Warzouz

OK I found what disturbed KER I had 2 dropable tanks with fuel conduit going to a third tank. The two tanks where not part of the same stage. When I chained them, calculations where better for KER. Then I had another issue. My "second stage" is able to work with remnant with the "first stage" (so I jettison the first stage after the "second stage" is activated. KER seems to assume that I drop the engines which are still attached (??) But KER is not the subject here. MechJeb calculate everything correctly on the Pad, but not in the VAB. Here is the corrected file (but still goes wrong in the VAB for MJ http://n.lejeune.free.fr/ksp/moho2.zip

As it has been said, massive black hole ejects matter which is not passed the horizon. It's swirling matter at relativist speed. Some of it is pushed away. When black hole become inactive, dure to lack o falling matter, this effect disappears. On the other hand, there is the Hawking radiation. Stephen Hawking says that black hole can emit energy through tunneling. This leads to "Black Hole evaporation". This effect is negligeable for massive black hole, but could be quite powerful for micro black holes. That could lead to powering ships. Some scientists says that would be far more easier and less dangerous than harvesting anti-matter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_starship That could do some some nice KSP mod. The trick is to create a black hole...

Hmmm, when my screen turn black, except the HUD, I usually get a NaN speed and a lot of lag. If I return to space center, the ship has totally disapeared. This bug occurs quite a lot, even after restarting KSP. The only workaround I've found is kill KSP.exe process in the task manager to force KSP not to save the game.

here are the vaccum stats I get Stage MJ/VAB MJ/Pad KER/VAB KER/Pad 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 1984 3097 0 0 3 0 3699 0 0 4 866 4245 0 0 5 0 0 6743 1949 6 0 1960 1960 1746 7 2459 2828 2828 2520 8 0 724 724 645 9 2017 92 92 497 10 1134 1134 1169 647 Total 8460 17779 13516 8004 I said that KER was 13500 each, but I was wrong. The correct value should be MJ/Pad, but even though the deltav for each stage doesn't seems to be exact. for example, it says that the stage 9 duration is only 2s. That is very wrong. The rocket is built using 2 sub-assemblies (the orbital stage and the interplanetary stage) I can't post the craft file now, but I'll try at home.

Eddiew, your rover is very nice. You should have made it 6 wheeled to look even more insect-like

I noticed an issue with MJ Delta-V info. I've a quite big rocket - Lower stage is a radial asparagus - Middle stage has droppable lateral tanks - Third stage (lander) has it's fuel tank locked (so DV = 0m/s) When in VAB, the DV si calculated at 8460m/s. When on pad, the DV si calculated at 17780m/s. Why such a difference ?. I think the correct value is 17700m/s, as I did a trim to Moho and came back with 5500m/s left (not counting the locked fuel tank for landing) On the pad Notice that KER gives mes 13500m/s both on VAB and PAD (which is not good either...).

Futher more, 1.0 will change many things. Best to wait few days.

How many parts did you had ? Mine weights 400T for 900 parts, which I managed to reduce to 650, then 600 parts. The big trouble wasn't the slow FPS but the non response from the context menus. It was very hard to simply get the menus to show. Transferting fuel was nearly impossible (and ultra slow when I succeed).

Yes that was the whole point of the 3 launches. I wanted a comparison. But finally, I did'nt understant the "DV-left" I had. Something is wrong with Ker (in the VAB and flight) and MJ (only in VAB).

Space stations can be very laggy. Strange thing is that everything goes perfectly until you add some more parts and the FPS and GUI response goes rapidly down. I experienced that when assembling my space station around Laythe. Around 600 parts, It turned like hell. I had to install KAS mod to remove nearly 250 parts. Now with one of the staged lander not returned from Tylo (by design) and with few fuel tank disconnected, it's largely manageable. I also tweak the graphic options and resolution. Here is a screen when the crew arrived at the station (13 assembled elements around Laythe) (click to enlarge)

I think the new way to explore the system would be - Grap an asteriod, get it to orbit Kerbin - Build a refueling space station - when launching stuff, stop by the space station to refuel But this way to go maybe have no meaning it can only be done in late game, when most of the system is already explored.

Sadly, I didn't write down the various burn I did and as I did everything in the same time, I don't recall which burn as done by which vessel. I remember that I delayed the Hohmann ship because on of the burn was very high. By touching Moho orbit at apoaps, the cost was lower (but still higher than the other two). But maybe what I called a "pure Hohmann transfert" is not. - I escape Kerbin SOI, but stayed in a nearly circular orbit, close to Kerbin - I changed plane to match Moho - I found a gentle encounter at apoaps while burning retrograde - The capture cost was quite low All this was long en costly My "Node tweak" - I escape Kerbin SOI and burn at Moho AN/DN - I changed plane to match Moho - I found a encounter after a very small course correction - Then the capture at Moho, inclination and circularize My MechJeb plot - MJ Burn directly to a Moho encounter - I made a very small mid-course correction - The encounter was steeper, then capture burn was longer. Well, maybe I will redo it (without landing), because I don't remember the precise numbers. I've only written down the fuel I had left, but after been back, I noticed to "DV left" indicator of KER was completely wrong. BTW, landing in Moho highlands is a pain because of slopes.Next time I'll design a much flatter lander...

The magnet effect is only when selecting a docking port. I don't understand you issue. I use docking ports a lot. Sometimes I even don't use RCS, I rotate my space station and the very slow movement push the undocked item away. The only issu I've notices is when you undock something, go back to the space center and get back to the undocked part. It sometimes redock itself when they are VERY near. So I wait a bit (time warp), THEN go back to space center.

