Starman4308

Localization is a huge effort, Squad's staff is now pretty small, the economic payoff is tempered by the fact that many of those likely to play KSP already know how to speak English, and you're complaining that they didn't localize to even more languages? Squad does not have the resources of an AAA game studio, and your expectations of their output should be tempered to that.

The languages mostly make sense to me. Spanish, because Squad is based in Mexico. Chinese due to its enormous population. Russian also has a fairly significant population, and has a long history of space exploration. I'll admit, mildly confused about why they did Japanese before French or German, although there is a reasonable player base of those who speak only Japanese and have access to computers, plus they do have a space program. The reasons why your mods broke have been repeatedly explained, and you should really either have some patience, or just keep playing 1.2.2 for a while. There will be API changes, and it hasn't even been a week. Squad should not need to bear responsibility for you modifying their product.

It is unwise to let national security interests rest with a single provider. Also, while I doubt this project will be that successful, it might wind up cheaper than Falcon 9. It's hard to tell when the project is so young.

If the mod has a permissive license, you can always fix it yourself, preferably sending a pull request or similar to the original modmaker so they can add the fix to the main repository. Otherwise, there really is no "better way"; each KSP update can and often will change the API, and at the very least, you need to recompile the mod against the new binaries.

It updates when it updates. Note the sticky post: It's not even remotely time to even be slightly impatient; it has not even been a week. FAR didn't update for KSP 1.2 until this week, and it's been around half a year since KSP 1.2 was released.

The reason why that helped so much for Scott Manley's RCS rocket is that RCS engines have a particularly horrible sea-level vs. vacuum Isp; you lose 58% of your thrust/Isp at sea level. By starting from a tall tower, he was able to start his engines much closer to vacuum Isp. The LES won't benefit nearly so much from that; with its Isp being 160/180 for sea-level/vacuum, I simply ignored sea-level Isp in my analysis above. The LES's problem is caused by its atrocious full/empty mass ratio; while you can get a huge kick out of the first few idealized* stages (which have just one LES), by the time you hit steady-state, each new stage adds maybe 8-9 m/sec of delta-V, and you're getting exponential growth in stage mass. *Minimum number of LES set to full thrust to achieve > 1.8 TWR. This lets you stage off empty LESs as quickly as possible, although compromises might wind up being made in practice. The analysis was primarily to set a lower bound on the number of LESs necessary to achieve a vacuum delta-V target. Granted, if you can start above atmosphere, you can avoid drag losses, and minimize gravity losses with a high TWR, something at which the LES excels. With a more generous delta-V target of 2200 m/sec (approximately LKO velocity), you can get to that using either 472 LES in 58 stages (5.0 TWR goal to minimize gravity losses), or 415 LES in 119 stages (standard 1.8 TWR goal). So, it's maybe possible with a launch-clamp-tower-of-doom to minimize your atmospheric drag losses and minimize your delta-V requirements.

I haven't done any telescopy, but I wish you the best of luck making your new telescope. Just remember, it's Mars, not Duna (or Gratian) that you're seeing through the telescope.

It's usually not a big deal, as different transfer burns tend to scatter arrival pretty well. If you're uncertain, you can do as @Streetwind suggested and adjust time to encounter at a correction burn, which can be quite cheap. EDIT: Though, one minor point, if you're playing with Real Fuels and using a cryogenic propellant, you probably don't want to wait long in your parking orbit, preferably leaving before you've even finished one complete orbit.

I'm also now 95% sure I screwed up the math by assuming stage N+1 was X times larger than stage N, but I should also be including N-1, N-2, N-3, etc. So it's even worse. I'll see if I can mock some code up tomorrow. EDIT: Finished what I think is valid code for this. The result, requiring each stage to have a TWR of at least 1.8 and a delta-V goal of 3000 m/sec, is 216 stages with a total of 4696 launch escape systems. I think part of why the number actually improved was that you can stage more often than I assumed thanks to the fantastic TWR of the LES; the end result is a stage wet/dry ratio of just about 1.005. To get to 3400 m/sec, you wind up needing 265 stages with 16313 launch escape systems. In short, despite mucking up the math the first time, it's still hilariously impractical, as you're talking a lower bound of thousands of LESs to get to orbit.

