RocketSquid

Yeah, but for the mun it just seems excessive. Why should I pay full-planet prices when I only need the network to cover half of a moon?

If I build a new ship with the orbital dock, can it have experiments onboard?

Yikes, I was away for a while, wasn’t I?

Is occlusion based on the geoid or on terrain? In other words, if I have a lander with relay antennae, and a rover with a tiny little whip antenna (or just an internal antenna) that can only talk to Kerbin by relaying through the lander, will the rover lose signal the moment a hill comes between it and the lander, or will it still have signal until it’s far enough away that the curvature of the planet is in the way? Will a taller craft be able to communicate farther over the surface?

Yeah, xenon was just a comparison to show how cheap the stock resources are. I picked it because it’s the most expensive in stock. Sorry if I gave the impression that it was mineable. I’d note that you can also scoop it from atmospheres if you have the stockalike mining expansion, and maybe with near future... propulsion?

No problem, I was exaggerating quite a bit earlier.

I'm still in high school at this point, so it more accurately means "ugh, gonna have to do a bunch of chores and/or yard work instead of playing KSP" I don't actually know how many hours I've spent on KSP, just that it's a lot.

OH GOD, YOU'VE RUINED ME NOW I HAVE TO UPDATE ALL OF MY MODS AND ALSO GET 15 DOLLARS I MIGHT ALREADY HAVE 15 DOLLARS SOMEWHERE AROUND HERE COME TO THINK OF IT BUT STILL, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Have the LARJ and small NTR been removed entirely?

If you decide to go with Rare Metals and Exotic Minerals, I heartily recommend the stockalike mining extension, which adds some truly enormous drills (which can pull up exotic minerals and rare metals if you have OSE workshop) as well as some humongous landing legs to support large mining ships. It also adds ore-propelled engines, so you can propel your mining ships without needing an ISRU processor onboard.

Sorry if I'm a bit redundant here, but: 1. There are a number of mods which add containers for these resources. One of the USI mods, the name of which is escaping me right now (Just Kontainers?) adds shipping containers which can hold all manner of resources, and the stockalike station parts expansion adds similar, more space-looking containers. FTT, also from USI, adds some really huge containers and parts for shipping massive amounts of resources. There's also the WBI family, most notably Pathfinder, which among other things adds adds a number of reconfigurable containers which can hold rare metals, and also adds an even-more-valuable resource called Aurum. In classic stock mode, you won't be able to hold rare metals from CRP but it will add its own, called Precious Metals, as well as gemstones. If you get kerbal flying saucers, there's also graviolium, which has the added complication of being more common near anomalies. 2. CRP itself adds rare metals to planets, but doesn't favor harder to reach or less travelled worlds. Pathfinder does in its placement of Precious Metals and Gemstones, kinda (a lot of the worlds with precious metals are ones you'll probably visit for other reasons), but it doesn't quite use the stock mining system for them (Your best bet is to put a minidrill onto a rover and go on a road trip, stopping every 3-4 km to check for gold). There's also Karborundum, which can only ever be found on eeloo, eve, in space very close to the sun, or in some asteroids, but you need the Karbonite and Karbonite Plus mods to extract it. 3. Values are included in the resource definitions for all of these resources already. Rare Metals are a 140 funds a unit. Exotic Minerals, also from CRP, go for 160. Karborundum is 4000. For comparison, the most expensive stock resource is xenon, at 4 funds per unit. In the WBI corner, precious metals are 150, Gemstones 175, Aurum 600, and Graviolium 1000. Keep in mind, some of these resources are available on Kerbin, and some might need new types of drills. Pathfinder definitely provides the drills needed for all of the WBI resources, and I think modifies the stock drills so they can get the resources as well. If you put it in "CRP" mode it'll be able to harvest the CRP resources; in "Classic Stock" it won't be much use for mining Rare Metals but it will add gemstones and Precious metals. If you get Kerbal Flying Saucers there will also be Graviolium, which is even rarer. Karborundum requires Karbonite for the drills that can mine it, and Karbonite Plus to make the drills recognize it. Rare Metals and Exotic Minerals can be mined by the stock drills (and the ones from the stockalike mining expansion) if you have the OSE workshop mod. They can also be mined by some of the pulse drills added by MKS, but that's a whole extra layer of complication that may not be worthwhile.

