Frannington

Many thanks for the update, and for your continuing efforts! I've been away for a little while - 1.4 happened without me knowing - but OPM is key to a number of Voyager-style missions I've got going on. Think I'll leave things be until Kopernicus is updated, (presumably for 1.4.1)

I... should have thought of that. Thank you!

Lord, the stuff you builders put up with. Good luck, Inigma. Still an admirer of your outstanding work. So I found that KSP was using 91% of my memory (Win7 32bit, 4GB) and discovered that my scenery, display and control settings had defaulted back to something that my pathetic rig can't handle, (as in it was no longer using half textures and was using software anti-aliasing). I don't mind resetting them once in a while, but the updates are coming thick and fast and my sim time is limited. Does anyone know in which file those settings are held please?

Someone, please, for the love of all that is holy, please make this happen. It's a very tame but manoeuvrable bird with a few degrees of anhedral, is a very useful utility craft, and has the descent rate of - and I'm quoting an ex-pilot of them here - a Simonized beer bottle. Plus it's as cute as all get-out.

You're doing amazing stuff. Thank you. I hope that Squad recognise what you're doing and approach you for development work because much of this is vital.

Oh, I have got this. Check out that centreline: My tips if you're flying by hand: 1) If you're using automation, ignore "Spaceplane Guidance". Instead, use "Landing Guidance" and select the KSC pad. Cancel it once the crosses meet. 2) Come in hot and high. Nothing is as useless as the altitude you don't have. ::Edit:: She's aerodynamic. So if you let the crosses meet, she will overshoot. That's what gives you the wiggle-room when you reach KSC. 3) Use S-turns to get yourself down where you need to be (in other words, do it like NASA did. It's a credit to inigma that this thing behaves so well, though I can't speak to its accuracy having never flown a real Shuttle...) 4) She will want to dive and has an alarming descent rate, so use SAS/thrusters to hold the nose up to bleed off the speed and keep her actually flying. 5) Land her like an airliner, with procedural turns. It's actually easiest to fly past KSC a couple KM to the left of it, then do a base and "upwind" turn. 6) If you get it wrong, the OMS engines have just enough grunt (and fuel) to extend your glide. Use them. 7) Don't hold the nose too high on landing. If you're carrying too much speed, go off the end of the runway. Descent rate is (in this simulation) more important. Those are tiny wheels and won't take anything above 10m/s when they hit the deck. Hope this helps! ::Edit:: Many thanks for the rep, my friend!

OP has definitely got a firm troll hand. 99% of the people participating in this thread know that it's a self-referential joke, and demanded that Squad fixed these issues immediately ROFL. 1% of the people participating in this thread took one look at it, thought it was serious, and demanded that Squad fixed these issues immediately. To the 1% - you do know that you're participating in a Beta test, don't you?

Grats on not making it into LHR (or wherever he landed) security for a good talking to after wiring up an Arduino on a plane.

I left her up there for 6 Kerbin days, but didn't count the orbits I'm afraid... Thanks for my new badge!

Myshka made it to 220km, albeit with an empty payload bay (haven't created any yet). Judging by the amount of fuel I still had in the ET, I suspect I could've made it to 300km. Absolutely had to leave the bottom tank empty though - with the empty bay, the balance is all wrong and it had a tendency to tip forward in flight beyond what the control surfaces could cope with. I understand from this thread that's normal though.

Awesome, thank you. Much of this is down to your design - I just flew it. But I did land on the runway - what do I need to do to be a Commander? Edit: I think you locked on to the Elizabeth failure and missed post 227 where Myshka came home safely. In fairness, I am not a Commander until Myshka comes home again. I will post tomorrow when that happens. And it will.

It is amazing, and Elizabeth did a water landing because I wasn't concentrating. It's not perfect, but then the real one wasn't either. Hilariously, this one is probably safer. I love it, and inigma is a bit of a hero to be honest.

Update: Elizabeth didn't make it home intact, but all crew are safe and well. Nice even approach, but too much speed burned off: I could see we were going to fall short, but by the time I noticed it we were already approaching an aerodynamic stall. She belly-flopped gracefully and all crew were recovered:

Well you wanted a few pics, so here we go. This is 'Myshka', which is a slightly Anglicized version of the Russian word for "Little Mouse". Myshka had default fuel, no cargo, and was lofted to about 150KM. Here she is on orbit: De-orbit is a busy time and I have no pics of that, but here we are, completely missing our target: I won't be beaten by this, any more than the woman this craft is named after would be. We're landing at the runway, not ditching in the sea, and that's that. Down and safe, my first ever shuttle landing. I play MS Flight Sim quite a bit (I've got 10,000 hours in FSPassengers, mostly in 757-200s) but this was a very different experience. Thanks for viewing, and many thanks once again to inigma for creating this complete barrel of laughs. And also for the answer about the RTGs. :EDIT: I should point out that I initially tried this landing by using Mechjeb, which totally let me down and led to the situation in the second picture. So I hand-flew the bird in, and got a flawless victory on my first ever landing attempt. If that doesn't tell that this model is high-quality and well thought-out, I don't know what will.

Quick question - the shuttles don't seem to be using any battery power. Have you got an RTG hidden somewhere (to simulate the fuel cells that the real ships had) or is this something that Mk3 parts do stock?

