AVaughan

On my install (RO + RP-1) the stock dV readout is disabled because it isn't accurate. the normal recommendation is to use MechJeb's dV display. (KER's dV display is also inaccurate).

Have we seen the engines for B8 yet? If so they could just swap the engines. Then they have plenty of time to inspect these, or send them back to the factory or McGregor.

In general don't use mods for the tutorial missions.

Some service modules and capsules do have magic electric storage that weighs nothing. I have no idea why but it is something that is known, and has been known for long enough that I'm assuming it was a deliberate choice when configuring them.

Personally I think the interest in Starship is some of the military wanting a new toy. For moving cargo to a forward zone, in general I think they would be better off either para-dropping supplies from a transport aircraft or using helicopters/v-22 osprey. One possible exception is if a large isolated base (eg an island) was surrounded and cut-off from normal aircraft approach and in need of resupply. Even then I think that Starship would just be too vulnerable to interception. (I guess it is possible that no existing air to air missile is able to target something like Starship. But I'm sure that won't last if the military actually acquired some). Obviously that all changes if we have bases on the Moon or in space. The other exception is if they think they can use Starship as a giant fuel air bomb. From memory a while ago Elon said that a full fuelled Starship (without any payload) had almost enough dV for orbital. So lets say about 9000 m/s. I think the Booster adds something like 2500 extra. So all up lets hypothetically say something like 12,000 m/s. When playing in RO/RP-1 the 3000km down-range contract needs roughly 6000 m/s of dV. So from those figures you might think that 2 sub-orbital hops of up to 3000 km each might work. But that is neglecting that Starship is designed to re-enter and land with a limited amount of fuel + cargo onboard. I don't know what Starship's re-entry mass limits are but lets guess at 100 tons dry mass, plus 100 tons cargo, plus 20 tons of fuel for landing. So a total mass at re-entry of about 220 tons. However the fuel needed for the return trip (6000 m/s + 300 m/s for landing) is roughly 450 tons. So to be able to fly that return trip Starship's total mass when landed on target needs to be about 550 tons. Fuel for landing would be another 45 tons or so. (Probably more like 50 tons, since a heavier Starship with the same cross-sectional area would have a higher terminal velocity, and would need more landing fuel). So mass at re-entry is probably about 600 tons. Note that all of this is with a zero ton payload, and without any allowance for landing legs. You might also need more mass to strengthen the flaps and their actuating mechanisms. Higher re-entry mass also means more energy to bleed off, however this is offset by lower re-entry velocity. Higher re-entry mass with the same cross-sectional area probably has some effect on altitude of peak heating and peak deceleration loads. Centre of mass is likely different as well. (Rotational inertia would definitely be larger, requiring either a longer flip or more engines for the flip, and hence even more landing propellant). I've got no idea what that the net effect of all of that would be other than to say you would need a new design study and probably significant design changes before a Starship optimised for a 220 ton re-entry wants to attempt a 600 ton re-entry. So even if a Starship has theoretically could have enough range for a return trip I don't think it is practical to land with that much fuel. (At least not without significant design changes).

That highlighted tick and cross does look odd. In general, for those contract types I find switching to all the satellites is enough for contract configurator to assign the sats and sort out which sat is which. Wait a couple of seconds at each sat before switching to the next. If necessary switch back to the first and start slowly cycling again. Also that looks like an old version of RP-1.

Do you have persistent thrust installed? If so try removing it.

A SRB exploding at a low altitude, causing enough burning fragments to endanger the parachutes perhaps?

It might technically run, but 4 GB of ram is probably not enough for a good experience. The GeForce 410M is also a fairly weak graphics card. Up until a few years ago I used to play on an i7-860 and a Radeon HD 5770 with 12 GB of ram. 8 GB of ram should be enough for a minimum install, but you will probably want to close other memory hungry programs first.

