MaxL_1023

In one of my RSS/RO careers, Jeb survived a fall from 30km up onto land.

Alright - I was within the render distance when I made the observation. I suspect your map view level detail would make my computer explode more often than my rockets do!

Hey - just a couple graphics questions: 1. The moons Iota and Ceti (only ones I have looked at in detail lately, working my way out in career) appear to have more surface detail in map view than in the main view. Is this intended, or do I have my graphics too low? Is the map view what it looks like on maximum settings? 2. Neither moon seems to have any craters? Is this intended, or am I borked again? I don't mind if it is intended, just wondering.

Wouldn't "just one more orbit" be more appropriate?

You can use sigma dimensions to make Kerbin 10x larger.

I have this problem in RSS/RO - I would LOVE to use hydrolox for my Mars/Jupiter/Venus orbit injection stage, but it all boils off on me. I have to use hypergolics, which are less effective, making my rockets much, much larger on the pad for the same total impulse.

You'd have a better chance using that Orion drive someone made out of landing legs and monoprop tanks.

Thanks!. I just landed on Iota and got the whole freeze-frame effect - I saw that updating would fix it. I may be using 0.9 - it would explain a lot in that respect.

Hey, I should be able to update from 1.0 to 1.0.1 without losing anything orbiting or in transit right?

Are you flying through the atmosphere nose first, or am I slightly impaired? If so, we got a BadS over here. Here is another article about nitrogen-dominated climate cycles - seems like early Titan might have had this (sun was 30% dimmer when it formed). http://www.exoclimes.com/news/recent-results/nitrogen-oceans-the-climate-of-early-titan/ I wonder how far out a body would need to be to have liquid hydrogen...

I will make my entire ship out of superconducting magnets, set up some rails and make the Ciro system's most insane transport system. On a more serious note, not sure how reliable this is but apparently Pluto once had liquid nitrogen lakes. I did not know it had climate cycles that extreme - it is too cold (plus not enough atmosphere) for it presently. They gave it a pressure of about 0.4 atm during this warm phase. http://www.seeker.com/pluto-may-have-nitrogen-lakes-that-freeze-and-thaw-1771112641.html

In that case, it would. I suspect your entry angle is too steep. Generally, there is an inverse relationship between G-load, total heat load and your entry angle. A steeper re-entry (think suborbital for the worse cases) will not burn a lot of ablator (you slow down too soon) but you will face extreme G-forces. On the other hand, a shallow re-entry may require multiple passes to finally fall out of orbit. Your deceleration is gentle (think 3 or 4 Gs tops for a Mk I pod at this angle) but you will need more ablator and may run out if you are re-entering from the Mun or Minmus (or any high orbit) and need several passes to decelerate. Try setting your PE to about 40 KM. You will easily make it down using a normal heatshield (even half full you should be fine) and will not usually go above 5 or 6 Gs. You should slow down to subsonic (350m/s) before an altitude of 10Km. For most of my entries, I could deploy parachutes at about 12Km if I wanted to - I usually wait for 5-8KM to save time on descent. One final point - Pilots can withstand significantly higher G-forces than Engineers or Scientists, with higher level Kerbals of all classes being more tolerant. Valentina can also take very slightly higher G forces than Jeb, maybe due to size or mass differences.

Looks like Hadrian is getting a makeover. What kind of environment are you giving it? It looks close enough to Nero for tidal heating to play a role, especially with other moons in the system adding further perturbations. Does it have a more substantial atmosphere? Liquid hydrocarbons or nitrogen oceans? I need to know what to bring with my first mission to the system

To be fair, SQUAD likely honestly expected those parts to be completed and released into the stock game. When unforeseen circumstances occur you can easily end up with features not being finished. In this case, I don't think the advertisement qualifies as false advertising. SQUAD stated that they had a set of parts under development for a planned release. They never stated that the parts were already in the game - that would be false advertising. If you purchase the game (which has had free updates and improvements long after the official release) based on an expected later addition you are taking a risk which you must accept. I spent 40$ on KSP when it was in the 1.02 stage. Between free mods and SQUADs updates, I have basically gotten two or three sequels for free based on the development games had 10 or 12 years ago. We could have all these parts being released as paid DLC. Besides that, the parts are mainly cosmetic, with one or two extra engines which are not really needed for gameplay. It's not like they promised that 1.2 would have new planets or something.

