Antstar

Hello :D Quick question on crew training. From wiki: Training course times and durations that the training lasts are based on the pod/crew container and the stupidity of the Astronaut. see CrewTrainingTimes.cfg for base times. Proficiency Course Give a skill set that allows the 'naut to be trained to do missions in that crew space. Refresher Course Retrains or updates the training time for a previously proficiency trained crew member. Mission Course Trains the crew to perform upcoming missions. (available slots = 2x crew capacity of part) I have never had proficiency expire (I had a problem with disappearing astronauts that may now be fixed). After looking at the config file I still have no idea how long proficiency lasts before refresher is needed??

So, I gave this a try maybe a year ago. I absolutely loved the concept, but found the maneuver planner pretty darn impossible to use. The slider was rather terrible for some things (the time IIRC) and desperately needed an additional way to just put in a numerical value. There was also an issue with interplanetary transfers where I needed to set the integration intervals to like 1m for around planets (the starting one in particular), obviously not needed for interplanetary space, but then when I tried to extend this to see where I would end up, it would eat 64GB of memory and blue screen the computer. Rather than reading 12 months of release notes, just wanted to know if these have been sorted yet? Thanks heaps

ARGH. Didn't work. I did exactly this, removing the line. Restarted KSP. No SRBs I quit and deleted the MM cache file. Restarted KSP. No SRBs. Any other ideas @Phineas Freak

I can't find the procedural SRBs in the new tech tree in RP-0. The upgrades are there. I looked in all the early nodes and I looked in all the tabs in the VAB. But no SRBs. Any idea what's going on?

Never mind, I found the correct thread and can't delete my comment

Awesome advice. Much of the rocket is already designed/modified from something I sent to Vesta. Now that I know aerocapture is viable, the whole thing is going to head to Venus, then the probe will detach and do a small burn to get there about an hour earlier. The comms will follow and go into orbit. Yeah I decided to include a parachute, its already kevlar and 2 chutes * 1.5m for what will be ~450kg when the heatshield is dropped. And they wont even semi-deploy until 200m from surface. I was only worried about the more than escape velocity entry

So, after a hiatus I am back to KSP. I decided to wait until I have a NTR to go to Mercury orbit, its just too much dV. In my quest to visit the nearby planets I am planning a probe to land on Venus. Has anyone who has done this got any tips? I am trying to figure out if I need to thrust into orbit, or if ballistic aerocapture is possible (ie. will a lunar rated heatshield take it, or just explode?). Will the probe overheat on the surface like IRL or should the parts be ok? I hear its almost as hot there as my room is at the moment :D

I wasn't planning one stage. I was thinking 1 + 4 + 10 AJ10s, plus a bit more on the tiny probe itself. But then the "probe" is a beast to launch and send on its way. And I'm hoping there is something with better ISP that Ive just missed. And forget ion engines. Too little thrust for Mercury insertion. Slingshots are hard to do in KSP. Even with maximum 6 conic sections its just not easy. I would be using principia, but this computer is not up to the challenge

I am trying to figure out the best way to carry lots of dV, for an orbital capture mission to Mercury. So far, the best I have found in storable propellants/engines is the AJ10 advanced. Packing 12km/s into this will be painful. Is it practical with hydrolox or is it not going to stay cold this close to the Sun? Any suggestions?

I looked through the available threads and can't find the answer to this. I corrupted my save. I finally found a save that was recent and (I think unbroken). I may have interfered with my meatdata file by accident, but either way, now I have a nice new error. I tried replacing the metadata file with the ones for quicksave and jumptoship. No luck. I opened it - there really isn't that much there. Can I reconstruct it? Looking at the numbers, maybe this was what was broken? Anyway, thanks for any advice. EDIT - I got it working with a different save and metadata. But I would still be interested to know if this can be reconstructed from the savefile?

This is all true. And I agree it is theoretically possible I have created 15 different problems in 15 different installs, with vastly different mod suites, with and without CKAN, although I suspect the probability is low. I have not had a chance yet to try the addons you suggested, but here is a log file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/51x0n1ci4aogup6/output_log.txt?dl=0 This time the final death of KSP may actually have been memory related but it was going very slowly for a good hour before that.

Yeah, I'll see what I can do. But this is a general problem, regardless of which mods I use. And at least in 1.2x-1.3x and maybe earlier. Hence a log file will probably be of limited usefullness in this case. Thanks for the reply though, I will try these out. My computer at home is a watercooled beast with 32GB and this is still a problem, but I run very high settings. I am overseas of a while ATM and my laptop is a rubbish 2013 i3 with 4GB and no dedicated graphics. I run everything on the lowest possible settings. Obviously I am posting now because the problem is much worse on the laptop. My experience has been that memory usage does not change significantly between it working fine and becoming totally unusable. Also, even when completely idle (like sitting in the R&D for more than 5mins) the usage on one of my computer cores sits at a near constant 100%

First of all, thanks for getting the 1.3.1 version out!!! I already love it to pieces. I may have noticed a bug - kind of - maybe - not quite sure??? I was collecting science around the moon and had collected the *remaining* science from near the north pole (I had already been there), then X science tell me im in a new biome called near the north pole and I got a whole bunch more science, including the experiments I had run on my last visit. Is it possible there are accidentally two north pole biomes on the moon? It is always possible that something else has bugged out but just wanted to make you aware of it in case it was a problem with RSS.

