Mad Rocket Scientist

What are the most common questions asked by newcomers to the forums? I'm trying to improve and expand my guide to the new forums.

The screenshot button can be rebound under settings>input>game>ui, the hide HUD button under settings>input>game>general. If you want to show off your craft, the spacecraft exchange is the best place. You could either start one topic for all of your crafts, or individual ones for each. You can post links to the craft files there if you want to also. The screenshots are saved to <your KSP directory>\Screenshots. Craft files are saved to <Your KSP directory>\saves\<Your savename>\Ships\<SPH or VAB> To post pictures, you have to host them with a third-party, the forums do not allow uploading. A lot of people use imgur, since it's free and you don't even need an account. You can just paste a direct link to the images (ending in .jpg or .png) and the forums will autoembed it: Same with .craft files, upload them anywhere then paste the link, it will automatically be turned into a clickable link. https://kerbalx.com/ is the most common host, since it's built for KSP, but dropbox or anything else will work. Generally steam workshop links are not used, since many people don't own the game on steam. Note that although there appears to be support for imgur albums, that does not work.

Have you talked to the nearest university? They might have a club or a department that has people that know what they're doing.

Also confirmation that BFR will be built in the port of L.A., and some new info on Falcon heavy: "Years earlier, Musk ordered Falcon Heavy canceled, forcing Shotwell, who’d been tipped off by another SpaceX employee, to sprint to a conference room and remind him that the U.S. Air Force, a critical customer, had already purchased a launch."

I can't think of any reason why not. There will just be weird relativistic effects from both the mass and the high orbital speed needed at low altitudes. Plus, the entire milky way orbits around a black hole.

It's slightly off-topic, but the Apollo LM star tracker was really impressive:

Sounds like A/B testing of headlines written by someone other than the author of the article.

OK, thanks.

That looks bad.

Kurzgesagt made a video on one way to get energy from black holes:

An easier way to destroy all the buildings than editing save files is just to use the object thrower in the alt-f12 menu.

Good idea, I just changed it.

A couple of quick questions (I'm going to be away from the forums for a bit, so don't worry if I don't reply in a couple of days): With regards to reusable SLVs: is liftoff mass the same as wet mass? Or just dry mass + payload? Is the Making History expansion considered balanced? Is Tweakable Everything, SpaceY, SpaceY expanded, KW rocketry rebalanced, Atomic age, Procedural parts, Planetary Base Systems, or Tweakscale considered balanced?

If I had to guess, I'd say fuel-rich. The propellant appears to be exiting the chamber before it ignites, which might be a sign of either fuel-rich combustion, excessive chamber pressure, or poor mixing of propellant and oxidizer. What pressure is your fuel and oxidizer? Your injector orifices look fairly large, and don't taper much, so the pressure drop may be lower than expected. I'm far from being an expert (or even an amateur) in rocket engines, so take this with a grain of salt.

Oh X-wing, why do all of your dimensions resist replication in KSP so? Attempting to make a 1 meter tube. Luckily there's some greebles on this part so I can hide how wonky it looks. Still going to drive the part count through the roof. EDIT: And I had to resort to craft file editing to make the mechanism work. Is that considered stock?

Thanks for the extra info. I'm not very well versed in jet engines compared to rocket engines.

That reminds me of sticky keys. The "Do you want to turn on Sticky Keys" dialogue still haunts my memory of early Mun landings.

Yay, complete success!

Gah, darn youtube doesn't start audio in the background. At least I'm still in time for the landing.

Those look great! By the way, editor extensions redux lets you use the offset tool without limits, and burn together (link because it's hard to track down a up to date version) or BD armory's wing commander lets you make formation flights more easily.

