Zeiss Ikon

Worth specifying whether you're talking about the 1.4 reentry effects, or the 1.4.1. The version in 1.4 seemed a little overblown, but in 1.4.1 it's rather subdued. This might be different quality settings; I haven't looked for a setting specific to reetnry effects, and I've already found one setting (advanced tweakables) that didn't follow my 1.3.0 save into 1.4.1. To my eye, the overblown version in 1.4 looked much like what I'd expect at very high altitudes -- thermosphere or ionosphere, where the air acts more like a collection of individual particles than a continuum fluid. The linear ray structure fragmenting on every protrusion just looks like that to me. The old effect, in 1.2.2 to 1.3.1 (possibly older, I've only played for a little over a year) looked more like what I'd expect at somewhat lower altitudes, say upper stratosphere and lower, where the air acts like a fluid. Generally, I like the way the effect appears in 1.4.1 (or whatever setting change occurred when I installed that version).

Don't forget that your velocity display is the scalar part of your vector velocity -- if you're gliding at (indicated) 25 m/s, you might only be sinking at 4 m/s (which would assume a 6:1 glide ratio -- I'm not sure what a modern airfoil parachute actually gives), so a little flare at the right time (just like when landing a jet or spaceplane) will cut your sink to near zero while your forward speed bleeds off. It's hard to read accurately, but there's a vertical speed gauge just next to the altimeter (top of the screen, with default GUI locations). It has a logarithmic scale, so there's as much needle movement between 10 m/s and 100 m/s as there is between 0 and 10, but in the ~10 to 0 range, you can tell pretty closely how fast you're falling. Most of us use it as a Q&D indicator of Ap and Pe if we're doing seat-of-pants maneuvers in orbit, but it's also useful during aerodynamic flight, and the log scale makes it readable even at parachute velocity.

I'm with @MechBFP on this one -- in 1.2.2, 1.3, and apparently 1.3.1 (maybe other versions, but these are the ones I have experience with), completed contract clauses will vanish from the "achievements" display if you close the game and then come back, though if you open the actual contract section they'll still show there, just with only the section headers marked (but individual section conditions will be collapsed). I can confirm that, assuming your mods are okay, a save game from 1.3.0 will still work with 1.4.1, so if you aren't using mods that have been broken by the upgrade, installing 1.4.1 might solve this for you; in this version, the achievement notifications (contract term completed, etc.) stay in the notification box until you delete them.

Looks like a decent deal. When I was learning Python (interrupted by life changes), I had gotten a free copy of a book titled Python the Hard Way. I recommend it. A little text about what a particular command or feature does, then enough programming examples to make that knowledge stick, then on to the next one.

What's the full list of contract terms? Which ones show completed, which have never been completed, and which ones switched back? Contracts have sections -- you have to complete a whole section for it to stay. For instance, if you accept a "test" contract that says "Test a Flea booster between 5000 and 10,000 m, between 200 m/s and 300 m/s velocity," when you fly the mission the dot for altitude will go green as soon as your vessel passes 5000 m, even if you're going way too fast -- and even if it takes you to 15,000 m to get slowed down, the velocity dot will go green when you do, but the altitude dot will go black again when you pass 10,000. If you can manage to get into the velocity range while in the altitude range, you still have to either activate with staging, or "run test" on the part to mark the remaining dot in the section (the "have Flea" will stay green as long as you don't stage that part away). Only after you've gotten the last dot in a section green will the section dot go green, marking that contract term completed. Once the term is completed, it'll stay completed. What probably happened on your Jool 6 is that you had to do something more than just flyby Jool and Laythe -- there was more to it than just entering the appropriate SOI -- and if you didn't complete all the conditions of a term ("section") the conditions will unmark once you're no longer meeting them.

I have the direct download version of MH running on Ubuntu Mate 16.04.3. It works fine in ~/Downloads/KSP_Linux_1.4.1/ where I installed it. Even works correctly with my career save, brought forward over the last few days from 1.3.0. If you're having a problem with the Steam version of MH not working outside the Steam folder, you may need to look for a file that didn't get transferred or some similar issue.

Yep, I went ahead and installed 1.4.1 and MH in a clean folder, and (IMO) they work pretty well. And yes, the Kerbal View bug is fixed. Even with MH having more than doubled what I've paid for the game (I got 1.2.2 on a special, under $14), this is still the best money I've spent on entertainment, EVER.

