Zeiss Ikon

Aha! I just asked CKAN to check for updates a few days ago, it must have been really recent. I'll have to go check ...

Can't tell if you're joking here -- I'm not finding such an option (or anything similar) in the Ascent Guidance section of the MechJeb version I have installed (the one called out in the Golden Spreadsheet). There is the option to turn off auto-staging after a chosen stage number, that's the closest I know of. And it's not obvious to me how to set MechJeb to do things like create, edit, and execute a maneuver node. I haven't been able to see the screen well enough in Nathan Kell's videos (I usually watch them on my tablet, which was $70 three years ago).

Correct -- per Grayduster and Nathan Kell, PEG does not handle launches with a coast phase before first apogee (which is almost all launches with reasonable TWR from Kerbin). I've seen MechJeb shut down a stage with propellant remaining when the apogee had reached the requested perigee value, however, presumably intending/expecting to circularize with the next stage, rather than (for instance) pitch down to continue building velocity without further raising the apsis. Where I have trouble is that PEG does unexpected things if, for instance, you don't quite have enough dV for the orbit you're after. It can also make things complicated if you need to stage fairly early (as, for instance, when your launch vehicle burns Ethanol90 with a 2+ minute burn time); it will turn over early trying to make the requested orbit, and then you wind up staging at, say, 30-35 km and Mach 2-3. Which doesn't work out well when you have an engine with 2 degrees thrust vectoring, and a big fairing up front, and no fins...

@PGTART With eight cores, I presume you're running either AMD or a Xeon server CPU. I have an AMD FX-8350 (8 cores, 4.1 GHz turbo), load from SSD, and have nVidia GTx750, and even when my mods are cached it takes several minutes (haven't timed it exactly) to start my RSS/RO/RP-1/Principia game. MUCH faster to start a stock game, of course; not having to load 8+ GB of extra parts makes a biggish difference. There's an unavoidable trade-off here, though -- if you want lots of mods to keep the game from being "boring" (matter of opinion, I played for a year and a half with no mods other than Better Burn Time and never got beyond Duna flyby and landing on Gilly), it's going to take longer to start. Worth noting that putting all the mods into a single cache file could cause problems; in some ways it'd be like leaving the game running. I find (with 58 mods and 55,849 patches for RO) that my 1.3.1 game will get glitchy after 5-6 hours, and crash after seven or so. Loading it all fresh from the original files makes it work "like new" again.

There was a book by Larry Niven titled Building Harlequin's Moon that had an antimatter factory ring that reached all the way around the titular moon (which also had a geologically short-lived atmosphere and hydrosphere). The moon and the antimatter factory were built to make more fuel for a starship that had to make an unscheduled stop.

By NASA standards, the fact you were able to save that mission with RCS means your third stage and both second and third stage RCS were seriously over-provisioned. What do you think this is, Kerbal Space Program?! Glad to see someone else playing RO/RP-1. I think before my next career restart (Take Six, running now, is suffering due to a couple expensive failures in a row), I'll pull all the vehicles into my sandbox and characterize things like how much dV it takes to reach certain sounding rocket altitudes (which will vary some, depending on TWR, of course), how much payload the orbital launchers can put into what orbit, etc. I've had several instances when a rocket I was pretty sure could handle a sounding mission fell a few km short (literally -- 2790 km when the mission altitude was 2810, that kind of thing). I also need to get a better handle on MechJeb's ascent guidance and explore some of its other functions, since MechJeb is clearly pivotal to flying with minimal launch dV (when it works correctly -- and when it doesn't, I'm pretty sure it's because I told it the wrong thing).

I covered that in my original post suggesting backing up. This might have occurred after an upgrade (OP didn't say), in which case there could be saved games to preserve. EDIT: And in any case, I forgot to suggest that the OP should also copy the "screenshots" and "Ships" folders if this is an upgrade.

