AVaughan

It probably works as is. Have you tried?

They should be fine with methalox. We had a discussion in this thread about Starships payload capacity to the moon a little over a month ago. Eg in https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/159887-spacex-discussion-thread/&do=findComment&comment=3600985 I calculated that using two fully refueled Starships (one for the lunar landing and return, and another as a tanker to refuel the first in elliptical Earth orbit, with both already refuelled in a 250 km LEO) they can land and return around 125 tons of cargo to the surface of the moon. (Most of my Starship performance figures were assumptions from an earlier post by someone else in the same discussion). 125 tons of cargo is a lot, and obviously margins improve with smaller payloads.

So start by helping yourself. You have already been told. You are the only person who knows what KSP version, and what mods (including mod versions) you are using. What tanks you are using. What tank utilisation. What engines/engine upgrades. Without that type of information all anybody can do is guess at the cause of your problem. My best guess is that you might have grabbed the wrong tanks. (Personally when I play RO, I'm playing RO + RP-1, and I don't build historical recreations, so I'm not sure which tanks an historical Mercury-Redstone should be using). If you had thought about things for even 5 seconds it is should have been obvious to you before your first post that we would need to know at least some details of what your Mercury-Redstone looks like, and probably it's thrust and mass before before anyone can do anything more than guess at what is wrong.

@IvanOV-104 : Cruesoe provided a link to a post by Nathan Kell that lists the information needed, and where to find it.

Yeah, just a build number increase.

But it might mean when FAR creates it's voxel map of the craft, that it doesn't see the shrouds. (I'm not sure what FAR bases its voxel version of the craft on, but colliders seem like a reasonable choice).

My experience with part failure mods is that I tend to revert/reload if a mission critical part fails, which means that for me, using those mods isn't fun and installing them is pointless. (By extension, adding part failures to stock also wouldn't be any fun, at least for me).

I think they will use all 6 engines after stage separation, then shutdown the sea level Raptors once they are no longer needed. (I believe that was the plan back when they had a 4/2 split).

They might also be able to land on an island or an old oil rig in the gulf of Mexico, or maybe even on the west coast of Florida. No idea what range would suit super heavy, but maybe around the Bahamas or the west coast of Florida might work? Any old airfields near the coast there? Other unused rural property near the coast? (They could make a large enough offer to convince a farmer to sell/lease his land). Failing that they could just build a bigger barge, and attempt to land at sea for at least the initial flights.

My calculations above required that both the lunar lander and the tanker were already refueled in LEO, so I'm not sure how multiple launch site options helps with the highly elliptical orbit rendezvous. (It obviously could help with launch cadence, which could be an issue with 2 starships needing to be refueled at the same time. Don't forget boil off. You might even want to leave both ships docked to their last tanker for a last minute top-off about an orbit or so before they leave LEO). Yeah the elliptical orbit rendezvous could be an issue. You probably also don't want 2 starships in similar orbits both doing the 2300 m/s burn at the same time. If I was to try that sort of rendezvous in KSP, I would have one ship raise its apoapsis first, then as it approaches periapsis the other ship could burn to setup a rendezvous at apoapsis. (They could even start at different orbital altitudes). Timing everything would still be an issue, but one I expect SpaceX could solve. You might also want to plan for a course correction burn to fine tune the rendezvous. (You could also split the raise apoapsis burn of the first ship over 2 orbits, which would allow you to adjust the orbital phase angle between the two ships at that time. That means that they only need to be in the same orbital plane, and the initial phase angle between them isn't critical). Of course you still need to be able to execute subsequent burns according to plan. Also if you really want to avoid it, a fully fueled starship should have around 8929 m/s dV even with a 25 ton payload. (1100 tons fuelled mass, 380 isp, 75 + 25 ton dry mass, works out to 8929 m/s of dV). So enough for a useful lunar mission even if you avoid refueling in an elliptical orbit. Of course all of this is highly dependent on assumptions about wet and dry mass, isp, and that they can solve any issues with refueling in orbit.

