QuantumInc

Bug Report: negative tank cost, same bug as above, cost of fuel in tank does not affect the total cost If you cycle through the various things IFS tanks can hold the cost does not change. Each tank has a certain cost specified in the files; this becomes the total prices when the tank is full. As you cycle through different resources the tank can contain the total price when full remains the same. Of course the value of the the resources vary in value. When empty the total value varies wildly and is negative for most resources. Recommendation: Code patch so that the tanks are empty by default and the listed price becomes the price when empty.

I launched a mission to explore Duna, Ike and Dres. It would launch four probes, two to land on Duna, two with ScanSat equipment, and then it would rely on drills to refuel. As I approached the Duna system I launched the ScanSat probes only to realize they can't rotate. So I created a seperate opened it in NotePad++ and changed the small inline batteries into small inline reaction wheels. After creating a test ship with only three parts I studied what the parts looked like in the save file code, and I changed the name and the block of text determining it's function while leaving the text defining it's position and other qualities the same. Since the parts have the same size and shape the altered probes worked fine. Later I landed the same ship on Ike and then realized that I had forgotten to double check how long the night was. Because it relies on solar power and because I have TAC life support installed Valentina, Bob and Bill would die from the lack of electricity, and simply turning off the drills and refinery were not enough. So using the power of Kerbal Attachment System and Hyper Edit, I teleported them some new batteries and had them installed onto the ship. Maybe I should simply double check things before I launch my craft rather than cheating...

My situation: I've accepted contracts to perform experiments on the surface of Eve. As career players know these sort of contracts require you to visit several small areas in a cluster while carrying a specific piece of equipment. Thus you need to not only land on the planet but aim your landing, and then travel horizontally somehow. Of course the easy method is to install the right mod, or build a tiny rover, but here at KSP we don't do things because they're easy. So I've designed a high lift rocket powered aircraft. I've tested on Kerbin, but not Eve. To be honest although I've logged many hours in KSP I have yet to fly an aircraft to or on another planet. The high gravity of Eve and Jool multiply your weight, and thus the needed lift and thus presumably the size of your wings. In addition you can't use jet engines. Though any rocket plane will still have less range than the equivalent jet plane, or a plane using a electric engine from a mod. Eve has a notoriously thick atmosphere which I believe will increase the lift provided by the wings, but also increase drag, making high speed travel impractical. Though I do believe a slower craft with an excessive number of wing parts could maximize the advantage of lift and minimize the disadvantage of drag. A rocket powered craft should glide most of the time, and only use low throttle bursts to maintain speed without losing altitude, and also during take off and turns. On Duna, I am guessing the reverse would be true. There will be low drag, but also low lift. You could compensate with extra wings, but I would imagine a better solution would be to throttle up your rocket engines and travel at high speed in a quasi-ballistic arc. The orbit line need not reach your destination, but you ought to travel fast enough to make it visible. High speed increases lift which will help you stay aloft, but you will still be burning plenty of rocket fuel. Stopping might be tricky, but will either require excessive parachutes or excessive turning ability. Laythe, so I've read, makes flyign easy. With low gravity, and a similar atmosphere anything that can fly on Kerbin will fly better on Laythe. Jool would be similar to Eve except that landing is obviously not an option, and returning from low altitude flights is barely an option. On a related note, how does one deliver a flyer into space in the first place? The most obvious answer is to make a capable space plane, but I don't have to in game technology or the personal KSP experience for a space plane, and I don't want to borrow someone else's design. Straping two planes to a mother ship is easy enough, but launching it from the KSC launch pad seem to require that the drag producing wings are near the bottom, but also requires that it can jettison stages at various points in flight without anything impacting the wings, which ofcourse extend fairly far. With nuclear engines, a sufficiently large mothership can make the journey and drop off the flyers at low orbit, though I wonder if there are any tricks for staying intact on the way down. Obviously I am most interested in the situation I've described but I also wanted to open up to discussion to flight that utilizes the atmosphere of other planets, and also getting an aircraft from the KSC to another planet.