So, how do we know what science experiments can be run where?? Some are obvious, like the orbital perturbation experiment. Even spectral analysis that mentions cloud tops I can take a good guess at. But I'm a scientist IRL and I have no idea if meaningful data could be obtained from a magnetometer on the surface I looked at the parts config files but its just so much code to me (not a computer scientist ). I guess eventually there will be a wiki, but is there anything on the github that i missed?

So, to be clear, this is not a new problem. I think it even happens in unmodded KSP. I load a fresh game and mod it up reaaal good. It works. Then, it gets slower. More freezing, more yellow and red even at no physics acceleration, ridiculous loading times when changing scene. (long enough to experience several stages of grief when you realise you clicked the VAB instead of mission control). Closing the game and reloading fixes this at first, but it just keeps getting worse. I used to think it was just because the game was keeping track of too much space junk but this time i launched a lot of rockets before i made orbit, so I know this can't be it. My assumption based on other programs would be that there is some huge log file somewhere, growing, but I have searched the directory for files with recent modifications and come up empty. Now, I suppose that it could be the save file itself - in which case can someone help me to decide which parts I can just delete without corrupting anything. The only other thing I can think of is that I have a lot of saved craft, but I don't see why this would be a problem when going to eg. the tracking station. I have looked on the forum and tried a couple of things. force opengl only makes the text in the menu disappear so I don't know what I am clicking on. Help is well appreciated

The story picks up in 1953. The "Longbow" series of sounding rockets had progressed from WAC corporals through A4 and A4 booster designs and made a quantum leap with the invention of the LR79 and LR89 engines. Of course, it didn't take long before more than one of these was needed to lift the vehicle from the ground and so 2 boosters were added: As the Longbow was already at Mk9, some suggested calling this the "Longbow Heavy", but this was quickly shot down by management for being "lame" and the traditional system of letters and numbers continued. The craft met with some success, however after a booster malfunction caused the craft to roll, pitch west, and almost destroyed the VAB, engineers suggested adopting a clustering approach instead. Initially 3 engines were used, but the frequency with which a single engine would fail aborting the launch suggested a 4 engined design may function even when one engine failed. Already, a satellite had been barely limped into orbit, literally, using differential application of attitude only RCS to raise the periapsis from 130km to 145km. Although, even at the time, some had argued that even if it only stayed up there for a couple of weeks we could still claim the title of first artificial satellite The center was already looking onwards towards the Moon and decided that with this new launch vehicle now would be a good time to cash in on those lucrative "polar orbit" and "solar powered satellite" contracts

Thanks guys! I was never planning to develop it into a series, but if you want to see more 'missions gone awry' then I will happily see what I can provide @qzgy The red cross in the Rockys is where the rocket will land when the Earth spins under it. No idea which mod it is, as I downloaded @Aazard 's gamedata folder to get RP0 working. When I tried to install it from github all I got was errors because it was still "very nearly ready"

OK, so, I am getting the hang of the tooling now. Its very "kerbal" to make a 1m long tank and then stack 10 on top of each other. I had just gotten used to using proceedural parts to avoid making stuff like this. Suggestion: put it in the FAQ? Anyway, I need to ask about ComSatPayload. I can't find any of my tanks/configurations that will take it. But also I have to point out that I skipped researching the node which unlocks type II because I needed the node that gives type III anyway. As far as I can see, it is not mentioned in the description for the parts anywhere in the research tree, so in what does CamSatPayload go?? Thanks Oh, and is the ability to pay for but skip researching nodes a bug or a feature? Just curious if that was intended? EDIT - never mind. I found it. I was looking at normal tanks not at service modules (duh).

Sadly, soon after this I started building things that were more or less actually rockets. Launching payloads straight up is nice for easy money. When I first saw this, I thought I was sending a present to Squad - but after looking at a map it seems like it is actually US (I don't know, Texas? California? I'm not A Merican). I dropped a lot of rubbish on Florida already. But my favorite was when I had a 500kg sounding payload on an A4 rocket (I think this was roughly the same configuration that the Germans used for their "sounding payloads"...). It went off course and hit - I think - Alabama. This being 1951 I can't help but picture some hick making moonshine in a barn when a V2 falls from the sky and shreds the farmhouse

Its Principia. That mod is in theory great but has some issues and this is one of them. You need to create the nodes using the principia tools - and be careful because if you dont set the iteration frequency just right, especially for a trip to say Venus, it will eat your 32GB of memory and completely crash the game. You also can't execute the nodes safely with MechJeb and you have to be careful to make the node invarient if you want to try to execute it in some frame of reference other than what it was created in (eg, you made a tangential burn in an Earth frame but want to watch in real time your trajectory relative to Venus). Hope this helps

