DStaal

I've noticed that as well. Another way to clear it is to hover the cursor over a *stored* Breaking Ground part - but that does mean you need to have one more part than you deploy. (It's also not 100% reliable that it will stay. I've been trying to figure out the exact trigger.)

Which means that the size of the reactor is based (indirectly) on the thrust, not that the the thrust is based on the size of the reactor. (And really it's more coupled to the ISP - you could always expel cold propellant if you want.)

Most of that NFE can do, actually. The one thing is the not usable for long durations - if you have the cooling, it would work even for long durations. In a surface-based tug I could see putting in an engine you couldn't use full-out for long, knowing you'll want the short bursts of power - but I don't really see how that would work with a nuclear space engine. Thrust is based on propellant/coolant flow, not the size of the reactor. Hmm. One idea: A low-ISP high-thrust mode that could be switched to. If you need power for something in particular, you can dump more propellant in, but you can't heat it as effectively then. If you really wanted to, that could over-cool the reactor and have it shut down the engine after a time period until it could heat up again.

Which makes sense in a mass-efficiency way, but is locking yourself into one design paradigm, and I'm not sure the core would heat up to explosion if you didn't. (Depending on design of the core, of course.) Basically, the main advantage of that is that you don't need radiators on your ship, and you were already doing a thrust burn anyway. You lose some ISP, but you aren't carrying dead weight which you only need for short periods. On the other hand if you do need the radiators for something else - say you have a nuclear power plant for EC, or you're delivering a mining rig that will need suitable radiators as well - then the long cooldown is just making your burn calculation harder. (And *much* harder in KSP, as none of the tools help with it.)

The part that sticks out to me is the 'cool down this way or it heats further' - I would think in most cases (especially for an engine) you could damp the reactor pretty quickly, so it wouldn't *generate* more heat. (Though it would be very hot at that point.) Depending on the design, you may be able to extract the heat without using propellant, and even without proper cooling what you'd have is a normal meltdown - which on it's own wouldn't cause an explosion. (Though it would cause catastrophic damage to the engine, making it unusable.) The obvious worst-case safety mechanism for an atomic rocket engine is just to expel the nuclear core - the shell of the engine is still there, but you're not going to be doing any more burns. Though maybe Kerbals prefer things that blow up. You probably could shut down the propellant flow with the engine was still quite hot without danger of meltdown as well (almost certainly by 50%) - though what that heat would do to the *rest* of your ship which isn't designed to handle high temperatures isn't likely to be nice. Though I'll admit I'm feeling a need to re-read the Atomic Rockets page on this... http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php#id--Nuclear_Thermal--Solid_Core

How much cooling would depend on the size of the nuclear core, and it's temperature. Those would have direct relationships to the max thrust of the engine (the reason for my flippant comment - if max thrust isn't keeping your core at a stable temp, your core is to large for the rest of your engine), and to the ISP of the engine, respectively. Ideal shutdown would be to damp the core and reduce flow as Starwaster commented of course - but especially for a tug you might want the ability to crash-shutdown the engine or to keep it warm and ready to thrust on a moment's notice. (And on a full dirty engine you might just dump the core on shutdown - leaving you to only have to deal with cooling the housing.) All that said - take a look at how NFE handles this, as it (and Kerbal Atomics) have an implementation of it already - though it's notoriously prone to issues with the KSP heat system.

Then the engine's poorly designed.

I'm having no issues in 1.7.2. I'm not sure if there's a backwards-incompatable change in b9 part switch, but if there is the best first check would be to find an older version of b9 partswitch.

Best way is probably the Konstruction mod (which is working fine in 1.7.x). There are other mods with larger docking ports, and there are options like EL or Global Construction where you could assemble in one-shot, but using the construction ports would be my choice for a station. Note that the ports themselves max out at the same size as the senior docking ports - but you can make them disappear and make the joint stronger, so it's only temporary while you are assembling the station.

I grabbed times from the KSP.log. It logs when you start, and when you get to the menu. I'll admit loading KSP wasn't all it was doing - I was browsing the web and watching videos while it loaded. AVC lists a bit over 200 mods for me, for reference.

25 minutes. SSD, computer less than a year old - all the mods.

I just wanted to thank @TBenz for their analysis. That exactly correlates to what I was seeing, and adds a *lot* of detail.

Fair enough. Mostly I wanted to be able to grab it and store it so I could sort it out later - not report that text itself, but be able to refer to it better, especially if there are multiple mods involved.

I'll be using it. One question: Is there a way to let the player copy-paste out of it? It'd make reporting issues easier.

Breaking Ground doesn't seem to impact this mod at all. Unless RoverDude decides to switch from KIS to Breaking Ground - but Breaking Ground doesn't have attachment, so I don't think it's suitable there.

What version of KSP are you running? (There was a bug related to this in 1.7.1, fixed in 1.7.2.)

Just a ping to let @VITAS know that KSP 1.7.2 is out.

Sounds good to me. (Took a moment to realize what was being described, but it should be fairly clear in practice.)

The original is working for me under 1.7.1.

Do the Interkosmos parts *need* support? They're just standard science parts, and should work by default.

See official answer above - but I believe in CRP mode they'll carry the resources.

I never remember that Machinery isn't transferable, since there's so many ways to transfer it with USI. Honestly, building Machinery out of SpecializedParts isn't a problem. (The cannon path for it is even SpecializedParts and MaterialKits...) But yeah, I'd expect Machinery to be like Ablator - something you typically expect to be able to build with.

I'd actually argue against this feature. Yes it allows someone to override what's stated - but that's the point of the override, and the overrides are already marked as a different color. And even if it was good just here, this would also block the main purpose of the overrides. Basically: Overrides are already 'at your own risk'. I see putting this in just being an 'unless I really mean it', and then someone's going to ask for an 'I really *really* mean it' override, and it's just a mess. Stop at one level: The player already has all the info, this doesn't add anything except potential aggravation to the player the maintainer of KSP-AVC.

On the ground, I tend to park utility craft where ever I last used them. And yeah, USI makes transferring resources easy in that situation, or I build KAS ports into everything for one-offs when I need them. (Which tends to be on the far side of the planet from everything else I've built...) In space is where I should use them - that's where I get lag-inducing part count, and actually go through the trouble to dock things together. I just need to actually do so and get used to it a few times. As for the rover hanger problem - have you seen the Breaking Ground trailer? They're getting closer to being able to do that in stock... I will note as a sidenote that I almost never use dorsal/ventral-door cargo bays - rovers have cargo bays which open to the sides, but I just land them directly most often. (Usually using TCA...)

I'll admit I almost never use the aeroshells - I tend to dump my fairings well before the areoshell dump would make sense, so they don't fit my play much. (That said, occasionally I'll have some satellite I want that I can't launch any other way due to the design.) The rover lander I find useful, but a bit awkward to use. I tend to like bigger multi-mission rovers, and the rover lander doesn't handle long rovers all that well. That said, if I want to dump a few small robotic utility rovers on a planet, nothing's better - but they have to be fairly small, or the radius of the lander gets big quick. I've rarely used it for anything larger than an Akita. The ground hanger I've used a couple of times - it's large enough it basically needs to be built in place, and though it's useful, that's a large investment in your offworld planetary infrastructure to get set up. It's only really useful once you've built a large base already. The other hangers - I haven't used much, though I probably should. My usual 'spacestation to spacestation' method of transit really should support it, but they've just never quite been part of the design. (Though then I have to launch the hangers as larger than my transit vehicles - which can get somewhat awkward, as they're not designed for anything but space, and may well have been directly constructed in orbit.) Hanger is a mod I always think I should use more than I do.