Anything small really. All of the things that would otherwise end up placed randomly around your command capsule. Science equipment, batteries, probe cores, various other stuff. Certainly in you want to incorporate a piece of a smaller diameter than the rest of your craft then inside the service bay is the best. The 2.5 meter service bay can even fit a minimal 0.625m probe.

KAX (Kerbal Aircraft Expansion) and the USI Exploration and USI Heavy Cargo mod packs have electric propellers. Firespitter was the first mod with electric propellers, and thus other mods have Firespitter core as a requirement. KAX has a variety of airplane parts, including both electric and fueled propellers. The propellers from USI mods are meant from vertical propulsion, but are extremely powerful, maybe too powerful. Of course these all require an atmosphere to work.

The thing to be aware of is that is that your velocity relative to Kerbin is equal to your velocity relative to the moon plus the velocity of the moon itself. To get closer to Kerbin you have to reduce your velocity relative. If you are moving in the opposite direction as the moon when you leave, the resulting velocity relative to Kerbin is your velocity relative to the moon MINUS the velocity of that moon. The faster you are going when you leave the moon, the closer your PE will be to Kerbin. (If you go too far, you'll crash into Kerbin or end up orbiting in the opposite direction.) For the best fuel efficiency you will adjust it so that your planned orbit around Kerbin will bring you well within the atmosphere. I'm not sure the best number, but probably a PE of 10km to 40km. The downside is that you will absolutely need a heat shield to survive, and also you won't be able to adjust your landing point much.

There is still a large number of mods that are updated for 1.0.2 but not 1.0.4. What are the potential risks of using a 1.0.2 mod with 1.0.4 KSP? When then game went from 0.9 to 1.0 infamously all of the mods will rendered incompatible. I saw all my ships vanish into thin void since they all had parts from mods on them. Presumably the shift from 1.0.2 to 1.0.4 is relatively minor. The game seems to run fine, but I do get error boxes warning me that they were run on 1.0.2 but not 1.0.4 during the initial load-up. I've started a new career and I was planning on incorporating "Dangit!" and "TAC Lifesupport" for extra challenge, but they seem to only be for availiable for 1.0.2 for now. On a related note: is there any way of preventing a steam install from updating? On a another note: Can adding and removing mods potentially cause problems? I've certainly noticed that removing a mod can cause a ship to vanish if it included a part from that mod, but so far I haven't noticed any other problems. Has anyone else noticed problems?

That mod is absurdly helpful. The only way it could be better is if there was a way to show closest approach markers, and maybe a permanent waypoint for KSP complex. Obviously it isn't realistic that you could simply look through your window, or space suit face plate, and see a giant arrow pointing where you need to go. Well, until you research advanced LED tech it isn't realistic..however it is practically expected in video games. It can be extremely hard to tell if you are going in the right direction. Showing a symbol on the navball helps, but it seems silly when I have my rocket do a 360 just to check which direction the target is in.

Of course technically one can already build a "vomit comet" in KSP, though it would be nice to have it provide extra XP, since that is one of the particular ways astronauts are trained IRL. Maybe they could have a EVA tutorial mission that limited to the inside of a Mk3 based Vomit Comet. I don't think you could ever build a vomit comet large enough to have a craft fly around inside. However technically any time you have a craft that is in free fall, but moving slow enough or high that air drag isn't significant, you get a limited time to practice your "Zero G" maneuvers.

I keep thinking one could have "Kirbidium" as an analogue to Iridium, an element that's extremely rare on earth, but relatively common in asteroids. I've heard that the highest concentrations on earth are actually buried asteroids, though it is also found alongside platinum. "Rocky" asteroids could be a source of fuel. "Metallic" asteroids could be mined for various money making materials. Though if it is possible to mine xenon alongside other fuels, it could easily act as a money making material.

There are a variety of mods that introduce various ways to get electricity. It seems like almost every major mod pack includes a part for electricity. Though if all you want is a generator the "On Demand Fuel Cells" mod seems like the best, or at least most straight forward one. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/110694-Plugin-ODFC-On-Demand-Fuel-Cells-%28v1-0-KSP-0-90%29 I plan to get into mod making, I think the first thing I want to make is a internal combustion engine. Essentially a modified RAPIER with a tiny bit of thrust but a very high alternator, and a very different model.

