Armisael

Is the object in a perfectly circular orbit? I think KSP has trouble with markers on those (understandably, given that the concept of apses breaks down in that situation).

I use Greek mythological figures that correspond to the name of the real world analog. Moho -> Hermes, Eve -> Aphrodite, Mun -> Artemis, Duna -> Ares, Dres -> Demeter, Jool -> Zeus, Eeloo -> Hades. Bodies without real-world analogs are harder, but I've settled a few. Gilly is Eros. Minmus is Endymion (a mortal who was Selene's lover and eventually was made immortal). Laythe is Oceanus (since it has so much water and is similar to Titan in some respects). Missions to space without any particular target or to asteroids are Aurai (the daughters of the wind gods). I've been giving infrastructure missions utilitarian names (eg, LKO station, Minmus Mining Base, Gas Tanker), but I'm considering changing that.

Both approaches are inventing nonsense that doesn't really apply to the engine - real NTRs have their shielding inside the engine already. The current model at least has the advantage of simplicity since it doesn't require any new systems. You are, of course, free to mod this in yourself.

Each data point is converted to 5 points of science. You don't lose any science - you can still bring the experiments back for full value. Note that the lab does require scientists and lots of power in it to work, and it takes a while to generate that data.

Ah, and there it is. Thanks!

As the title says: we have listed values for vacuum and ASL thrust, but how is the Isp/thrust interpolated from there (or extrapolated for higher atmospheric pressures)?

NASA has three classes: Commander and Pilot, Mission Specialist, and Payload specialist.

Isn't that basically just installing RemoteTech at that point?

The drag from legs on a stage that size is trivial to counteract with engine gimbal or fins (and yes, I've done it). You'd need legs an order of magnitude larger than anything we have now that make that stage feasible to land on end anyways

...have you considered putting the legs on the side of that so it's low and wide instead of tall and narrow?

@OP: By the time you're in late game none of the classes do anything particularly useful. You have more money than god, plenty of time to do anything and everything, and probe cores that can steer perfectly and weigh less. Once you're in the sandbox phase you're really just doing things because they can. Also, please don't screw with trajectory calculations. @regex Not true, in my opinion. They force you to consider the trade-off between bringing back less science, bringing more experiments, or bringing an extra pod with a scientist. Engineers are less useful in my experience, but faster mining and repacking parachutes has some minor value.

I think MachTemperatureScalar needs to be reduced (presumably to 1, as described earlier in this thread) before it can really get the bump. If you try to come in from LKO using otherwise unmodded KSP heatshields overheat and blow up before they've used all of their ablator. That, or make a re-entry heat mod a recommendation/requirement.

It's possible to land it (I just went and did it), but it's incredibly tight on fuel to do so. As noted above, something like 20% of the ship's mass is useless RCS, and the legs are placed in an asinine location (my apologies to squad, but seriously - a wide ship and you put all the legs at the center?). You either need to burn off a bunch of monoprop or use some of it for maneuvering. Conveniently, none of the RCS ports can fire in the direction you're pointed, so you have to burn sideways. I wouldn't bother with it.

Only one of those is really amenable to change during an ascent. Your payload is what it is and needs to go wherever it needs to go - the mass fraction is irrelevant. Similarly, you've already paid for the rocket and designed some portion of it to return for recovery value.

I don't think that the problem is with re-entry heating here - you're apparently setting your transfers such that your trajectory intercepts the target's trajectory at a pretty serious angle. Aerocapture works just fine at reasonable speeds.

I'm not aware of any major bugs with re-entry right now. How fast were you moving when you hit Eve's atmosphere? I've hit it at ~4.6 km/s surface velocity with a half-full heatshield and been just fine. If your heatshield is blowing up instantly you must be going fast enough to push it over the critical temperature despite the ablator, which means that you were doing 5-6 km/s - or perhaps that your ship tilted and parts of it were exposed and they went first.