Well if they can refuel in LEO, then they should be able to refuel in a highly elliptical orbit (once they have enough operational tankers). From a 250 km LEO lunar transfer is about 3120 m/s, capture to low orbit about 820 m/s, landing 1720 m/s, ascent another 1720 m/s, then Earth return and landing should be another 820 m/s plus around 400 m/s to land. So they need around 8600 m/s. So assuming a fully refuelled Starship in LEO, and another fully refuel Starship as tanker (also starting from LEO). 1100 tons fully fueled mass and 75 tons dry mass for both ships. ISP of 380. (So the tanker version has 1025 tons of fuel and 10 km/s dV at this point. The other ship has less because it has a payload). Burn 2300 m/s with both ships. That means each ship uses 507 tons of fuel. Use the tanker to fully refuel the other ship. That leaves the tanker with 11 tons of fuel, which is 500m/s. Should be plenty to de-orbit and land. At this point a lunar landing and return needs about 6300 m/s. That means the non-fuel mass of the lunar lander starship + payload can be a little over 200 tons, so on this sort of mission profile Starship can land (and return to earth) around 125 tons of payload. Plenty of mass for a useful mission. (dV numbers from an online RO/RSS dV chart, which might be wrong. Calculations using an online rocket equation calculator plus windows calculator. Quite possible I entered the wrong number somewhere. An earlier version of this calculation assumed refuelling in elliptical Lunar orbit, which might need too many refuelling flights to be practical. I'll leave it below). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From an elliptical Lunar orbit landing is about 2400 km/s, ascent another 2400m/s, then Earth return and landing should be about 500 m/s or so. So they need around 5500 m/s. Using a lot of tankers to refuel in elliptical lunar orbit, a starship with a dry mass of 75 tons with a payload of 175 tons (and returning that payload to earth to keep calculations simpler), a fully fuelled mass of 1100 tons, ISP of 3800, that looks like a dV of 5517 m/s. That is definitely a useful payload capacity, but probably too many tanker flights to be practical.

My suggestion is to set yourself a new challenge. Eg, play with RO + RP-1 and land people/kerbals on Mars. (Or even just add a planet pack, and aim to land on every planet/moon. For more challenge add a life support mod and a x2.5 or x3.2 rescale).

My guess is that the new versions with the new textures/texture variants mean that the game now needs to load more data from disk during startup, and that this is the main cause of the slowdown. Have you tried turning the graphics options down (eg texture resolution, and anti-aliasing)? Do you have plenty of ram? (If KSP is causing your computer to swap to disk that will make the things laggy). I'm also on a 9 year old PC, a i7-860 with a HD5770 graphics card, and I haven't noticed a decrease in performance or an increase in loading time. (But I have 12 GB of ram, and I turn the graphic options down).

Do you have Advanced Tweakables turned on in the gameplay settings?

I find it also helps to rotate the camera so that the screen is centered and aimed at the decoupler. I find that makes it easier to attach the tank so it sits squarely on the decoupler.

Personally I wish that the additional nodes weren't enabled by default. I have had a few issues where I managed to mount a parachute on one of those nodes, rather than on the top of the capsule inside the fairing.

For people wondering about that hexagonal "box" with what looks like a robot arm, I think it is part of the telescope support and pointing systems. Scott Manley has a nice animation of it towards the end of one of his videos. https://youtu.be/uH9aX5evxqU?t=967

Sure 2.2 is the latest kerbalism release, but it is so buggy the lead modder wrote "Do not download 2.2." Also according to the kerbalism thread OP,

Just wanted to point out that Kerbalism 2.2 is a known buggy release. The devs recommend reverting to 2.1.2. Not sure whether that is the cause of your issues.

@FleshJeb : I'm guessing you are a PC player. Arch3rAc3 is a console player. (Also this thread is titled [EE] KSPedia Removal, so he is specifically talking about the console version). My understanding is that it was removed from the console versions in the recent patch. Pure speculation on my part, but with the addition of the extra textures for the new part variants, maybe they found out late in development that they were running short of available RAM, and removing the KSPedia was the easiest and fastest way to fix that. (I think the PC version loads all graphics at startup, including KSPedia images, and I'm guessing the console versions handle images the same way). That might even have been the reason for the last minute release delay.

Quoting what I wrote elsewhere,

@DaveroskiActually a screenshot of a vessel which has problems with radiators might be useful. Often these type of issues are because the game is a more complex simulation than players realise, and a screenshot which shows the vessel in question might let other people make useful suggestions on how to make better use of KSPs radiators. (And provides a starting point for deciding whether radiators/heat transfer seems to be buggy, or whether the issue is a craft design issue). Edit: Also PC or console? What version? Modded or unmodded? (If modded what mods?)

@Topher420247 What happens if you do a manual named save, then activate the cheat menu, then load that manual save? Does that allow achievements?

Well actually you don't need an antenna to get to Duna, provided you have a pilot. But without a suitable antenna, you won't have communications, and can't transmit science. (Technically you don't need the pilot, or the antenna, or even maneuver nodes, but anyone who is competent to do that doesn't need any help from beginner tutorials).

I too recommend Scott Manley's tutorial videos. One thing other people haven't mentioned that changed after 1.0 was the introduction of Commnet with KSP 1.2. That added antenna ranges and communication blackouts which weren't a consideration before that version.