@Kazkar A couple of other possibilities come to mind. (I have made all of these mistakes in the past). One possibility is that your rocket is actually 20.0001 tons, and the VAB report/KER is displaying that as 20.00 tons. You can check whether rp-1 thinks your rocket has enough avionics by opening the rp-1 display and clicking on the avionics tab. (I'm not sure whether you need to remove the clamps. I often use this to check that an upper stage or a probe core will have control once in space. But I don't normally get close enough to the avionics limit to need it for a booster). Another is that if you use the slider at the bottom of a tank to remove fuel, then the launch clamps will replenish that fuel on the pad. That can mean that you think your rocket is under the avionics limit, when it is actually over them. (Use the tank utilisation slider, or the Real Fuels GUI to remove fuel if you want to use a partially filled tank). I have also occasionally made a small tweak to the physical dimensions of a procedural avionics unit, and then later noticed that the control limit had unexpectedly changed by a small amount, eg from 20 tons to 19.95 or so.

Internet is what enables the proliferation of games we have today. If we lived in a world without internet, people would need to go to a physical store to buy games. That would drive up the cost of buying games and reduce the number and variety of games that got released. Physical game copies would cost money to produce, and more money to distribute. Physical stores also cost money to build/rent, maintain, pay staff, stock for shelves etc. They also have limited space, so they can't carry physical stock of millions of different games. Indie game developers like Squad with niche games like KSP 1 would probably find it almost impossible to get stock on shelves without first signing with a publisher. (Early access would also be impossible, and without early access or a publisher I doubt Squad would have even been able to afford to finish KSP 1). There are many reasons why some indie titles benefit from being released via early access whilst still in development. These include getting funding to finish the game, but they also include getting feedback from outside the small development team (and possibly any friends that were acting as early access/beta testers). This is important for working out if there is enough interest from paying customers for the game to be successful in the market. It also gives the developers a whole horde of bug report/suggestions and other feedback that hopeful result in a better game. Small indie developers with an unknown product need some hype to be successful. They need to get streamers and review sites actually playing and writing about the the game. Small indie developers don't have the advertising budget to get noticed any other way. Note that for that strategy to be successful the initial impression has to be good. (Or at least good enough that reviews/ first impressions video etc are positive, and people decide to buy the game). If the initial release is good/popular, then that can result in hype and publicity that can drive even more sales. It doesn't matter if this is an early access release or not. It doesn't matter if the game could have been even better with the advantages of early access or not, what matters is whether customers, streamers and reviewers recommend/promote the game to their friends and audience. Large publishers like Take Two have other options, especially with an established game like KSP. Online review sites know that there are a couple of million owners of the first KSP out there who are likely to be interested in a sequel. (And getting page views and advertising revenue is the raison d'être for such sites). Assuming KSP 2 is good, then KSP youtubers/streamers will also be happy to do pre-release streams/videos of KSP 2. Assuming TT are willing to splash some money around on advertising, and distribute some review keys, then getting day one reviews out will be easy. (That is something that no indie developer can expect if they don't have a publisher/advertising money and/or hype). Also note that first impressions matter. If the initial word of mouth is that a game isn't worth your time/money, then that impression will probably stick. A premature/bad early access release can be fatal to a games development. Pushing KSP 2 out to early release too early could result in a backlash from unsatisfied customers expecting the finished product. From Take Two's perspective that risk is almost certainly not worthwhile. Personally I think a large developer or publisher who doesn't need early access money/feedback can get the same amount of publicity and hype potential with less risk by releasing a finished game rather than an early access game. If have an advertising budget, then they can get reviews and first-plays and hence get noticed. Whether their game then develops hype depends on the game and whether it appeals to the market. Early access does not provide any advantage here, and if the game comes across as unfinished/unpolished then can be a problem. Ultimately the choice of early access or not belongs to Take Two. They are the ones funding development, they get to make these choices. I'm sure they have thought about it. They have probably spent more hours considering the pros and cons of it than anyone on these forums. These days my personal philosophy is I only buy an early access game when the already released content is enough to make me go "Stuff waiting. I want to play that now". That way even if the game never gets more content, I'm still getting something I consider to be worth my money. (Anytime I violate those rules, I typically end up being disappointed).

Best guess from the screenshot you shared is that either you don't have sufficient avionics on that stage (science cores don't provide enough control for rcs), or you don't have comms. Here is the the rocket I used for my first orbit in my last campaign https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GEL5tiJg8DJB8R7-pr4FYLfBpu4aLo71/view?usp=sharing It successfully reached 315 x 7200 despite the second stage engine failing early. It has science instruments and a few days of power. It easily has enough margin to add a small solar panel if desired, or to launch polar. (You will need to coast toward apoapsis, then use rcs to point towards the horizon, then manually spin up and ullage before dropping the avionics and igniting the last stage). I'm pretty sure those craft files are from his current YouTube playthrough/dev stream. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI_cTKGllaWjtxrJVH8j4EDD_KEIYdZOG . The craft name and episode number are enough for viewers to pick which craft they are interested in. (Or you could just download the lot and open them in sandbox until you find one you like).