Yeah, it isn't these I have a problem with, it is the near - must of launching complete garbage at first. My suggestion is to do away with this and just give us maybe 6-10 points to start the game with, and disable getting points for the 1 or 2 science nodes to discourage building complete rubbish and actually encourage building real rockets that ya' know, go to space, or at least the upper atmosphere. They had artillery in WWI even, there is nothing creative about launching utter garbage into the lower atmosphere PS. @Aazard you get an extra like because I just noticed your avatar So, the early game after the launching of garbage, where you launch spin stabilised rockets followed by A4s then staged A4/WACs seems balanced to me. It was fun and the rewards are commensurate with the difficulty. Then we get to the post orbital period and again we hit a problem. I'm going to say it belongs here because it is mostly about test flight and construction time, but both are running RP-0 configs: 1) the rockets ALWAYS cost ~4x as much to deploy to the launch site as the cost of building them. I think I already said that this is ridiculous and challenged anyone to find a real world justification for this. When the first stage doesnt fire it is heartbreaking. Not because of the loss of a 1.3k rocket, but because of the 5k cost to deploy it to troll it back to the VAB and back out again. This is just stupid. I mostly just cheated with the revert, only accepting every 4th failure as something I had to pay for. 2) the reliability of a 3 stage rocket is just unrealistically bad. I am running something roughly akin to the vanguard with a LR89 first stage below it ATM to throw payloads to altitude for money. The first stage is not the problem, usually, but excluding failures where the mission is still salvageable (ie partial loss of thrust with only a few seconds of burn time left) the failure rate seems to be somewhere between 4/5 and 9/10. Now the vanguard was crap, but not that crap. After they blew up the first few on the launchpad they definitely got better than 1/5. for what its worth, I can not research any more reliability and I'm not even pushing the engines up to their specified burn time. So, yeah, fixering-upering needed there IMO. I really appreciate the work that has been put into this mod but I'm not going to sugar coat what I think are problems that were introduced To balance this otherwise acidic post, some really good things (IMO) compared to the 1.22 release: 1) When I buy the LR89 I can then buy the LR79 at greatly reduced cost. This is as it should be 2) When I unlock one version of an engine (ie a model, from a mod) all models of this engine (including from other mods) get unlocked together and act as the same component. 3) Introducing multiple types of tank that can be improved as technology is researched, specifically improved weight and utilisation. Although I think that if you have tooled a 2x2m type I tank you should get a discount on the 2x2m type 2 tank (perhaps only 50% discount? It shouldn't be trivial but it shouldn't be full price) 4) contracts to throw ever heavier payloads to ever greater altitudes, even after you have achieved orbit. This does allow you to refine your lower/booster stages and get more time on your engines without expensive payloads. 5)Multiple levels of upgrade for facilities, not just 1,2 and 3

Hah, 12 days. beat this

Recently I got annoyed with some of the changes and had a bit of a rant in the RP-0 forum (BTW I still love the mod, just not a fan of some of the changes). So I decided to make the most exploit-y start possible to get quick development. Here is my first ~ 20 days. I only have a couple of pics though. Presenting the POC: Able to be built in less than 6 days, this was designed to satisfy the launch first craft contract. The "engine" is angled so as to ensure no damage to the launchpad but it was decided to launch it from the SPH so that there would be no rollout time and it could be pointed away from the KSC. This mission was a grand success, with the craft raising into the air 3.6m and pinwheeling, thus ensuring a full recovery with 5.8 science. The POC Mk2 was then built, with an added parachute and the engine centered. A thermometer and barometer were added and used to balance the torque to 0.00kNm like the weights in a car wheel. This craft did not fair so well due to some kind of glitchy bug in the procedural parachute. The POC Mk2b however had this problem corrected, and it was further discovered that by reducing the number so spare parachutes to none and using silk, further costs could be saved (redundancy is for suckers) Here we can see the POC Mk2b in its stable position, lying at 45degrees. Unfortunately this craft landed at 18m/s and was destroyed. The POC Mk2c had the parachutes expanded to 5.5m and was launched resulting in a perfect 500m climb at 45degrees and a soft 6.8m/s landing with all the juicy science within available for collection. The POC Mk2c was put into immediate production at SPH around the world, and 6 days later a slew of new science poured in. Other space agencies should be made aware that the POC Mk2c is an excellent starting craft and, if immediately put into production in every biome (in the SPH of course) can lead to more than 25 science available by the end of day 6...

@Lego_ProdigyWell done on the successful Mun mission. @NSEP Landing on the Mun for the first time is kind of tricky, but having a Mun-landed craft which is still pointed at space and able to lift off is the greatest step It's been a while but I think it was something like attempt 4 before I made a craft with a low enough center of mass than it didn't tip on landing

This sounds like a workaround to me. But. Sure I have literally no idea how it would be possible to achieve orbit in less than about 3 years. Can you show/link me to anything regarding how you did this in 1/10th of that time? I can't see how you managed to do any research, so I feel as though you would need something like 2^5 - 1 WACs which is ridiculous EDIT- I am officially ruined. I can't complete contracts; in 3 years I will fail some big ones and go deeply into the red; and its going to be 10 years before my technology is researched. I'm going to burn down the VAB for the insurance money and move somewhere that doesn't extradite to any country with a launchpad. Then change my identity and start again