Tyko

just downloaded this mod...love the way it looks! For some crazy reason the Service Module is producing 3788.4EC. I'm looking at the cfg file and it clearly says 200. I even tried disabling the fuel cell thinking that was doing something whacky. The Avionics Ring doesn't have this problem even though it also offers EC. I know it's a long shot, but does that (strange) number sound familiar at all?

Question about Suicide Burn calculations. There's the Suicide Burn altitude readout - which i thought meant "fire full throttle at this altitude to avoid dying" - but every time I try using that, even padding by 10% or so, ends up with loss of life and equipment. Am I using it wrong or is this something that's still being worked on?

Some life support mods use water as a resource, so I guess it could be used for that. If you had water as a resource you could break it down (by adding electricity back in) to hydrogen and oxygen to power some mod's cryogenic engines...So, I guess there would be some ways to use it. I think the biggest issue though is just the small quantities you're talking about. Compared to fuel-hungry engines, the amount of fuel you'd recover from the waste product of the fuel cell reaction is really small.

Fair point. I thought this particular thread was specifically debating circularization versus a gravity ascent followed by direct injection to a transfer vector. I was addressing that, but it's good to clarify

Did you add Module Manager and Kopernicus? those two mods are necessary. (I made the same mistake the first time...)

You may also be thinking of AutomatedScienceSampler, It's icon is a little animated flask and it does all the things you're describing. https://kerbokatz.github.io/#AutomatedScienceSampler

You can't go from a suborbital path to an escape trajectory without passing through a stable orbit path. At some point on your burn you'll go from a negative PE to a 70Km or higher PE. When you surpass 70Km you're already on an orbital path. You may spend a little DV to fine tune a circular orbit, but that's negligible. Once you're in a circular orbit you have plenty of time to plan your transfer burn and being able to optimize that burn can offer significant DV savings.

Are the rings of Tellumo actually a navigation hazard? I tried cheating some ships into orbit and flying around the rings and couldn't figure out how to interact with them.

I've tried several and settled with USI-LS. I like the simplification of having "supplies". I also like the way that recycling and greenhouses are treated. When using USI-LS I get a sense for what it takes to create longer missions without getting bogged down by multiple resources.

I just finished reading Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin. In that he pretty strongly denounces Moon-first as having any real value when measured against the additional resources necessary. His arguments include that it actually takes more DV to get to the moon than it does to Mars (including use of aerobraking on Mars), that the resources on moon are very limited and different than those on Mars (so you can't really test ISRU equipment) and that it's harder to get from Moon to Mars than it is to leave directly from LEO...there are a bunch of others. It's a good read.

Except in many space movies that behave like submarine movies they go too far with the analogy. Everyone on the spaceship speaking in hushed tones, for example. I think that the Wing Commander movie was guilty of this. I'm usually willing to overlook sci-fi "errors" that are tied to something being too small for the job. That can be explained away with the "technology got better" excuse. Higher ISP engines, smaller/lighter components, etc.

I'd love to see an alternative stockalike 3 person command pod. The Stock version doesn't really go with more recently created parts and the fact that the crew hatch isn't located on one of the 4 cardinal directions makes ladder placement a pain.

MOLE is pretty awesome! For adding a 2 Kerbin capsule to Stock, I'd go simple to avoid creating a dozen new parts. I'd be happy with a 1.25m capsule that flairs to 1.875 just above it's 1.25 connector. It would essentially fit in the same way a slightly expanded satellite fairing would. You could also create a 2.5 meter adapter / service bay for those that want to mount the Mk2 capsule on a 2.5m stack. This option would only require 2 new parts; Capsule and adaptor/service module.

Yea, I know that I can switch the type and I'm sure it's not range because switching the craft type gets me full signal. I was just looking to use that asteroid type to include asteroid bases that I've captured into orbit.

Thanks. I'm pretty sure I was looking at tonnages (as shown in the right click menus for tanks) not the units. I'll try it again tonight and see what happens.

I'm pretty close to @Snark but go for lower TWR. 1.5 for my first stage (shoot for approx 1700DV), just around 1.1 for my second stage (approx 1700DV). I tilt to 10 degrees as soon as I clear the launch gantries but leave SAS on Hold Course. When the rocket hits 140-160m/s I switch SAS to Hold Prograde. this launch profile usually gets the rocket to a 45 degree angle between 10 and 15Km After that, it's the same as Snark

That worked! Thanks for the prompt help

I'm with @RX2000. I first tried the demo last year and it almost scared me away from the game. Last week I installed it again so I could help @AdmFranzvonHippie (new forum member) with a few questions. I thought it would be super simple because I've played KSP for thousands of hours. Even with that experience I found the mix of parts they chose for the demo to be a far cry from ideal. I also wish that the demo was based on 1.2.x rather than 1.[something older]

Please change my name to: Tyko Thanks!

wonderful! I was thinking more along the lines of what @danfarnsy said - add a small monopropellant capacity and then fill the rest of the tank with LFO.

Love this mod! Thanks It's working with Procedural Parts no problem. Feature Request - In the UI, could you include an "add a tank" option that actually adds both an LF and OX tank in the correct ratios?

Thanks!

@Kermanzooming if you happen to find the link to the fix, please shoot it our way. I'm helping a friend to use KSP on his Mac and he has a heck of a time getting the game to load

If I modify a MM config file, is there a quicker way to see the changes than quitting and reloading the entire game?

I've captured a couple of asteroids and renamed them using the craft type "asteroid". Apparently CommNet doesn't try to talk to Asteroids even if they have radios attached to their surface.