Korizan

After some testing with Limit Acceleration: 20 m/s / Turn Shape: 60 / End fuel 1st Stage: 160 / 6480, I got some interesting results. Limit Acceleration: / Turn Shape / End fuel 1st Stage 20 / 40 / 328 --------- 17 / 40 / not tested 20 / 45 / 338 ------ 17 / 40 / Failure Roll 20 / 50 / 250 -------- 17 / 50 / 207 20 / 55 / 194 ------- 17 / 55 / 212 20 / 60 / 160 ------- 17 / 60 / 175 20/ 65 / 105 ---------17 / 65 / Not Tested ------------------------------------------------------ As you can see there is a very fine line between max fuel efficiency and failure (3m/s to be exact) So I wouldn't feel bad about having your rocket roll. Also I noted some heating and air resistance on the 20 m/s flights. So personally I would take the 17 / 55 / 212 profile as it appears to be reasonably safe and a good fuel efficiency. But the choice is yours and happy flying

Success !!!!!! (Mechjeb 2.5.0.0) Rocket (not sure what is under your fairing) sooo... [uF] = Under Fairing Core rocket Mk7 / Advanced Reaction Wheel Module, Large / X200-32 Tank / X200-8 Tank / RE-I5 Skipper [uF] / Rockmax Decoupler [uF] / AE-FF3 Fairing / S3-7200 Tank / S3-14400 Tank / S3- KS-25x4 Engine Boosters (2) Aerodynamic Nose cone / S1 SRB-KD25K (Hydaulic Detachment Manifold ) This thing has LOTS of power show 23.19 m/s Acceleration on liftoff sooo Mechjeb Assent Guidance Limit Acceleration: 20 m/s Force Roll - defaults (need to turn it over because of boosters or turn it on build) Edit Ascent Path Turn Start altitude: 0.5 km Turn End Altitude: 60 km Final flight path angle: 0 Turn Shape: 60 ---------------- End fuel in first stage @ 80km orbit 160 / 6480 Will try to refine that some should be able to get more from this rocket NP. Let me know what is under that fairing and try my settings, but it looks like your rocket is just fine

Can I get a part list from top to bottom. The picture helps but to replicate I need the exact parts. In other words what is under the fairing (AE-FF3) ????? Why because I want to try and make the thing fly myself (I will use mechjeb) if I can then I will tell you what I did if I fail then you will get those results as well.

Turn off automatic altitude turn just like 2.5.0

I play Orbiter from time to time so when I saw this on steam well there is just no way I could pass it up

Not bad except it is more like your kayak is going over a water fall. fast strong currents to zero in a blink of an eye. The new effects make use of drag and lifting bodies. So any rocket that is on an angle is actually getting some lift from the atmosphere. The problem is when that atmosphere disappears, suddenly and you don't have the lift anymore so it is all down to momentum to keep you going in the same direction or you where trying to turn and suddenly no resistance , the result is the same a flip. I ran a test last week for fun to see if I could measure the atmo with the barometer. it came up with this; 1km = 86 % Atmosphere/ 2 = 74 / 3 = 63 / 4 = 54 / 5 = 45 / 6 = 38 / 7 = 31 / 8 = 26 / 9 = 21 / 10 = 17 / 11 = 14 / 12 = 12 So you can see that your pressure is dropping like a rock so you are going from fighting the atmosphere to nothing really fast.

When I first updated 2.5.1 it worked great in sandbox. Then I tryed it in Career and the Maneuver planner and Ascent planner stopped engaging, says it is on but engines don't cut in and I can't control it either weird. Oh and Assent and Maneuver planner needs to be moved to the bottom of the tech tree, KSP moved Unmanned Tech up near the top so it should be changed to Advanced Flight So back to 2.5.0.0 for now it works. Just edit Ascent Path to Start Altitude - .5 Turn end altitude - 60 final flight - 0 turn shape - 60 If your rocket flips it most likely means you have way to much thrust so set - limit acceleration to 15 or 20 m/s Never had a problem with any rocket with the above settings in 2.5.0.0 running KSP 1.0.2

Stupid question, never even thought about thumbnails except when I am clipping them. What even made you look for them to begin with ?