I voted for "more complex" because for the sort of person who would consider spending time on this added complexity is just added challenge. Though I strongly agree that most of the complexity should be endgame material. Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of things you're forced to learn before you can even take baby steps. You need a good understanding on how to build a rocket before you can fly it, and you need to fly in through the air before flying it through space, even though flying things through space is ostensibly the meat of the game. Of course this isn't the only game accused of replacing the difficulty curve with a cliff Fortunately Squad fully recognizes the need for more tutorials. I hope they do more than simply a Duna tutorial though. A tutorial where you not only launch a rocket, but have to get it into orbit and then back down is important. A tutorial on flying planes, a separate tutorial on flying space planes. A tutorial or scenario where you can build a ship in the VAB, and when you click launch it appears in orbit around the Mun. A tutorial where you are shown various stock designs with descriptions about their features and what they're meant to be used for. In addition a button that opens a PDF that describes with text and pictures all of the features and little things you can do that weren't in the tutorials.

It's quite possible, I've lanched rockets without it, and turning SAS off can often make turning around easier. However it is obviously easier, and sometimes it is nice to be able to take your hands off of the keyboard.

I've been putting together a ship to go to Moho with four parts. The main mothership up front, a large lander in the back, a stage with the lesser radial mechjeb and lotsa extra fuel in the middle, and another section with extra fuel just to increase the eccentricity around Kerbin to help with the escape burn. With all four sections it was over 1000 tons in orbit around Kerbin. 1.4 million even after recovering as much as I could. Getting lotsa fuel into orbit is really expensive, but really necessary for a high dV trip.

The only real reason to avoid the space plane hangar is in career mode where the related parts are simply unavailable at first. A lesser reason is that getting a space plane into orbit is far trickier than getting a vertical launch rocket to orbit. Of course a space plane that can't reach orbit is simply an air plane, which are plenty fun and useful in the game. A lot of people decide that they greatly prefer using space planes to get things into orbit. The drawback is that building and flying one is more complicated, and more expensive, but the advantage (in career) is that if you can land it safely it is vastly cheaper. There are different skills to develop in this game. Like any good "sand box" game you can go in any direction, there is a wide range of things to do, and often different skills you as a player will have to develop in order to do them. There isn't a specific order that you have to learn these things. If you want to master the art of building airplanes first, then that is simply your choice.

I have not really launched any interplanetary missions. Though I did notice that the space station scenario has a ship orbiting Duna and I eventually found a trajectory to get it home. Having your ship approach a planet from behind works well, also aerobraking. I noticed that in Launch Window Planner, there is a good trajectory to Moho for day 39. That will be my first interplanetary. I already launched a lander to Minimus with a single LVN and an exorbitant amount of fuel. With the well..minimal...surface gravity I've been able to hop to different spots over a dozen times (4 long range hops, mostly because of temperature scanning contracts). While I was planning the trajectory for my minimus lander I accidently happened to get a munar flyby, I adjusted it to an intentional munar flyby, using the chance for a gravity assist and to test out the orbital science mod. When planning a trajectory back to Kerbin I again just happened upon a munar flyby, and then took the time to make a proper gravity assist flyby. Well, I suppose that the Mun is inbetween Minimus and Kerbin, so you ought to fly past it going both directions!

Thank you for your answers. In retrospect the fact that air/ambient pressure is subtracted from the exhaust's pressure seems utterly obvious. F = q * Ve + (Pe - Pa) * Ae still doesn't seem right, I would think that F = q * Ve = Pe * Ae in vacuum, and in atmosphere Ve would be less meaningful since the exhaust immediately impacts the air. I guess I'll have to take your word for it OhioBob. I guess this is another element of the game where they simply did it in a unrealistic way for 0.1.

