proteasome

you have exactly the same problem I've periodically come across. I haven't found anybody else with this problem yet, so I don't know what's causing it. I've been able to avoid the problem for now by taking the following steps, which I gleaned from various posts, but I'm not sure which of them is actually causing the bug to go away. 1) I did a clean install of KSP and all my mods. I made sure to get rid of any mods I wasn't using. One mod in particular that I did get rid of, which may have been causing the problem, was OPT space plane parts. I also uninstalled TCA for what it's worth. Other mods I removed included precise node, better burn time. I don't know if this bug is a mod conflict or not. 2) I now try to avoid excessive part clipping. I think this may have been causing the problem. Do your ships have significant part clipping? I would be really curious to know. 3) I avoid excessive quicksaving. 4) I keep my saves uncluttered. I first noticed the bug a while ago, but it got really bad last week. Since then I've been doing these 4 things and haven't seen it come back. Let me know what works or doesn't for you. Interesting. None of my ships have had drill-o-matics. Were they at all clipped into anything, even when extended?

Post a screenshot of your ship (as you said, on the ground testing for figuring out reactors is best) and I might be able to help.

I've had a similar problem to this that can occur with many different engines where I seem to get "stuck" in a particular orbit, and nothing I do can change it. I think it's related to part clipping, but that's just a hypothesis. A question: do you have functioning RCS? is that able to change your orbit, or is it simply a problem with Vista thrust? What do the values from Kengineer and from the Vista say for thrust in kN?

You might want to think about KSP Interstellar. It's a complicated mod, but one that will ultimately allow you to launch rockets and SSTOs on a kerbal scale (.65 - 3.75 m) in RSS. If you take the plunge, be aware that KSPI is a large and actively updated mod and will require lots of additional research (both in game and on forums) to discover the true potential of, however, like KSP in general I think it is well worth the effort. As an example, I just made this SSTO that landed on Titan without refueling from KSC/Florida. Additional parts are from B9 mods.

Range may be theoretically infinite, but how far have you or an autopilot actually flown?

unobtanium/handwavium also 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (the comet Rosetta went to)

Cool. What's the furthest it's possible to go in an SSTO Spaceplane w/out refuel I wonder? Has anyone ever made it to Eeloo?

I'll try the return trip with a reactionless SSTO design. Thanks for the shoutout.

I'm thinking of trying this challenge, but want some clarification. What is the current Altitudinist record? I don't see it listed. Also, can you achieve said altitudinist record by repeatedly refueling en-route to final orbit? Thanks.

For my entry I didn't engineer for range or speed (or total score) but tried to get every bonus point and no deductions. When all the testing was done it managed around 2.5 circumnavigations and topped out at 1,432 m/s. Here's my submission in the medium category, scored below: Bonus points: Your plane cannot tailstrike no matter how hard you pull up on takeoff (20 points) (extra-large landing gear is almost flush with engines) Your plane stalls at less than 20m/s (60 points) (with full flaps and little/no fuel I can fly straight at 20 m/s. Stall is higher (~30 m/s) with more fuel) Your plane does not need SAS to fly stably (20 points) (at high speeds/altitudes it's almost easier to fly without SAS, particularly in roll) Your plane does not need trim adjustment to fly straight and level. This only stacks with the non SAS points. (10 points) (between 5,000 and 10,000 meters, trim is stable and altitude can be adjusted with throttle only and SAS turned off) Your plane can fly on 25% of it's engines (35 points) (can easily take off with 3/4 engines disabled) Your plane can belly land with all crew and passengers surviving (20 points) Your plane can belly land without damage (40 points) Your plane has airbrakes (10 points) Your plane can ditch in the water with all crew surviving (10 points) Your plane can ditch in the water with no damage (20 points) Your plane is an amphibious seaplane (30 points) (can take off and land with full fuel both in water and on land) Your plane can take off and immediately land back on the runway without turning around, and is heavy size or above (10 points for large 20 points for super-heavy) (can easily do this, but is only medium) Your plane has a way to jettison fuel without speeding up (10 points) (I mounted 2 small engines radially, 180 degrees from each other on opposite sides of the fuselage below the wings. You can see them in the staging, if not the screenshot. Running these engines will spend fuel without changing speed) Your plane can fly on any two engines. (I tested a lightly fueled airplane and was able to take off with only 2 engines, one on either side, with 14 disabled. Not sure if you picked the two engines on one extreme side if it would still be doable). Simple fuel and air systems: your plane has all fuel tanks and air intakes in the same stack as an engine (10 points) Point malus: None! Score: Max speed+(max distance/10)+((Max passengers*5)*1+(number of flight attendants/2))+Bonus points 1432+ (12,992/10) + (32*5) + (9/2) + 295 =1432 + 1299 + 160 + 4.5 + 295 = 3190.5