I don't see the MEM being smaller than the LEM ascent stage as a bad thing. Kerbals are smaller than humans (a bit). The Mun is smaller than Luna, with, what, 1/3 the orbital velocity? MEM fits the smaller scale of the game (if anything, the Mk. 1-2 and Mk. 1-3 command pods are a bigger than they need to be; we should be able to fit three Kerbals into a 1.75 m capsule, like a Mk. 2 with a "back seat" as was once proposed for Gemini). Yes, the COM is off center. Take a look at the original LEM layout; there was a lot of compromise in that spacecraft to get it to fit inside the fairing between the 3rd stage and the SM, and the ascent stage was, I've read, pretty cranky to fly. I don't even mind having the RCS and two Round 8 (or whatever they call them now) tanks premounted. Makes a good starting point and helps keep parts count down (presuming the thing counts as one part).

Today (really today, this time, instead of last night, or a couple days ago): I got 1.4.1 and Making History installed and flew a couple missions. There's a lot to be said for a 3-Kerbal command pod that's lighter than the old one, has more battery, and built-in RCS (though it's really only good for roll when the pod is flying alone). Given my 1.3.0 career still works in 1.4 and 1.4.1 (with Making History, even), I went ahead and launched Lufrid, along with Lars and Herford, to the Mun. Lars and Herford were paying to land on the Mun, and the Agency had a contract to plant a flag on the Mun (even though it would be the fourth such flag). Lufrid, recently rescued from LKO and having paid her dues by spending 30 days in command of Kerbin Station Alpha (alone, doing EVA reports below 85 km over biomes that previously hadn't had this situation covered), had previously flown the Program's first Minmus flyby (first landing and science contracts for Minmus are open now). Lufrid, of course, had never flown a Mun landing, and she was in a passenger carrier vessel hastily modified with 1600 units of drop tanks and landing legs (Mk. 1-3 pod, decopuler and 1600 unit tank, Poodle engine, no additional RCS and monopropellant deleted before launch, no solar panels, and 30% of the ablator also deleted). Launch and cis-Munar flight were routine; she captured into a 17 km orbit, selected a landing site, and deorbited, held surface retrograde and killed her velocity as low as possible, then let the lander fall (still holding retrograde). Unfortunately, she bobbled at the last second; when she should have shut down the landing engine, she instead hit maximum throttle and the lander started climbing again. Okay, keep calm, she let the lander start falling again, restored retrograde hold -- and killed the engine a little too soon, touching down at about 7 m/s. No, nothing broke, but the lander bounced on the sloping landing surface (are there any level spots on the Mun?). With a single leg oriented upslope, the lander immediately tipped, and there wasn't enough time or reaction wheel authority to right it before it landed (with no damage) on its side. Well, that's a fine kettle of fish. No RCS other than the built-in, no monopropellant anyway, and nothing like enough reaction wheel authority to right the lander. With two tourists on board, this had the potential to get ugly. The drop tanks (with the landing legs on them) were empty anyway, so she jettisoned them, but there still wasn't enough torque to lift the nose of the return stage. A little quick calculation (i.e. three or four tests with quicksave restores) showed that the engine had enough gimbal authority (in yaw, in this case) to raise the nose before the movement along the regolith could destroy anything. That looked a lot like a plan. A contract is a contract, though. She had to use the reaction wheel to roll the lander to unblock the hatch, in order to EVA and plant the flag that was half the reason for coming. While she was out, she also made an EVA report and collected a surface sample -- then back into the command pod. Time to go home; hang onto your lunches, tourists. Hold maximum yaw (D key) and punch the throttle -- before it had slid its own length, the vessel had lifted its nose to the sky and climbed clear of the surface; a quick slap to turn on stability assist kept the vessel pointed up, and she cut throttle once she had 40 or so m/s vertical. Then it was just a matter of orienting toward the eastern horizon and burning until the velocity passed 550 m/s. She wound up with an orbit of 56 km apoapsis, and 39 m periapsis, quickly corrected at apoapsis. From there it was "just" a matter of a routine burn for home. Except that she found herself in a retrograde orbit, inclined at more than 60 degrees. Fortunately, orbital velocity at Munar distance (at AP for a pretty eccentric orbit) is quite low; she had plenty of fuel left to make a reversing burn at Apoapsis that also corrected her inclination, then make a minor correction to get the correct reentry apoapsis. When she dropped the service stage a couple hundred kilometers before reentry (on a burn-up path), it still contained almost one hundred units of Lf/O, and she flew within sight of KSC before splashing down 240 or so km ENE from the launch site -- and becoming the first Level 2 pilot in the history of the program.