I'm afraid that, without writing code, your only options are either to turn off "Enable Kerbal Experience" in Advanced settings, or individually edit the Kerbal entries in the save file (and I'm not sure that will do the job -- that is, I'm not sure there's a specific EVA Parachute entry, vs. just changing the Kerbal's experience level). Of course, you could still install one of the mods that provide emergency parachutes for Kerbals, usually in the form of a small module attached to the outside of a command part. You'll get a round canopy that just drops straight down (essentially a part recovery parachute that attaches to your Kerbal as you eject from the vessel) rather than the nice, controllable glide 'chutes the game provides in 1.4.1+, but at least your Kerbals have a way to survive a vessel in a condition that can't be landed...

Still not a bad idea to make a copy of the "saves" folder -- alter or delete the wrong file, and you're back to reinstalling. And don't say it won't happen; I've been using PCs since 1987 (1986 if you count non-DOS/Windows/Linux systems) and I last deleted the wrong file just a few months ago.

WARNING! If you make a mistake doing this, there's a likelihood you'll have to reinstall the game. Since (presumably) you haven't been able to do anything and don't have any save files yet, all that will cost you is a few minutes to reinstall -- but it's something to be aware of. If you have actually started a game, you should make a copy of your "saves" folder before you edit the settings.cfg. BTW, FWIW, in a Linux install (I play on Ubuntu MATE 16.04 at present), the name and location of this file is the same as in Windows -- likely the case for MacOS as well.

I had looked at limiting the thrust on one pair of the Castors to get staggered booster sep back on the Bumper D series, and found the TWR wasn't adequate, but I'll check it again. If I could avoid the high gravity losses after booster sep, I might be able to do some "space high" and comsat contracts with Bumper E1 instead of having to grind funds and then wait for the pad upgrades to accommodate Bumper F1 (4x RD-103 booster, 1xRD-103 full burn second stage, it's over 120 T and 35 m tall). I don't have anything similar to Titan I or Atlas anything yet, I'm still waiting for those lazy-butts in R&D to put down their coffee and invent some engines with more thrust and higher Isp than these alcohol-burners. You'd think they'd never seen a jet engine running on kerosene. I'd recommend searching YouTube for "KSP" or "Kerbal Space Program" and "tutorial". As long as you get a tutorial based on 1.2.2 or later, almost everything you see should apply. I didn't find the game difficult, even when I started playing, but I've been a rocket enthusiast since the Gemini program was still ongoing (and they were calling the planned Moon rocket "Nova"), built model rockets about the time Apollo ended, etc., so understood about things like rocket stability, thrust-to-weight ratio, and the basics of orbital mechanics.

You mean Bumper E1? Thanks! Yes, that's Take Six. I'm pretty happy with it, though the orbit-payload that last launch went to is about its limit. In the VAB, MechJeb claims it has just over 10,000 m/s, but the low TWR after booster sep costs a good bit in gravity and aero losses. Bumper F will almost certainly need to have three or four main engines in the booster stage. Fortunately, I've got enough flight time on the RD-103 now that igniting four at once at least doesn't virtually guarantee a failure.