Managed to plant a flag on Proxima Centauri B in a 70 year mission from earth using a single 20 meter SSTO and a bunch of kick ass mods. Full mission report below for anyone interested. Val's view of Proxima Centauri rising over Proxima Centauri B:

WOOT! This challenge was truly challenging! Completing it was a great way to tie together everything I learned about the Interstellar mod over the past several 100 hours of playing with it in sandbox. I just finished this using a SSTO Space plane carrier without FTL or reactionless drives! Stats for posterity. total launch mass 4,123t total launch cost $1,236,987,000 total launch part count 68 interstellar vessel dry mass 1,550t interstellar vessel wet mass 4,123t interstellar vessel part count 68 interstellar vessel cost $1,236,987,000 total travel time 69y 91d maximum achieved speed 4,164,000 m/s deltaV 10,165,752 All the gory details are in the album, along with extensive captions. If people are more interested in this I can post the craft file and/or edit the raw video down, maybe post it in flight reports. It was around 4 hours of time flying the mission, so that's a bit of editing. As far as I know (please correct me if wrong) the first Single Stage to Proxima Centauri Space Plane, The SSTP "BoatyMcBoatFace." All the credit goes to FreeThinker and everyone who's contributed to the mod and all its dependencies, and nurtured this awesome community. (Don't know why all pics aren't showing up in preview, click on album to view all through completion) With a little more engineering and better flying, I'm confident I can round trip from the runway to Proxima and back, but maybe not as quickly. If allowed to refuel at proxima it should be close to doable with a setup similar to this, replacing the lander in the cargo bay with some ISRU equipment. Might even be done in the same time round trip than it took me to go one way. I think it might even be possible to land on Proxima Centauri B and return to the Space Center without refueling if you were clever about it. Totally unconfirmed at this point. Also worth noting, if you ease the restriction on not using the quantum vacuum plasma thruster (not sure if that's part of the challenge or not) you could use this ship to go to Proxima Centauri in a few years tops. Replace the fusion pellet fuel with a black hole drive and as many radiators as you can fit into a flyable airframe. Your effective range and top speed is now only limited by how much Hydrogen or Helium fuel you bring to feed the black hole. Just a thought.

The FTL drive is out, but what about the quantum plasma EM drive? Slow, but no propellant aside from reactor fuel. Would this be cheating for this challenge?

Post a picture of your ship and transmitter and i might be able to help.

If you don't consider it cheating, try combine the anti-grav "wheels" from foundries with a strong RCS system.

I was getting ok on kerbin by using the same vehicle each time, that really helped with having reliable benchmarks. Now that I switched to RSS I feel like I'm learning to do it all over again. If anyone has tips for planning deorbit on larger worlds i'd love to hear about them.

Just made this relay sat. Main mods: KSP-interstellar, RSS, tweak-scale. Launched with a kspi antimatter powered spaceplane per gallery. Be kind, haven't posted to a challenge before.

MJ opened up more of the game for me after I had proved that I could orbit, land, rendezvous and dock by letting me focus more on design, which is what I was interested in. Later, when I began to do more with planes and mods it became progressively less useful, and now I use it mostly for delta-v planning and automating rendezvous. It was a useful bridge for me when I wanted to automate things while I was still learning. My 2 cents for a dead horse...

