Cyrious

Off it goes, destination: Duna, with 9 kerbals and 8 satellites onboard. Also sent the Duna station out, but made a spectacular mistake with the escape burn (missed the initial node then burned too long to try and compensate), going on a trajectory I did not want. So now i have to make mid course corrections for it and hope I can use what fuel and monoprop I have left on board to make it to the desired Duna orbit.

Part count: 167 Taking out the launch and support structure for the landers, thats another 158 parts that will be piggybacking off the Duna station. God this thing is gonna chug, and thats not including the fuel tanker that I have to bolt to the "front" of the station just so it has enough DeltaV to make the trip in the first place.

Quick check: Duna landings don't require heatshields when coming in from Mid Duna orbit right? I have some unmanned science landers I'm setting up and 2 of them have to come down on Duna (other 2 are for Ike). Bad enough they need parachutes and atmospheric only science hardware.

My suggestion: Start small. If you have stock crafts enabled, take the stock space station core and get it into space. Deploy the solar arrays, and rotate the station so that the arrays are roughly perpendicular to kerbin orbit (basically straight up and down). There you go, a basic space station. From there, learn how to dock (absolutely critical, if you're not adverse to mods, get Docking Port Alignment Indicator, it is a godsend with docking), and add on to your station. Maybe add a fuel module, or more habitation, or maybe a science module. Whatever you want. Once you've gotten that down pat, then you can go hogwild on the mods to get the parts needed to actually replicate the ISS.

Well, random flooding of the KSC aside, now that I've returned a Mun crew, I need to panic-launch manned and unmanned landers for Ike and Duna to the Duna control station in orbit, then start loading both Duna ships/mobile space stations with crew for the imminent opening of the Duna transfer window.

Dunno, I've also seen it go the opposite direction by a significant amount. Fine thing to return to the space center only to find the coastline is several kilometers away because the sealevel dropped by almost 200 meters while I was out.

All I did was return a science experiment from Minmus. Now my space center is under about 20 meters of water. Still, not the worst its been. Worst I've seen it was when the water level was above the VAB's helipads. Silly Scatterer.

Get the Stack Inline Lights mod, it is so much better for general illumination.

Update on the Station Science hardware: Mun station has all hardware docked and online. Cyclotrons going full bore pull about 360EC/s. The solar arrays combined deliver nearly 1000 EC/s, and scattered across the station is almost 43K EC in battery capacity. I'm not running out of power any time soon thats for sure. Now that the Mun objective is done (ignoring the massive centrifuges and the stabilization bar for them later) I get to run out to Minmus and repeat the feat with 4 more cyclotrons and a Zoo lab for the Minmus station.

Update, no images this time: The Mun hardware naturally all arrived (twas a mess of orbits), and I've begun the process of docking the payloads to the station one by one. 2 Cyclotrons and 2 Thinker labs are already attached, and once i start the game up tomorrow I intend on using some of the delivered propellant to lower the station's orbit a bit. Still havent figured out what I'm gonna do for the propellant reserve module though. Last one I designed ended up being a 90 ton (dry) flat mass of octo girder tanks, procedural tanks, a pair of orange tanks, 5000 units of monoprop storage, solar arrays, batteries, and various converter devices. Getting it up to orbit was... interesting.

I went on a launching spree for Station Science hardware both to the Mun and to Minmus stations. Minmus got 4 cyclotrons, a Zoo lab, and a science pod. The Mun got 4 Cyclotrons, 2 Thinker Labs and 2 Zoo labs, plus its own science pod. Total launch expenditure was something along the lines of 3 million in cash, but when the science pods launched after them are complete, I'm looking at something like 4 million in profit along with well over a thousand science points to burn. Since both stations also have their own normal labs on top of this, I can process the data again in those for even more juicy juicy science. Eh, its only about 400 tons of hardware and fuel in flight to the stations.

In the process of docking now, just wanna say that manhandling 80+ tons of metal and propellant around on just 16 RCS blocks sucks. Edit: Docking complete! Station now masses 140 tons. To the left is the initial station module. Contains basic crew space, some oversize cupolas, and the food (no life support mods added) pods. Middle section is for station science labs and cyclotrons. Thats about 200 tons by itself. To the right is the freshly added expansion bar, which also comes with a Science Lab for surface and orbital samples. The crossbar is going to play host to 2 massive centrifuges, the other ends of which will be secured with another bar. The far left next to the station module is going to eventually host fuel processing hardware and storage. By the time this whole thing is done I expect it to clock in at a respectable 500 tons.

So, been a while since I posted, been a bit busy with other things. That being said, I'm about to launch this thing into space, destination the Mun station. It will form one of 2 structural bars at this end of the station. Between the two bars will be the monstrously huge Mercury centrifuges, 2 of them. Hopefully if i do this right I can multi-dock it together and make a nice chunky square orbiting the Mun. At 723k cash and 1028 tons its definitely one of the more expensive single launches I've done. I also usually launch these crossbars sideways. EDIT: Launch was successful, but getting through Max-Q was a bit hairy. Something this big, and unshielded at that, flies with all the grace of a dead pig.

Just smashed Valentina and scientist kerbal into the far end of the runway while testing a rover in preparation for an attempt to circumnavigate kerbin via rover. Erm... not how I wanted to start this. On the plus side, the small bit of science they had gathered was automatically picked up by the cleanup crew.

We MUST have a video of this glorious mess, if you can provide one.

