Chaos_Klaus

The navball shows the angles for azimuth (along the horizon) and altitude (above and below the horizon). So it always shows your vessel's orientation in relation to the surface. The blue area is the "sky" and the brown area is the "ground". Both are separated by the artificial horizon. The navball does switch its orientation when you pass into another SoI.

Be careful with your staging. Put the parachutes into their own stage. Only deploy them when your surface speed has dropped below 250m/s. KSP puts the chutes in the same stage as the last decoupler by default. That way they are triggered too early. I don't know why Squad does not change this ... When reentering from orbit, make sure you set your periapse at around 30km. If you set it too low, you run the risk of not slowing down enough. Then you would never be slower then 250m/s and could never delpoy the chutes ... which is bad.

I just found that out recently in another thread. I always wondered why shortcuts had that option ... I still do, but now I know that it actually has consequences.

Do you run KSP via a short cut? This shortcut would need the approroiate folder set correctly. KSP won't read the config files correctly if it's not.

You need to press R to actually activate RCS. To use the translation capabilities, use the keymapping: IKJL and HN.

they switch, because they run out of intake air. staying below 350m/s is not advisable, becausethe engines would produce more thrust if you go faster. Also, 350m/s is just above the sound barrier already so there is really no reason to not fly faster.

The problem is that by default KSP puts the chutes in the same stage as the last decoupler. That way you stage them before entering the atmo. You need to move them to a seperate stage so that you can stage them when you are slow enough.

You want to exit Kerbins SOI toward Kerbin's retrograde. However, you dont want to actually burn exactly on the day side of kerbin. Gravity will sling you around while you move towards the SoI edge. You need to burn at the right ejection angle. Take a look here: http://ksp.olex.biz This will tell you the ejection angle for your specific transferburn. Alternatively, you can always just drag the maeuvernode around on the orbit to align your exit vector with kerbin's orbit. You actually want to do the escape and the transfer in a single burn in LKO. This way you take advantage of the Oberth effect and it will only take a hand full of m/s more than ascape velocity to get an encounter. That's why there are these low numbers on the delta v map. Those maps always assume you do things in the most efficient way.

Well. I have the same problem. I don't know what version made the changes, but at some point I noticed that even rockets with relatively low part count would give me 10FPS on launch AND ingame time would be slowed down to at least 1/3. Ascent takes ages! I think you answered that yourself. 64bit/32bit matters, because 32bit can only adress 4GB of RAM. With windows running, that makes my game unplayable when KSP has about 3800MB. Also, KSP can only use a single CPU core. IF it could tap into the other cores it could surely run faster. Why should 64bit win not use more than 8GB of RAM? Source?

While it is not more efficient, it is still completely doable. My old Apollo 11 recreation launched on a 3.5m launcher. You just have to be extremely careful about engine choice and how much fuel you bring. On the mun, you can use a single Spark and a few round-8 fuel tanks to launch the MK2 lander can back into orbit. The desent stage could use a Terrier with, say two T200 fuel tanks. Or you could do the whole lander in a single stage.

Every part will create body lift now. I don't know how they handle the mk2 parts now. Could be that the y have the same lift model as the wings (that is different to the rest of the parts). MK3 parts should be safe to use though. - - - Updated - - - No ... the lift is not applied "upwards" as seen from the part. It is based on angle of attack. So if you attach mk2 parts at the top of your rocket, it is the same like putting giant fins there. Use a small MK3 tank. Or .... efficiency and send up a LFO tank without oxodizer. It's not hard. Just make sure you deactivate fuelflow from this tank.

KerbalX has no heatshield? Because with a heatshield you can out your pe at 30km coming from minmus, no problem. Engines also can take a lot of heat. You need to reenter "backwards" with the capsule pointing retrograde.

One thing small SRBs like the seperatrons were used for, is on the Saturn V. Prior to an upper stage ignition, tiny SRBs would accelerate the rocket just a little to settle the liquid fuel at the bottom of the tanks. That had to be done, because you can not feed fuel to the engines in weightlessnes. Russian rockets (for instance the Soyuz or any other launcher of the R-7 family) have this characteristic grid of struts between the lower and the upper stage. They actually fire the upper stage while the lower stage is still running and the flames exit through this grid until the lower stage is dropped.

I generally don't bring SRBs to space. Their Isp is so low that they are just too heavy for the little delta v they give. Lower stages get too large because of that. The one thing SRBs are good at is producing lots of thrust for cheap. I almost never launch something without SRBs.