@LTL King @Joesk There is a channel on discord for sharing craft files. Discord is also a good place for help and advice. https://discord.gg/VdsxK9p7QC I'm not sure which of the RCS part packs you screenshotted have RO/RP-1 configs. If RCS isn't working then check you have high pressure tanks, the correct fuel mixture, enough avionics, and for manual control, not MechJeb, you also need a comms connection. Edit: For RCS parts make sure they have an engine config button in the PAW, otherwise they probably aren't correctly configured for RP-1. You shouldn't have any gyroscope parts at that stage in career.

Personally I think the "make our own methane" project won't get any further than a pilot plant to develop the processes and equipment they intend to eventually use for ISRU on Mars. If they are making large amounts of LOX on site, then they might be able to capture small amounts of carbon dioxide from that plant, for relatively low additional energy and cost, which might be enough for an ISRU pilot plant that only runs some of the time. I also recall hearing something about Musk offering a prize for carbon capture technology, so I think they are hoping for a better capture tech.

@LTL King KSP 1.12.3 is the latest version of KSP. (Do not read version numbers as decimal numbers, read them as major version <separator> minor version <separator> patch level. 1.12 is later than 1.9. KSP 1.12.3 is the only version of KSP that the latest release of RO, RP-1 and related mods is designed to work with. @Kazkar RO, RP-1 and a number of other related mods had new releases about 24-48 hours ago. The CKAN metadata tab has links to the github repositories. The github release page for each mod lists the changes. From memory most of the changes shouldn't break anything in existing saves. However do not update Scatterer. For some reason new versions of scatterer break things.

@LTL King In the steam beta tab select none. That opts out of all old versions that are archived under the beta tab, and gets you the latest version.

Most of the parts from the DLCs are also unsupported. From memory deleting or disabling the file GameData\RP-1-ExpressInstall\RP-1Express.cfg should allow unsupported parts to load.

I'm not so sure. If you are mass producing engines, then you need to expect the some sort of failure rate. (That is part of why they test every engine). So if the first one failed unexpectedly for a random reason, they may well have continued testing other engines whilst they investigated the failure. But if two failed unexpectedly in a short period, that suggests there might be a problem. Are they still testing raptors, or have they now paused?

Personally I use CKAN to install mods. It makes checking for newer versions easy and automatically installs dependencies, and eliminates user install errors. @LNugget315 RSSInclinations.cfg from 2020. I have vague memories of a mod that attempted to add proper inclination support to KSP from a couple of years ago. I'm assuming it was a Kopernicus add-on. I haven't heard anything about it recently so I'm guessing it isn't maintained, and probably isn't compatible with the latest KSP and Kopernicus. (The last I heard about it was a few years ago, and that was something about it never really working properly anyway). If that mod was installed then I would clean that out, and also get rid of all of its config files.

@LNugget315 The only thing that jumps out at me from those screenshots is why do you have 2 copies of ModuleManager? Are all mods up-to-date, and compatible with 1.12.3? How did you install? For me, to debug a problem like this, I would start with a clean KSP install, with just the minimum set of mods you need for Kopernicus and Sigma. (I don't see a planet pack I recognise, so I'm assuming you are just rescaling the stock system). Then find out whether that loads, then gradually add more mods.

The Kopernicus-1.12.1-90 release also works for me on KSP 1.12.3, so whatever the problem is it doesn't impact everyone.

Personally I have no interest in creating a user defined theme, but I would try a dark theme, if it was included in the download.

Source?

See

It's worth pointing out that the Gemini 6A launch abort happened after engine start, but before the launch clamps released, so I'm not sure that is considered as an abort after launch. In real life, an engine shutdown and the vehicle falling more than a few inches back to the pad, is likely to result in a fuel leak and fire. eg Vanguard TV3 and Atlas/Centaur AC-5.