Aelfhe1m

Pathé News Monday 1st February 1960 “A surprise announcement from Puck Aerospace Chief Executive Peadar Kincaid rocked journalists at a press conference at their Kourou, French Guiana headquarters today. Riding high on the successes of their fledgling space programme, the ambitious entrepreneurs have signed an agreement with a consortium of European aerospace companies and governments to begin developing some daring new rockets. Not content with merely sending artificial satellites into orbit around the Earth, they plan to launch probes to explore our nearest neighbour, The Moon! “While Mr Kincaid admitted that they did not have the technology to achieve even the simplest of the new project’s goals as yet, he stated that several lines of research are planned and he was confident that they would soon show real progress and have close up photos of The Moon from space within the next 18 months to two years. “Opinion amongst various experts interviewed following the announcement was mixed, with several expressing the belief that while both the Soviets and the American space programmes have demonstrated recently that reaching the Moon is just barely within mankind’s abilities now, they feel that the smaller independent Puck Aerospace will not have the same capability for many more years yet.” Pathé News Wednesday 10th February 1960 “Flying high on her earlier success last summer, Mdme Arlette Bertrand of Puck Aerospace once more climbed into the skies above South America as she took her Condor research aircraft on a survey flight 25 kilometres above the French Guianan and Brazilian coastlines during an 80-minute mission today.” Pathé News Wednesday 2nd March 1960 “Test pilot Mdme Arlette Bertrand was once again breaking records as she took Puck Aerospace’s Kestrel experimental jet aeroplane up for a short flight from Kourou, French Guiana today. Climbing almost to the edge of the stratosphere, Mdme Bertrand held her plane at more than 18,000 metres while making a three-minute speed run at a peak speed of 721 ms-1 (1,612 mph). Once again pushing her plane to its very limits. After returning safely to Kourou airport, she expressed the opinion that while she could perhaps squeeze a little more speed out of the current engines, they were operating right at the limit of their heat tolerance and pushing them much further risked explosive failures.” Pathé News Monday 21st March 1960 “Hawker Siddeley’s new experimental rocketplane was rolled out for its first test flight from Puck Aerospace’s facilities in Kourou, French Guiana today. Test pilot Mlle Marguerite Laurent was aiming to take the plane more than 85 km into the sky but after releasing from the carrier aircraft several hundred kilometres off the Guianan coast, she reported some minor control issues during the initial ascent and briefly shut down her engines while she regained control. With the aircraft once again in the correct orientation she attempted to start the engines once more, but only one responded. Despite a couple more attempts, the starboard engine refused to light again, and Mlle Laurent was forced to hold the throttle on the remaining engine at a severely reduced setting to prevent the off-centre thrust pushing her aircraft out of control. “Despite these difficulties however, she did succeed in setting new altitude and speed records with a peak altitude of 81,023 metres (50.3 miles) and a top speed on ascent of 1,524 ms-1 (3,409 mph). A second attempt will be scheduled for the end of next month.” Pathé News Friday 29th April 1960 “There were no engine problems for Puck Aerospace’s XSP-01 rocketplane today when it carried test pilot Mlle Marguerite Laurent to new record-breaking heights and speeds, reaching a top speed of 1,571ms-1 (3,514 mph) while climbing 90,986 metres (56½ miles) into the sky above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of French Guiana today.” Pathé News Friday 10th June 1960 “In their first major rocket launch of the year, Puck Aerospace showed off their new Lycan rocket. While smaller than the massive Xanthos launcher, it utilises much of the same technology although the first stage used only a single one of the booster engines, the lighter upper stage should have been capable of placing a small scientific probe into an orbit crossing above the Earth’s poles in order to take low resolution video photographs of the whole planet’s surface over the next several months. “Unfortunately, there was another failure of the booster engine, with an abrupt drop in performance just 90 seconds into the flight dooming the mission to failure. The probe managed to only transmit a small number of images before falling back into the atmosphere and being destroyed just 29 minutes after launch. Another attempt will be scheduled for later in the year.” Pathé News Monday 20th June 1960 “Puck Aerospace test pilot Mdme Arlette Bertrand set a major milestone in manned spaceflight today, by taking their experimental rocket plane up above the 100 km mark for the very first time. According to a new ruling by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), this qualifies her as the world’s first astronaut. Mdme Bertrand only had a few minutes to appreciate these lofty heights before plummeting back into the atmosphere and gliding her plane to a safe landing on the runway at Kourou, French Guiana.” === Gameplay notes and screenshots