I suspected for a long time that if I bought this game I would become instantly addicted to it. After playing a game called "Space Engineers" for 400 hours over Christmas I decided I needed to do something different...well not completely different. I played through the demo, the introduction to orbital both intimidated and intrigued me. Several hours later I decided to bite the bullet. My first rocket in career mode had three parts, RT-10 SRB, Mk1 Command Pod, Mk25 Parachute, it flew well beyond 5000m and conveniently landed in front of the astronaut complex. So Jeb just walked over for a beer. I spent days and nights trying to see how many contracts I could fulfill in a single contract. When I started getting contracts to survey minimus I decided it was time for my first trip to the mun. I did a 935,000 contract to test the huge Liquid Fuel Booster in orbit, fortunately it turned out that it doesn't need to be actually full. Then I started developing a ship to lift an unused S1 SRB with a rescue ship on one end, and a massive lander with a science lab on top, oh and collect data from space and test this decoupler in orbit while you're at it. There was a ridiculous amount of trial and error involved with my method. It helped when I learned about struts. Turns out the S1 SRB is more than enough to get a science lab to the mun from orbit. It also turns out that very tall landers are a very bad idea. Still with enough quick loads I managed to not only land but execute multiple hops, travel home with a minimum of fuel and collect 1527 science in a single trip. Unfortunately the game had a tendency to crash at an hourly rate during all this. Something about the transition between viewing a spacecraft and viewing a space center menu completely boggled my old computer. Admittedly this was the same computer that would automatically reboot if I made the mistake of watching youtube for a continuous 15 minutes. I suspected the CPU was overheating, a problem that appeared a few months ago and had been getting steadily worse, so maybe I should have been more cautious and avoided attempting to alter the virtual memory. Altering the virtual memory ostensibly would allow me to install Active Texture Management to solve the hourly game crashes...potentially. However when I went to the bathroom the machine overheated, froze, and refused to turn back on. The CPU had melted, finally retiring several years of active service. I was thinking of buying a new computer anyway... Although KSP ostensibly works better with 32-bit I've had no issues on the new machine so far, with or without texture management. I haven't touched the career save I fished alongside a lifetime of data from my old hard drive. Instead I've been investigating and testing the various mods. Having VOID and Engineer Redux simply tell me my delta-V is awesome, so is the launch window planner. I'm definetely including FAR. My minimus ship will feature Universal Storage Wedges for all of the DMagic orbital science instruments, and the lander will have a Karbonite scanner. The name "Quantum Incorporated" originally came from HomeWorld: Cataclysm which features a lot of conveniently placed wormholes. I figured there must be a hyper-advanced yet unprofitable corporation creating them all. As such my endgame is to used the ESLD Jumpdrive Beacon mod to make a network. The mod allows you to jump between beacons instantly, but adds fuel requirements and some complicated line of site issues. It inspired RoverDude to change the K+ mod to work better with it. Apparently the original mod developer left, but somebody else updated it for 0.90.http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/110487-0-90-ESLD-Jump-Beacons-KMs-fork-Dev-0-3c I've also been thinking for a while that I really need to get into making mods for games. To live up to my name that might mean something similar to the ESLD Jumpdrive. Though maybe a "Kerbal Space Engineers" mod that allows you use "welder" modules to move and assemble absolutely any module (expanding on the Kerbal Attachment System). Or create a black hole mod, and make people visit the black hole in order to power their wormhole generators. Unfortunately I have more ideas that I have the patience or courage to actually work on.

The generally accepted method is 1. Go straight up until 10,000m, move slower than 200m/s here 2. Turn to the ocean, the east, aim for a 45 degrees above the horizon 3. Check the map, cut engines when your AP reaches your desired orbit, which must be at least 70km 4. Right before you reach your AP tilt down to the horizon, and burn horizontally until the PE rises to where you want it, stop if you see AP and PE moving around a lot, wait until you reach the new AP and start again. When the PE is above 70km you're officially in orbit. I'd hate to say it, but there are a few mods that are ridiculously useful. Mechjeb, Engineer Redux, VOID, launch window planner, these all give you a lot of essential information, such as your delta-V. Delta-V refers to how much you can change your velocity before running out of fuel. Another important term is ISP, specific impulse, which is essentially fuel efficiency. Liquid fuel has better fuel efficiency than solid fuel, but solid fuel booster are cheap. So only use solid fuel for the first stage. All of the engines have better fuel efficiency in space than in the atmosphere. Most of the liquid engines have a similar ISP, though the short engines typically have slightly better fuel efficiency in space at the cost of thrust power. Ion engines and Nuclear engines are high tech, but have wonderful ISP in space. They are favored for moving around after you've reach orbit. Toroidal Aerospikes have significantly better ISP that other engines, but are only available at the end of the tech tree. Jet engines only work in the atmosphere and need air intakes on the front of the craft, but they have a much, much greater ISP. Generally a space plane is more fuel efficient, but many people have trouble getting one to work.