The manual (mid course plane change) and Mechjeb where fire at 2 days interval. The Hohmann was half a year later (it would have been worse otherwise)

BTW, this is my staged lander for Tylo And my SSTO

The first stage is a radial asparagus The second stage is 4 LVN and droppable tanks. The only tweak is that the first and second stage can work together, when only the core engine of the first stage is left. The third stage has his fuel locked (so it's a dead weight for the moment) In the VAB On the pad At 20km In orbit (part of the first stage is still attached) I drop the lateral engine. Now The first stage core is full and the second stage can push too. It seems that MechJeb is able to calculate the DV, but only on the pad, not in the VAB. So my DV is more near 17700m/s. (+ 2000ms in the lander). Well I like overfueled rockets...

I had some difficulties with MechJeb in my mission around Jool. It fails to give me some good route between moons. Well it failed each time, even offer me to dive into Laythe ocean and hope to get outward... So I tried to compare in a mission to Moho. I sent 3 identical rockets. - One would have trajectories calculated by MJ prokshop thingy (MechJeb mission) - One would be a pure Hohman planetary transfert (Hoffman mission) - One would be some manual node tweak (with mid course plane change) (Manual mission) My rocket has 3 main stages, each are asparagus. It's quite heavy (1130T on the pad). It's designed to lift 200T payload to 100km. But as the payload is only 80T, I keep part of the first stage while the engines (4 LVN) of the second stage are lit. My goal is to check deltaV differences on each missions. There is a 4T, 2000m/s SSTO lander, but it's tank is locked. Starting DV for each rocket : 13500m/s In orbit at 90km : 9000m/s I compared the DV of each ship after achieving a 40km circular, 0° inclined orbit around Moho - Mechjeb : 8360 m/s left - Manual : 7610 m/s left - Hohman : 6380 m/s left This is not possible since I burnt (from memory) 3200 using MechJeb + capture, and the others were higher. It's no way possible to have only consumed 640dV to go from Kerbin orbit to Moho orbit. For the return : - MechJeb calculated a 3380m/s route, which arrived with a additional 1880 to be captured (I aerobrake to avoid it) - The manual node calculation costs me 3950, which arrived with a additional 890 to be captured. - The Hohan transfer costs me 5430m/s, and an additional 700m/s. On the return, calculations seems to be more coherent. But I don't understand why the DV calculations are so wrong on the first part. I think KER and MJ calculated some false DV for my craft. It must have been higher than 13500m/s. So to go to Moho (ignoring the landing) I started with 13500m/s, arriving in Kerbin SOI, I had - 5000dv left with MechJeb calculations. - 3600m/s left with a mid course plane change - 900m/s with a pure Hohman transfer.

Your lander seems heavier than mine. (14T fully loaded). Is it as SSTO or a staged lander ? Did you have a mothership or tug at 20km ?

Well done !

For space station, why building around Kerbin then go to target instead of build it at target ? I recently finished a Jool mission (basically a space station with 5 SSTO landers (+1 staged lander), return ship and 6 orange tanks and RCS which was assembled orbiting Laythe. All 13 parts where sent every 20 minutes. They arrived within 400 days time span, which gave me plenty of time to do the double aerobrake (Jool +° Laythe). Finally I have a 400T space station on a 500km Laythe Orbit. The mission is now finished. I managed to get 41000 science points by 2 landings on each moons and some flyby. The crew went back to Kerbin. The station is now uninhabited.

I'm sure, handling flags sub-type like debris sub-type (but not AS debris) should solve this issue. It's quite stupid to have one mission planting 10 flags and ends with 10 missions after return. Further more, I'm quite unhappy with the aftermath of a mission. Everything is basically unloaded. Only Science points, Credits and reputations. Ther whould be links to planted flag, returned science and contracts. There is no "MISSION" entity in the game. Only vessels.

My first stage (launcher to orbit) as usually a TWR around 2 all the way up. This allow to have a shallow angle in upper atmosphere and get a better gravity turn. My second stage TWR is usually around 0.5, but I'm not too easy with that. For instance, my previous second stage had only 3 LVN for a 38T max payload. The TWR was 0.25 I think. I redid it with 4 fixed LVN and 4 dumpable LVT30. This allow to have a high TWR at start. It's less efficient, but I get some kind of variable TWR and ISP by toggling engines. Further more, the design of the second stage allow it to fire, event if the first stage core has fuel left (and have not beeing dropped). My Joolian payloads were largely under 200T (more like 90T), that's why the first stage had plenty of fuel left after reaching orbit.

I didn't noticed KER gives the average ISP. I'll look into it. What I call Meta-Stage is a launcher - The first meta-stage is meant to put it's payload to orbit. - The second meta-stage is meant to push the lander/return vehicle to it's target celestial body. Usually I design my "meta-stage" in classic KSP aparagus where all engines works together. My first heavy 200T "meta-stage" has 5 stages My second meta stage for Jool has 3 stages (dumps empty tanks and engines) I find easier to design this way becaus each meta-stage has a task of it's own, thus specific DV requirement.

For sure satrting KSP is massively overwhelming. It's like watching Pro Tennis players. It seems very easy. But when on a Tennis court, it's much harder than it seems. KSP's leaning curve ist VERY steep. My suggestion : start playing science game mode (or sandbox). Carreer adds complexity. Read Wiki, as it's been said. Watch few basic videos and try to redo them. Some mods are nice for beginners as it's been said. Don't hesitate to use MJ autopilot to see how it's doing it. Then try to do it yourself. Some advice : TEST your stages launchers before real launch. Test landers on ground (check ladders, batteries, solar panels...). And remember "F5" (but use it wisely).

I don't think this is possible. To distinguish manned of unmanned, you can rename ships (from a control pod or probe core). Then you can set the vehicle type (there are maybe 8 types from space station to lander and satelites).