If I did the math right, it's pretty thoroughly impractical to get to orbit. The LES simply has too much dry mass, and you need an absurd number of them. The hard cap on wet/dry ratio is going to be 1.25, the ratio of LES full/empty mass. From there, you can start calculating how many stages are needed at various stage wet/dry ratios to achieve a target of 3000 m/sec... which is quite optimistic. For a wet/dry ratio of 1.025, you need 69 stages to reach 3,000 m/sec. As you increase this ratio, the number of stages you need goes down, but the size of the N+1'th stage grows more and more; the theoretical optimum is to have a low wet/dry ratio, so you're effectively staging off empty LESs more often. You can also calculate how much bigger the N+1'th stage is than the N'th stage. For a wet/dry ratio of 1.025, the N+1'th stage has to be 10/9 as large as the N'th stage (1.11111...). So, the final number of LESs can be calculated as such: n = sum(0 to # of stages - 1) of (stage ratio ^ i) For that wet/dry of 1.025, this is sum(0 to 68) of (1.1111^i). This number is 12,918.35. Thus, given hopelessly optimistic assumptions (no staging equipment, no fins, no structural elements, vacuum Isp throughout, only 3000 m/sec to orbit), you need at least 12,919 launch escape systems to get to orbit. Drop the wet/dry ratio much lower than 1.025, and you'll get some serious TWR issues.

Year 305: Interplanetary The Gael Space Center has become confident in our near-Gael operations, but much as our ancestors yearned to explore the Kerbol system, so must we explore Ciro and its many planets. Tellumo is chosen as the first target for multiple reasons: its large bodies of liquid water, the excellent photographs that can be taken at opposition, and its lack of major moons that could disrupt operations. Day 197, 00:52 Hours Pioneer 1, the first interplanetary probe constructed, launches from KSC in the dead of night, a launch time imposed by the location of the GSC launch complex and Tellumo's inclination. Massing 5.7 tonnes, it is the first payload to be lofted aboard a Pebble booster. Loaded down with 700 kilograms of scientific payload and 3675 kilograms of MMH and MON for Tellumo insertion and orbital maneuvers, her target is a series of three polar orbits over Tellumo: the first, a highly elliptical orbit to establish Tellumo's magnetosphere, which will last for 123 days, followed by a second, circular mapping orbit at 800 km, followed by a third, lower orbit for high-resolution imagery. At completion of the Pioneer mission, the probe will be crashed into Lili to avoid any possible contamination of Tellumo. Notable is the Communotron HG-55 antenna with an 80,000,000 km range, far more powerful than the previous Reflectron KR-7, which has a maximum rated communication range of 288,000 km. To feed this dish and all the science equipment onboard, Pioneer carries eight solar panels massing 17.5 kg each, as well as half a tonne of batteris and capacitors. Following insertion into parking orbit, at 01:33 Hours, Pioneer's Pebble booster commenced Tellumo injection, burning for almost 2 minutes to add 2060 m/sec to her velocity. As Pioneer passed out of the Gael system, scientific systems were tested on Iota and Ceti, which were fortuitously close to Pioneer's ejection path. Pioneer 1 passed the orbit of Iota at 11:45 hours that day traveling at 2.15 km/sec, and Ceti's orbit at 10:05 hours the next day, at 2.07 km/sec. Day 200, 00:04 hours Pioneer 1 separates from the Pebble booster, which will continue onto Cirocentric orbit, and initiates a 15 m/sec correction burn to adjust her entry into Ciro. Estimated time to arrival is 97 days. She also takes the opportunity to conduct experiments in Ciro orbit, away from the magnetic influence of Gael. Tellukhod 1: The First Lander In addition to the Pioneer orbiter, a second mission, the Tellukhod lander is launched on Day 199, 1:15 hours, aboard an Alanine booster. Massing just 3 tonnes, of which only 705 kg is the lander, Tellukhod is a much simpler vehicle than Pioneer, with just 30 kg of scientific experiments. The vehicle does not have enough delta-V to circularize; the Tellukhod lander will separate itself approximately two hours prior to periapsis, and the transfer vehicle will attempt to bring itself into some sort of stable orbit as a relay for both the Tellukhod lander and future missions. Particular care was taken to sterilizing Tellukhod; the vehicle and fairing interior was washed down with irradiated ethanol and heat-sterilized for a week. Pioneer was also treated as per planetary protection protocols, although due to her more sensitive instruments and the planned disposal on Lili, the sterilization was not quite as thorough. Tellukhod 1 launched on Day 199 at 1:15 hours, with a 2055 m/sec Tellumo injection at 1:53 hours. On Day 202 at 00:45 hours, a 7 m/sec correction burn brought Tellukhod to a 20 km periapsis, although it will likely be refined again as the vehicle approaches Tellumo. The Lifson Program: Space Tourism and the Armstrong Moon Landing Project The Lifson Program has created a multi-purpose Kerballed vehicle for transportation to and from Gael's moons. The vehicle masses 16 tonnes, a payload for which the Laythe booster was designed. While its first usage has been commercial, to transport tourists to the orbits of Iota and Ceti, it is also planned for the Armstrong project, named for the first Kerbal to set foot upon the Mun. The Gael Space Center would like to submit this photographic evidence that no parts of the vehicle have ever been damaged by SRB separation. Launch abort system separation occurs shortly after second stage ignition. Lifson launches are timed to begin 4-5 days prior to an Iota-Ceti transfer window, so that both moons can be reached before the 40-day life support supply is finished. The Laythe booster upper stage, while not strictly necessary for the mission, is carried through usually until at least Iota circularization, so that the Lifson vehicle has plenty of delta-V remaining for emergencies. On return to Kerbin, a lifting reentry ensures a peak acceleration of 4 Gs, ensuring a comfortable ride back for tourists and Kerbonauts alike.