I think the problem is the position of the disableOnStateChange field - it applies to the vessel (so switching vessels would disable it) rather than the vessel state (so changes in altitude would affect it). Try this (untested):

There are two glideslopes.cfg files, the mod used to use the one in GameData/NavInstruments/PluginData but was updated a while ago to use the one in GameData/NavInstruments/ModuleManagerCfgs instead. Make sure you are modifying the correct one. Or you can add your own custom glideslopes.cfg anywhere in GameData and put just the new glideslope nodes in there. (This is the method the Kerbinside Remastered GAP contract pack uses [see Github])

It's accessed from the WBT button on the main KSC view toolbar. Yes, sorry, got a bit confused myself there. CRP mode uses equipment. It's USI that makes use of machinery (and material kits), not WBI. I'd just been reading a post about someone setting up a USI based munbase and got the two mixed up in my head. Didn't help that they were using USI's inflatable modules. And one of my saves in the past used a USI playmode that doesn't seem to be available anymore.

Excerpt from Pathé News Wednesday 14th January 1959 “Despite the optimistic tone set at their New Year’s celebrations just two weeks ago, Puck Aerospace’s run of bad luck does not look to be abating any time soon. Mr Vincent Glasgow tried to put on a brave face while announcing another major launch attempt, and another round of failures, but the strain was obvious to everyone watching. “While the previous flight of the Xanthos rocket could, perhaps, be classified as a qualified success, there was no question that today’s launch was nothing short of dismal. The initial stages of the flight seemed promising, with lift-off and the separation of the side boosters and payload fairings all proceeding as planned. Unfortunately, this early success failed to carry through to the remainder of the flight, starting a little more than two minutes after launch, when one of the four engines on the core rocket shut down early. According to flight engineer Monty Scott, this would not have been too serious, since the remaining engines could have taken up the slack at that stage, but alas a second engine partially surrendered to the strain just a minute later. Putting even more stress on the two remaining fully functioning engines. “The rocket’s woes did not stop there, however, and when the guidance systems attempted to start the upper stage engines, only one of the two responded. With a grossly off centre thrust, the rocket began cartwheeling out of control before breaking up and exploding. A sad end to an eventful four-and-a-half-minute flight. “While the recent series of setbacks have slightly soured Puck Aerospace’s reputation with their government backers, the management team continue to express their confidence in their engineering staff’s ability to overcome their current difficulties and put their space programme back on track.” Excerpt from Pathé News Thursday 28th May 1959 “The Fates smiled upon Puck Aerospace today as their fourth launch of a Xanthos rocket reportedly proceeded without a hitch. Initial reports indicate that the one-ton science satellite was placed into almost exactly the intended orbit. The version of the satellite launched today, differed from the three previous failed attempts in that in addition to the magnetic and radiation sensors of the prior design, it also carried a small pressurised habitat containing several plants and insects. The satellite will send regular updates to the scientists here at Kourou, as they monitor the long term affects of an extended stay in space has on these organisms. The team hope to collect a couple of weeks of observations before the batteries run down and the life support systems for the small habitat fail.” Excerpt from Pathé News Thursday 4th June 1959 “Buoyed by the recent successful launch of their first heavy science satellite and the detailed information received from it, Puck Aerospace today announced that they were moving forward with a planned programme of launches, starting