Redchrome

Cool. Thanks @rabidninjawombat, you rock!

Thanks @rabidninjawombat, I'm still sorting out how some of these modules work together (or don't work together). @krillin678, I noticed that the inflatable rocket parts storage unit will only hold 1 (!) rocket part, even tho it appeared to be inflated. Also, it doesn't offer me a right-click menu option for inflating/deflating it. I figured that I was just missing some necessary module. Perhaps whatever offers "USIAnimation"? I'm brand-new to looking at these config files, tho in principle I'm comfortable enough editing such things. I tried your fix by replacing with: and it does not appear to have changed the behavior of the part (still shows a part capacity of 1) even when I create a new one in the VAB. - - - Updated - - - I broke down and installed MKS/OKS, and now the part is animated and can store its full capacity. I would suggest removing the inflatable rocket parts storage module from this package, or at least putting in a big warning that it won't work without MKS/OKS. (I would suggest the latter, but that's because of my bias to minimize dependencies).

That's pretty nifty. Why so many solar panels? Why didn't you cross-brace the outriggers so they don't wobble so much, especially at touchdown? Also, why use monoprop instead of Vernier engines for RCS?

I've used it a bit more, got a bit more experience with it, and indeed it is helpful in some ways. There is definitely a learning curve tho, and it's very confusing when you're new to it. I've found that the button to show/hide the display will often be movable the first time the game is loaded, but then 'stuck' afterwards. Except sometimes, when it remains movable. In any case, it always seems to want to revert back to the original spawn position rather than remain where I put it. (KSP 0.90, on OSX 10.10.1, also using Kerbal Alarm Clock, MechJeb, and several other mods). In any case, I'd rather have it next to the other buttons in the stock launcher by default. Keep up the good work tho! I'm looking foward to the next version!

I'm looking forward to v5. I just installed this on my KSP 0.90 instance, and while the 'show/hide' button was movable at first, it now seems to be permanently stuck in one place (upper left-ish corner). I'm still figuring out how to use it, but oddly-shaped space-station modules weighing dozens of tons and attached to sluggish giant rockets or too-flexible tugs are a lousy place to start learning.

I just downloaded this mod, and I like it but I note that it does not have the RecycleBin part, which is what I was really after. I want to recycle all that space junk that I paid good money to launch. My natural stinginess hates to throw away a few dozen tons of perfectly good booster which is in a perfectly workable orbit. I downloaded the regular EPL mod to get the RecycleBin. Haven't tried it yet tho.

I had an idea to try using three stock claws together on a tri-coupler to see how well they compare to the big claw from AMT. Here's what I put together at one end of the ship: The other end of the ship used the claw from AMT, which is really awesome because it has an attachment point on top of it so it can be stacked inline against a coupler, or have a coupler and nose cone put on top of it. While the tri-claw arrangement seemed to work at first, when grabbing a fuel tanker, it started to show Kraken problems as I got close to my target asteroid: I got connected to the asteroid, but then the Kraken bit me and tore the coupler and claws off the ship in a bunch of different directions. The AMT claw however, seems to hold up just fine, and eventually I used it to stick my now-crippled ship to the asteroid (which obviously already has a ship stuck to it). The AMT claw seems to need a bit more force to grab the asteroid (0.6 m/s instead of 0.1m/s) but does the job. So thanks RoverDude for a really awesome claw! When will there be a 3.75m version?

I did eventually get the hook to retract, but only by waiting until the hook is oriented almost correctly (about like a docking port) and then retracting it the rest of the way. It takes some fiddling. It definitely will not work on asteroids tho. It either bounces off them (if still reeled all the way in to the winch) or passes entirely through them. Guess I'll have to use it on ships attached to asteroids. I suppose this also means that I won't be able to place a pylon on an asteroid, and thereby link two or more asteroids with struts.

I built a ship with a winch and grappling hook and attempted to grapple an asteroid with it. I have two problems: 1. The grappling hook passed straight through almost the center of the (Class asteroid and grabbed the ship on the far side already attached to the asteroid (the other ship was attached with an Advanced Grabbing Unit). 2. I eventually figured out I needed to be in a particular orientation to the grappling hook to be able to detach it. Having done so, I now can't retract the hook all the way. It gets pulled back to the winch and an error message appears saying "Connected parts not aligned! Locking impossible!" So I can't re-arm the winch for another shot at something else. I see that the hook seems to be treated as a separate 'ship' for many game purposes such as camera focus and the like. Unfortunately pulling on it (even when the cable is all retracted) doesn't change its 'orientation' such that it can be reattached to the winch. This would probably work much better in a gravity well, where the constant accelleration of gravity would orient the hook. (Unless the winch was sideways or upside down relative to gravity, in which case you're screwed.) Are these known bugs?

Thanks for the advice @waterlubber. The rocket that came apart did indeed have a couple of RTGs around a probe core, along with an antenna and a gravioli detector. Unfortunately I had put a Tiny probe core in line with a grabber (which is a Small) and some Small tanks. So it was pretty floppy to begin with. Once I used all Small-diameter parts for my probes, it got much stiffer. I eventually got a few more rockets stuck to it (and my docking skills have gotten much better!), nudging it closer to the equatorial plane every time (and thus making the next launch easier). It flies better than you might think, really. Now let's see if the Kraken bites me again when I try to tie this to another asteroid or five.

When I put something together I'll take a screenshot for you! Thanks for the encouragement!

