Ten Key

I am certainly not an expert when it comes to this sort of thing, and I'm sure the other folks posting here will be able to help you out more, but I had a couple of questions based on the above picture. . . Is there a reason your throttle is not all the way forward? You're pretty much out of the atmosphere at this point, so drag losses aren't a problem. Unless you're having attitude control (steering) issues at a higher throttle setting, there's really no reason to not "stand on the gas". I'm running an older version of the game at the moment, back when the atmosphere of Kerbin had a lot more drag to it. And even in that environment, I have almost always pitched all the way over to 90 degrees by about 30 - 35 km. In this picture you're at 55 km and still only pitched over to about 45 degrees. For the purposes of getting to orbit, your rocket's velocity can be neatly split into two components-- horizontal and vertical. Any energy you spend in the vertical direction is only temporary. . .Kerbin's gravity will eventually "eat" it. The only velocity you get to keep is your horizontal velocity. The only reason rockets launch vertically is because of atmospheric drag. If Kerbin did not have an atmosphere, and there were no mountains in your way, you could launch a rocket horizontally right off the pad. In this picture, your rocket is more or less halfway between horizontal and vertical, which means fully half of your energy is going to vertical velocity. And you don't get to keep that, so in effect you're wasting half of your delta-v at this point in your flight. According to your navball, your rocket's heading in this picture is currently 63 degrees. Unless you're trying to reach an inclined (non-equatorial) orbit, you should try to stay as close to 90 degrees (due east) as possible. The reason for this is that your rocket is not sitting still on the pad. . .it already has an eastward velocity due to Kerbin's rotation. By launching due east, you pick up some extra delta-v for free. Thrust-to-weight ratio can be found with the following equation. . . TWR = Thrust / (mass * gravity) Thrust is the total thrust of your engines. Mass is the current mass of your rocket. Since rockets are mostly fuel, this number changes wildly during flight. Gravity is the local gravity field. Kerbin's gravity is right around 9.81 m/s2. If your TWR is less than one, your rocket will not lift off the pad. If your thrust to weight ratio is barely above one, it will crawl off the pad. If your TWR is too high, you will experience greater drag losses down in Kerbin's lower atmosphere. If your TWR is way too high, you might start to have control problems. Aside from redesigning your rocket (too much TWR means too much engine, and engines are heavy) you can use thrust limiters (right click on the engine, its in the menu) to keep your thrust under control. If you can't redesign your rocket for whatever reason, you could also try stagger firing your solid rockets. . .if your have six SRBs in your first stage for example, you could try starting with only four, and then fire the other two once the first four have burnt out.

Gemini had ejection seats instead of an escape tower.

This doesn't necessarily apply to your specific situation, but it's something to be aware of. It's my understanding that a ship in KSP cannot collide with itself, so for the most part the game ignores collisions between anything attached to the same parent vessel. However, if a clipped part becomes detached from the parent, either through intentional staging/undocking or as the result of a impact, that part's collider mesh will violently reassert itself. You know those practical joke cans with the spring loaded snakes inside them? Pretty much just like that.

Can confirm, the word count is rolling ever upward.

Or perhaps even turn the contract system around a bit, and let the player hire an NPC company to move stuff automagically from point A to point B once certain conditions have been met.

Those aren't bolts. They're rivets.

It looks like technically, the answer may be "yes". There is a "local play" option for single player, but as far as I can tell this simply creates an instanced "server" on your computer, which the game client then attempts to connect to. It should be private, but it seems like there can be weird connection problems you wouldn't expect in a single player game. This was the best thread I could find on the subject. Unfortunately, their forum isn't very helpful.

Huh. I was in elementary school during the Challenger disaster. We were all watching the launch on live TV and. . .well, that was my introduction to space flight. My great uncle worked at Grumman when they were building the lunar modules, and every year at Christmas time there would be new books and NASA VHS tapes on all the old missions. I burned out at least one VCR watching them, over and over. I remember the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune, but for the most part the shuttles went up and they came back down, and those old VHS tapes seemed more exciting than anything we were doing at the time. The Spirit and Opportunity Mars landings were pretty neat, but my Holy Crap We're Living in the Future! moment came when Huygens landed on Titan. Titan! Pictures of the surface of Titan! Pictures from the surface of Titan! If I live to be a hundred, I don't think anything is going to hit me quite the same way Huygens did. Everybody screws up. From the Bell X-1, to the Mars Polar Lander. . .from Russian Glonass launches to American GPS launches, and even on the ISS, everyone makes mistakes. Some are due to "unknown unknowns", others are due to simple human error, but they happen to everyone. And SpaceX is certainly not immune. The only certain way to avoid failure is to never try. The Philae lander didn't work exactly as hoped-- but it did work. It was audacious, and it was bold and it did land and it did return data. We were all cheering on my end when those pictures came back. I mean, it wasn't Titan. . .but it sure was something.

That pad looks weird without the shuttle sitting on it.

As an American, I don't really get why Europeans don't do that.

Ah. Yep, that would do it.

Huh, that's weird. Most of my flights are on F5 F9.

I'm not well versed on laptops, but the folks that frequent the following thread can probably help you out.

I love the wrap around boosters on that rocket. Out of curiosity, why didn't you launch directly into Ferdlin's orbital plane?