next year, to expand studies of the Earth from space and to partner with several companies in the use of satellites for commercial purposes – such as long-range communication and aiding in navigation at sea. “As part of this programme, they revealed that they have entered into closer ties with various research bodies in both Europe and America to develop the technologies necessary for this endeavour. This includes the appointment of Dr James Van Allen of the University of Iowa as chairman of their scientific advisory board and closer ties with the recently formed United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). “News from both France, The Netherlands and The United Kingdom, indicates that their governments are also heading towards establishing their own official agencies to promote the peaceful exploration of space.” Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 20th July 1959 “A new aircraft took flight over Kourou, French Guiana today, as Puck Aerospace test pilot Mdme Arlette Bertrand took the Hawker Siddeley high altitude research aeroplane Condor for its first proving flight. Mdme Bertrand reached and held a lofty 22,000 metres of altitude as she flew south-east along the South American coastline. While hardly the first time that planes have reached such heights, what sets the Condor apart from its predecessors is that it relies on long thin wings to provide lift at much slower speeds, making it a much more stable platform for observing the ground below it and the thin atmosphere around it at such altitudes. “Its slower speed and much more sedate consumption of its onboard fuel supply allow it to remain at such altitudes much longer than the faster but short ranged jets that preceded it, collecting data from a wider swathe of ground on each flight. While Mdme Bertrand’s initial flight lasted less than an hour, future flights of several hours’ duration are planned. “Flying such an extreme aircraft is not without its challenges, and one of those came with the landing. Given the fragile nature of the extremely light airframe and a lack of a clear view beneath her, Mdme Bertrand relied on information radioed from her friend and teammate Mlle Marguerite Laurent for guidance during the final stages of the flight. Mlle Laurent was in the passenger seat of an Aston Martin DB touring car as it paced the aircraft on its approach to the runway, calling out details about its speed and height above the ground, to guide Mdme Bertrand down to a safe landing." Excerpt from Pathé News Wednesday 21st October 1959 “Following the leaking of rumours over the weekend from their factory in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, Hawker Siddeley have confirmed that work has begun on constructing the latest in their series of experimental rocket planes for Puck Aerospace. Advances in cockpit technology and the use of newer more powerful engines are expected to give the plane never before seen performance, taking it higher and faster than previous generations of test aircraft, with the goal of launching a pilot up to the very edges of space before the end of next year.” Excerpt from Pathé News Friday 1st January 1960 “In what is quickly becoming tradition, Mr Peadar Kincaid once again addressed workers and invited guests at the Puck Aerospace Hogmanay party and fireworks display in Kourou, French Guiana yesterday evening. “Looking back over the ups and downs of the prior year, he spoke at length about their many achievements over the past twelve months, while acknowledging the rocky start to the year with the failed Xanthos rocket launch. But the good far outweighed the bad, he insisted, with their continuing near perfect record of sounding rocket launches and the successes of their high-altitude aircraft research being a much better indicator of their organisation’s abilities than the single failure of their heavy satellite launch at the beginning of the year. Instead, he praised the engineers, scientists, administrators and others who had put in such sterling work over the year.” === Gameplay notes and screenshots:

