Nickel AP

I haven't looked too deep into the forums as to why this mod isn't being updated, but, has there been any outreach to Ferram4 and suggesting they create a patreon so as to help support their work? Of all the mods I use, this one changed the game for me and is sorely missed. I would be happy to donate to help keep this mod up to date.

After about 10 seconds (or less) it was "COOL!" but yeah, it could also be my mostly from my personality also. I have a tendency to worry about things more than most. To be honest, I knew it was a rocket in my head but I hadn't seen one like that before. I've lived in so cal my entire life and have seen maybe 2-3 launched from vandenberg AFB, but 2 things were unique for this launch: 1. The direction, most launches head out over the ocean and continue west, this one went south. 2. The size and look of this one was much different. I know its due to atmospheric conditions and the twilight effect but the contrail was massive. Its hard to tell from pictures, but this contrail was probably 100x larger than anything I have seen before. Additionally, most rocket launches I have seen stop the show once the main engine cuts off, this one the secondary engine had a contrail too. I had never seen that before. That's why it wasn't until stage 2 that my fear it was maybe something nefarious. But again, it was probably mostly my fear prone personality. A few of my friends were positive it was a UFO (until I explained it to them), so it probably tends to be interpreted differently based on peoples predisposed notions. @Vanamonde I also grew up in SoCal, As i mentioned above, i have only ever seen maybe 2-3 launches. It doesn't happen as much anymore, or I am just not lucky enough to see it. The only other odd looking launch I have seen was one maybe 12 years ago. My mom swore the rocket put a hole in the atmosphere. You could see the trail and where the rocket went there was a dark hole where you could see into space. I am not scientific enough to know what caused this effect, but my guess is it was a shadow allowing you to see the dark of space. Anyway, lots of people did know about the launch but apparently I am not one of them. If I remember correctly, they did a launch a week earlier as well. The difference with this one was the atmospheric conditions. It looked like a trail of fire against the (getting darker) twilight sky.

Just a fun little post here thanking the game and community for the added enjoyment of last night’s space x launch. I got a phone call from my fiancé asking if I saw the weird plane in the sky. I turned to look and was struck with awe and fear as I saw a massive light with an even bigger tail. My brain quickly raced through the possibilities of what it could be. Was it a returning space shuttle? No, NASA hasn’t launched a shuttle in years. A meteor? No, we would have heard of it’s approach. Oh god could it be a missile? My fears grew as I saw something detach from the craft. “Oh no, it’s a warhead” I thought. Then after that 10 seconds of confusion and fear, my 500+ hours of KSP experience kicked in. It was a rocket!!! I quickly ran through what I was seeing: The contrail due to it reaching the colder upper atmosphere, the gap in the contrail due to throttle down, the throttle up once it had gained enough altitude to not have atmospheric resistance, the separation of the main stage, the ignition of the secondary engine, and the spinning of the main stage in space and it’s eventual reentry into earths atmosphere. I called my friends and family, most of whom were scared it was a UFO or missile themselves, and explained to them exactly what was going on, all thanks to an indie video game. Since then I have been obsessed with watching footage on social media, the space X stream of the launch (link below) and KSP videos. It was truly an awesome thing to see but even more awesome to scientifically understand what I was seeing. To be able to break down each step in the process but also to understand why it was happening. Thanks to this game a cool experience turned into an amazing one. Thank you Kerbal Space Program for being such a great game that I was able to take experience from a game and turn it into understanding of an actual rocket launch. This is my favorite game I have ever played and now, thanks to Space x, I love it even more. See you in the skies!