Mod files for Kerbal Space Program go in the "GameData" folder. Mods normally come as compressed files-- .zip, .rar and .7z file formats are fairly common. You need to have a program capable of opening this compressed file before you can install the mod. I think Windows can open .zip files on its own, but the other two need special programs to open. Once you have opened the compressed file, there are two basic ways to install the mod. I find the second method to be easier. First, you can use the "extract" command in your compression program to copy the mod files to KSP's GameData folder. This is the fastest way, but can be a little tricky-- you must make sure the folders line up so that the files go into the right place. Mod authors sometimes use different file conventions (for example, one author might compress his files KSP--->GameData--->Mod Files, while another might omit the KSP folder and just use GameData--->Mod Files) and this will affect where you extract the files to. If you end up with a second GameData folder inside KSP's original GameData folder, you extracted it to the wrong directory. The second way is to copy the files by hand. It's a bit more time consuming, but it lets you control exactly where the files go. Open the compressed mod file and find the GameData folder stored inside. Open that folder within the compressed file. Select everything inside that folder (ctrl-A) and "copy" it (ctrl-C). Next, find the Kerbal Space Program directory on your hard drive, open it, and then open the GameData folder. Use the "paste" command (ctrl-V) to drop the files into KSP. And that should be it. . .your mod should be installed. I'm running KSP on Windows, so that's what I'm familiar with. I assume installing mods works exactly the same way on Linux or Mac. . .but "install" makes it sound more complicated than it really is. Adding a mod to KSP is just copying files into the right folder. The game does the rest.

Good eye. I skimmed through that manual during my own search and completely missed that. If we take the internal diagram of the Soyuz booster from page 233 of that manual and lay it next to a slightly enlarged cut out of the actual booster from that image. . . . . .we can see that the line from that red external tank goes into the booster right where the peroxide tank would be. Both the nitrogen and the peroxide tanks are tori (donut shaped), so there's only one of each type of tank, even though the diagram makes it look like there are two of each. Nitrogen is fairly benign, but high-test peroxide likes to decompose on its own, and since the process is exothermic it's self reinforcing. In a sealed tank, this decomposition will cause the pressure to build until the tank ruptures. Those red cylinders may be used to mitigate pressure build up in the peroxide tanks, but I don't know why they'd be removed before roll out. As far as I can tell, the peroxide isn't added until the rocket is on the pad.

I regret nothing.

Will this expansion be available for console versions of the game?

Yep. Sometimes, it is just that simple.

This video is misleading. Scott Manley is correct in that a perfectly rigid rocket will not benefit from a puller configuration, since the thrust vector is always locked relative to the rest of the rocket. However, rockets in KSP are rarely rigid, and if you watch that video all the way to the end you can see that introducing even a small amount of flexibility does result in a pendulum effect. For launch vehicles this isn't necessarily desirable. . .we want the rocket to be able to tip in a controlled manned. But for a tug operating in space, it does help. In a puller configuration, any sort of wobble or flex in the system will naturally damp out when the vehicle is under thrust. In a pusher configuration, it's apt to get worse. There's a reason tow trucks are favored over push trucks.

I did some digging and I can't seem to find anything conclusive. Given the handles, the color and the loose hoses, I would be stunned if they weren't removed before flight. Part of the launch prep for the Soyuz rocket involves installing batteries, so it is possible the tanks are some sort of power supply. Another theory I ran across is that they are part of some sort of temperature and/or humidity control system. One thing I did notice is that these tanks seem to be missing from Soyuz rockets launched from the ESA's facility at the Guiana Space Center. . . Roll out at the Russian cosmodrome. . . The rocket below has reached the launch pad and the tanks are still attached. You can see the hoses go into the sides of the boosters. I found a basic diagram of those boosters (Pg 22 of this manual. WARNING PDF) and it looks like there are small peroxide and nitrogen tanks just below the kerosene tanks, and right about where those hoses look like they attach. Those red cylinders may be part of a gas purge for the peroxide tanks prior to filling. That's my wild guess. In contrast, here are two pictures of a roll out at the ESA facility. Note the missing tanks.

No, you won't have to repurchase the game.

For main propulsion, yes, I agree. But I think there's room for an efficiency bonus on the attitude control bits. Not an increase in torque or thrust, but rather a small but noticeable reduction in consumable use. This would primarily affect docking and landing operations, where you would expect the pilot to be the most useful crew member. Scott Carpenter's misadventures on his Mercury flight would seem to be a real world example of this. Changing the efficiency of the propulsion parts would negatively impact the educational portion of the game (was that dV boost due to the pilot, or the Oberth effect?), but KSP doesn't model attitude control well to begin with so I don't see the harm.

Honestly, I think the problem is that Gene isn't talking the whole time. I would cut the first two paragraphs entirely. . .they break up the immediacy of the scene, and don't really convey any information necessary for the rest of the piece. I would also cut out the dialog between Jeb and Val. . .this scene isn't about the dead pilots. It's about Gene. It's about Gene's connections to, and perceptions of, the deceased, the program at large, and the audience listening to him speak. Let the reader see what happened through Gene's eyes. Let him tell the reader how, at first, there was no indication as to what the argument was about, how there seemed to be no reason for the escalation. But as the words grew more heated, and the accusations more wild, those who knew the two of them could start to feel the ghosts, Jeb and Val's dead comrades egging them on through the guilt of their own survival. Let the reader feel Gene's pain at the loss of two friends, and the weight of the burden of having to pick up the pieces and carry on. Let the scene be about Gene.

I see this a lot in Kerbin orbits below about 100 km. Above that threshold, the problem seems to mostly go away. But in a low orbit of 70-80 km, I can watch the maneuver indicator drift away from the heading indicator with no time warp at all. I usually have to correct after 1-3 minutes or so.