As many people have said, KSP isn't actually particularly demanding on most parts of a computer, so the system you're proposing is overkill is KSP is your only goal. It's nice for lots of other stuff, though. That said... Ivy was terrible to OC because intel replaced the solder with crappy TIM paste. It's unrealistic and unhelpful to make that comparison - unless you're proposing OP order a delidded proc off some forum? 3 generations of procs has seen some slight boost in IPC. Additionally, you get the extra features in the newer chipset Ivy and Z68/Z78 parts are mostly out of stock. The only way you really can get them is used. This is not the audience to be suggesting that to. SSDs are phenomenal - they make everything on the computer much faster and they'll last for years - they're probably the smartest part of this build. The 6700k goes in the LGA 1151 socket. Most boards for that socket don't even support DDR3 (and DDR3 was noticeably faster than DDR2 back in 2008, let alone now). If OP's actually going to run the 6700k at 4.8 GHz he's going to need a liquid loop - that's a excrementsload of heat. I suspect he's confused or made a typo, but if not... The 1000 series isn't coming out until april/june at the soonest. Don't tell people to wait a third of a year for the next gpu - you'll always be waiting if you do that. Also, all of those cards are way beyond what's necessary for KSP, so it hardly matters. They could get a 750ti and be just fine.

Someone (not me) managed it in under a ton. It was in 1.0.2, but I'm not aware of any cbanges to KSP since then that would cripple it.

I've never had any issues with Steam (but then again I've never tried rolling back to older versions). Both versions are DRM free. I assume that squad gets a few extra bucks if you buy through the KSP store since they aren't paying Valve for hosting. I like steam because it makes it easy for me to manage my whole collection of games. That said, steam can launch non-steam games, so that isn't a big issue. TL;DR: If you want automatic updates get it through steam - it's likely that you'll end up with a steam account anyways if you get into PC gaming. If you'd rather throw squad a little extra money, or actively dislike automatic updates buy it through the KSP store. They're identical experiences when actually playing the game.

There is one other effect from the data cap (that I've noticed at least). If you have several hundred data of experiments sitting in a lab waiting for processing, it's tied up there - if you want to bring the data back home, you either don't process much of it or you have to wait a long time. I dunno if this is a good reason, but it certainly is a thing.

Spelled (ie, KSP). Too much time discussing other abbreviated game names (ie, TF2, KF2, HotS, DotA 2) [quote name='Moh1336']Technically though KSP is an initialism, therefore English Language dictates you say it the letters. ;)[/QUOTE] There seem to be two distinctions between acronyms and initialisms - one based on how they're constructed (initialisms are initials and acronyms aren't) and another based on how they're pronounced (initialisms are spelled out and acronyms are pronounced as words). I don't think that drawing one of those distinctions necessarily implies the other. Also, the english language dictates very little. It's a prescriptivists' nightmare. Usage is correct if most people believe it is. [quote name='razark']Please tell me how y'all say "NASA", "ESA", and "JAXA".[/QUOTE] Personally, I pronounce NASA and JAXA (as nah-suh and jack-suh), but spell ESA.

[quote name='LostOblivion']I know, and agree, however I think it's a nice game limitation restricting the upper limit of how much ablator a heat shield can have for its size, and although a lower limitation of 0 is unrealistic without changing the looks of the heat shield, it makes for more freedom in gameplay.[/QUOTE] That limitation doesn't really exist. You can stack multiple heat shields on top of each other - once all the ablator is gone from the first one, it'll overheat and explode, exposing the second one. It's a little more expensive in cost/parts/weight than a single heat shield with a huge pile of ablator, but it still works just fine.

I did it yesterday (rescuing a pair of kerbals from minmus on a 64k playthrough). It works, but it's tight and really weird stuff can happen. I've had kerbals auto-eject when the bay opens, and once I had a kerbal die from getting out of the chair. If you do do this, I strongly advise against putting anything else in the bay with them. If you want guarantees of safety, put them somewhere else.