Antstar

OK, makes sense. The documentation needs more clarity though Yeah, I knew about the upgrade points. Of my 32, 30 came from science that will take >10 years to research (it looks as though I may be able to research advanced science without the prerequisite as long as it was paid for?? Is this the intention??). The other 2 were free. Oh to have 30k to spend to buy a point. Well I can dream. Also I think I found a bug but I'm not sure as it would be kind of hard to reproduce. So I used the SPH to make a rocket (why not, it took 2 years but meh) and in that time I tooled a tank for the A9 rocket used. Then I realised I needed an antenna for the crewed suborbital mission I had been building for 2 years, but to my shock and horror even making no changes to the craft caused it to be only 96% complete. I assume (can't be sure. can't test) that this was because the tank was now much cheaper. Not cool to have to wait for another month just because I am saving some money On the subject of tooling (and this is just my opinion) I love the concept but really (really, really, really) hate the implementation. the "tank" (why a tank I do not know) to hold my sounding payload is more than 1/3 of the cost of my rocket. I can't make it cheaper in any reasonable way - there is no point tooling the part. So maybe I make a pointlessly big tank and stick it under a fairing?? Sure, so I tool a fairing. But whats this? The fairing is procedural. I cant make it stay exactly the same shape and size for use with other vehicles, so when it shrinks just a tiny bit (on its own, no way to stop it) I end up paying a truckload for it. I'm going to stick with it for now to see if more standardisation of say 3 of 4 stages makes it more useable but tooling is definitely on death row.

Can someone explain what the difference between 1 and 3 is? what is the difference between 'doing missions' and 'performing upcoming missions'? Oh, and @Bornholio you are indeed correct that sounding payload can go in the pressurised tank 1. However it does not say this in the info about the tank and it does say that payload can go in the service module tank in its blurb. So I guess that's something that should be fixed??

Hmm, ok. I couldn't see it in tank 1 but found a post saying you need service tank. It was an old post and I will check again. Since I still have not unlocked it I have not tried these yet, only altitude contracts which have been disappointing to say the least. It always pushes the bar higher than your last test result - not the last result asked for in contract. As a result, you need a better rocket every time which is completely anti to the concept of encouraging standardisation. Ill admit, I wish I had put more points into VAB. I have about 1/3 in VAB and 2/3 in science because I wanted to get away from engines that fail more often than not. I'm not ready to write a bug report, but the corporal has become completely $hit IMO. It cant be trusted to light at high G, wont light at no G, and at the start of the game those are your options. It dies after burnout of the tiny tim if you do a ground ignition. it doesnt seem to like too much rotation. So yeah, Im pushing A4/A9 with more happiness except that im getting screwed by rollout and maintenance costs. Not that I enjoy 50-150days between launches but at least I will have good orbital tech before 1960. Seriously though, can anyone think of an actual example of a rocket that cost more to roll to the launchpad than it cost to build? At the end of the day, I play KSP to have fun and I'm not going to have fun launching 100 pointless missions that wont even advance my science to grind for cash - compounded by the fact that im overseas on a crap laptop so change of scene takes forever, ie. like 3 mins to build a rocket, accept a mission, launch a rocket. So, I think from what you said, I'm just playing it wrong and the maintenance and rollout costs would be less screwy if I was launching lots of annoying (to me) up and down contracts New tech tree seems good so far. It makes more sense, although there are a lot of empty nodes even near the start! I will reserve any more judgments till I see how it plays when I unlock more goodies

Yep its me again. I'm going to spam the thread I think the contracts which require a "sounding payload" need to have prerequisites. Only through a lot of googling did I find that I lack the technology to complete my contract. Regarding retirement; will kerbals retire during a mission? I'm obviously a long way off but it would really suck if my astronauts decided to retire en route to Mars

Quick question regarding the suggested settings for KCT with the current RP-0... The initial BP make a small rocket take about a month to build (ok, sounds right) and a 1 science node take 2 months to unlock (sure). But the upgrade points are 30,000 to purchase and do next to nothing to improve things. after putting 1 point into the VAB it tells me that I will get a +0 improvement from another. similiarly for science I woud need something like 10 or 20 points to double my progression. This feels like an order of magnitude error to me? I suspect this is a settings problem - I am happy to manually edit it to get it right, but what are the correct suggested settings for the current RP-0? EDIT - so I just played on. It seems more reasonable now, except the 30k per point, which makes me I have no idea why it said +0 points (rounding to the nearest 0.1??) because it did in fact add a small amount of BPs MORE EDIT - So I just found all of this detailed. But not under RP-0, under RO (even though it says use the RP-0 settings for KCT). I almost feel that RO and RP-0 should just merge into one thread, it is very hard to know where to post about things

Thanks for the explanation. BTW did you know that the link in the first line of the OP is broken? Does anyone know (even roughly) what speed the lunar return rated heatshields will protect against? Again, I am using all the mods suggested by RO - I think it is better to ask here than in say deadly reentry thread or whichever, since people here must be using this suite of mods together. I decided not to install Cheaty Mccheater hyperedit this game so that if something goes wrong I am not tempted to just undo it. But this means that I have no idea if i can go directly from a Hohmann transfer to Venus into the Venusian atmosphere, to aerocapture and descend to the surface? And no real way to test this short of trying it and probably failing the contract.