Are the issues of the wheels being "skittish" and the suspension being non-functional already known? For the former, the wheels jitter around alot (wheel stress goes bonkers) and for the latter it doesn't matter what accelerations the vehicle is under the suspension will not move. I am running 1.4.3 so I'm not sure if that is part of the issue. Edit: Cut the number of active wheels down to a significantly smaller number (I like clustering the KF Medium wheel for superheavy rovers) seems to have eased off the worst of the jitteryness and gotten the suspension to respond to loads, but its still acting oddly. Edit 2: Seems the jitteryness and other whatnot at least partially stemmed from how I was attaching the wheels to the main body of the rover (Through girders segments and struts). I'm still trying to figure it out.

Here it is. The station crossbar. Fairly useful structure, but getting it into space is... interesting. The actual thrust axis for the bar (as it has its own engines) follows the short arms of the bar, not the long, so I'm essentially launching it sideways and have to reorient the whole smash once into space. Just after staging of the main cores. Kinda botched the launch and got a bit too much vertical, but hey, not every launch is perfect. The tank-engine attached to the end will provide the remaining kick to orbit and was also used to do the plane matching to Minmus. The crossbar's engines did the transfer (and boy did that leave me a smaller fuel margin than planned for). 7 days later at Minmus, doing the plane change to match the Station's orbit. Oh hai thar (grey blob is the station in the distance). Yay for docking. These octo-ports suck when dealing with light craft, but when the two craft being docked clock in at ~35 tons each (and you've got the alignment just right), they work quite smoothly. Tadaa! Got it on first contact too. And the night-side shot. I love these stack inline lights for general lighting. Now I get to loft about 180 more tons of hardware for the Minmus station, starting with the fuel pod. Once it's all up though, I can fleece Low minmus orbit for the Station Science Science data, then use the crossbar engines to boost it up above the Low limit and fleece that as well.

I'm currently in the process of adding a crossbar structure to my minmus station. I'll post screenshots once done. A 40 ton 30 meter long bar of metal and hardware isnt exactly easy to pilot.

Well, I've gotten everything out to Kerbin done, and so far from the data I've got, actively keeping the solar panels cooled doesn't really need to be done until the craft in question has passed through the halfway point between Eve and Moho. By the time you reach Moho though, it is definitely recommended that at least basic cooling is added for ion-driven craft, as the addtional mass of radiators is definitely offset by the addtional power available to run the ion engines and other power hungry items. Rest of the data to be done tomorrow.

Huh, might actually have the rest of the data done today. It was only being close to Kerbol that caused the long equilibrium times due to waiting for the heatsoaking to peter out.

Continued from here. First tidbits of data are in. At about 1,200,000km Kerbol orbit (which came within the ballpark of 1000 kelvin), the panels achieved these outputs (Uncooled above, cooled below): OX-4L 1x6 Gigantor XL K5K 1x3 K90 ML-TRIO 101.601 950.919 359.616 3363.083 184.664 2009.555 593.994 6541.506 Cooling was undertaken by a pair of stock Large Thermal Control radiator panels. Uncooled saw the panels pushing roughly 1000K although there definitely was variance between them. The K90-Trio arrays were always the hottest while the K5Ks were the coolest by a considerable margin. The Gigantor XL array interestingly enough saw an over 100% increase in power generation once they were cooled. So, if you're going to sundive and need a ton of power/keeping your ship from melting, pack some radiator mass. Simple enough. The data for Moho Perihelion is also done, but you guys wont be seeing that until its all done (which may take quite a bit of time). Edit: God these things take forever to reach equilibrium.

Right now. I'm attempting to develop a Power/Thermal map of the Kerbol system. As we all know, as solar panel temperatures change, their efficiency goes up and down in accordance to how far off from the optimal temperature they are. On top of that, their output also changes according to how close or how far they are from Kerbol. The end result would be to figure out where and when it would be optimal for solar powered probes and craft to add additional radiator mass in order to get that extra bit of power from the panels. While this isn't that useful for the stock Ion engine, mods like Near Future Propulsion which have a wide variety of ion engines could see great use from such a map. As for the data points themselves, I'm using 4 solar arrays for the testing, 2 stock, 2 mod (OX-4L 1x6 and the Gigantor XL for stock, and NF Solar's K5K 1x3 and K90 Trio for the mod arrays). Distances include the Perihelion and Apohelion of every stock planet and planet in OPM, as well as the point around Kerbol where the temperature is about 1000K. Right now my biggest issue in making the data table for the map is the fact that it takes forever for thermal equilibrium to be reached, and using timewarp to speed it up throws off the thermal radiation/absorption as read out by Kerbal Engineer. Map's no good if it isn't accurate after all. Anyone know of a mod that would allow for more direct thermal manipulation instead of waiting hours for the thing to heat up/cool down?

Can I make a suggestion? For the closest approach mode for the indicator where it gives the distance that the craft will reach during closest approach (ex Target@ 0.7km in 83s), can it be changed (either via a config file or even just clicking on that part of the indicator) so it switches from 0.n KM to nnn KM (0.7km to 723m)? It would allow for maneuvers on final approach to be finely tuned so the pilot doesnt have to do further maneuvers/waste time closing the gap after velocity matching has been done.

I personally haven't run into issues, but as always back up your save before doing the update.

I'm getting this issue as well. Touching down at anything higher than 4m/s even with the fix posted by the mod above results in the landing legs violently exploding. I have however discovered that multiplying the crash tolerances by 10 and the break/torque forces by 2 in the provided fix have helped.