A five day tumble period (implied by the five day periodicity in a graph up the thread a bit) would look steady. it was certainly already tumbling then; it's been out of control for a couple years. Another factor that might have prevented you observing the solar transit is how old the predictions were that you were using. With the station unstable in (presumably) both pitch and yaw, it may wander from predicted orbit fairly quickly; if your forecast was more than 24 hours old, the station might simply not have been where it was forecast to be. A half degree (width of the solar disc) at a couple hundred kilometers is window only about 1700 m (just over a mile) wide. At its last reported orbit height, with a more or less random two-axis tumble, a forecast 24 hours old might put the station outside that window, regardless of timing.

I realize it may be unpopular in this pessimistic thread, but here's the way I see it: 1.4.0 had a few bugs. The only significant one I noticed was not seeing the Kerbal View for the new Mk. 1-3 command pod (which also directly affected EVA, in that the EVA button was in the Kerbal View). That has definitely been fixed with 1.4.1/Making History (which I've now installed and tried). The only mod I use, Better Burn Time, still works with 1.4.1 and Making History installed, and further the upgrade doesn't seem to have damaged my 1.3.0-originated career save. Others were what I'd call cosmetic -- overdone reentry effects, engine sounds. In fact, with the limited playing time I've had with it so far, the only problem I see with 1.4.1/Making History is something I should have expected: it's even harder on my laptop's thermal issues than 1.3.0 was. The Unity upgrade has improved my yellow clock issues on my desktop machine, as long as I don't run full screen, none of the engines I use regularly (rocket engines only, I don't have many jet powered craft and only half the tech tree open in career) sound bad, and 1.4.1 seems to have improved the reentry effects (which were a little overblown in 1.4.0). This seems odd to me, because I've been called a doomsayer many times in a number of different venues -- but I don't see the newest versions of KSP as indicative of the beginning of the end, I see them as approximately typical of software being maintained and upgraded by people who weren't involved in the creation of the system. I believe things will improve as the development process moves into a steady state.

Well, you get partial alignment information from the nav ball. The pink crossed circle ("to target") marker has a definite center, and if the dot in your own "wings" heading indicator is centered on the "to target" marker, and you've done "control from here" with the port you want to use, you can be assured your docking craft is aligned. Then if, after you set up your approach and are coming in straight from less than around 300 m (in Kerbin orbit, drift rate varies with how tight and how fast your orbit is, so that distance will be different around other bodies), you switch to the target, set "control from here" on your target port, set target on your docking vehicle, and then similarly center the heading dot on the "to target" marker, everything will be lined up, more than close enough that if you keep the velocity vector aligned and periodically nudge the docking craft's heading, you won't be off angle enough to worry about when you get close. I've done this twice in 1.4, and it works the same way it always has since I learned to dock with the nav ball.

Was that before it started tumbling and decaying, though? I'm pretty sure we won't hear the CNSA yelling "April Fool's!" right after thirty tonnes of space station crashes to Earth...

Or it wasn't where you expected it to be. With the station apparently tumbling (hence the large uncertainty in even date of reentry, never mind location), it could be tens of kilometers cross-range from the expected orbit at any given time. It might also pass early (by several seconds to a couple minutes), since the orbit is decaying almost visibly, shortening the period. Tiangong is smaller than ISS by a good margin, but larger than a Space Shuttle, and people have imaged Shuttles transiting the sun -- so I'm not sold on "too small" as the reason you didn't see it.

For the Flea: you may need to reduce the fuel contents of the Flea in the VAB before launch. Right click the booster and look in the popup window for a slider for "Solid Fuel" -- move it to the left to reduce the fuel. It may take a couple tries to get a level that lets you slow down enough in the right altitude range -- which, of course, reduces the profits from the contract, unless you make liberal use of "revert to VAB". For the LV-T45 "Swivel" -- if it's exploding when you touch the water, you're falling too fast. You need parachutes -- possibly multiples, if you're trying to land the entire vessel (probe core or command pod, fuel tank, engine, possibly fins). Look up the impact tolerance of the engine (in VAB, in the parts bin), and add enough parachutes that your descent rate just before hitting the ocean surface is lower than that figure. Then after splashing down, you'll likely need to right click the engine and look in the popup for the "test" button (click it) for the contract to complete. Welcome to the game, and the forums!