I am not how I feel about fins. Fins do help you stabilize even a stable rocket, lets face it in RL you won't be flying a rocket into space manually. There is also the consideration of keyboard versus joystick. Keyboard controls are either on or off where a joystick gives you degrees of control and that can make a huge difference when trying to control a rocket on assent. Personally I use Mechjeb simply because it may be fun at times to get off the ground manually I generally have other things in mind like fuel to get to another planet and I am happy to let the computer run the assent. But this may be the grind. For those that use mechjeb then changing in the atmosphere means tweaking the assent profile. Where if you are flying manually it may become ridiculously hard to get into space. So what does the squad do. Make it very realistic and put a mechjeb style autopilot into the game or make it less realistic and easier to fly on manual. ?

Single contracts generally are money losers or very small profit, so I tend to combine as many as I can into one flight. I had 3 different rescues at Mun yesterday so I combined them into one and used a Mk1-2 to get them. For another planet I think I would make sure I just have a seat for them and do several other missions if possible while I was there. I had 2 more that where around Kerban and took a tourist up for the third seat he got a REALLY long flight

So I was going back and testing some old rockets to answer a thread and I realized something critical that most likely gets overlooked and more important a HUGE difference from the BETA 0.90 (mind you a good difference) The Rocket top to bottom (this rocket will get you into orbit) MK16 / MK1 + (MechJeb 2 Module) / Heat Shield / TR-18A / FL-T200 / LV-909 / TR-18A / FL-T800 / FL-T800 / MAIN ENGINE You can replace the (2) FL-T800's with (4) FL-T400's or (8) FL-T200's with the same result. [Notice it has NO fins] The Main engine is the fun part. I had a LV-T45 "swivel" (THIS ENGINE CAN GIMBAL) for a main engine and it flew into orbit just fine. For fun I replaced the LV-T45 with a LV-T30 (it has more power right but it CAN NOT GIMBAL ) Well that is where it got interesting the rocket did a flip @ 6500m and was just uncontrollable. Placed (4) Basic Fins at the bottom of the Rocket and it was stable enough to fly into orbit but the fuel efficiency was terrible. A tiny change for more realism (a good thing) that is most likely driving some players up the wall when they first start out. What makes things worse is there are several good tutorials out there for 0.90 on how to get into orbit but they used the LV-T30 which worked just fine back then. However now it is the engine of doom without fins. Makes me wonder what other tiny little items where put in that are driving people insane.

None of my rockets use fins so..... Forget the fins you only need 1 of 3 parts (Small Inline Reaction Wheel / Advanced Inline Stabilizer / Advanced Reaction Wheel Module, Large ) Now just get one Mod Mechjeb With some rockets the SAS is not even needed. Mechjeb Assent guidance - pick and Altitude of 80 KM and select "Edit Ascent Path" under that : Turn Start Altitude - 0.5 KM (that is right I start my gravity turn at 500 Meters) Turn End Altitude - 60KM Final Flight Angle - 0 Turn Shape - 60 (This work out as the most efficient for fuel [50 and 70 use more fuel on my rockets]) And my way is more fuel efficient then mechjeb's default settings (40 is to low an angle you run into atmospheric heating and drag) And that is it, with the SAS on a rocket most rockets will fly. You will struggle, initially with the game and you just have to follow the guides other people have laid out till you get an SAS but after that you are good. One thing of note, if your rocket has way to much TWR (Thrust to Weight Ratio) you will need to limit your acceleration to 15 or 20 m/s. (If you do it means your rocket is OVERPOWERED) I should take pictures of rocket designs and post them for those that need it.

Sadly I can't think of any mods that might help you. It is a question of does the atmosphere effect the drag like it should and how is the atmosphere worked out. Did they use a log^ to create it or it just hard boundaries at certain altitudes, I don't know. Another thought may be a case of truncating you don't know how the game is calculating its numbers, truncating can some serious deviation.