I'm not sure, I always play CRP, which uses Machinery. Maybe simplified? I know it's not Classic Stock - that uses some weird resources from long, long ago.

What's needed for assembly depends on which Play Mode you installed and configured. To disable the resource requirement: from the pause menu select "Settings", then the "Difficulty Options: XXX" button at the top of the settings menu. Click "Wild Blue" button on left. Disable "Require resources to reconfigure" Click Accept then Accept again to save settings.

@J534 You don't need to transfer the parts to the module using the KAS interface. You just need to have either a docked connection through the RTS-1 (set link type to Docked on EVA) or a suitably configured resource distributor with rocket parts available. Then "Assemble" the habitat.

What's missing is an after patching clean-up to remove the flag before part compilation (the warning in the logs is harmless) Add: @PART:HAS[#SSS_Tier[*]]:LAST[zzzSkyhawkScienceSystem] { !SSS_Tier = delete }

1. Adding fins to the rear of small rockets can improve aerodynamic stability during early parts of flight. This may not be needed if you have engines with a high degree of gimbling instead. Most but not all rocket engines in KSP have quite large amounts of gimbling (this is shown in the right hand side of the part menu in the VAB) 2. In the VAB turn on the Centre of Mass (CoM) and Centre of Lift (CoL) indicators (buttons near bottom left of screen) and check to see that the blue ball (CoL) is lower than the yellow ball (CoM). If you want to be extra thorough check to see if this changes if you empty the fuel tanks. Having the CoL above the CoM will cause the nose of the rocket to be more prone to moving off course if you deviate even slightly from prograde. Conversely, having the CoL far below the CoM may make turning slightly sluggish and the rocket more "determined" to stay pointing in the direction its currently travelling. 3. During early parts of flight, it is generally a good idea not to turn too far away from your prograde vector. A good rule of thumb is to keep your direction indicator inside the prograde vector circle on the navball. Tap controls when turning rather than holding them down and use fine control (caps lock on keyboard) if necessary. 4. Start turning early and smoothly rather than trying to make larger corrections later in flight. This will vary depending on the exact design of your rocket (mostly based on the TWR of your stages), but a general rule of thumb is to fly vertical until you reach about 80-100m/s speed then pitch over 5-10° and then keep pitching over gradually until you reach about 45° at around 25 km altitude and be pointing more or less horizontal by 50km. NOTE: these figures refer to stock Kerbin atmosphere if you have any mods that replace Kerbin or change the atmosphere, then you may need to adjust for those. 5. Don't worry too much about getting to a perfectly equatorial orbit for going to the Mun. An small orbital inclination can be corrected quite easily (and for little cost in fuel) during transfer.

Copy the patch text into a new empty text file and save it into GameData as a .cfg file with any filename you want, I suggest a new folder to hold all your patches and then a meaningful name (e.g. GameData/Z_MyPatches/RealFuels_EvaFuel.cfg)

I'm pretty sure Parallax update 2.0.5 from 17 Dec 2022 resolved this issue (for large scatter) as it included a fix to respect the don't spawn on mapdecals setting. For any sites that are still showing trees/rocks or other large scatter in the wrong areas, it should just be a case of toggling the setting on in the KK editor or adding a (flat) mapdecal to any sites that are missing one and activating the toggle. The smaller scatter (grass, flowers etc.) will still appear within the mapdecal area, but as mentioned in Caerfinon's "Getting started with Kerbal Konstructs" guide, raising each KK group 2-3 metres will eliminate most of this poke through .

Try giving the main wings a small angle of incidence (use the rotate tool to tilt the front edge of the wings up about 5°). You get lift in KSP based on the angle between your wing surface and direction of flight. By pre-tilting the wings you get a little extra lift while holding the main body more horizontal which decreases overall drag (unless your wings are huge). Note: after applying angle of incidence you may need to move the wings back or forward to maintain relative CoM and CoL. Most of the fuel looks like it's in tanks towards the rear of the plane which is why it gets nose heavy later in flight. Which wings are you using? Can they store fuel? That can help keep the CoM more stable as fuel drains. Deploying flaps acts as a brake, which is why you are stalling. Instead you can use advanced tweakables to increase the control authority on the elevons. Also make sure that each of your control surfaces is only responsible for one axis of rotation (usually). Pitch on the rear elevons, yaw on the tail rudder, and roll on the wing elevons. Also, despite looking a bit out of place on a passenger jet like this, canards at the front can also help if the plane needs extra pitch authority.

