FullMetalMachinist

As long as they use the same fuel source (all engines burning from the exact same tanks) then you just take the average of all the different Isp's.

To add to that, updates to the game are usually available later on GOG than Steam or the store, by anywhere from a few hours to a day or two. This is because there is a verification of files that GOG does, and AFAIK has nothing to do with Squad.

Going by the latest dev notes and in particular this post from arsonide (towards the bottom of his post), it looks like we're well on the way to getting just that.

The only program that I know of that adds mods for you is CKAN. Might that be it?

It's a stock bug. Look under the "Career" category.

@Firemetal I understand that this is frustrating. What you're describing doesn't sound like it's past the capabilities of the heat shield, and others have said that pretty much the same thing you're doing works for them. So that leaves two possibilities, either you're being more aggressive with reentry than we think, or your 1.1.2 game is bugged. For the first issue, a couple of screenshots will help loads. If you could post one in map view that shows your orbit right when you start reentry, with the AP and PE markers showing the numbers. And one showing the part of your craft that is reentering, maybe one in the VAB and one during reentry, right before everything goes kablooie. As for the other possible problem, when you started playing with 1.1, did you update an existing copy of the game, or did you download a fresh install? If you updated (especially with the patcher) it's possible that something went wrong and messed up your install of 1.1. I would suggest first trying to delete your physics.cfg from the main KSP folder. This will force the game to make a new one with the default values when you restart the game. If that doesn't work you can try downloading a fresh copy. If you're using Steam try verifying the integrity of the game cache.

I think that's (at least partly) the cause of your problems. Easy difficulty has the reentry heat that is generated turned down.

I recently, for the first time ever, used the infinite fuel cheat to finish a land-and-return mission to the Mun, in career mode. I felt dirty afterwards.

I think you get a pass for "just now" figuring that out, as that was added in 1.1 not too long ago. If we knew that, we wouldn't overlook them

Mine is a low-res crop of this picture: It's a puzzle box that's a globe! It was the prize for a summer learning challenge for kids called Brain Chase. The company I work for was contracted to design and make it. I did most of the fabrication work for it. Full album here.

He was being sarcastic. Don't feel too bad, @regex is a master of the sarcastic arts. I've more than once seen someone fall for it.

Hi @paulholt1983, sorry you're having troubles. I'm not sure about what version of KSP you're running, as there is no 1.17. The current version is 1.1.2, and that has some known crashing issues that will hopefully be solved when 1.1.3 comes out soon. There also is a 0.17.1, but that came out almost 4 years ago, so you're unlikely to get much support if that's what you're using . As for posting your log files, it's easiest to upload them to a file hosting site (like pastebin or dropbox) and then post the link to those files here.

The Vector engine is surface attachable, so put 6 in 6x symmetry on the bottom of the tank, towards the edge. Then put one in the center, attached to the node.

You know about named quick saves, yes? If not, press alt-F5 to name a specific save that will not get overwritten when you do a normal F5 quicksave. Press alt-F9 to load those named saves.

Maybe an old school style keyboard map is more to your liking?

21 549.425 s Or 5 h 59 m 9.4 s To be precise. From the wiki.

@Stoney3K I don't know what to tell you. I see having the same amount of fuel in twice the space as being a gameplay balance to offset the other things that Mk2 parts give you that I listed above. I really think it was an intentional act by the developers, but if it bothers you, it'd be pretty easy to write a small Module Manager config to add more fuel capacity to those parts.

I don't have any "official" information, but I believe it was a decision by Squad to balance out a few things. 1) The Mk2 parts have a higher crash tolerance 2) Mk2 parts have a higher heat tolerance 3) Mk2 parts provide tons of body lift I think that if you got all that, plus more fuel storage then it would be pretty unbalanced from a gameplay perspective.