I don't know about official counterparts, but this is my unofficial list: These ones are hard to guess at, since they mostly come from a time when KSP was more cartoonish and based its engines on BACC "Thumper" Solid Fuel Booster - Generic RT-10 "Hammer" Solid Fuel Booster - Generic RT-5 "Flea" Solid Fuel Booster - Generic J-20 "Juno" Basic Jet Engine - Private plane turbojet engine Junkers Jumo 004 turbojet J-33 "Wheesley" Turbofan Engine - Generic low-bypass turbofan Possibly P&W JT3D low-bypass turbofan J-404 "Panther" Afterburning Turbofan - Generic afterburning turbojet, for fighter planes J-90 "Goliath" Turbofan Engine - Generic high-bypass turbofan Rolls-Royce Trent 800 and GE 90 high-bypass turbofan T-1 Toroidal Aerospike "Dart" Liquid Fuel Engine - Any of a number of experimental toroidal aerospikes IX-6315 "Dawn" Electric Propulsion System - Dawn spacecraft NSTAR derived xenon ion engine O-10 "Puff" MonoPropellant Fuel Engine - Like STS OMS, probably generic though Vernor Engine - Generic (not strictly a vernier engine) 24-77 "Twitch" Liquid Fuel Engine - Hard to say, closest to an actual vernier engine 48-7S "Spark" Liquid Fuel Engine - Again, hard to say. Engines this small are much more numerous. But the most famous is the Apollo descent engine. LV-1 "Ant" Liquid Fuel Engine - Again, closest to an actual vernier engine LV-1R "Spider" Liquid Fuel Engine - Possibly the Apollo ascent engine LV-909 "Terrier" Liquid Fuel Engine - The weird design of this one makes it look like almost no real engine, but behave like any number of upper stage engines LV-T30 "Reliant" Liquid Fuel Engine - Redstone A6 or A7 engines, alternatively Rocketdyne XLR-89-5 LV-T45 "Swivel" Liquid Fuel Engine - Gameplay based variant of above RE-M3 "Mainsail" Liquid Fuel Engine - Vulcain, F1, RS-68 Mk-55 "Thud" Liquid Fuel Engine - STS OMS RE-L10 "Poodle" Liquid Fuel Engine - Apollo SPS RE-I5 "Skipper" Liquid Fuel Engine - RL-10, Mvac LFB KR-1x2 "Twin-Boar" Liquid Fuel Engine - IIRC, some NASA design for SLS LFBs since it came with .23.5. Possibly Pyrios These ones are easy, since they have definite counterparts: S1 SRB-KD25k "Kickback" Solid Fuel Booster - SLS STS derived 5-segment SRB J-X4 "Whiplash" Turbo Ramjet Engine - P&W J58 LV-N "Nerv" Atomic Rocket Motor - NERVA S3 KS-25 "Vector" Liquid Fuel Engine - SSME/RS-25 Kerbodyne KR-2L+ "Rhino" Liquid Fuel Engine - J-2x S3 KS-25x4 "Mammoth" Liquid Fuel Engine - 4x cluster of SSME/RS-25 CR-7 R.A.P.I.E.R. Engine - SABRE Kerbodyne KE-1 'Mastodon' Liquid Fuel Engine - F-1 LV-TX87 'Bobcat' Liquid Fuel Engine - LR-87 LV-T91 'Cheetah' Liquid Fuel Engine - LR-91 RE-I2 'Skiff' Liquid Fuel Engine - J-2 RE-J10 'Wolfhound' Liquid Fuel Engine AJ10 - AJ-10, in the apollo SPS variant RK-7 'Kodiak' Liquid Fueled Engine - RD-107/108 RV-1 'Cub' Vernier Engine - LR-101 EDIT: updated with @ARS's suggestions.

Oooh, nice. I did not see that when it was released. I'm going to try to make the T-65 though. I had tried to make one previously, but been put off by the challenge of making those surprisingly square wings and nose, along with the S-wing mechanism, of course.

My earliest surviving screenshots and saves are in my .25 zipped archive, even though I bought the game in .23.5. I was copying screenshots and saves over from version to version at that point though, since there are over 12 thousand screenshots and the very first game I ever named in that zip. The very first rockets I ever made would have been in the demo though, which I have long since lost. I just unzipped it and fired it up. Here's everything in the VAB craft list: https://imgur.com/a/iVvy0bA Note massively overkill lifters, an excess of control surfaces, and sweet, sweet, soup-o-sphere "aerodynamic" designs. Also, those interplanetary tugs were as useless as you might imagine, given that I didn't have the patience to set up an interplanetary network of fuel depots, or even a Delta-V readout. And some of the earliest screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/xucqhGU

Actually, it's the heaviest commsat ever, in addition to being the heaviest thing SpaceX has launched to GEO. It weighs 7075 kg, the previous record was 6910 kg.

This is the article. Currently it leads to a 404 page on the live website.