Ostensibly Specific Impulse is the ratio between thrust and fuel consumption. I calculated this ratio using the statistics presented by the parts list in the VAB/SPH but the numbers didn't line up with the discussion between other players, most noticeably for the nuclear engine which is the most efficient engine on the forums, but the least efficient in the VAB. I understand that high gravity and air drag would massively reduce the fuel efficiency of a rocket, but this effect would be dependent on the lift vehicle as a whole and not which kind of engine you're using. However the wiki lists the numbers as being different and even lists the fuel consumption rates as being different for atmosphere and vacuum. What is the relationship between atmospheric ISP, specific impulse in vacuum, thrust and fuel consumption? How do you calculate Specific Impulse? Does the fuel consumption rate for a given rocket change depending on the environment? What, it simply changes? Is the atmospheric ISP different for different planets?

ISP is a term that gets thrown around fairly regularly in these parts. Ostensibly it is a measure of a thruster's fuel efficiency, the ratio of the thrust provided vs the amount of fuel consumed. This ratio is pretty easy to calculate when you are looking at the statistics of various parts in the VAB. However the numbers didn't necessarily line up with how things were talked about on these here forums, the most notable being Nuclear engines which are known for having the best fuel efficiency, but when calculated from VAB numbers actually have the worst. Right clicking the engine of a craft it flight can show a direct measure of ISP that doesn't match up with the thrust vs fuel consumption numbers one sees in the VAB or SPH. Forum discussions also occasionally mention a difference of atmospheric ISP and Vacuum ISP and the Wikipedia shows that the two are different for almost everything, with the vacuum ISP being noticeably but not dramatically higher. Of course I assume the difference is in fact quite dramatic for Ion and Nuclear. The question: What is the relationship between Atmospheric ISP, Vacuum ISP, and the ratio of Thrust divided by fuel consumption as shown by the parts list stats in the VAB/SPH?

A similar thread I found useful: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/110174-Moving-Surface-Samples Thank You

So to repeat widely known facts relating to the below questions: the game features various actions and various combinations of experiments, (each of which requires a particular module) and areas (i.e. various surface biomes and altitudes for each planet/moon, the wiki has helpful tables). Each time you do one of these things you get science, but when you repeat the action you get exponentially less science, in addition there seems to be a maximum amount of science you can get from a specific action. When you write a report or perform an experiment you can choose whether to store the data or to immediately transmit it back home for a reduced value, and the Mobile Processing Lab that can partially negate that penalty. Questions: You can "collect" the data from an experiment during an EVA, and deposit elsewhere, (usually a command pod). What does that do, can I simply reset and reuse the experiment module? How do scientist Kerbals improve your science gain? How do you tell when you've reached the limit of how much data you can store inside a spaceship? Can you perform the same experiment multiple times with the same ship in the same biome? If yes, would you want to bring several of each type of experiment module, or is it better to have a Mobile Processing Lab and just one of each experiment module? So say you land on the Mun Highlands with several mystery goo containers and a mobile processing lab. Could I simply Observer the Goo, process that data in the lab, transmit it home, and then repeat the cycle with the same modules over and over until the science is maxed out for Mystery Goo / Munar Highlands? What if I Observed the Goo with several Mystery Goo modules, clicked store each time, and then brought it all back to Kerbin? Of course visiting the same biome on another planet repeatedly isn't really worthwhile, so how do you maximise a particular trip?