I like you and what you've given us. Your Shuttle is so accessible and I'm throwing them up to 120, 150, 200 KM as test articles. Just practicing, but they're so easy to handle. I'm on a different computer at the moment, but I promise to show me flying your ship. And I will absolutely send you pics of me docking with my space station once I manage it.

In case you didn't know (or if anyone reading this didn't) Pathfinder was one of the STAs used during development and wears the designation OV-098. She has been preserved and now lives at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. I agree that it's a fitting name. As for me, I would like to thank you for schooling me on shuttle construction. Yours is literally the first .craft I have flown that I didn't create myself and I've learned a great deal from it. My first launch of your craft to 100KM went without a hitch and the ship is both docile and hugely manouverable. It's an absolute delight and easy to understand, and since I'm lazy I tried it with Mechjeb. It launched with no problems, which was a huge surprise. I've never landed a spaceplane though, so stand by for Jeb-level explosions. As for the name, my STS-1 is being flown by the "Elizabeth". STS-2 will be flown in a few minutes time by "Myshka". :Edit: it turns out in stock that you can get to about 150KM with the default fuel. That feels about right. But I wish I hadn't put my refuelling space station at 350KM for the sake of time warp! I'll play and see if I can get your shuttle that high...

Many thanks for the data, Sigma88 - much obliged. 3) I...won't for the moment. Might start a fresh sandbox to give it a go, but it sounds like the devs have tried and found it impossible. 4) That looks interesting. Like a Hubble sort of thing? Thanks for suggesting it.

Just a few comments.... 1) Thank you so, so much for this. It's in the most literal sense a game-changer and all of your hard work and persistence is appreciated. If Squad don't get in touch to include this in 1.0 (or maybe 1.1) I will be shocked. And if they don't, I hope you will continue to maintain it. I'm still amazed by the commitment of the KSP modding community, from which I have personally benefitted...for free. 2) Since I'm busy Kerballing, I haven't read all 101 pages of this thread, but is there a list anywhere of the atmosphere heights and Dv requirements from Kerbin available please? No worries if not - I just want to keep my reference data up-to-date. 3) What happens if you try to "land" on a gas giant? I'm too scared to try and I remember that Jool would awaken the Kraken. 4) Does anyone else feel...uneasy when approaching the gas giants? I noticed this particularly with Sarnus, especially under time-warp when they get big fast. It's like you're approaching something so vast that it's simply going to annihilate you. Very similar to the way that Kernow felt about transferring to Discovery over Jupiter in "2010 - The Year We Made Contact". It might just be me, but there's... something about them.

This is...simply magnificent. Thank you.

No, since their actual goal is to make money from the wealthy. Yesterday's crash is tragic for the men who were aboard and who physically suffered (and in one case so far, died). I absolutely stand by everyone who mourns that death even though it happened with tedious inevitability. I think that Richard Branson genuinely believes in what he's doing. He's an adrenalin nutcase who thinks that he can fund a programme that far outlives him by leveraging the goodwill and spirit of adventure of the wealthy people around him. But he's wrong. The strange thing about serious wealth is that it makes people suddenly become very protective of their existence. They're worth more than you, so surely they have more to lose, right? His ship crashed, someone died, and most of the people who've paid a deposit will be going, "Hmm. Maybe not". If VG goes bankrupt - and I think it will unless it keeps being run as a loss-leader - It's not a great loss to be honest.

You missed the last paragraph of my post, I think. I will cheerfully accept that space is difficult and that in our efforts to conquer it, lives are going to be lost. For the benefit of us as a species, it's an acceptable risk. What I don't see is a benefit to what VG is doing. Virgin Galactic is a company that is massively over-budget, has failed to deliver on every promise they have ever made and even if it ever succeeds, will only ever lift a bunch of people with excess cash on a suborbital flight. This might lead to something bigger, might not. At this stage of our evolution, we need to encourage companies that bring us all benefits. Of course they need to be profitable because that's how we work and some private companies can do that. I just don't think that VG is contributing to anything meaningful, but I'm happy to be proven wrong.

I'm going to have to agree with Kryten here. UP YOURS, Virgin Galactic. I am very sorry you lost a crew member today. I'm genuinely upset that a very brave man is dead. But the reason that man is dead is because of your half-arsed attempt to monetise space travel. Like you're anywhere near being able to make it a sport for the wealthy. You're not. We as a species are not. Space is hard for us - even the suborbital bull you're selling - and every successful launch by a commercial concern is just another lesson in how difficult it is. It's not a game. It's not a toy. And if you want to know how to do things, look at Space-X. This is incredibly important to us as a species. We need to do this right, and can't be squeamish about people dying. But when those people die, it should be because they were doing something amazing. Not because they were testing a white elephant that lets privileged dickheads get a few minutes of weightlesness.

Ten...years...? Oh. Oh my word.

I don't. My post above was a bit of fun. Like you, the gender of someone doing a job doesn't really matter to me one way or another, any more than it does in Real Life. But I enjoy Sci-Fi, and our Kerbal friends are just ripe for storytelling. So I'm still wondering why some people care so much that some other people want to create a narrative, for whatever reason. I also wonder why some people are so desperate to shoot those narratives down. It's just a diversion for most of us, and anyone who feels the need to shout "NO! They're all men/women/genderless!" is just exposing their own bias. Ignore the discussion. Go fly a rocket.