I know this is a very old post (3 years, wow) but I have a few questions. Before I get to that though, my motivation is that I am currently trying to build an interplanetary tug to carry my landers, rovers, whatever. I Have made it to duna and back using a ship with single orange and 8x LV-N engines. However, I feel like the twr is poor and despite it being one of the most efficient ways of getting to other planets, I am having a hard time loving the burn times due to twr. So because of this I have been working on bigger, faster, stronger tugs (MORE ENGINES!!!!) to give it oomph, but still having poor twr no matter how naked I make the ship. Now to my questions. What was the TWR on this ship? You mentioned using oxidizer so I am assuming this older version of ksp had lv-n require ox? with this new ksp 8 lv-n seem like they wouldn't have enough push to get that much payload anywhere in a decent time. I am sure you could get to duna (Obviously) but what was your burn time? Was it incredibly long?. The new tug design I have come up with is essentially engines and fuel with some ports for docking (28xLVN, 2x2.5 mono tanks, 2.5 storage, science storage, probe core, 7xbatteries, 8x rcs and each engine has 2x 400 liquid fuel tanks) Essentially the ship is a giant engine and fuel tanks. twr is still < 1.0 with a burn time of 8 minutes. I could probably make it to some outer planets with this but seriously, bare bones build with 28 engines and still less than 1.0 twr? How are the LV-N considered good for interplanetary missions.

Thanks for all of the replies. I definitely agree its over engineered, it was designed that way to experiment with the way heat transferred through stages built this way. also its my interplanetary pod/reserve fuel for an interplanetary tug I built with NERVS. I have since removed the engine completely in an effort to get the heat shields to slow the craft and absorb the heat. My main ship that suffers this question is my refueler. its a big orage with 4 nervs, 4 mark1 liquids with heat shields on top (covered by clam shell until over 70k, my goal is to get it to enter prograde with heatshields on the front, having the 4 nervs at COM causes them to take no heat (ablator loss). My goal is to get it to be capable of slowing down during reentry on its own using the heat shields. I'm thinking I can engineer some supports forward then out to bring the 4 nervs parallel with the 2.5 heat shield. hopefully that way all take the heat and wind and will slow the craft down. Again, over engineered to the 9s but that's what makes this game so fun. Re: the recommendation to remove the heat shields, does having heat shields add more or less resistance? I assumed heat shield = slower. Is it only there to be safer for heat but ends up being more aerodynamic? on a side note, would air brakes at the aft keep it pointed prograde through atmosphere? it doesn't seem like it does which surprised me.

I would assume this has been suggested before but it just came to me and its too awesome not to suggest in the off chance no one has thought of it. It would be awesome to have a star wars themed planetary add-on. I've seen some youtube videos of star destroyers and stuff but I would love to see planets based on the star wars universe. Going further it would be cool to have places on said star wars planets, like a base on Yavin IV or a wrecked star destroyer on Jakku or canyons you can fly through on tat. My love of KSP mixed with my love of star wars would be amazing. Even if this never happens, the thought alone makes me happy! Thanks for reading, may the force be with you and safe flying out there kerbonauts.

So here is a question I have been trying to find an answer to but have had no luck. How does heat on the ship during re entry work? In the instance of heat shields or just standard non heat shielded parts, is it the lead point that takes 100% of the heat or is it heating any point at all that is not parallel to entry angle. Basically here is the back story that leads to my question. I am using stage recovery mod because I like the realism of being able to recover stages. Because of this each stage has parachutes and other things designed to slow down my stages. On my main stage (4 nerv's a orange fuel tank and some struts) I put 1.25s on top of the mark1 liquids and a 2.5 on top of the orange. during aero breaking with my pod attached the 1.25s that are set back a few meters from my pod but open to the elements were taking no heat (no ablator loss) but my lead point on the pod was. Is this how it works? To simplify I have a new stage I'm making (screen shot attached) will the engine take all of the heat and not the shields, or will the shields take the heat since they are also at a perpendicular angle to entry? Thanks in advance.

Good afternoon all, Im coming across and issue with docking. I am unable to dock 2 clamp-o-tron together. they are both the same size. I recently added KJR due to the mass and shape of my station and this will be the third time docking since adding the mod. no issues either previous time. Is there a bug that appears with this mod some times? Do the ports need to be "top to top" and ive just been really lucky with hitting it each time?(station has a total of 6 attachments, this will be 7). by top to top i mean (using nav ball as an example) North to north?. Here is a screen shot for proof of size and lack of magnetism. Should i roll my ship? is my build causing issue? any advice would be great! thanks.