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 24th March 1958 “Kit Carson of Puck Aerospace was in an uncharacteristically sombre mood today as he addressed members of the press at their operations centre in Kourou, French Guiana. Today was the first attempted launch of their new larger rocket that had been shown to select members of the press over the weekend. Unfortunately, as Mr Carson reported, a number of technical problems with the engines resulted in the rocket not quite having enough performance to place its one-ton satellite into Earth orbit. “While everything looked nominal immediately following launch with all six of the powerful new rocket engines on the first stage of the massive 130 ton rocket lighting successfully and carrying the vehicle skyward, problems were first noticed a mere two minutes later, when telemetry from one of the side booster engines began indicating a reduction in performance. While concerning, Mr Carson stated that engineers had been confident that the rocket still had enough thrust to still reach some sort of orbit. “However, the rocket’s fate was sealed a mere three and a half minutes later when one of the second stage engines began reporting lower than expected thrust. The combination of failures resulted in the rocket failing to reach orbital velocity and the satellite was only able to transmit a tiny fraction of the planned scientific observations before falling back into the atmosphere and burning up less than 24 minutes after launch. “Despite the setback, Mr Carson remained cautiously optimistic, emphasising that such issues were only to be expected when dealing with such complex and experimental systems (a common refrain from previous Puck Aerospace launch failures). He pointed out that their engineers were already pouring over the data that had been returned by the flight monitoring systems and that this new information would be put to use in modifying the engines where necessary before the next launch attempt. “With a certain degree of wry humour, Mr Carson invoked the legendary tale of Robert the Bruce and the spider. ‘You only truly fail,’ he said ‘when you stop trying. Just as the spider fell many times while trying to spin its web but never gave up. We too will try, try, try again and eventually we will succeed. I have confidence in the abilities of our engineers and scientists to resolve these problems and deliver the full potential of our Xanthos rocket. I believe that this rocket holds a lot of promise for the future and we must not let our initial teething issues from taking a deep bite of the fruit of success.’” Excerpt from Pathé News Friday 22nd August 1958 “It has been a troubling couple of months at Puck Aerospace’s headquarters in Kourou, French Guiana. Reports of budgetary problems that led to the laying off of a large number of their researchers and technicians in favour of hiring additional engineers have been downplayed by company spokesperson Mrs McKenzie-Poitier. She stated that claims of the company facing bankruptcy were highly exaggerated and instead emphasized that this was expected to only be a temporary hiatus in their research and development endeavours and that most of the dismissed staff are likely to be rehired within a year or two as the company's finances improve. “Mrs McKenzie-Poitier was speaking to the press alongside Chief Administrator Mr Vincent Glasgow and Flight Operations Manager Mt Kit Carson, in a conference following the launch today of their second Xanthos rocket. While emphasising that the rocket had successfully delivered its satellite payload into orbit of the Earth, Mr Carson admitted that an early performance loss on one of the boosters had prevented it from reaching its full target altitude. He was careful to stress that only the one engine had shown any problems this time and that while the satellite was in a lower orbit than had been desired, it would still be able to return a significant portion of the expected scientific data planned for the mission. “He further pointed out that the fact that the satellite had reached a stable orbit despite the early partial loss of one engine, only went to demonstrate the potential capability of the Xanthos rocket once it is performing to its full capability.” Excerpt from Pathé News report Thursday 1st January 1959 “Addressing staff and guests at the Puck Aerospace Hogmanay party in Kourou, French Guiana yesterday, owner Peadar Kincaid joked about how it was only fitting that they end the horrors of their past year with a bang, as he pressed the button to start the evening’s fireworks display. He spoke candidly of mistakes made by himself and other senior management in their attempts to rush the Xanthos rockets into production and admitted that several corners had been cut in the testing of the rockets and their new engines that were rather glaring blunders in hindsight. “While admitting to their problems and the lack of any fully successful launches during the prior year, he was keen to stress that it hadn’t all been bad news and that they had learned a lot even from the worst of the failures. Mr Kincaid spoke of the next Xanthos rocket, even now being prepped for launch and of a fourth rocket just beginning construction. He highlighted his continuing belief in the capabilities and proficiency of their staff and contractors and his firm belief that they would overcome their current woes and forge forward together into a brighter future.” ==== Gameplay notes and screenshots:

It's a "grabbing claw" using the same mechanism as the stock "Advanced Grabbing Unit".

Try this instead: The @NODE[value] selector is shorthand for @NODE:HAS[#name[value]]. If the identity field is called anything except "name" then the longer version is needed. NOTE: I only fixed the syntax in the patch and have not tested it.

It's the big NODE button on the first row (KILL ROT is the equivalent of basic stability assist). The buttons on the OBT mode panel are pretty direct substitutes for the stock SAS modes (when orbit is selected on Navball). SURF gives similar functions for surface mode, but with more options for specifying offsets to the vector. And for horizontal or vertical alignment. TGT is for target mode. TGT+ and TGT- are the point at/away from target. RVEL+/RVEL- are stock target relative prograde/retrograde and PAR+/PAR- align your crafts axis parallel to your target's (very useful for docking) ADV is for various alignments relative to celestial bodies (useful for pointing solar panels at the sun for example or having a space station's cupola module always point down towards the body it is orbiting for cinematics/roleplay)

11-14 Nov '54 was when I finished the Suborbital Rocket Research Programme and started the Early Satellites (Heavy) Programme (it's at the end of this post). In RP-1, you need to spend confidence points in order to start any programme at anything other than Normal speed (i.e. Fast or Breakneck). The tighter the deadlines you choose, the more funding per year you get for the Programme.