I notice that if you don't have enough air intakes it will go to closed cycle on initial ignition.

I don't remember - I am using a different modset so I can't check. If I did have 56 Energia engines (there might have been 8 radial cores looking at the screenshot, so 6 with a center engine each)) I would be looking at roughly 9 MN per engine at liftoff, or 504 MN in total. That would correspond to about 40,000 tons using my usual launch TWR in RSS of 1.25 for large rockets. The second stage started with a TWR near one, so with 40 SSMEs that would be about 10,000 tons. The rocket must have been 40,000 tons then, since I usually go by a roughly 4-1 thrust ratio rule at minimum for lower stage transitions.

The screenshot is what made it to orbit - there was a first stage which I dropped on the way up. That one was the 6 radial cores with a excrements-ton of energia engines, each core slightly smaller in diameter than the center stage. I didn't have hangar extender at the time so I literally could not fit any more in the VAB - most of the rocket was above the roof with the boosters taking up essentially the entire screen.

I have forgotten parachutes, batteries, RCS fuel and in RO have had the wrong type of fuel in the tank. Also, do you use any mods? And messing with the squad folder screwed up a lot the one time I tried to change something.

The game couldn't really handle this one on the pad, but here's what I got into orbit: It's a Triton orbiter/lander probe with a bunch of science stuff onboard. I decided to do a single, direct launch because I have no idea how to actually calculate Jupiter gravity assists. Also, Jebediah was on the design board. The first stage was 56 (I think, more than 40 for sure just due to TWR issues) RD-170s from the energia stack. The second stage has 435 m/s of delta-V left and had 40 SSMEs. The next two were Hydrolox (12 and 3 J2-X respectively I believe) with the last two using hypergolics. I did make it onto triton, but I needed almost all of my Delta-V.

I don't have this issue. Do you have oxidizer on board? I know it seems silly but I have made worse mistakes than that before.

You can also use moons for plane changes as well by making a direct pass over a pole. It usually won't be a huge effect but it can make a difference over multiple orbits.

Turns out I packed an extra 3km/s again. I really need to learn how to properly design a rocket - my strategy is usually just to make something weighing more than a class E asteroid just to put a Kerbal into orbit.

Your planet pack made me launch a rocket with 160 MN of liftoff thrust. I hope Gael is on rails, otherwise it might not orbit correctly after liftoff. I just HAD to land a 200 ton mining lander on your planets.

I never did much with bases (RO has no ISRU afaik). My largest rocket put 3000 tons into LEO. The final payload was a 5 ton Triton lander. I decided to do a direct launch to Neptune and capture retrograde on arrival from a 13 year hyperbolic trajectory. It took half an hour to make orbit - I think the first stage had 56 Rd-171 Energia engines with 40 SSMEs on the second stage, which just made orbit before burning out. I posted that one in mission reports awhile back. I think I needed something about half that size for a single launch manned Mars mission using TAC LS - most of my payload was supplies. When in doubt, get hangar extender and add a zero to every parameter. Jedediah Kerman would approve.

Depending on how scientifically accurate you want to be, there could be some fairly crazy ice structures on the surface of a cold atmospheric planet. Earth is too warm and has too much gravity IRL - glaciers won't form anything really large besides solid piles. However, at 90K, somewhat lower gravity and with a thicker atmosphere to sculpt things I can see there being snowdrifts a kilometer high. Think methane sand dunes writ large, gossamer structures of nitrogen ice or cryovolcanic vents. Almost all ices get harder at lower temperatures, while cryovolcanism will supply the small particles for deposition. I am not sure how hard it would be to code that - some sort of fractal structure might be able to generate a biomes worth of detailed terrain without manually having to place every structure.