Today (not yesterday, last night, or over the past weekend, for a change), I fulfilled two lucrative contracts with a single launch (not counting the one that failed to make orbit because I forgot to let it sit on the pad while the first stage tanks filled). The Bumper family launchers have all been loosely derived from the original Project Bumper design, an A-4 (AKA V-2) without its warhead boosting a WAC Corporal (small sounding rocket with hypergolic engine). Over time, the engines have been upgraded, tanks stretched, fuel mix changed to suit the engines. The first orbital launch in this career was on a Bumper D2a -- which barely made orbit at all, finishing insertion with the RCS on the final core. There were still contracts to fill while R&D (seemingly) spent their time over coffee and donuts (at present, I'm nine years out for nodes I've already invested the science points on -- if I wait for Atlas and Mercury tech, it'll be 1970-1972 before I can launch a Kerbal into orbit). Since I have a workable orbital launcher, obviously I ought to be able to upgrade it to take more payload into orbits that require more delta-V. This is Bumper E1. The booster core is an RD-103, a fourth-gen upgrade of the RD-100, which was a Soviet replication of the A-4 engine that rained explosives on London around the middle of the War. The original burned 75% ethanol, chosen because any higher percentage and the engines would overheat and fail. A few more years of development, and the Soviets were able to run 90% ETOH for nearly double the burn time without even needing to monitor engine temperature. Higher Isp, higher thrust, eventually similar reliability. In this case, however, the RD-103 lacks the thrust to even lift the stack off the ground. Fortunately, R&D turned out some actually useful solid boosters recently, the Castor 1. Using the same type of fuel as the Space Shuttle, SLS, Ariane, Vega, Atlas, and Delta solid boosters, as well as hobby rocket motors bigger than the ones Estes has sold for the past sixty years, the Castor boosters bring the TWR from below 1 to about 2.5 on launch, and burn for 38+ seconds. After booster separation, the vessel actually slows slightly for a short time; the RD-103's thrust is less than gravity and air drag combined. Not much less, however, and as propellant burns off, it picks up the pace. The core burns out at about 43 km, around 900 m/s. The sharp-eyed RSS players will notice that this launch is to the north from Canaveral -- I'm combining Solar Powered Satellite (which can go into any orbit about 300 km perigee) with Sun-Synchronous. Unfortunately, I failed to get any images of the second stage -- it's another RD-103 with a shortened tank (to limit the mass the booster has to lift). With staging as low as it was, there was concern the upper stage would tumble before the engine could come up to thrust, but in fact it only pitch/yawed about 45 degrees, and the air is thin enough that high that the jet vanes were able to correct once the engine reached full thrust. Third stage is three AJ10-27, the current upgraded descendant of the original WAC Corporal engine. Mechjeb has the stage pitched up fairly sharply, still raising apogee to become the 300 km perigee. Stages four and five are identical, two AJ10-27 (spaced apart so the decoupler can mount between them). On top of them is the satellite proper, an upper stage avionics core, two Sputnik antennae (Sputnik itself had four of these), three standard experiments (thermometer, barometer, and Geiger-Mueller counter), and the RCS tank and thrusters. Four thrusters push forward, while eight provide pitch/roll/yaw. The RCS actually has 200+ m/s dV and (in line with previous Bumper family satellites) completes orbital insertion, ensuring that all previous stages fall into the atmosphere. The upgraded launcher makes a big difference, though -- despite a significantly higher, slightly retrograde orbit, Sunseeker 1 (the actual spacecraft) has nearly 2/3 of its original load of 68+ liters of HTP remaining on orbit -- plenty for orbital changes, characterization of the sun-synchronous phenomenon, and eventual deorbit. The combined payouts for completion of the Solar Powered Satellite and Sun-Synchronous contracts will give a start toward adapting the available technology for Lunar probe missions. Based on the R&D schedule, it appears I might wind up using alcohol fuel for Lunar probes as well.

FWIW, a fuel cell is a fuel burning "engine" -- it's just that the parts that convert chemical energy into electric energy are molecular in size... But use of fuel cells was the first thing that came into my mind when I read the thread title, too.

"Get out and push" has been around since Kerbals have had jet packs on EVA. Before 1.0, for certain. It's a (sort of) standard method of self-rescue if you're stranded, out of fuel, and don't need a bunch of dV to get to safety -- since the EVA fuel refills every time the Kerbal reenters their pod/cockpit, you just have to remember to leave a few percent to get back inside, and you have infinite (if very annoying to use) delta-V. Mind you, I've never been able to do it -- the module I'm trying to push always tumbles -- but others report doing amazing things that way.