Hm. Two stack nodes. This opens new possibilities. Can both be used simultaniously.?

Well, this rapid decceleration is completely stupid and was only possible due to the wrong aerodynamic calculations before 1.0. KSP approximated the shape of an object by it's mass. That resulted in every object having the same terminal velocity. Ridiculous. What do you expect would happen if a giant asteroid hits earth head on? You are comparing apples to oranges in many ways here. 1.) The problem is not about heating, it is about braking. 2.) Space ship two and and White Knight 2 are planes, using lift to get into shallow trajectories. 3.) Suborbital trajectories are totally possible in KSP, just not straight up and down. (depending on the aeodynamic qualities of the vehicle) 4.) Kerbin is very different from Earth, as it is way smaller, while the atmospheric hight is similar. Orbital speed is way higher in LEO (7.8km/s) than in KEO (2.4km/s). On earth that means that you need a heatshield to bleed of that horizontal velocity. In KSP, using realistic aerodynamics, there would be no dangerous heating at all, due to the lower speeds. Ontop of that the path through theatmosphere is quite long, so there is plenty of time to slow down on a shallow trajectory. Squad had to increase heating to get some heat going on. no.

Aside from the airspeed, note that air breathing engines have a certain altitude at which they magically stop working.

Take a look at these two forum posts: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/117069-Great-New-Physics-Thread%21?p=1894742&viewfull=1#post1894742 http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/117069-Great-New-Physics-Thread%21?p=1940443&viewfull=1#post1940443 They take a close look at Temperature and Pressure on post 1.0 Kerbin. The model follows some kind of standard atmospheric model that was scaled to fit Kerbin. The speed of sound changes with these parameters.

Well, that mod is obsolete, because KER actually has a partless mode that can be activated in its settings.

You need to use the brackets appropriately. rearranging the Rocket Equation: DV = Isp * 9,81 * ln (m0/m1) to solve for the mass ratio m0/m1 goes like this: DV / (Isp * 9,81) = ln (m0/m1) _______ // devided the whole equation by Isp * 9.81 so that it cancels out on the right side and appears on the left EXP( DV / (Isp * 9.81) ) = m0/m1 ______ // here I did the dance with "ln ()" beeing the inverse function of "EXP()" =EXP(DV/(Isp*9.81)) ________________ //this the spreadsheet friendly version without spaces. Now that you know the ratio between m0 and m1, you can calculate how much fuel you need to bring in relation to your dry mass (payload+engine+empty tanks).

In general yes, but the drag coefficient also changes with mach number (which is speed aswell ...). When you pass 270m/s you get to transonic speeds, where part of the airflow around you vehicle goes supersonic. That creates a lot of drag and might cause a lot of instability. Once you pass Mach 1 (ca. 340m/s) drag decreases again. RO ... well, I have an RO install aswell. It doesn't feel very polished. It has too many engine options. Each engine part can be clicked and you can choose like eight different setups/versions of this engine that all have different stats. I think it is overcomplicated. Someone went to town on the engine stats, but the models all look ugly. But don't believe some guy on the internet (me). One advice: Copy your KSP folder and do a seperate install for RO/RSS.

Starting from LKO, it really does not matter if your initial orbit around kerbin is perfectly shaped. The only thing that matters here is the shape of the transfer orbit. And that will have a very specific periapse and apoapse. Also ... you don't need to be a wizard to get a nice circular orbit after launch. It just takes the right technique and some practise. Actually, I don't really get how people come up with elliptical orbits, while they propably do a circularization burn. Are they not doing that maneuver accurately? Or maybe people have a strange definition of an elliptic orbit, because 100km x 105km is not very elliptic really.

Eclipse? Each other? ... prppably not. However, Jupiter was in opposition some time ago. That mean that he reflected the sunlight in a specific way (just like a road sign "glowing" in the headlights). It was really bright. I didn't see it myself, but it should have been visible during daytime, next to the sun. Those are not expensive at all. If your telescope has the standard threads, you can just go to the photo shop with it. You do need a camera with dettachable optics though. Take a look at this Scott Manley vid: He shows how you can do cool photos of planets without any kind of telescope.

Its really strange ... I never encounter this with clipping. But I also use Kerbal Joint Reinforcement.

Yes. http://ksp.olex.biz Or use Kerbal alarm clock to tell you when the time is right.