I’m not a fan of construction time simply because it’s fun to imagine a society so thoroughly devoted to rocketry that they have all of the parts in a big warehouse and can throw a rocket together in about ten minutes flat.

Well, it does feel it if the exhaust hits a another part of the ship, because then it creates thrust on that part. Deflected thrust can even move the ship backwards In general, though, a raycast or...cylinder-cast? would be more effective and simpler than modeling particles

Wingless Electromagnetic Air Vehicle, it's a sort of real-life flying saucer design using plasma actuators over the surface of the device and a hole in the center of the craft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingless_Electromagnetic_Air_Vehicle

I'm trying to make a WEAV style electric-only hoverjet (Like the Coanda, but with more plasma and less fuel) and I've run into the problem that I don't know quite how to make a correctly-sized hexagonal block for modeling. Is there a trick I could use?

I recall once having a mod which allowed kerbals to move about inside the craft, but I can't find it now. Anyone know if it still exists?

Could you post a link? I'm rubbish at finding mods.

The question here is, why? I've seen two reasons thrown about, and neither of them hold water. First, realism. In real life, solar panels also degrade, and so do batteries, and pretty much every part of a mission. Missions not powered by RTGs tend to fail far earlier, when a solar panel or battery fails. Satellites around earth fail far sooner, when they run out of RCS fuel. So if we're so concerned with realism, why punish RTGs and not, say, the batteries themselves, which are more often a limitation both in space and in everyday life? Surely a battery losing energy over time would also solve the supposed "cheatyness" of an RTG. And that's the second lie: that RTGs are somehow cheaty, or unbalanced. There's the claim that RTGs are "too good" and then the earlier claim that they're only "supposed" to be for deep space probes, not just powering whatever. First of all, RTGs aren't practical for powering anything beyond a certain size. Sure, you can add a bunch, but that makes the part count rocket up. If you want to run an ISRU rig, you're better off running fuel cells on some of the LFO you're making, like a coal mine running steam engines with coal straight from the ground. And sure, solar panels have diminishing returns, but a lot of people seem to think that the total power output doesn't matter, and that a small source of constant power is overpowered. The only reason RTGs seem overpowered is because everything else in the game is unrealistically power efficient. As for the claim that RTGs are only supposed to be for deep space, uhh, false, no, they used them in the Apollo missions, they used them in a weather satellite, and they used them on earth, in lighthouses, buoys, and monitoring stations. The response of real world governments to "Hey, we can build you a cylinder that produces electricity for free" is pretty much the same as that of KSP players, with the distinction that the real world governments are notably more squeamish about launching any radioactive material into space.

More importantly, they need to make surface bases more stable. Current bases have a nasty tendency to explode or flip over.

Really like the twitch changes. It's always felt weird to not have any sort of vaguely-efficient vernier besides the thud, which is really big. Also, looks like the twitch just got its vacuum and especially ASL TWR pushed past the spark. Seems the niche the spark had occupied will now shift over to the twitch, and the spark will mostly be relegated to vacuum roles.

Okay, a few questions, since I know adding principia to an existing save will break it. 1. Will removing principia from a save break it to the extent that adding it does, or will the issues be less severe? 2. Will deleting and reinstalling principia (in order to update it) without opening the save in between break the save?