@Harry RhodanIf you have LF without the O, you wouldn't hear engine sounds. @danny84 If you're hearing the engine sounds, that implies your engine has started, and with throttle 100%, if it's a vessel that has worked in the past, it ought to lift off. I wouldn't normally expect graphics settings changes to affect flight parameters, but if you set things in a way that overloads your CPU, you could be hearing the engine and just haven't waited long enough for the vessel to start accelerating. If your mission clock is yellow (mine usually are, at liftoff, due to a combination of too many parts and all the KSC stuff in view and physics range), you might need to wait a while -- give it at least long enough for the mission clock to tick off three or four seconds after staging the launch clamps (assuming you use those). If it's a new vessel, double check your staging (launch clamps aren't up in the top with the parachutes, are they? I usually stage them along with the booster engines), and verify that your TWR is greater than one. One quick and dirty way to do that is, in VAB, pop up the vessel statistics display (lower right, the gear icon) and check the vessel mass (which includes your fuel load), then look in the parts bin and check the sea level thrust of your engines (add up all the engines that fire when you stage the launch). If the engines' kN thrust isn't at least twelve times the vessel's mass (in T), you're going to be very slow off the pad; if thrust in kN is less than 10 times mass in T, you'll just sit there until you've burned off some fuel (assuming the drop from the launch clamps disengaging doesn't lead to engines exploding). This Q&D method works because F=MA: 1 T (1000 kg) mass in 1 G field (9.81 m/s^2) weighs 9.81 kN -- so 10 kilonewtons of engine thrust is just about enough to lift it, and you need TWR of about 1.2 to get decent acceleration off the launch pad.

I got a chance to try a docking in 1.4.0 with a Mk. 1-3 pod; as usual, I docked with the nav ball (no mods installed for this), and as usual, with closing velocity around 0.7 m/s (slowing down with RCS, but a little late decelerating, so docked with a heavy bump) -- no bounce. Good thing there weren't knick-knacks on a shelf in the station, though -- that docking probably rattled every Kerbal tooth in both vessels. Straight in approach from a couple hundred meters out (hence the relatively high approach velocity), target (Mun Station Alpha) pointed at the approaching vessel, approach velocity set with main engine at minimum thrust, steered in and kept aligned with RCS. Bob's your uncle (which, I think, makes you a Kerbal, too).

Okay, I replaced the Mk. 1-2 command pod in a couple of my 2.5 m rockets (one rescue vessel, one that carries tourists to LKO) with Mk. 1-3 -- and I confirm the bug with crew images not appearing (by default, in the lower right corner of the game window). This would be a minor concern, except that it prevents sending a Kerbal on EVA, looking at a Kerbal's stats while in flight, and checking who's in a command pod when it's docked to a station. In the last case, only Kerbals actually in station parts show images; those in the command pod don't show -- transfer a Kerbal from the station to the pod, and their portrait vanishes. Transfer one back (they do still show in the Transfer Crew dialog, at least) and they appear; previously, all the Kerbals in the station and any docked pods would show, with arrows to scroll right and left if they don't all show in the window. I've downloaded 1.4.1, but haven't installed it yet, based on reports that it appears to be even buggier than 1.4.0. Look like for now, because of the obvious advantages of the Mk. 1-3 (lighter, built-in -- if limited -- RCS, increased battery capacity, crew hatch on the side I expect it to be on instead of the "bottom"), there'll be a mix of Mk. 1-2 and Mk. 1-3 command pods in my fleet, depending on the job they're expected to do, since I can't install Making History (and get its Apollo capsule) without installing 1.4.1. Since this appears to be a part-specific bug, I'm not going to revert from 1.4.0 to 1.3.0 at this time -- there are other parts I've gained that will be helpful, even though I'm only about halfway up the tech tree in my career. Sure seems like a beta testing and bug fixing failure in the new release, though.

Unless the ring is supported by a rigid structure from the parent body, it'll fall without active station keeping (or when the station keeping system runs out of fuel). At some point, one side of the ring will be closer to the parent body than the other; it'll get more gravity pull, which will make it fall closer, increasing the gravity effect on that side (and decreasing it on the other) -- and the side that first got closer to the parent body will contact the body. This is called a "crash" in common language. There's a good reason Larry Niven (about forty years before KSP hit version 1.0) put attitude jets (Bussard ramjets burning the solar wind) on the Ringworld -- watching a spin-gravity ribbon around a star fall into the photosphere with a transverse velocity of around 1400 km/s would make for some serious eye candy, but you wouldn't want to be in the neighborhood when it happens...

The only time I've had ships bounce off after docking (velocities anywhere from 0.1 m/s up to 1 m/s or a little above) was when I had inadvertently attached docking ports backward. No attraction, no latch-up, just a bounce, as if I'd bumped a part with no port attached. You guys do dock with the nav ball, don't you? I can pretty much dock without looking at the ships, now, other than to switch to the target and (if there's control) turn its port to face the ship doing the work (and then leave SAS on stability mode). And this is in 1.3.0 (which I was running until a few days ago) and 1.4.0 (which I installed this past weekend). I've never had a need to turn SAS off just before contact, either, except one time when I got the clamps into contact, but the ship axes were something like 55 degrees off parallel.

