mod... I'm currently working on an alternative passenger-only version using the Vulture cockpit, and a cargo-only version using the standard cockpit as pictured.

I'm still playing my 1.05 career for the forseeable future, and bearing in mind I already use Nertea's Stockalike Station Parts Mod and the entire Near Future range of mods, how is it remotely possible that I've never noticed this one before??.... it looks amazing.... downloading now!

Tried this out yesterday - really lovely mod. This is now the preferred resupply method to my stations!

Working on Spacedock - just downloaded it today!

Today I used the Remote Tech computer to program an orbital burn 17 minutes in advance as my probe was going to be out of comms line of sight when the burn was needed... ... And it worked!

Nice series! You should consider highlighting Blizzy's Toolbar. I've found it an indispensable aid to organising my icons onscreen.

Very cool, I've subbed your youtube channel. I'd ask you which mods you are using, but i imagine the list is too long to type!

Thanks Dude!

Duna or Bust, Part 5 This is it, our last installment... Lorim Kerman sat at the controls of the lander, selecting his MFD controls prior to the descent His partner for the landing, Aldton Kerman, doesn't get much of a view, unfortunately... just the back of Lorim's head! de-orbit burn complete, Lorim consults the Scansat information to check that the landing site is suitable and thus began the rapid descent through the atmosphere at 34km altitude, the lander begins to feel the first effects of atmospheric compression, and the orbital velocity peaks at 950m/s before starting to come down... at 20km the drogue chute opens. I was using both the Real Chutes and Deadly Reentry mods, so careful planning for this moment was essential back on Kerbin! at 7km the main chutes begin to deploy. The staging of the chutes was critical... at an altitude of 2.5km, all of the chutes were fully deployed, and it was time to see if our number crunching had been correct... with 300m on the altimeter, and a leisurely descent rate of 4.3m/s, it looks like we are going to be successful... Lorim and Aldton share an amusing anecdote on the way down... Touchdown! As the closest to the hatch, Aldton gets the honour of being first out... but before descending the ladder he unstows the solar panels from the KAS container and attaches them... But Lorim and Aldton soon find time to set up the camera and take a selfie for the folks back home! And there we have it... having first bought the game in March of 2013, it took me until October 2014 to make it to Duna... Hopefully when 1.1 is released I'll make it out to Jool! Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the ride!