Gaarst

I am currently working on a nuclear powered ship that needs external fuel ducts between the tanks and the engine, as below: Then I thought that, as there were big heating issues with 1.0 (less with 1.0.2), it might be a good idea to add a feature that makes the fuel passing through these ducts cooled while in space. This would happen because the ducts are directly exposed to the coldness of space. So, for example, the longer the duct, the cooler the fuel. Cold fuel being consumed in the engine could then cool it down or reduce its heat output (just like real rockets) as long as the engine is active (so that there is actual fuel flow). Though this might not be necessary with 1.0.2, it could be a good thing to reintroduce more realistic heating, while having actual ways to manage it without adding any stock or modded parts to your rocket. I think it could be good thing to consider and that it could lead to interesting rocket designs to manage heat other than just an engine stacked to a tank, where the fuel would go directly from the tank to the engine without being cooled through the ducts.

Jet fuel can't melt steel beams !!! Wait, wrong thread...

Take the number of pods needed, add SRBs, launch. If AP not high enough, add moar SRBs.

Are you sure you didn't simply forgot to stop time-warp ?

Yeah, about that... Magic boulder was orbiting Ike and was removed some time ago, sorry to break your dreams

Intakes have higher drag than other parts due to their function. Closing intake reduces their drag and make it similar to same sized parts.

Parts considered as debris disappear as soon as they are >22 km (not sure) from your active ship when inside the atmosphere. So they will be gone if you just leave them falling and expect to recover them at your return. What you can do is go to map view and switch the vessel type of your decoupled stages from "debris" to any other (eg: lander, probe...); that way the game will consider them as active crafts and won't delete them while in atmosphere. Don't take what I'm saying for granted, this is not 100% sure.

Yes I do when docking: as I said if you're off your CoM, your ship will gain torque, and as you cannot predict what exact amount of fuel you consume, you don't exactly know where your CoM will be when approaching the ship to dock; so leaving SAS on, set on target (most of the time), will keep your ship to the right orientation when you translate. Then I usually deactivate it when about to touch the other ship to let them dock correctly.

Something like a sandbox mode ?

It depends on what you use RCS for. If you want to move your ship around then you have to put your RCS on the CoM. If you want to orientate your ship more easily then you have to put your RCS as far from the CoM as possible because torque depends on the distance to the CoM. When translating, if your RCS is only off your CoM by a few centimeters it will induce torque in the ship, if your SAS is not active or not strong enough to counter it. Or you can decide that RCS is for the weak and dock without it. I did it once because I forgot to put RCS on my ship; the ship was small so it was easier than I expected

Fairings are in the same categories as plane parts. Yes this is completely counter-intuitive (not to say something else)

You can always configure action groups to do what you want. Default action groups are: Space: next stage (duh) G: toggle landing gears B: activate brakes U: toggle lights (not sure) And probably a few others. You can configure your own action groups, used with keys 1 to 9. When in VAB/SPH go on the menu left of crew selection, select an action group, right click on a part and then configure what you want it to do. EDIT: ninja'd

@seaces Yes and no. That would be best case scenario for good launch window, but bad orbit orientation (ie: wrong plane, radial correction needed): 950 + 2520 + 760 + 2410 = 5880 m/s Best case scenario would be: 950 + 760 + 2410 = 4120 m/s Worst case scenario would be launching at the opposite of the optimal launch window, then transfer delta-v can go up to several km/s

That's basically it, but less exagerated. 1.0.0 atmosphere had a more realistic behaviour than 0.90, and thermal effects were high, ie: easy to heat a craft with engines or reentry; and chutes were OP: you could open them at 2000 m/s, get >30g but be fine overall and fall slowly. 1.0.2 atmosphere has had a lot of drag added, thermal effects reduced (easier to enter atmosphere) and chutes were corrected.

I always though that the number above the delta-v requirements meant the delta-v required to align orbital planes Guess I learnt something today

Yes that's right but remember that atmospheric delta-v predictions are outdated on this map since 1.0 and that these delta-v are usually for optimal manoeuvres (especially for interplanetary trips), always have more delta-v than you actually need. EDIT: ninja'd

Solar panels are really bad radiating heat. Best thing to do is put the engines as close as possible to the tanks to absorb the heat; and to radiate it, wing parts are the best: best ratio radiating area to mass. Another thing you can do is anticipate your burn and just pause during it to let parts cool down for manoeuvres that do not require much time precision.

I have been running KSP with the same potato since 2012 (i3-2330M 2.2GHz, Radeon HD 6470M 512MB, 6GB RAM) and outside the usual lags I get (since way before 1.0) I have not experienced a single crash since 1.0 I had some crashes and severe bugs in 0.90, but in 1.0 nothing. Crashes ? Nope. Lags ? Still can't handle more than 150 parts but nope. Temp gauges memory leaks in 1.0.2 ? Nope. Val glitching ? Nope. Krakens of any kind ? Nope. And this is with an almost vanilla install (only KER), so no patches outside official ones, and most graphics set to minimum. So IMO Squad did their job: their game is running smoothly on a very basic config, at least for me. And there's no need for everyone to just argue against each other: some people have bugs, some don't. Squad cannot be expected to make sure the game runs flawlessly on every single config possible, so just give them the time to fix things and everything will be fine.

Now docking mode has several functions on same key, but you can still dock in staging mode. Default controls are (I think), with RCS on: H: forward N: backward J: left L: right I: up K: down (H/I and N/K may be inverted)

With enough thrust downwards, I'm sure you can

You can do very well without gravity assists in KSP but if they are well done they can spare up to 2000 m/s delta-v for interplanetary trips. Best and easiest ones are: - using Mun to exit / reenter Kerbin system; - using Eve to get to Moho; - using Ike to exit / enter Duna system (though Ike often interferes with you at the wrong time); - using Jool to dive towards Kerbol; - or for doing anything within Jool system, Laythe, Tylo and Vall will happily help you crash into / reach your destination.

I say this because I have seen other people having the same problem on the forums. And if your rocket is tall, CoM is higher so it is less stable on the ground. If it's wide, then the area on the launchpad (either main engine or radial parts) is greater so it's more stable, or there can be several points touching the launchpad. But really, you can forget about the above as soon as you get launch clamps.

SRB: [see my signature below]

Yeah, I know about KW rocketry but having sounds for stock rockets would be really great. Thanks for looking ! I saw that one, but latest version is for 0.23.5 unfortunately