Can it be reproduced? Can you add it to the KSP bug tracker with logs? Also, you can do this far more easily with just the debug menu, so it's an exploit very few would use.

Reaction wheel saturation isn't a maintenance issue, it's a basic physics issue where the wheels are treated as magic torque machines, not as devices to store and release angular momentum.

You could try modular design, with relatively stable sections sent individually to Eeloo and docked using the biggest docking ports you have. You could also try sending it separate from the fuel it's supposed to store, and filling up the tanks with a separate mission, possibly via ISRU on Eeloo's surface. It doesn't matter how wobbly the final product is if sent in segments capable of assembly at the destination.

With how KSP handles physics, it's physically impossible to get into an elliptical Mun orbit from outside the Mun's SOI. You need to make another maneuver node at Mun periapsis to achieve a stable orbit, burning retrograde. You have some velocity relative to the Mun coming into its SOI, plus some from falling inwards, and you need to remove some of that to stay inside its SOI. Also, I suspect the sarcasm is stayed by being polite about asking questions, the questions literally being rocket science, and the experienced players being those who can do rocket science. This forum is usually pretty good about staying polite. EDIT: The reason for this is conservation of orbital energy. When you enter a sphere of influence, your orbital energy will be constant unless something happens (such as an engine burn or aerobrake). When entering an SOI, you by definition have enough orbital energy to escape again, because you have A: sufficient gravitational potential energy to be at the outer edge of the SOI, and B, a finite amount of kinetic energy from having some velocity relative to the central body (you did enter the SOI in a finite amount of time, yes?). Because of that, to insert into lunar orbit, you need to shave off some of that orbital energy, for which the best option is almost always a retrograde burn at periapsis, as that benefits from the Oberth effect.

