Mjarf

KSP claimed KSP Interstellar was incompatible on launch, but it seems to work normally.

I have definitely experienced more VAB crashes after I installed several mods, so it definitely seems to be at least affected by mods if not caused by mods. Before I installed any mods I had VAB crashes very rarely, now it's definitely more often, but not enough to make the game unplayable.

As long as your way of playing involves spending large amounts of propellant, I approve it.

I see your point, it's true that parachutes aren't very efficient on Duna, but I like to foolproof my crafts as much as possible, as I have the occasional brainfart when flying. I guess half the point of the forums is to share our different ways of doing things. You prefer to do things more efficiently, I tend to over-engineer everything.

One alternative is to have parachutes in clusters mounted on decouplers so that you can get rid of the weight before launching from the surface? One thing I have noticed on my trips to Duna is that the planet seems to be jinxed. On every trip something has gone wrong or has almost gone wrong. I've nearly lost both Jeb and valentina on Duna, it's a surprisingly treacherous planet, probably because I tend to underestimate it.

Tested my newly built 2nd generation Odin class interplanetary cruiser with a trip to Duna, it performed beautifully. The new lander I designed performed fairly well, but I will probably go back to using a Mk1 lander can to keep the weight down. It could take off from Duna with delta-v to spare when it reached orbit, but it was quite sluggish. The launch nearly crashed the local fuel market: En route to Duna, I'm loving these nuclear lightbulb engines: Jeb likes big engines : Arrived at Duna, about to launch the landing craft, there's an extra tank of monoprop in the hangar/cargobay to re-fuel it for multiple landings: Jeb safely landed in one of the long valleys on Duna: Jeb got curious about the nucelar reactor when he got back from Duna "This thing heats my dinner?": Jeb also took a trip to Ike, he seems to like small moons:

I know that that it was close to 0% chance it would have hit the craft, but it definitely felt close, that's what I meant. Maybe I should have worded it a bit differently.

I had a near miss the other day, had a leftover booster zoom past at several km/s at about 10km distance, that's really close at those velocities. I had an interplanetary craft enter a clockwise orbit around Kerbin on accident, so all debris in orbit was moving at 4-6km/s relative to the craft. After this incident I went to the tracking station and started terminating space debris, don't want any of my crews die because of leftover rocket parts.

In vanilla KSP (no mods), I often use the NERV engine(s) with the Mk3 liquid fuel tanks as they have a huge capacity, 10km/s delta-v is easy peasy this way.

When you occasionally dream about KSP. I had a quite creepy dream last night, I dreamt I forgot I had left timewarp on and did other stuff in the meantime, when I came back it had been on full timewarp for a long time. The ship had left the Kerbol system and reached some hellish looking planet with some random name, gave me the creeps. It was all black with a heavily cratered surface and a fiery looking atmosphere. I think I may have to cut back on KSP.

I like the solar panel array, looks almost like an umbrella.

I love this engine, very nice balance between ISP and power to weight ratio. It can also run on almost any fuel, liquid fuel gives slightly lower ISP, but at the same time give slightly higher thrust. Did a little "housekeeping mission today, decided bring back the 4 Kerbals at my Mun base as I've never gotten around to finishing it. After 15 years stationed on the Mun Shermun, Hanfield, Leia and Carchelle were "grateful" to finally be brought back home.

Here's a couple pics of my 2nd generation Odin craft that I used for my recent Eve mission. It has a cargobay/hangar for landing crafts and probes, makes for a more aerodynamic profile during Kerbin ascent and it's just a lot neater than strapping the lander on top of the craft. Here it's in orbit over Eve: Cargobay/hangar open, here you can also the radiators on the molten salt radiator: I'm working on the 3rd generation at the moment, it'll be designed for longer missions and will have an ore converter in the cargobay, I may have to make it slightly longer to make room for it all. It will also be a twin engine design with a bit more emphasis on aesthetics.

I thought my new Odin class was big, it's compact compared to this behemoth hehe. My Odin craft custom tailored for a manned landing on Eve will be quite huge as it'll have to haul a quite large landing craft. This is impressive stuff, I'm guessing you're using Infernal Robotics or something for the shipyard?