Yes, I've made several abortive attempts at writing up 1958 and early 1959, but I'm struggling with it. There weren't many launches (a lot of waiting around for stuff to build/upgrade/accumulate funds) and the launches were mostly disastrous due to Test Flight not being kind during this period, and I made several stupid mistakes on top of that. Trying to wrangle that into a coherent story is proving difficult, but I should have the next update soon™. Peek at log:

Never tried this myself, but off the top of my head, the positioning of the perigee point (and hence timing of launch) will be dependent on the burn time of the initial boost phase. If you are recreating the Artemis SLS launcher then it might be worth looking at the real world launch date/time and trying to match that lunar phase angle as closely as possible since NASA will have done all the hard maths already. You might also be able to track down documentation of alternate launch windows they had planned. For a more practical approach you could start with a test satellite in the plane of the Moon in a circular orbit at the planned periapsis height then plot a manoeuvre to raise the apoapsis to 1800 followed by a TLI at perigee and then adjust them until you get a suitable Moon encounter. That should then let you plan your actual launch time to hit 1800 km apogee at the correct time for the perigee TLI.

Are you planning to do a direct launch or launch to orbit in correct plane followed by TLI burn? Stock physics or Principia? I much prefer to go to orbit first and usually delay my first Moon missions until I have the necessary tech. Then the correct time to launch is when the ascending/descending node of the Moon's orbit is close to the Cape (shown in MechJeb (if you have manoeuvre nodes unlocked) by the relative target inclination being at a minimum (~ 0.7° from memory). What time of day this occurs at will depend on the time of year, but since there are two launch windows spaced 12 hours apart (one at the AN and one at DN), most of the year there will be one of them during daylight hours. For direct ascent, you also need to factor in the journey time to the Moon based on the ΔV of your rocket. For advance planning you can also use the mod : https://github.com/KSP-RO/LunarTransferPlanner (it is a recommended mod when installing RP-1 express)

@Steigleder It's not that these mods are incompatible with RO, but rather that the compatibility patching is provided BY RO rather than being in the mods themselves. The RO suggested mods patch folder includes patches for many (most?) Raidernick parts including LN & LOK as well as N1 adapters, engines and tanks. While I'm not using them in my current RP-1 build, I have used them in past RO/RSS sandbox builds without issue and I would expect they still work (if correctly installed.) As cheesecake intimated, the large size of your log file suggests that something is throwing frequent error spam, which is often indicative of a mis-installed or incompatible mod. Double checking that all your mods have been correctly installed and that none of them are out of date or known to be incompatible with each other would be a good idea.

@Superawesome4141 MechJeb isn't doing this, Advanced SAS for all is choosing to disable itself if MechJeb is installed. Instead, I recommend using MechJeb's built in Smart ASS instead (from the MechJeb menu in flight) that becomes available on all command pods/control probes after you unlock flight control (45 science). It uses a separate UI and replacement SAS controller and once you get used to it, you'll find that Smart ASS is much more flexible than the stock SAS modes. If you would like Smart ASS to be unlocked from the start node, then that can be done using a ModuleManager patch:

This list suggests to me that you probably have installation issues in some/many of your mods. If you post your KSP.log file on a file sharing service (e.g. Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive etc.) and then link it here, then we might be able to diagnose issues for you. 1. I've never used BDA, but installation problems should be obvious from the log. 2. White square's replacing icons is a common symptom of an incorrectly installed mod. KSP relies on full file paths to find the textures it uses to display buttons/icons etc. in game. The part of the path before GameData is unimportant, but the part after GameData must be EXACTLY correct or many mods will break. 3. Sounds like an installation problem 4. Sido's Urania is an extremely old mod. I doubt it has been updated to work with modern versions of Kopernicus. 5.Installation again? The logs would tell us more 6. Ditto.