As the saying goes, "Folks, this ain't normal". Couldn't have made a prettier debris cloud if I tried tho. Note that some parts stayed sort of on their original orbit.

When I first saw the cargo boxes in KAS I immediately thought of the art from this 1975 Boeing study. I intend my KAS-using cargo landers to look like this. I think I'll even build a station around Minmus that looks sort of like this.

So I've had minor nibbles by the Kraken before - ship stuck pointing in one direction in spite of torquers and reaction jets until I switched to the Space Center and back again - but last night I had my first real run in with the Kraken tearing things apart. I sent a rocket to push an asteroid and managed to capture into a really elliptical polar orbit. Then, having read about people putting multiple rockets on a single asteroid, decided to try it. Got two ships clamped onto the same asteroid! Woohoo! Only problem is that they were pointed 90 degrees to each other. So I tried moving both of them to a 'flatter' spot on the asteroid where hopefully I could get both pointing sort of the same direction. When moving one of them (the original one I had attached to the asteroid), I found that if I had both RCS and SAS engaged at the same time, the ship would shake violently and RCS would fire lots of directions trying to control it. The shaking got worse the farther I was away from the asteroid/other ship. This makes sense based on what I saw in HarvesteR's talk at unity 2013, as an example of compounding floating point variations. I got both rockets moved around and pointed at about 20 degrees from each other, both aimed roughly at the center of mass. Firing both at the same time was controllable and looked pretty cool in a wacky kind of way. Looked even more cool to have this thing flying over Kerbin's south pole. I wanted to take a screenshot, had to look up how to take a screenshot, went to remap the keys (function keys don't work quite right on my Mac for OS reasons), switched back to my ship.... and suddenly the Mechjeb dialogs all go away and when I look at the map view my ship weighs 0.1t and there's a string of debris there. Oops. Guess I should have learned about savefiles sooner. My ship (admittedly the more structurally unsound one) was reduced to its probe core. the rest of it was in a string of debris across several hunded km. The 'explosion' was violent enough to cause most of the debris to almost stop in its orbit and start falling toward the planet. Somehow it even slowed the whole asteroid and put it on a suborbital trajectory! (Tho not quite as straight toward the planet as some of the other stuff, the periapsis was lowered from ~90km to ~53km). That's not good. I've spent too much time nudging this thing around, I'm not giving up on it. Is any of this debris a usable ship? Yes! One of the rockets (the second and sturdier one) is still functional. So I try to re-capture the asteroid with the working ship. Crap, the grabber seems to be 'jammed' and won't clamp onto anything and can't be disarmed/pivoted (no such options visible in the right-click dialog for the part). Quit game, restart game. Aha! Grabber can be 'reset' now by disarming and rearming it. Why won't SAS hold a pointing at the target now? It'll stabilize, point prograde, retrograde, normal, antinormal, radial, antiradial, but won't point towards the target (button isn't available, even tho it was working before). Oh well. Grabbed the asteroid again with manual pointing. Nudged it back up into an orbit that won't decay. Not pointing exactly at the center of mass. Navball is screwed up, says I'm pointing near opposite the center of mass. Unclamp from the asteroid... now SAS is working properly again. Reattach to asteroid. Not perfectly lined up, but as long as I don't thrust too hard it's controllable now. So it was a bit of an adventure... but that's what real spaceflight is like. Stuff goes wrong and you have to figure out how to fix it with limited tools and limited time.

Thanks KospY! I would send you a few milliBitcoins or $$ if you have a donation link.

Yeah, so I've discovered. Oh well, now I have a better idea of what I was looking for! Thanks for the reply!

@RoverDude, I paypal'ed you a tip. Keep up the amazing work!

D'oh! I was looking for this mod for days because I really wanted to play with that grabber, but since this mod isn't on your USI index page, I didn't find it until today... oh well, sounds like it might have broken on the shores of 0.90 anyway. I'm really looking forward to the parts coming out!

Regolith was it! Thanks! I kept finding the other two you linked to, and RoverDude sounded familiar but I didn't see the parts I was looking for until you pointed it out. I will have to experiment with Tweakscale. Thanks again!

I'm looking forward to this being updated to 0.90. Spheres make sense for storing liquids and gases when you don't have to move them through tunnels or down roads (most modern rockets are ~12ft-diameter cylinders partly because of atmospheric drag, but mostly because of road transport issues). I really want to put fuel spheres on my space tug designs.

Some time ago when I was still playing with the demo version of the game, I saw a mod discussed on the forums which had large, tiny, and possibly extra-large diameter grapplers for grabbing asteroids. I had thought it was part of a toroidal space station/asteroid mining mod, but I'm likely misremembering. Now that I have the full game, and I'm having fun pushing asteroids around, I can't find that mod again in spite of looking for what seems like a long time. I'd really like a grappler that's less 'whippy' when attached to an asteroid. I built a three-point grappler using trusses and three stock grabbers, since some people on the forum had said that worked for them, but I've not yet tried it and it seems like an awful kludge, and probably much heavier than alternative methods. I heard about the 'pull' method of moving asteroids, but it seems a bit less realistic, and I've yet to try it. Can anyone help me find the mod I'm thinking of? (Hopefully it'll be updated to be compatible with 0.90). [EDIT]: Regolith by RoverDude was what I was looking for. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/100162-0-25-Regolith-an-open-ISRU-and-Resource-framework-Technical-Preview