Nutter

Something you really don't have to worry about and actually isn't nearly as scary when taken in the context of the well over a thousand nuclear tests in the last fifty years. How many would one of these need to reach orbit, again?

Maybe also some insane gimbal range as well? The standard thrusters always remind me of Deus Ex cameras.

I'm guessing the tree will still get to see some extra work. I'd love to see it broken down in several smaller, cheaper levels too but that might raise other problems. About the gimbal and ISP: I will keep the stock value when the other one gets its fix (though, I could've just brought it down instead) and while the probes do have less torque, they also work on smaller loads than a command pod or reaction wheel.

Yeah, I upped it too. Though, I did raise it to 40. Might regret in the slightly longer run but I really don't want my game loading an engine just so it can sit there and stock parts, I rather not fiddle with much. *I also ditched the gimbal.

I never really understood why it got that ISP increase. Even the original part has a rather nasty thrust ratio, if I remember correctly. PS: Maybe having the others available a bit sooner would help compensate for the fact? Though, with my game currently unavailable (location, location), I'm not sure if there's any properly suited node for it.

Well... There goes all the rest of my free time as soon as I get my hands on this.

But I don't remember either original part generating power and aside from the T5, no .625 engine does it either so it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.

Errr...seriously? That's pretty much completely missing the point of the things. The Nerva is a nerva and, as a result, it has the second best ISP of anything on standard tanks and due to its size, it generally has more delta-v than the best IPS engine on the stuff as well. Thrust is not what you get a NERVA for. And as far as the aerospike is concerned, again, it has better ISP than most the stuff you can get but this one is made to not care about altitude differences. And the one non-nuclear engine with better efficiency is the stock aerospike, which has less thrust. Sure it has less thrust and more mass than the other engines and is, as such, not exactly what you'll usually want on a rocket but I'm guessing it does wonders on a spaceplane. Now someone come kick me in the shins for all the mistakes I made and fix them for me.

The new structural parts are really, really nice for putting a whole lot of engines onto a first stage. Great for trying to make stuff that's a bit more...Russian. Though, I think I need more engines...

They do. Could do with a .625 version of the LV-T30 for some more efficient boosting but for all intents and purposes, the R48-7S does the job nicely anyway.

And they said this will be a bad day.

Excellent! I see many uses for the small radial decoupler. Yeeees. And the LV-T5 doesn't seem like a bad addition either. By the by, am I the only thinking that the monopropellant engines sound slightly like they're powered by the souls of the damned? Edit: Completely forgot about he small fuel tanks. Ooooh, I am so building an altar for you once I...finish playing with them...okay, maybe you aren't getting that altar after all.

You can run the VASMIR with high thrust and low impulse or low thrust and high impulse. And that's not fully supported by the game code so it needs some extra work.

How about ion/resistojet/arcjet manoeuvring thrusters?

I wonder if you could make these things decouple on one side a bit after the other. Say...quarter second? Though, that would leave the separator hurtling back towards the craft/part that decoupled first if it isn't already accelerating out of the way.

I made a 360/180 array out of three OSAT panels on a cubic strut a few times. Two would pretty much ensure you had at least some power to control the ship with. Stopped when I realised it costs as much as a solar array anyway* though I just realised it still might be much, much lighter. *Was fiddling with mission control at the time so I was relatively appreciative of the price tag.

Aye. The design is nice and there's nothing really broken in the general idea. So why waste time 'fixing' that as well? And it allows for ships with a bit of an "Atlas V" look.

Yeah. And that would suck very, very, much. And even discounting that, you're still sending up someone who you know will die. And that means you're using precious fuel sending up someone who will outlive their usefulness far faster than usual. So now you'll have to train and send more people on your one way trip because they're dying on you faster. The first few colony runs to Mars are probably gonna be a one way affair either way. Won't be the first time explorers did it. I'm willing to wager it won't be the last.

Nope.

...What?

Symetry mode.