swjr-swis

One thing to consider: the first part of reentry, and in a large atmosphere like Eve's that's a LOT of km in, SAS will by default stay in Orbital mode. If you have SAS trying to hold prograde or retrograde to get the most advantage of heatshields, keep in mind that SAS is actually pointing somewhat away from the actual airstream vector. This could be the reason you notice a deviation, because in Eve's thicker atmosphere even a slight deviation from the actual airstream vector can make a lot of difference. Manually set your SAS to Surface mode as soon as you start entering so it follows 'true' prograde/retrograde; that may be all you need for that deviation to go away.

The Swivel engine was revamped at some point, given a new internal name, and the old one was 'obsoleted' by hiding it from the default tech tree category. They forgot to adapt the training though, so it's still trying to point to an engine that is now 'missing'. If you 'Enable advanced mode' (top left), and go to the tech level category, you can still find it in level 2. Pictures or it didn't get explained:

Lampirydae, a.k.a. Firefly. Very enlightening. (I love small one-seater jets, especially when supersonic.) Cruise mach 1.65 @ 13 km, with more than enough fuel to land anywhere on Kerbin and return.

The last series of comments about the ISS being too outdated to serve this purpose and discussing alternatives answers the why. I thought the conversation was already past that point. Jolly good, then it's all solved already. Which ones are those btw, and when are their launch dates?

I think you just described almost 100% of the universe. Not very specific. In any case, welcome. Have a thumbs up just for the thought-provoking introduction, and feel free to link your craft/screenshots/movies of KSP, or tell us your missions, or ask us your questions.

So, basically we just need someone to fly up a self-boosting station core with an expandable multi-dock truss, and things will grow from there by renting out -and eventually, expand- the docking space? Incentive for the early bird renters to get their modules close to the core. Incentive for the core owner to provide/maintain the core services since there's already multiple parties with a committed interest, of which several national or even international level, and at least one existing station that needs replacing in the very near future. Why is this not in the plans of the Elon Musks et al, as something much more immediately attainable (with a much more realistic RoI) than say, Moon landings or Mars one-way trips? Too mundane for them?

Any chance of an official 11th anniversary of KSP being celebrated with an official bugfix of 1.12.3 ...?

The debug option you clicked (and need to unclick) is this one:

Not even an honorary mention for the infinite range plane? You're actually gonna make me sit through 3-4 circumnavigations to secure that top spot? Sad face.

No worries, I got you covered. Here's one that commemorates the most important part of that journey:

"Mark Watney... Space Pirate." <looks pointedly into camera>

Oh and a belated welcome to the forum.

It's basically a high eccentricity polar orbit around Ike, with an eccentricity of 0.001 too much. Result: a slight gap in the orbit right at the top, where it temporarily escapes Ike's SoI. Temporarily, because Duna, being the quintessential big brother, immediately catches the escaping relay and pulls it in towards itself, in the process slinging it back into Ike's SoI. The only reason it looks like it ends up escaping the dance is because the patched conics shows a limited number of patches... in reality it goes around and around a couple of revolutions more. Just a few. Ike: "Mooooooom! Duna keeps throwing the relay back at me!!" Duna: "No I don't!" <whisper> "Why are you hitting yourself with the relay?" Ike: "MOOOOOOOOOM!!" Kerbol: "Stop it! Don't make me turn this solar system around. I *will* turn this around!"

The thrust limiter is an artificial limitation imposed by the game editor, forcing fixed 0.5 steps. Nothing stops you from manually editing the craft file (or if you've already launched it, the save file) and lowering that limiter to say, 0.01%. Search for 'thrustPercentage = 0.5', since that's the value you have on it now. That should at least give you more time to react for the cut off. Not sure if it will help to show the maneuver time though - at some point the values become so small the in-game code simply shows zero regardless. For future reference, if you wish more accurate thrust for small probes, try using monoprop and either one of the small RCS thrusters - 0.1 Thruster power, 20x smaller than the Ant.

Nothing so nefarious. Just Duna and Ike playing a game of "Catch, it's yours! No, you! No, YOU!" with my poor dizzy relay.

Psst: double that. 2 π * 600 km radius. Actually 607 km, unless you plan to phase through mountains.

Playing around with relay orbitals, the following appeared: Go home, relay... you're drunk.

