AaronLS

Sorry, I went back and read the numbered items a couple of times thru before I saw the giant underlined heading and realized they all described the same issue I'll try those out.

I have this same issue, seems I'm on newest version 2.7.5 of module manager. Any ideas?

Mine does. I apply a force to the object, and also an equal and opposite force to the ring. Generally your ring vessel should be much higher mass than the target, so it only deorbits slightly, and the smaller object accelerates alot. My idea was to attach a solar sail that would be deployed between firings to restore the ring's orbit and prepare it for the next target. // We need to make sure we apply the force to the center of mass (AddForce finds the center of the vessel, which is not the same as center of mass and thus will cause rotation) otherVessel.rigidbody.AddForceAtPosition(forceVector, vesselPosition); // and apply equal&opposite to ourself this.vessel.rigidbody.AddForceAtPosition(-forceVector, this.vessel.findWorldCenterOfMass()); https://github.com/AaronLS/KerbalMagnetMod/blob/v00.01-alpha/KerbalMagnetMod/MagneticRingModule.cs Sorry life has demotivated me for awhile and I never really cleaned this up properly. I also kind of got stuck trying to find an elegant way to setup the nodes on the rings. The nodes floating in the center can be confusing, like fairing interstage nodes often do(I've seen the people ask about this many times on reddit in regards to fairing interstage nodes). Nodes around the edge of the ring look more sensible, but are misleading because only one node will connect and the rings will be floppy without struts.

This has taken alot of the trial and error out of SSTO design! Thanks so much! The only fault I could find is the axis's of the graph aren't labeled. It's quite confusing to begin with. It'd be alot less confusing if the markers on the X axis indicating pitch -20, -10, 0, 10, 20 etc. or whatever current scale is. Labeling the Y axis would be nice as well but obviously you'd need 3 scales for the three lines. Either way, thanks for this!

Does this mod increase deflection speed of control surfaces? I.e. if I center joystick it takes a second for control surfaces to return to neutral position, and thus feels a bit sluggish. Trying to find something that will gives me some Blue Angel snappy responsiveness

I would make a suggestion of including a description of what this mod is. I followed all the links, and they essentially just say it's a revival of the mod, but not exactly what the mod is or how it extends the stock parts. Don't mean to sound entitled, obviously you've put a lot of work into this and you aren't obligated to writeup a description. Just a suggestion. Maybe one of your users could post a brief description that would make it easy for you to copy/paste. Cheers.

The question wasn't meant to be about the Kerbal solar system. I gave that as an example only. It was meant as a question about physics. The linked article seems to deal with the affect a fly-by has on the orbit around the parent body, which is not what I'm asking about. Anyhow, not a big deal.

If I do a fly by the Mun, and behind behind the mun's direction of orbit, then I get a gravity assist increasing my orbit of Kerbin(not sure on correct terminology here, orbital energy?). If I pass in front, then my Kerbin orbit is decreased. So if I were wanting to save some dV on deorbiting to Kerbin, then first doing a fly by of the Mun on the front side is a good way to lose some orbital energy. However, I'm wondering if this matters within the reference frame of the Mun, if my goal is to capture and orbit the Mun, will it save me dV to put my periapsis on the front side of the Mun? I would imagine if my periapsis is on the backside of the Mun(relative to it's orbital direction) then I spend more time approaching and thus spend more time accelerating and thus will need to expend more dV to slow down to capture. My fairly non scientific testing with nodes indicates this probably is the case, saving roughly 10% dV in the couple cases I tried. Basically using a radial node at the midpoint of my Kerbin orbit to set my approach up to the Mun to pass in front or behind at the same Mun periapsis height, then using a retrograde node at the Mun periapsis to compare dV needed to drop apoapsis to 100km.

I watched Masterminds last night and there was a funny analogy Zach gave. I don't remember all of it, but at one point he says "No one cares about rocket boosters. They just fall off and burn up in the atmosphere." I tried to find the rest of it online or in a transcript but the only transcript I found was way off and said "thrusters" instead of "rocket boosters". The analogy is kind of hard to explain out of context, but just the humanization of a rocket booster and saying "No one cares about rocket boosters" was just a funny statement to me.

I did a fresh install last week after not having played for awhile. No mods or saves restored. I had a craft in orbit and added two maneuver nodes. Focused on Mun, then hit backspace to focus on craft again, but it will not focus on the craft. I can switch focus back to Kerbal. If I click on the craft the only options I get are for adding a maneuver node or warp to here, as if I clicked on orbital path. Yeh, so because I can't switch focus to the craft in map view, I don't get the craft specific buttons on the right. Note I am controlling the vessel though, so I have the navball.

I just read about that higher altitude change and some of the factors considered: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition26/iss_altitude.html It's interesting that higher solar activity raises the altitude/density of the atmosphere. I wonder at what altitude you would start seeing a significant increase in radiation. Enlightening point about self cleaning debris altitudes. I wonder what altitudes most of the current debri orbits at. I'm sure all of it slowly changes to a more elliptical orbit due to irregularities in Earth's density and would eventually starts hitting thicker atmosphere, but might be so slow that it's negligible. Perhaps they could put boost it to a grave yard orbit and operate it remotely. No human crew, only a remotely operated robot. They could even put a monorail of some sort through the ISS to allow the robot straightforward movement. It would cost more to send resupply missions to the higher orbit, but hopefully that would be offset by how rarely you'd send a resupply. You wouldn't need to send food or drinking water. Assuming you are now outside of the atmosphere completely, not more need for propellant (8,000 lbs of propellant a year is what I believe is currently needed for reboosts!) Probably there are certain things needed to keep the station operational. It leaks air, and you'd probably want to maintain a certain amount of atmosphere inside the cabin to support cooling electronics, but you could probably have a lower pressure and thus decrease the leak rate. I'm sure there's lots of other issues at a higher orbit. I wonder what the average lifespan of a geosynchronous satellite is, and what typical failure scenarios are. We're not speaking in concrete altitudes, so hard to say at what point these issues become actual issues. Without human crew, I'd wonder if there's a higher orbit that significantly reduces drag, but has radiation levels still tolerable for systems.

These U-2 landings look very much like some of my landings in KSP:

Had same issue. When the cargo bay doors are open, no problem. As soon as they are closed Rapiers and Turbo Jets all drop to 50%. Disabled crossfeed to block fuel in the cargo bay fixed issue. Took awhile to figure it out though then googled to see if it was known issue.

My mistake, it's the horizontal control surfaces I always have attached to the vertical fins. Still I would remove them when positioning wings/CoL. At least according to the Aero overlay, control surfaces don't actually produce lift when not deflected. If I had positioned my CoL with them attached in the below, I would have ended up with CoL in front of CoM. Before I first discovered this, my planes were not always stable, and after discovering this nuance, I can now consistently make stable planes.

Anytime you are comparing position of CoL and CoM, temporarily remove any vertical wings or control surfaces such as your rudder. They will cause your CoL to appear to be further back than it actually is.