Reinstalled and things are working fine. Thanks.

Just trying this mod for the 1st time. Very beautiful! Having a small issue where loading any of the J cockpits causes my game to crash when moving to the runway. Doesn't occur with the J drone cores or the other format cockpits. My error log below: [ERR 19:17:54.231] [JSIActionGroupSwitch]: Failed to instantiate action handler JSIInternalRPMButtons:ButtonSASModeNormal [ERR 19:17:54.233] Cannot find an InternalModule of typename 'JSIInternalRPMButtons' [ERR 19:17:54.233] [InternalProp]: Failed finding module JSIInternalRPMButtons for method ButtonSASModePrograde [ERR 19:17:54.233] [JSIActionGroupSwitch]: Failed to instantiate action handler JSIInternalRPMButtons:ButtonSASModePrograde

I'm still unclear, personally, if there's a true difference btwn beamed thermal vs electrical. Some of the recievers can use either mode, but I think this is just for electric vs thermal engines. I don't think you can use a transmitter setup that didn't use either integrated generators (a few reactors have them) or external ones. Unless I'm misreading the KSPedia page which shows all transmitters requiring megajoules. As for a mirror relay, you shouldn't need a beam generator or a second dish. The only thing else you need is some source of power, since the relay won't both receive and transmit. Solar power should be ok, unless you need MJ for a computer core. Hope none of that is wrong, I'm still figuring out all the details of this amazing mod.

I can't answer all your questions, but I can tell you about my experience with microwaves vs laser IR. I haven't yet used ultraviolet extensively, but I've heard it's best for beaming large amounts of power over great distances in space. ***For the optimal configuration of your transmitters, what to use as relays, etc, look at the KSPedia entry for KSP Interstellar Extended in the game. The first network I built was microwave, because that's what I had used in previous KSPI releases. With the new introduction of different wavelengths, it looks like the mod is now more realistic in how it treats distance and atmospheric scattering across the spectrum. @FreeThinker has posted a plot of Wavelength vs Absorption that the game uses in these threads a few times. The takeaway is that if you want to beam lots of power in the atmosphere, you need to use microwave or laser far-IR. Of these two, microwave might seem somewhat easier to do because of the diversity and capacity of the parts, but it has a big limitation, which is that it looses power very rapidly with distance. A laser-based far-IR setup works better if you want flexibility in being able to capture larger amounts of power over greater distances (or if you're using real solar system scale). Some of the mod's thermal receivers can accept power from any beamed wavelength source, of course factoring in the usual path and atmospheric losses, so it's fine to have complimentary networks. Just be aware that things might get tricky if you try to relay or transmit multiple wavelengths simultaneously on a single satellite. To sum up my main thoughts: - For Atmospheric launches over short relay distances, use Microwave or Laser far-IR - If you need larger path lengths (for instance because of relays) and atmospheric penetration, user far-IR. - For interplanetary distances use UV. - Beam types can be converted on a relay station that contains two dishes and a beam generator, with some loss occurring depending on the scale and optimal wavelengths of the dishes.. - The most efficient relays use one of the pivoted mirrors because the power doesn't have to travel through the spacecraft or a converter of any sort. Getting your relay in orbit is also a lot easier when you're only trying to orbit one large dish, instead of two. I found this to be a major point in favor of far-IR when setting up my home planet system.

I've had a lot of success solving bugs like that in sandbox modes to check if it's an upgrade burried or undocumented somewhere. Alternatively, you can start a new career/science mode and give yourself science points with the cheat menu to figure out what you need to research. My 2 cents...

Is there a working folding antenna to use for microwave beamed thermal power? I tried all three of the folding antenna's (directly connected to a mk1 inline thermal reciever, connected to a thermal turbojet), and they can pick up microwave electrical MW, but not thermal power. Are there better solutions for capturing power beamed parallel to the axis of thrust?