I see a lot of comparisons stating the SRB's are just not as good as Liquids Well lets look at this from a different point of view. Why should SRB's be as good as a liquid core ? If they should be as good then why in RL do you see so many liquid core rockets and very few solid core rockets. Most solid core rockets tend to be small. So I don't believe they have nerfed SRB's to much, it appears they have actually just balanced them correctly.

Very true. I am not even sure that KSP is using a thrust curve for there SRB's let alone which one they are using. or for that matter is it even worth it to add those kinds of calculations into a game.

Drag is not a constant, it will vary based on altitude. Apparently in .9 and below the atmosphere was kind of messed up to make things work. and / or the drag you are using is not the same number that KSP is using. (example drag of a single part is .2 but KSP is adding up all the parts and assigning a different drag coefficient for the rocket as a whole) So the question is are your dependencies linear or are they variant based on altitude ? That should help you narrow down the problem.

Hmm never really thought about using a SRB in space. I do use them very early in the game till I can use a liquid core. The inherit problem with SRB is you waste fuel do to aerodynamics, (you need full thrust to get off the ground but then that extra power is wasted as the rocket pushes against aerodynamic drag.) So basically I use them like they are used in RL. (I add them to a liquid core rocket to add some extra power or to get the liquid core off the ground.) As far as cost. Well when you add in all the parts for a liquid fuel rocket they are cheaper or on par. Where they really shine is early in the game where you are pushing against the rocket part counts till you upgrade. For those number crunchers out there don't forget to factor in mass. SRB are designed to burn fast and hard then you drop the mass of the SRB container and continue on. Liquid tanks tend to stick around a lot longer and as such the mass stays with you.

First I haven't built a SSTO yet. Will I, most likely at some point once I work my way through the science tree. I hate saying this, but considering the game makers are trying to emulate at least in part RL, that means SSTO should not be easy. In fact making an SSTO should be one of the hardest things to make in the game. So if the squad decides to make the game even more realistic then it is now expect the SSTO's to be even harder to make.

If you feel it is abusive then don't do it. The game is giving you the freedom to decide rather then enforce a rule. So make make it as easy or as hard as you wish and enjoy it.

Anything below 1.0 is just a beta and I treat it as such (it was just a test sometimes that means making things easier just to see what happens), .9 was a beta and as such changes where bound to be made. So I started a new career and have never looked back, get to figure it out the game all over again and try different things.

Ran into the same issue initially. If you are still using the dirt launch platform upgrade it. You will see a world of difference.

Don't forget to upgrade your the launch site. Started and new game and had no problems with the solid boosters on the dirt launch platform. Then I built a basic small rocket with liquid engines and the FL-T400 tanks. I could not get this thing to become stable, ran about 6 test flights. Added fins and ran 6 more flights same result. The weird bit is the rockets launch normal and at first glance appear to be running fine but then they just become uncontrollable. So I up graded the platform. And there was a world of difference. It went from near impossible to get the rocket on the track you want to pretty much no problem. Removed the fins and again no problem. You will notice none of the video's above are using the dirt platform. So upgrade them platforms.

As stated Jet engines are fine. Now it may be a question of the missions. I had an old carry over mission the still lists 17K + above but earlier today I thought it was changed to a lower altitude. I haven't seen any new missions but if the new ones are now much lower as they should be then we are all good. However if they are still coming up with 16 17 18 19K above then those missions should get changed not the engines.

So I love this plane, just a lot of fun to fly. Granted it is not a very original design style but you can't complain when when something just performs. Pictures : http://imgur.com/a/zmuc9 Will eventually cruise about 12,000m at a 3 degree pitch, I took the picture just shortly after takeoff sitting nicely at 11,000 Weight ~ 7.3 t Controls AV-R8 Winglets : Pitch only Delta Deluxe : Yaw only Elevons : Roll Only Engine is gimbal locked. So what is your favorite plane you have made and why ?