One small additional thing is that, if you want to tweak your entry into the Mun, it's often best to perform your correction maybe halfway to 2/3 of the way there. The farther away you make the correction burn, the easier it is to change direction due to having slowed down so much, but the maneuver has less time to adjust your eventual position. Also, as mentioned, burn prograde about 90 degrees behind the Mun, and you'll meet up with it at apoapsis.

Look at any of the stock tanks; the ratio is 11 oxidizer to 9 liquid fuel. The math gets more complex if you have a nuclear rocket mixed in or are using Real Fuels.

Wait, Gratian, not Grannus. Yes. This solar system's Ike analog is just as trolly as the Kerbin system's, it seems. I forget the name, but I did take a photo of it. It'll be in the Solar System Update post following the next story post. Haven't found anything around Grannus, despite looking very, very hard and playing with the Distant Object Enhancement flare settings.

You can try using MemGraph to reduce GC stutters, but other than that and keeping part counts low, there's not really all that much that can be done. KSP is what it is, a CPU-hungry beast that has to do far more rigid-body physics on the CPU than almost any other game. With low-part-count vehicles, it should play very smoothly. With larger part counts, a higher-end CPU should let you squeeze out a little extra performance, but you still have the issue that CPU load grows faster than number of parts on a vessel: I'm not sure exactly what algorithms Unity's physics engine uses, but I am pretty sure it's worse than O(n). The Intel chips might have had a slight edge for KSP, on account of having better single-thread performance, but it would hardly be a deal-breaker. KSP can do a little bit of offloading, but the primary limiting factor has always been the main thread.

The video is about going to Mars, not Duna. The delta V requirements of RSS are vastly greater than stock, plus he was using TAC Life Support.

Yes. Absolutely impossible. Okay, so it might be a little difficult for new players. And mostly I just wanted an excuse to link Macollo's video. With regular-scale Duna, it shouldn't really be all that hard to do direct-ascent, it's just a case of "moar delta-V". Just beware of Ike and its trolly ways. Eve ascent is KSP's final boss, due to its incredibly thick atmosphere and powerful gravity well. It's easy enough to send stuff there, but quite difficult to get anything back from the surface. In any event: I would strongly suggest teaching yourself to dock in LKO. Remember that you want a ring of 4 RCS blocks distributed roughly around center-of-mass: that gives you full 6-axis control (pitch, yaw, roll, and translation in X, Y, and Z). The further away CoM is from the plane containing your RCS blocks, the more issues you'll have with unwanted torques during translation. You can partially alleviate that by making that ring wider; there's a mod somewhere with RCS blocks on extendable booms. Past that, you may want to look into mods like Navyfish's Docking Port Alignment Indicator, which I use religiously for docking.

Very many, indeed. I'm still a fair distance from the end of the tech tree. I'll look into SSTOs with SpaceX-style recovery for my second flight of boosters, which will probably be once I've unlocked tech-level 7 engines. I do have another crop of images from Telescope son of Telescope son of Telescope, although I think I'll hold off on that until I can get at least one more story-ish post in. Due to having a lot of things like rescue-Kerbal contracts that don't really do anything for the story, the only material I have for that right now is the Lifson crew transfer vehicle, which has sent the first set of four tourists to orbit Iota and Ceti. I do, however, have Plans (TM), some of which will come to light in approximately 80 game days when a certain transfer window opens up. Hopefully the pace will pick up soon; I'm almost at my goal of 12 Kerbals of each specialty, after which I'll stop accepting rescue-Kerbal contracts, which is a lot of time not spent doing anything that will feature in-story. I'm also filthy rich, at almost 8 million roots so dangit me, stop clicking accept contract.

It is still angry, red, and I can't see any planets/moons despite fiddling with the Distant Object Enhancement settings to try to get some flare going. There probably are such bodies, but I'll have to try things like turning up the contrast. EDIT: And at this post, I was very much a doofus, confusing Gratian with Grannus. They're both red and start with "Gra".

