JAFO

Ahh.. my apologies.. somehow I had it in my head that you were waiting until you had it working again with the current SDK before releasing a 1.3 version. Sorry for any confusion, @Rohaq.

That's because it still is KSP 1.2 max at the moment. For 1.3, it'll be ready when it's ready. (Don't worry.. I'm hanging on the update too.. but pestering doesn't help.)

Then you are definitely better off going with the higher deployment altitude.. less air rushing past means the fairing sections will get further away from the craft before being pushed backwards. It pays to check the fairing deployment force setting in the VAB before launch, as well.

Ahh.. thanks for that! Far too long since I've played around with KSP.. so my memory on this particular issue is spotty at best. This discussion is getting me interested in playing again, in fact. I've just checked, and my fairing setting is 10. That gives me a typical deployment altitude of 65,000m to 67,000m. I've edited my post above to include your instructions. Agreed.. but in my experimenting, the gain from mass loss seldom compensated for the increased drag losses. There may be a "sweet spot" somewhere, but I've yet to find it.

Try it with a brand new craft.. GT saves a bunch of settings for every craft you build. Maybe something got borked.

Pretty sure I lowered it.. I seem to recall GT used to install with it set to 10,000 or something like that. But it's been close to a year since I played KSP much.

Not that I'm aware of.. Very strange. Have you tried messing with the Pressure Cutoff settings to see what happens?

Do you have any atmosphere changing mods installed?

Yes, I used to have this problem. Fortunately, the solution is simple. Set the 'Pressure Cutoff' value to 1200, What you want is to press the SETUP button towards the bottom of the UI. A small window will open, and the top line, 'Fairing Pressure', will have 1000 as default. I have mine set at 10, and fairings will deploy at 65-67 km ASL. This might be higher than some people might prefer, but I found it was the point at which the sudden change in atmospheric drag will have the least impact on dV. Experiment with the value to see what suits you best. Edited to correct a stupid goof caused by my bad memory! Thanks to @MaxxQ for the correction!

<just kidding mode> Over 900 posts here, and you still haven't gotten to grips with maneuver nodes? I think I see your problem. Spend a lot less time on the forums, and a lot more time playing the game instead. </just kidding mode> Follow Snark's excellent guide and you'll do fine! Good luck!

The vast majority do, these days.. (and blank CDs are easy to obtain)

Yes, as well as KSP, I get this way at times with The Long Dark, and with Subnautica. Not having fun anymore, but still compulsively playing.

Ever heard of backing them up to CD/DVD?

Accuse someone in Northern Ireland of speaking with a British accent, and let us know how that works out for you..

Congratulations on just having offended every Scottish person on the planet!

Steam users should know better than to mod the Steam install. You should copy the "\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program" folder to another location on your computer, and mod the copy instead. That way, you'll always have a vanilla copy for identifying problems with, too.

Yep.. UbioZur Welding Ltd. Continued. Then you could turn the cockpit and chassis into a single part.

Oolite does.. but its use as a game engine is rather limited. (though recent changes to the API have made it considerably better than it used to be)

After (belatedly) reading the post before it, I realised you'd pretty much answered my question anyway. Best wishes for the future, for your and your daughter.. hopefully one day you'll have the time to return here.

Thanks for that.. this is one of my favourite mods, it's good to hear the last known bug has been squashed.

Open CKAN, go to the "Settings" menu, and select "Compatible KSP versions". In the window that pops up, check the "1.2" box and click the "Save" button. Hit the "Refresh" button, and then you'll be able to install S.A.V.E. via CKAN.

That's a cute rover.. I like it. I'm guessing it's just for science harvesting around KSP? Because at 2 tonnes mass, it'll be a real PITA to set down on Mun or Minmus.. And as for getting the Kerbal home again.. I think you could forget about that.

Nice! I liked the extended comments, too. Also, it appears Imgur albums now work properly in the forum again! Excellent. galactictaco gives a lot of good, sensible advice above.. but as he notes, that will only get you so far, when rendezvousing at the Mun. So I'd like to point out that none of the orbital rendezvous' involved in the assembly of my Mun-return lander mission detailed above, were done 'sensibly'. I launched whenever I was ready to go, even if my target was on the other side of Kerbin, and took care of all the phasing orbits by eye. A couple of times I didn't even bother with matching planes first (a fancy way of saying; I forgot!), I just kind of took care of it all on-the-fly. One tip that I picked up in a Scott Manley video, that came in handy, was this.. So you've got your catchup/slowdown orbit going nicely, how do you know when you're at the right point to raise/lower your orbit to that of your target, to get an intercept? For LKO, the magic number is 7. For instance, if you're at a 90km orbit, and your target is at an 80km orbit, the difference in altitude is 10km. 10x7 = 70, so when the target distance is about 70km (behind you, in this case, since the target is catching up), you should burn to put your Pe down to 80km on the far side of Kerbin. It's rough, so it's not guaranteed to get you a close intercept, but you will get close enough that you can work with it. This value is not guaranteed to work at much higher orbits, or other planets/bodies, but it's a starting point, at least. Some experimentation should turn up a similar value for the Mun. Finally, although GT was talking in terms of an Apollo style rendezvous, I doubt that's what the contract you mentioned called for.. I imagine it would be happy with any 2 vessels rendezvousing at the Mun, regardless of other mission details. So you don't necessarily have to land and return from the surface.. any 2 (separately launched, very important!) probes achieving a Munar rendezvous would fulfill the contract requirements. That's a whole lot simpler to achieve than an Apollo style Mun rendezvous. Edit to add: also, "rendezvous" in a contract does not mean the same thing as "dock". Once your two craft are close enough to each other at low relative velocities (and the game is quite generous about what is "close enough"), the contract will be deemed fulfilled. Give it a shot.. sure, it won't be easy, but for Cavemen, very little is. If/when you pull it off, it will lift your KSP gameplay skills to new heights.

That had to have been quite a nerve-wracking voyage.. I salute you, sir! In this case 200m/s definitely counts as a hair. I'm quite impressed by that craft, and fully intend stealing the design! I'd forgotten about the thermometer reset trick.. good call. And no, you didn't miss anything. Caveman pods can't collect data, or do action groups. I must say, I'm constantly impressed by the ingenuity and courage shown by the latest crop of Cavemen.. even after the Challenge has been running all this time, you continue to come up with new, innovative solutions. Congratulations all of you! In other news, I've been looking into the feasibility or otherwise of "stacking" antennas for Eve/Duna probes. In theory, it's possible to combine enough HG-5 antennas on a probe to contact Kerbin from other planets, so I set myself the task of determining if the quantity necessary was practical to achieve.. obviously it would need a number of comms modules docked together in orbit, the question was, how many modules would be needed? In a sandbox game, I placed 8 HG-5s around an OKTO core, then duplicated and stacked the setup as many times as I thought would be necessary. It turned out that with a Level 3 Tracking Station, and Eve at close approach to Kerbin, it took 88 HG-5s to get an 11% signal. I estimate that at very closest approach, that might go up as high as 15%. Some rough calcu-guess-timations suggest that with a Level 1 Tracking Station, something on the order of 500-1000 HG-5s would be needed to establish the same connection. And even then, Eve would be out of range for around 90% of its orbit! As for Duna.. well, let's just forget about that. So, for Cavemen considering Eve/Duna/beyond missions, there really is no option but crewed missions.

The Lander Can is significantly lighter than the Mk1 Capsule. So that's a DV advantage right there. And you only really need the Science Container if you can't physically return the experiments to Kerbin's surface. Well done!