I imagine because a resource container that runs empty at one point doesn't necessarily stay empty from that point on, so it makes sense to allow continuous requests if at some point one could actually provide the resource again. An easy to picture example: Battery -> lights. Lights turn on, start requesting EC continuously at say 0.1 EC/sec. Battery sees those requests and tries to provide the asked-for EC, until the battery runs out. Lights keep asking EC but get 0. Now consider that this is a probe on the night side of a body, and there is a deployed solar panel on-board. Dawn arrives and the solar panel starts producing EC. If the lights are allowed to continue request EC, the EC can now automatically be provided again and the lights turn on again. Bad example maybe because in KSP1 engines and lights simply switch off entirely when the required resource flow stops, forcing us to re-activate them manually. But it works that way for probe cores and reaction wheels: both need EC to work, stop working when no EC is available, and automatically start working again when EC is generated again. I'm hoping they will consider allowing all resource using parts to work like cores and reaction wheels, and stay 'switched on' to start working again once the depleted resource is available again. Hmm. Forum playing tricks on me again. I thought I was responding to the just created post in the Devs insight about KSP2 bug thread. Apologies for the necro.

I would advise you to run a few simulations/trials, in a separate sandbox save if need be. You need to get a feel for how long it takes to slow down enough for a controlled landing, how long ahead of the intended landing spot you need to start your burn. On a low orbit around Moho, you'll be going around 800 m/s. That's horizontal speed you need to kill with the burn. You will also gain some vertical speed purely from gravity alone, which also needs to be countered - the longer you 'hover', the more you need to burn. Don't underestimate this: on three Ants this is likely to take a burn of 2-3 mins (!). That whole time you'll be falling, so don't start from too low an orbit or gravity will have you before you even had the chance to kill your orbital speed. Doing this with 840-870 m/s would require picking a flat area and executing a near to perfect suicide burn with a high TWR craft. I would not recommend it if you've never done it before; even the 950 m/s suggested is likely on the low side. I can't stress enough my first recommendation above - try it out a few times and you'll get a better idea of how much you may need. I would keep the landing legs; it's only 45 kg for the three, and they up your safety margin a good bit compared to landing on the engines. I do agree with not needing batteries. In fact, you can do without that 0.625m reaction wheel too - the HECS2 includes a strong reaction wheel as well. You will however need a good antenna, or a strong relay in high polar position to keep line of sight with both your probe and Kerbin, or you risk losing control at the wrong moment (assuming you play with CommNet and requiring connection for control).

Ok let's start you off with a lightweight entry, the MinCN-1885 The MinCN-1885. 16 parts, 1.885 t, single Juno, single seat. Jeb standing ready, all of 91 units of LF in the tanks. Cruising mach 2 @ 11.5 km. Halfway point. One full circumnavigation later, back at the KSC runway. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/bRtYrpu

Or.... and just throwing this out there... just bring all the pieces you find together to 'organically' grow your very first space station. A space station of lost and found spacecraft parts. The Lost and Found Space Hotel. Come stay a night at our growing collection of quaint abandoned pods of mysteriously stranded kerbals. <starts walking off talking to no one in particular> Some say, when you're really quiet -and space is really, really quiet- you can still hear the screams for help of the former occupants when they first realized they were marooned in space. <rubbing hands> Yes... yes I can make this work. They'll be lining up for tickets! Muhahaha! <stops and looks suspiciously over both shoulders, then scurries off>

Aliens. The ones that left all the anomalies for our current-day kerbals to find.

Big ship with lots of stuff going on, but I can't see anything that's a dead giveaway for phantom forces. So I figured I'd test launch, but I can't even get it to launch without exploding. I assume it's meant to be cheated somewhere into the ocean before launching. I tried that, but before it settles down enough to launch, it just topples over and explodes halfway down to the water - apparently because the reaction wheels drain all EC within seconds. The staging order also seems wrong - decoupling order that can only lead to explosions if it did manage to lift off. The craft description and the upload page give no launch instructions; not sure if I'm missing something crucial here. Since I can't get it to launch to test and don't understand the intended working, I have no idea which section of the ship even gets to the point where you mention having the issue. Can you check to make sure you have the upload correct, and/or add a little explanation of the intended launch sequence?

@jimmymcgoochie already offered alternative suggestions, worth noting. to still answer your questions directly: Yes, engines attached to rotors will keep running when or after rotating. No, no fuel line is needed - as long as a part doesn't explicitly mention 'no fuel crossfeed', KSP considers all parts to include invisible internal fuel conducts. Fuel lines stretch pretty far, usually more than is practical. They also don't care about stuff being in the way.