That actually sounds like a lot of fun. Things get a lot more interesting when you have to improvise and "MacGyver" a solution to the problem. I have also had to send jeb out to push, I think we've all been there and done that.

From what I've seen increasing TWR doesn't necessarily decrease delta-v as much as reducing fuel mass or increasing payload mass. Doubling the TWR won't necessarily cut delta-v in half, decreasing fuel mass to half will. At least this is according to Kerbal Engineer, this mod seems to calculate delta-v precisely. It's true what Reactordrone says, overdoing the TWR will waste fuel, I always go for a balance between TWR and fuel efficiency. For a transfer stage you're wasting fuel with a TWR higher than 1, .5 is usually sufficient, unless you plan on doing very aggressive maneuvering and/or are bringing ISRU to re-fuel. Doubling both engine thrust and fuel mass will increase payload capacity, so sometimes it's necessary to have multiple engine and tank assemblies if you're pushing a very heavy payload. I like to us mutliple engines on transfer stages because it looks cool and I like my Kerbals to be comfortable in a large command/habitation module.

Docking ports don't like clipping. I had the same issue, turned out the monoprop tanks I mounted close to the docking port were slightly clipping into it. When I moved the tanks the docking port worked properly again.

I'm glad it worked out, I know how how frustrating a non-compliant rocket can be.

Went to Eve and back, landed a probe on the surface, not brave enough for manned landings yet. I almost lost Jeb on Gilly, spent too much fuel forrecting the orbital inclination, barely had enough fuel left to get into a stable orbit around Eve. Luckily the mothership had plenty delta-v to spare so I did the rendezvous with the mothersip. It was a bit scary on the way back from Gilly to Eve orbit, but in the end all went well and the trip earned me several thousand science points to spend on new technologies. I'm using the KSP Interstellar mod, so there are plenty technologies to spend science points on. Eve's atmosphere is scary btw. Jeb seems to like it on Gilly, might bring a little base to place there next time. Jeb happily reunited with his comrades. Back in Kerbin orbit, rendezvous with a Heimdal R ship to get them back to the KSC. I'm definitely going back to Eve, very interesting planet, I wanna pull off a manned landing too, just need to do some engineering work first. This was the first trip of the first ship in my new Odin class, intended for long interplanetary missions. Later generations will be larger with ISRU capability.

I do remember the "old way" of playing KSP, I did it myself, but back then I'd get bored of the game after a day or two, I'm not saying the "old way" was any better or worse, but it din't suit me. Back then I'd place 30+ SRB's under the Mk1 pod and launch just to see what happened. I'd build ships with a bunch of NERV engines and fly to the Mun by aiming towards it and keep the engines running until I crashed into it. It was fun but it wasn't lasting fun for me. Now I can spend days just engineering and designing a ship before launching it, only to revert back to the VAB again because it didn't perform exactly the way I want. This way of playing suits me much better, I often plan new ship designs in my head when it's quiet at work. I've always been a tinkerer, so I often have more fun building the ships than flying them. Now that I actually know what I'm doing the game is more fun and has more meaning to me, it's almost become dangerously addicitive.

Are you sure the COM is perfectly centered longitudinally? Maybe some part is causing excessive drag on one of the sides of the rocket? Do you have a craft file so maybe one of us can test run your rocket?

Did you adjust the gimbal range down? The vector engine has extreme Vector range, if you don't adjust it you risk the engine ripping the entire rocket apart in my experience. I usually set it to 10-15% gimbal range.

I occasionally use this trick myself, it works with docking ports as well.

When you're starting to have an actual problem with space debris. Last night a piece of debris zoomed past a ship in orbit at a distance of just 10km at what looked like a relative velocity of several km/s. 10km might not sound close, but it feels extremely close at those velocities, and it only takes a tiny nudge to make it collide on the next pass. I really need to start cleaning up my debris.

How about Kerbal parachutes? It would be extremely useful for those instances when the crafts parachute fails, you could just go EVA and pop the Kerbal parachute. No need to add new tanks for liquid fuel, just implement the fuel switch mod, I use it all the time, makes for some ridiculous delta-v with NERV's.