Pretty exciting day for me today. I've been messing around with stuff for a while now and gotten progressively better. BUT! today was my biggest jump in new things. Today I launched my first attachment to my original station satellite, successfully docked the 2. The station is in LKO +- 72k and was originally put up to test out the MPL and I took extra fuel up to serve as a refueling station once in orbit around kerbin. New attachment had a lot more fuel, plus some new scanners I did not originally have. Also the original station was flown using a probe. With todays attachment I wanted to try a manned craft to see if i could also return home and how much fuel it would take. Mission was a total success, docking is a lot of fun! The other big milestone for me today was landing on minmus and returning home. I used the same craft as the station add on minus scanners, to see how much fuel i would need for the trip. I experimented with using RCS thrusters in docking mode to burn prograde. It took a while but seeing as I had never even tried this before, it was pretty neat! Landing on minmus was pretty fun considering the low gravity but the really gut wrenching part was the return. Considering I had never done the landing before I figured I would return home the same way I return from Mun. Well apparently I had my bearing backward because I left KSO and orbited the sun once, did some adjustments and ultimately made it home safe with a LOT of science. I used this science to buy some aero research and experimented with standard flight since I am not great at those builds yet. Built a pretty neat plane and flew due north to reach north pole. about 2/3 of the way up the game froze. Now here I am. It was a pretty neat day for me in KSP, definitely 3 big things I had never done before in 1 day. I love this game and cant wait to try some new things! Happy flying! I know you probably use quite a few and ill try to be as specific as possible, but which mods do you use for realism? The sky and planets look amazing! I tried the realism mod (i think) but was not skilled enough to deal with the real life scale, when i tried to scale back to original, the gravity was all jacked up. anyway, just curious. Thanks in advance

Just here to say OP's name is awesome. Good day!

I was more commenting on being able to achieve 2 out of 2 previously and then not even 1 out of the 2.

Thanks to all replies. Was able to achieve contract. It was my flight path being off a bit. I was just very surprised with my consistency being so "on" and then not being able to hit the contract any more.

Yeah, apparently that is what happened. Accomplished contract a bit later. Was just shocked with my previous consistency that it would be so much different due to slight flight path change. Thanks

Was there an update at all between 1-17-17 and 1-19-17? I had been repeatedly doing kerbin orbit tourist contracts and could continually complete them, first try, at least 5 times in a row. Today I attempted to do a kerbin orbit tourist contract with the exact same ship and could not achieve 70k ap-70k pap orbit. I tried multiple times and ran out of fuel every time BEFORE hitting orbit, not even enough fuel to de orbit. whats going on? Additional info: Was using reliant initial stage, terrier second stage. In an attempt to be extremely cost efficient I was using just enough fuel tanks to achieve orbit and de orbit. With consecutive failures today I tried switching over to thud x2 on initial stage for greater ISP at sea level to no avail. In all humility it may be my flying but I was pretty consistent at hitting orbit with this same ship. I don't know what could have changed in my flying style to restrict me from hitting orbit.

Was there an update at all between 1-17-17 and 1-19-17? I had been repeatedly doing kerbin orbit tourist contracts and could continually complete them, first try, at least 5 times in a row. Today I attempted to do a kerbin orbit tourist contract with the exact same ship and could not achieve 70k ap-70k pap orbit. I tried multiple times and ran out of fuel every time BEFORE hitting orbit, not even enough fuel to de orbit. whats going on? Additional info: Was using reliant initial stage, terrier second stage. In an attempt to be extremely cost efficient I was using just enough fuel tanks to achieve orbit and de orbit. With consecutive failures today I tried switching over to thud x2 on initial stage for greater ISP at sea level to no avail. In all humility it may be my flying but I was pretty consistent at hitting orbit with this same ship. I don't know what could have changed in my flying style to restrict me from hitting orbit.