Well, not entirely. While you can't have solid boosters share fuel like asparagus, there is a way to make them act and stage away like asparagus. It's pretty involved to get it working right, but it's lots of fun (I think). Warning, wall of text incoming. It takes a lot of trial and error if you don't have a mod that gives you TWR in the VAB (like Mechjeb or KER). Here's what you do (for all this I'm assuming that you'll use the solids stage just as a first lifter stage, and have a second LF-O stage, plus payload). 1) Put a center booster (either solid or liquid fuel, whichever you prefer) 2) Put a pair of radial decouplers in symmetry on that center booster. Attach a solid booster of your preference. This will be set "C". 3) Hold the <mod> key (alt for Windows) and click on the radial decoupler. This will copy the decoupler and the booster attached to it. Place another pair so that it will be evenly spaced as if there were 6x symmetry on. This will be set "B". 4) Copy the decoupler/booster combo again and place on the core in the empty spot. Make sure that all 3 pairs are evenly spaced, as if you had set them all at once using 6x radial symmetry. This will be set "A". 5) Now comes the tricky part. Set the staging so that the core and all 3 sets of radial boosters fire together. Then put the decouplers for set A in the next stage, then set B in the next stage, and then set C in the next. 6) Now right click on a set A booster and make sure the thrust limiter is set to full. Then right click on set B and put it somewhere lower, maybe around 80%. Then set C at around 60, and the center something like 40. The thrust limits will vary depending on the rest of the ship, so you'll just have to play with it. This is why it's helpful to have a TWR readout in the VAB. if you set the staging properly, it will tell you the TWR at the start, and take into account all the fuel that burns when you stage away each booster set. Set the thrust limiters so that at the start of each stage you have a TWR of around 1.4. 7) When you launch, it should go something like this. First stage starts all the radial boosters and the center. Set A had it's limiter set to full, so it's fuel runs out first. When it does, stage to drop set A, and everything else keeps burning. Then set B runs out, so you stage those away. Then set C, until all that's left is the center, burning at a low thrust limited setting, so it's fuel lasted the longest. When it's done stage it away and continue as normal. (Credit given where credit is due. I had played with this idea a little, but it was @Snark (who calls this "poor man's asparagus") who posted this method in another thread and finally filled in what I was missing to make this work.)

Known bug. When any of the contract orbit parameters are either N/A or NaN the orbit lines will not be drawn. http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/9651

Unfortunately, the answer is no, it's not possible to attach a radial tank using more than one radial decoupler. Not for a single tank, nor for a stack of radial tanks. They may look like they're both attached, but only the one that you click on to place the tank will actually attach. If you're having stability issues, the answer is to put one radial decoupler towards the top, attach the side tank, then put one or two struts at the bottom. They will disappear when you stage the decoupler. Be sure to place the struts from the side tanks to the center. This is because after the struts let go when you stage, their mass and drag are still applied to their parent part (which is the one you place first when doing the strut).

In all of my career games I've been to Mun and Minmus before ever touching planes or wheels, because that's pretty much how the tech tree is laid out. Press caps lock to toggle precision controls. Makes everything much less twitchy.

Reentry behavior, or atmospheric behavior didn't really change with 1.1 The way the opening conditions are calculated is what changed. In 1.0.5 to "safe" opening speed was too slow on Duna because of a wonky way that number was calculated by the game. They fixed that for 1.1, so now drogues can open much faster on Duna, but the atmosphere didn't really change (AFAIK). Now, that doesn't really help your situation, just thought I'd let you know. What I would try is once you start seeing your velocity slow the most during reentry (when your deceleration is greatest) fire your engine just until it's safe for the drogue. Then you should be able to open it and kill your engine, and the chute will hopefully do the rest. I also would be careful about setting your PE too high, 25-30 km sounds right to me, but that also depends on how high your AP is. Hope this helps!

It's not actually, that's stock. That only "works" if you have rotated them away from the default orientation. You have it backwards. You want that option turned off, as Aser says. With the "Auto rotate" option turned off, when you use left-click-drag to rotate the kerbal and then use WASD to translate, they will stay rotated and translate in the desired direction. Then, if you need to, you can press space bar to reset them to the default "up/down" rotation.