Those are (apparently) actually 10 yen coins shown in the photo, and they're made of a hybrid between bronze and brass. In the USA, copper pennies aren't easy to find -- they quit making them in the early 1980s (replaced by copper plated zinc alloy). However, US dimes and quarters are made of the same core alloy as the cents were from before the introduction of the Lincoln head (1909) until 1983, except for a short run of unplated zinc during WWII (these "silver" coins have been clad with pure nickel since the mid-1960s). The copper-nickel alloy used in American coins isn't all that great a conductor, as metals go, however; pure aluminum is better, pure copper better still. If you have access to a MAPP plumber's torch and a steel ladle (a stainless measuring cup would work, though you'd want to hold it with tongs because the handle is probably too short), you could melt down pure copper from the windings of a scrapped electric motor or an old lamp cord or extension cord, and pour the melt into a mold made from wood (with shallow holes cut with a Forstner bit; single use mold, probably) or steel (drilled holes in one plate, a solid one under it). Please don't do this in a mobile home or apartment...

Okay. Haven't tried it in career (only done parafoil in sandbox, where all Kerbals are 5-star and all buildings are fully upgraded).

Not generally familiar with the Lenovo model in question, but there's another issue to consider: cooling. The Mackbook probably uses the aluminum case as a heat sink, so doesn't depend on a fan to keep cool. My own Thinkpad T430 depends on a fan, and as a result has developed cooling issues that are probably due to dust/lint/cat hair built up in the cooling duct (blowing out the cooling hasn't helped, I probably need to disassemble the machine for cleaning). If your (prospective) Ideapad uses no-fan cooling, it will likely do better than this, but my Thinkpad (I5-3250, 3.4 GHz turbo) throttles to as little as 350 MHz even in the VAB in 1.4.3. Needless to say, that level of slow-down is very frustrating. Potentially worse, some no-fan machines don't cool adequately for gaming, depending on the intermittency of demand for office type use to allow throttling when tasks have pauses (say, when your browser displays a static page while you appreciate the photo -- OF A GALAXY, what did you think?!). These may still exhibit sub-par performance when playing a game that depends heavily on per-thread performance.

In stock game, that won't help you; you have to EVA to get your Kerbal from a command pod or cockpit into the command seat (most folks who build parafoil craft start with the thing coupled to a Mk. 1 Command Pod, it seems). If you're using the Take Command mod, then you can start a vessel with a Kerbal in the command seat.

I'll go with @Green Baron on the cloud types in the photo. This kind of appearance (sharply defined edge, clear on one side and near 100% overcast on the other) is highly indicative of a cold front. If you see this, you can expect a sudden drop in temperature, likely combined with precipitation as the edge of the cloud formation passes over your location.

Also worth considering whether being able to deploy an EVA parachute matters -- if you're running a career with more or less standard settings, your Kerbals can't EVA until you've upgraded the Astronaut Center at least once. No EVA == no EVA parachute deployment...

I agree -- effectively, the only things 1.4.* added over 1.3.1 were parachutes for Kerbals, and the ability to install the Making History add-on (which is mostly parts, plus the Mission Designer). RSS/RO for 1.3.1 has easily ten times as many historical parts as Making History, accurately statted, plus Real Fuels and Real Plume which make a hypergolic engine work and look different from a kerolox, ethylox, or hydrolox engine (hypergolics have relatively poor performance, but won't boil off while you wait nine months on a Hohmann transfer to Mars). The underlying game could be considered the most stable version of KSP to date. It's not perfect; at present, RP-1 is still a work in progress, the runway (and hence SPH) is virtually useless (not sure if it's terrain seams or something else, but it's like running over a bunch of low curbs or speed bumps), there are bugs related to FAI records when flying aircraft, and some problems switching to Map View while under thrust. The game and mod suite are very playable, however, especially if you're mostly interested in the history of spaceflight. which includes very few actual spaceplanes.

The rotation of the Mk. 1-3 when using only its built-in RCS is simply due to the craft's thrust not pointing through the center of mass. I noted this when I first installed 1.4 and launched a vessel with this pod -- the RCS jets on the command pod are apparently intended only to work alongside a set of quads (or at least thrusters) located aft, on the service module, and they're virtually useless for just the command pod (other than for roll). This is more or less consistent with the Apollo spacecraft; after decoupling from the Service Module, they had very limited translation and no fore-aft translation at all, and only limited pitch and yaw. What they did have was very good roll control, which was all the Apollo needed during reentry. The off-center balance of the spacecraft allowed a certain amount of "glide" to control depth of penetration and crossrange, simply by rolling during reentry (the craft would 'glide" toward the heavy side, as the heat shield would tilt that direction and produce a lift force not parallel with the velocity vector). Given you'll generally have a service module or partially used stage attached to the command pod until just before reentry, don't be afraid to put some RCS on that stage.

