selfish_meme

I would be careful on re-entry with those airliner wings, they are not space safe.

The relevant Physx performance announcement, TLDR we could see up to a doubling of performance in some edge cases up to tenfold. http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/07/08/high-performance-physics-in-unity-5/ That's still pretty huge, but your still not going to get 1000 part count ships, maybe 400-500, and you could probably run two of those ships close to each other without too much degradation. Dock them however and it's back to slideshow.

I should say core instead of thread - - - Updated - - - Stupid mobile site

Thanks for that - - - Updated - - - Ares V by CommanderSpock - - - Updated - - - So the front page has been updated and is filling out nicely, I have some craft files I have not uploaded yet (as they are kinda sucky). I have started making the save file. I might build a quick and dirty Hermes as a placeholder to start working out the flyby and doing some rover journeys to estimate the rendezvous times. If anyone wants to make any of the craft not made yet, or test the made craft or rebuild the made craft to be better please feel free, just post the craft file and pictures up here, no need to ask, and all help is welcome. If you make a better rover or ship or base, you won't be stepping on anyones toes, the idea is for me to be more of an aesthetic director not the ultimate builder of every craft. Edit: especially if you want to do rover journeys, no really Rover journeys would be good, for the love of mick won't anyone do rover journeys! ....eh hmm I will push out the map soon.

Delta II

Yeah that Delta II needs a lot of work, shimmies like crazy when the SRB's are detached, there is no Lander just the rover, crazy stages with mono and LFO at the same time. It would probably get there and land the rover (with separatons and parachutes?) but thats it's only real similarity with the pathfinder mission - - - Updated - - - OK did some testing, gets to orbit no problem, nice to fly, could use some separatons on the boosters, if you are turning when they go say goodbye to your engine. Lots of RCS and Twitches ? Once I get to LKO Mechjeb tells me the stage has 970m/s of dV left and 1680m/s total, according to the updated Delta-V map I need 2150m/s from LKO to Duna so we might need to tweak that. Otherwise looks good. I'm going to test the lander on Duna, might want to think about a mk3 to 3.75m adapter on the ends, rather than tanks inside the bay, I think we will need the room. - - - Updated - - - What are the multitude of Gigantors for? - - - Updated - - - Yep the landing needs some tweaking, I will get some pictures up soon, there is a balance issue, plus all the descent engines were staged together giving you lateral as well as vertical thrust. Got it down in one piece but even at under 10m/s it got explody and the cargo fell out. Made for nice pictures though

Picked up a Delta II from KerbalX by GuillermoElNino download will work on pathfinder if it needs it.

Won't make any difference to fps but they will look prettier - - - Updated - - - Unity 5 = less lag for multiple large craft, single craft will still be single threadeed only minor improvements to single craft

That Ares V is just about right,, good job, I haven"t tested it yet, how much payload can it lift? - - - Updated - - - Are the mk3 cargo containers functional? I have to drop 14 to the surface we need small part counta for those. - - - Updated - - - My current DAV is an SSTO because Duna gravity is so low I wasn't even trying. Will have to nobble it a bit and add a last stage.

Unfortunately it doesn't account for acceleration, you end up landing much closer than the node, if the land is higher between you and the node you are in trouble. The node does not know the surface height, and eye-balling it gives a large error margin. You just have to almost come to a halt quite high up, to give yourself some margin and then do a burn again closer to the ground. I think it's called a step burn. Which is what you meant by safety Margin, I just realised.

OK Ares 1 work is at a good spot, I did some work on a Duna Descent Vehicle as well. Seats 6 (tick) is a tin can (tick) has multiple chutes (tick) has thrusters to control descent (tick) has enough TWR for a short hop (tick). From the book I imagined something rough and ungainly. This is what I came up with. - - - Updated - - - I think I am in love with fairings, they are so useful for crafting ships.

My Ares 1 Replica is a lot of fun to fly thread

Thanks for that, it was a lot of fun working on this and getting help from everybody. I can't wait for Yukon0009 to get back from holidays so I can fly a crew up to Hermes.

The numbers match pretty good, the real one was 3.71m and 5.5m, this one is 2.5m and 3.75m, 67% scale of original gives 2.48m and 3.68m, I purposely scaled the booster to 30m which is 67% of the real one and 58m for the whole craft which is almost 67% of the 90m of the real one. It is very close all round, I wasn't really pushing for ultimate realism but it just worked well. - - - Updated - - - Also I'm not joking when I say it's fun to fly, it is very stable, and it has gobs of margins everywhere, it could probably do a Mun flyby easily.

Updated to address some of Clivman's feedback, thank you for that.

I had a rover that was made using Venn's, worked great, loaded it in stock and it exploded on load.

Inverness was really nice, lots of scotch distilleries, my castle is there, Cawdor Castle, long story

Currently it is a combined upper stage/service module, will revisit it when I have some more time. Thanks.

Finished off the Ares 1 to a workable level, docked it with a station and landed. Testing done right?

I have a smallish smooth bearing, I can send you the craft file, it would only be one axis rotation. You can see it in use here.

Ares 1 replica 2/3rd scale for LKO (100km+) operations with a crew of up to 6, SRB first stage LFO second stage. This is a great rocket, delivering the Orion capsule with Service Module flawlessly time after time. Update 1: Less Parts, less crew, separation of Service Module and Second stage, more range, flies better, more fun, more solar panels arranged more like Orion solar panels (not the circular ones, the four in a cross). Update 2: More parts, more crew, closer to scale, this has been reworked and optimised for 100km LKO, originally I went to fix a height issue because I based the SRB height on the 4 segment Shuttle SRB's not the 5 segment ones planned and used in the test launch, that led to a paint job, a video, lot's of launches, and sad to say lots of fixes. Stuff you don't really notice till you test it A LOT. It is now pretty bulletproof, even Mechjeb can fly it to orbit no issues and look good doing it. I recommend a 2 to 3 second delay between stages, especially when filming to give that NASA separation footage. Parts: 83 Mass: 405t Height: 63.1m Width 1: 2.5m Width 2: 3.75 Operating Instructions Activate SAS and RCS (verniers to turn against SRB torque), stage SRB's and ascend as normal, gravity turn at 100m/s, slowly keep pitching over until at around 70 degrees by 10km. When SRB's are exhausted stage second seperation. Follow prograde marker until 100km apoapsis is attained. Stage fairing and LAS and then circularise as normal. The second stage should be exhausted or nearly so and can be detached. Continue on Service Module. Launch Abort System - hit abort button Action Group 1 is for chutes, if you abort on the pad it takes too long to stage through and the LES does not take the Capsule far. Action Group 2 is for Solar Panels. Thanks to Majorjim for some help with the craft and to CommanderSpock for testing an earlier version. Also Clivman for some feedback. Download Don't take any notice of the LES still being attached, twas piloting error

Do the turrets move?

The only test launch did not have orange tanks anyway https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/aqBfzhzQ6bSS095QqKvJqpymUpNVH0UP-dLU62hhw-ule7Znl_GcvvFf1O_4mYuY5Jf5ocoMCJwJJi3EtoLgJY8974U-XGNBFTvEhW18AgyYKy31qo1unS1M_UuaroZ6-VE=w313-h470-nc

I am not going for a scale replica, more of an functional/aesthetic one, if they happen to coincide then that's good but not necessary, the only reason I mentioned it was it happened to be close and the second stage was looking short. Functional first, aesthetic second and scale last.