Thanks for the warning: I was almost about to click. Booster Standardization Program: Year 304 To reduce development costs and improve reliability, a booster standardization program was initiated in Year 304, with set mass-to-Gael-escape targets. These are largely 2- and 2.5-stage rockets with about 7.7 km/sec of delta-V with restartable upper stages; the lower stages generally have parachutes for recovery and refurbishment. A note: in parentheses will be the mod any given engine comes from, and many stock engines are reskinned by Ven's Stock Part Revamp. Neutron: 1 Tonne Payloads The Neutron booster is the cheapest and lightest standardized vehicle, massing just 14 tonnes at launch and costing 6,000 roots. A single kerolox BA-8 "Flare" (Lack's SXT) powers the first stage for 2 minutes, and a pair of MRS Sparkler hydrolox engines (Modular Rocket Systems) under a cryogenic tank power the second stage. Also visible are the RCS pods, with a pair of hydrazine-powered linear RCS thrusters underneath. The Gael Space Program would like to take this opportunity to deny rumors that a Neutron booster was totalled during the party following Bob Kerman's return from the Ariadne I mission. Alanine: 2.5 Tonne Payloads The Alanine booster is commissioned for payloads that do not quite fit aboard the Neutron booster, with both a much larger, 2.5 meter fairing base and much more lift capacity. Because of the large gap between the Neutron and Alanine boosters, plans are being mulled for a Neutron-Plus booster with strap-on SRB assistance. A K1 "Kiwi" kerolox engine (SpaceY) and two Mk-55 Thuds power the first stage for 106 seconds, at which a hydrolox RE-L10 Poodle takes over. While a lighter second-stage engine might have been preferred, no suitable candidates were found, leading to use of a relatively overpowered second stage on a lightweight first stage. Nucleus: 4 Tonne Payloads The first 2.5-stage booster, the 58-tonne Nucleus booster shares a great deal of parts commonality with the Alanine booster, trading its Mk-55 Thuds for a pair of Globe X solid rocket boosters (KW Rocketry) that burn for 71 seconds, after which the central Kiwi core burns for another 132 seconds. Pebble: 6 Tonne Payloads The 66-tonne Pebble booster uses an atypical staging arrangement borrowed from the Ariadne-project boosters. While the first stage is highly conventional, an M1 Moa (SpaceY) supplemented with three Mk-55 Thuds that burns for 113 seconds, the second stage has a hydrolox Poodle core initially supplemented by a quartet of Rockomax 56-8U engines in pods that are detached once the extra thrust is unnecessary. Oz: 10 Tonne Payloads The 146-tonne Oz booster, named after the continent of Oz, has more engines than any other vehicle currently in use. The first, almost comically short stage is powered by three K1 Kiwi engines, with a pair of S1 SRB-KD25k Kickback SRBs to provide additional thrust for the first 88 seconds of the 153-second first-stage burn. Above this is a hydrolox stage powered by a trio of Poodle engines underneath a 3.75-meter payload base. Laythe: 16 Tonne Payloads The 219 tonne Laythe booster, the largest in current use by the Gael Space Program, is the booster of choice for the Lifson crew transfer vehicle. The first stage uses a pair of Globe X-5 Thor SRBs (KW Rocketry) that burn for 87 seconds, followed by another 87 seconds on the core RE-M3 kerolox Mainsail engine. The second stage, instead of the hydrolox engines used by every other standard booster, uses a single kerolox-powered Vesta VR-9D engine (KW Rocketry). While the specific impulse is less than that achievable by hydrolox, the kerosene fuel is much cheaper, much denser, non-cryogenic, and gives the engine better thrust than similar hydrolox engines. It also is largely responsible for why the core 3.75m stack is shorter than the X-5 Thor SRBs surrounding it, because that high density means relatively small tanks. The Gael Space Center would like to take this chance to deny rumors that every time the Laythe booster has flied, the SRBs have wrecked at least one of the core-stage fins upon separation.

Not everybody picks up the game quickly. Heck, I use it to plot the actual Hohmann transfer to Minmus; while I could do it manually, it would take me a couple minutes of fiddling around with the maneuver node to get it just right, and it wouldn't be as precise as what MJ plots.