Well, over the past couple days, in my RSS/RO/RP-1/Principia career "Take Six": The original four, Jeb, Bob, Bill, and Val, were nearing "no earlier than" retirement dates, so it was time to give them some interesting rides to keep them in the program for a while. Lacking the Redstone and the Mercury capsule to go on top of it, Werner and company made do with what they had available. That's Single Step C, an A-9 variant of an A-4 engine, burning Hydyne and LOX; it'll readily push a tonne to nearly 600 km (the original A-4 could loft its 1000 kg warhead above 200 km while sending it hundreds of kilometers downrange and, historically, was the first man-made object to leave the atmosphere). It's also a well researched and reliable engine, though it lacks the power and efficiency to push enough stages to send a payload into orbit. Inside the fairing is an X-1 cockpit (in this program, the rest of the airplane was never built, because Werner convinced everyone rockets were safer than airplanes). This is the first successful object-to-object photograph in history -- Val snuck her Pentax aboard, preset focus and exposure by guess (couldn't see into the viewfinder with her helmet on), and took a few shots. This one managed to capture her discarded booster, still only a few tens of meters from the cockpit. Bumper C (and its variants, Bumper C1 and Bumper C1+) -- an RD-103 burning Ethanol 90 and LOX, pushing a second stage that's a "fat Aerobee", an AJ10-27 burning aniline/furfuryl with red fuming nitric acid -- has been a workhorse sounding payload carrier, but its altitude limit was reached some time ago, and it still needs a lot of delta-V to reach orbit. This, however, is Bumper D. With two AJ10-27 stages (one with two engines, the second with a single) inside the fairing, and a solid kick motor on top of them, this one came very, very close to pushing a sounding rocket core into orbit. Eventually, with a procedural avionic core, I was able to place the payload (Geiger-Mueller counter, barmeter, and thermometer) into a minimum orbit (this isn't that one; on this one, the RCS wouldn't start for some reason), but I had to find a couple hundred m/s additional dV to do it. Fresh from R&D, the Castor 1 booster. Burning HTPB (syntheic rubber), with powdered aluminum for energy and ammonium perchlorate oxidizer, this solid fuel system persists to the present day (the SRBs for the Space Shutter and SLS use this fuel, along with those on Ariane and Vega). Attach a couple of these, and I get the thrust to really launch with those liquid and solid stages -- still with the ethanol-burning RD-103 core. Still not perfect; the RCS needs some tweaking for improved control and a larger tank (since it provides the last couple hundred m/s to turn a ballistic missile trajectory into an orbit) -- but this made it to a 150 km perigee orbit, which was worth more than half a million funds to my program. And the next task is polar orbit, which requires another 400 m/s or so (to kill the Earth's eastward motion, instead of using it). This calls for Bumper D2 (and then, immediately, Bumper D2a after the first failure). With four Castor 1 boosters, launch starts at 3+ G, and MechJeb can barely turn the booster over fast enough. MECO is at 90+ km altitude, around 2000 m/s. With 2xAJ10-27 second stage, 2xAJ10-27 third stage, and a solid kick motor (can't offhand recall the kick motor designation, and don't have the game open), the satellite still needed a long RCS burn to make orbit, but make orbit it did -- and in a polar orbit, it covers all biomes (if you can keep comms contact). With battery power enough for weeks aloft, this (and the earlier, native-inclination prototype) is keeping the R&D folks hopping.

Advanced Tweakables? In my VAB (1.4.3, stock with Better Burn Time), there's a "Decoupler: Disable Staging" button on the Pomegranate. If you don't have that, you need to go into Settings and make sure "advanced tweakables" is turned on.