I haven't installed 1.4.1 yet, though I do have 1.4.0 installed and have downloaded 1.4.1. I've purchased and downloaded the DLC (this morning), but haven't installed it yet. I also haven't had time to play much since it came out (I get a couple hours a week, not several a day like some folks). I haven't seen anything in 1.4 that I'd identify as a genuine "bug" -- reentry effects actually look like what I'd expect at, say, ionospheric or thermospheric altitudes (where air molecules mostly don't interact with each other because they're so sparse); if they gradually transitioned to the old effects at, say, 35-40 km or so, I'll call that change a big win. I have tried the new Mk. 1-3 command pod, just long enough to launch and make a trans-Munar insertion -- cheaper, lighter, better than the old Mk. 1-2. So, I don't see bugs (yet). Maybe 1.4.1 added some -- I'll find out soon, and if so, I can easily revert to 1.4.0 (the download is still on my HDD).

I've never managed to get a spaceplane to orbit, other than my Taxicab series that were built to carry LKO tourist missions early in my career -- they launch on top of a rocket, like Dyna-Soar (if it had been designed by Burt Rutan, hence came out as a canard). OTOH, I have a very functional SSTO -- a reusable booster, in fact -- that I created for a Mass Fraction Challenge a while back. It's a Twin Boar, with an orange tank (6400 units) on top, and an 800 unit 2.5-1.25 adapter tank. A few batteries/fuel cells, a probe core, and an extra reaction wheel, then a decoupler -- and anything 1.25 m base diameter and weighing less than about 15.5 T can get a ride to LKO without using any of its own dV. Once decoupled, the booster has enough dV left to deorbit, stands up nicely to reentry from ~80 km circular, and with half a dozen landing legs (three on each side) plus, IIRC, 12 radial parachutes, it manages a nice, zero-damage horizontal landing on either reasonably level ground or water. I could easily (much more easily than the real world engineering SpaceX had to do) join this into a three-wide and lift 45+ T, still with 100% reusability, presuming I can manage a ballistic reentry in Kerbin's atmosphere and get close to KSC.

They'd be just the thing for launching a heavy, heavy upper stacks. The original Saturn V booster stage lifted the SII second stage, SIV-B third (transfer) stage, LEM with fairing, and CSM high enough to require vacuum nozzles on the second stage, and fast enough to make that worthwhile. I don't have the figures in front of me for the stack mass remaining when the SV staged off, but the third stage stack was something like 60 T. If you see a rocket that requires six or eight Reliant-based boosters with a Mammoth core, it would probably lift with 5 E1 engines mounted on a thrust plate under 5 m tanks.

I bought mine in (according to the download page, where I grabbed 1.4 for both of my computers a couple days ago) in late January 2017. No freebie for me, not that I'm worried about it. KSP has been the best $14 I ever spent on entertainment, and Making History would have to be pretty horrible not to be worth the $15 price tag.

That seems reasonable. The model needs to be moving fast enough for the fins to produce useful levels of stabilizing lift (likely 10 m/s or faster) before the model leaves the launch guide (rod, rail, or tower). Since the guide is usually much less than 5 m long (the distance traveled to accelerate to 10 m/s at 1 G), the rocket needs to accelerate significantly faster than 1 G to reach the needed speed in the available distance. Once off the launch guide, the gravity turn is less pronounced the faster the rocket accelerates, which both reduces the walk to retrieve the rocket after landing, and reduces the likelihood of damage due to high speed at the time of recovery system deployment. FWIW, I've flow a rocket weighing every gram of a pound (the NAR limit for non-HPR models) on a D12-3 (did it for a movie camera, the launch appeared in a PBS special on rocketry back in 1998). That seems like a roughly 3 G launch, but the Estes black powder D12 is a semi-cored grain, with a pronounced thrust spike just after ignition, then around a 1 second sustain at slightly less than half the average thrust. It gets the rocket going fast enough to be stable on a three foot (1 m) rod, but there's no margin -- if your guides have excess friction, or your ignition leads don't separate cleanly, you can wind up with a tip-off, where the rocket veers at an angle as soon as it loses the launch guidance -- still with 4/5 of the engine burn to run. Yes, even when the rocket weighs a few tens of grams, this stuff is rocket science.