Chapter 2: Muniy, Take II: Some thirteen kerbals clustered around the revivification chamber. Creating an entirely new body would take weeks, and would need to be monitored by a team of scientists the entire time; but they'd long ago learned to keep a spare body for Jebediah at the ready. With this, his thirty-third revivification, he had died more than any other kerbal to date. The tank slid open, and Jebediah crawled out, looking good as new. "Happy Birthday!" Shouted the gathered guests Jeb blinked and rubbed his eyes. "How long was I out? What killed me this time?" "Just vun day. Ve haff gotten the revivicators vorking at maximum theoretical efficiency." "A...and I don't really kn... know what killed y... you. You j... just... popped." said the nervous voice from the comm panel. Jeb grabbed the nearby kPad and logged in. "I'll just put it down as 'Mun Ghost'" "Why do you have a spreadsheet for this?" "Well, Val, I take pride in my accomplishments." "Anyways, Jeb, in a couple days, you get another shot at landing safely on the Mun. You should get ready." Muniy II sat on the pad, securely held by eight clamps around the base. Jebediah sat in the front seat, with relative newbies Maclas and Ircas flanking him. With a furious roar, the M1 rocket leapt for the sky. The array of... a few dozen? engines shot it skyward, munward. The verniers guided the rocket through the upper atmosphere. "Yikes!" "Don't worry, it's just the old stage. If there was a real problem we'd have exploded already!" "Almost in orbit" "And done. Now I'll just remote control the lander" "They've automated it" "Phooey" "Alright, to the Mun we go!" "Can you... ugh... not spin so fast? I'm... ugh... getting sick" said Maclas "Sorry!" "Say, how is this ship still connected to the launch vehicle?" said Ircas "You're the engineer here, I just fly the ship" "So, Maclas, you got that checklist?" "Yeah, right here. Not much on it. The whole craft was built for reliability, and neither of us could fix it even if we found something. Ircas gave it a look-over while we were still docked to the CSM." "I just want to be sure, is all." "What happened to the reckless Jeb, the one who crashed a plane while giving an orientation?" "This is my last chance at a Mun mission. If I screw this up, or if anything screws this up, I don't get another chance at it. Gene already had to pull the strings." Maclas didn't really have anything to say to that. "Hmm, I don't like these coordinates" "Why not?" "Well, first of all, it isn't near anything useful. There's an anomaly to the north, but it's too far away for us to investigate. And second, just look at the slope map" "Oh, yikes." "We'd slide, what, a kilometer into the crater, and the lander would end up on its side." "Can we change the coordinates?" "I think the manual's over by you" "Hmm, 'Anatid Robotics Mechanical Jeb System Version 2.18 Operations Manual'" "Of course" "What's wrong, Jeb?" "Do you know what it feels like to live in the shadow of a giant for your entire life, and to be reminded of that fact at every turn, whenever you see the manufacturer's logo on a fuel tank, or read up on kerbal history, or look at... well, the exact style of facial hair you're currently wearing?" "Well... no, not exactly." said Maclas, self-consciously twiddling with his mustache. "On the plus side, I think I have an idea of how this system works now" "Landing site change: Confirmed. New coordinates now onscreen" "God, they even copied his voice." "Well it could be worse..." ventured Maclas "Oh, really, how?" "They could've copied his volume." There was a pause. And then, without warning, Jebediah burst into laughter. "They really couldn't, it would break the whole ship!" "Oh, we're burning" "The landing site changed definitely worked" "This path feels risky." "Relax, the new site should be flat enough to build a base on" "Welp, time to have a look around." "Wait, is this thing on?" "I think you just used up the film" "Well krud" "Just plant the flag and take the surface sample so we can get home" "You got the science?" "Yeah, of course." "Then let's go" "Lower tanks depleted, time to get rid of the stage" "Now we need to get on a rendezvous track" "Just need to wait" "Do we just ditch the lander here?" "That's what the checklist says, but we could probably bring it back with us." "Ehh, nah. It's done its job. It can stay." "They really gave us too much launch vehicle." "Yeah." "We can actually shed almost all of our velocity" "Wow, yeah" "We're really falling now" "I... I did it! I... I landed to the Mun, and I left a flag. I'm... I guess technically the first and third? Fourth? Kerbal on the mun." "And I think we have enough science for the next stage of Munar exploration!"

In trying to get a particularly shadowy screenshot into a state where it was actually possible to make out the ship, I inadvertently reduced it to flat colors, creating something painting-like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waverider https://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/x51-wave-rider/

Waveriders are hypersonic vehicles designed to increase lift by riding their own shockwaves. They tend to be chisel-shaped, with sharp noses and small, anhedral wings.