Perhaps I should have asked here instead of making a thread.... Any assistance would be great

I haven't fed a troll in a long time. My watercooled beast back in Aus can run KSP much better, but even this rubbish laptop can run it. Stop complaining cos you wasted money on an overpriced paperweight then more money on an inherently poorer version of the game than I have; and get a real computer

As per the title, I am playing with RO, RP-0, all the default CKAN mods and nothing else. I am trying to understand the difference between command and avionics. So, I know that with science core you are essentially drifting but if you asked for a SAS hold you may still be able to get that. And I know that with command and enough avionics you have full control over vehicle. But what if you have command but no avionics, like the Mariner probe in image??? Thanks

Yes it does. My bad. I just saw the part about B5 debuting

I'd agree with that reasoning. Are they all block 5 though? So far we have only seen a picture of a B5 center core, or have I missed it?

Do we know if they plan to recover all 3 boosters? Its not mentioned in the article

Indeed. Although *SpaceX* actually uses another additional propellant. Its called charisma Not sure you can power a rocket with it though, but helps build it

Okay, I'm not going to say this is completely untrue, but I think that balancing the rockey is the primary reason for the positioning of the tanks - that and feed lines to the engine. Looking at the numbers: Buoyancy and surface area are key here. LH2 is 70x air, LO2 at the boiling point is 1000x - both will really want to sink. Not so much difference really as they are both way over unity. So, comparing surface areas. LO2 is 16 x as dense as LH2 (again at boiling points). so, say its got 16 ^ (2/3) = 6 x the surface area So, yeah it wont fall quite as fast, but it will meet some exploding boiling oxygen (if they both burst at once) once the oxygen hits the ground.... EDIT: I never considered a moving rocket... If it can maintain pressure (Ie the leak isn't total) I would have thought that the propellant will be spread out over so many kilometers it doesn't really matter??

I'm sorry, you're wrong. If you look at the figures above you will see that the THEORETICAL amount of air that the liquid hydrogen will have to interact with to boil - if it cools the air to 0K - is 10 x its volume in GASEOUS air. in combination with the Leidenfrost effect (which I believe applies, since I have seen it for LN2), I absolutely guarantee you that a garden hose spewing LH2 at its boiling point would have most of the droplets hitting the ground. If you think I'm wrong, find an error in my maths. EDIT: and to elaborate on my point in the previous post, if a bulk discharge is aerosoled it will boil and expand >100x, we call this an explosion - an explosion does not need to be on fire.... dammit, what time zone am I even in? OK, GMT + 1, sigh, that may be too early

Yeah, in stock especially, you wind up needing to asparagus stage a lot when something heavy needs to go to space. And it usually looks ridiculous, but works. Just don't go too fast below 30 km and it will be fine. So no 2 TWR at the launchpad

?? nitrogen LN2. I don't think it is suitable for rockets unless you mean for pressurising the tanks. BTW liquids don't like to be pressurised, its the basis of hydraulics. I suppose you COULD make densified LN2 (I was really surprised this was practical for LOX), I don't think there is a point though, IIRC it goes from hot (100K) liquid to STP gas with 100x increase in volume, so since it is not going to be propellant, getting a 10% improvement (this is what falcon gets from densified LOX?) may not be worth the difficulty and the surface area of the vessel does not scale down well with volume, although I guess you can put it inside the densified LOX tank. Would anyone disagree that for hydrolox, there is no need for densified LOX, since you cant densify LH2 and this is most of your fuel volume...?

Yeah I use it most days. however LN2 is nearly the density of water. A side note: https://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/dec97/car1.html IIRC LN2 to room temp N2 gives 10% of the energy storage density of petrol, but your radiators will ice up

I was vaguely remembering a documentary about building the A380. Apparently the 747 had caused problems from the vortex (helical?) turbulence at the wing tips. They had to change the minimum distance between takeoffs and/or landings as a result. A380 needed to make sure it produced NO MORE turbulence than a 747. It was not this documentary, but this has the same footage : EDIT: And yeah, I guess it is not applicable for a rocket launch (I'm just stoopid) Launch is nowhere near max Q, and by then the rocket is in a place with huge sheer winds that do sometimes cause cancellation of launch, so yeah, stoopid

Why does everyone keep thinking that liquid H2 will rise, it will not Density (LH2) 70.85 g/L At sea level and at 15 °C air has a density of approximately 1.225 kg/m3 (1.225 x10−3 g/cm3 Latent Heat of Vaporization of Hydrogen is 0.44936 kJ/mol. (1mol~2g => 15kJ/cubic meter of LH2) Air has VERY APPROXIMATELY 150kJ/m^3 of energy (sea level, room temperature), however to access all of this you end up liquefying the air finally found a place which didn't use EVERY useless unit of measurement ever invented: https://www.h2tools.org/hyarc/hydrogen-data/hydrogen-density-different-temperatures-and-pressures We see that cold gaseous H2 has a density of ~1g/L, at approx STP it is 0.08g/L What conclusions can we draw from this: 1) Liquid hydrogen will fall like a brick - well not a brick, but 1/12 the density of water. 2) Hydrogen will want to float once boiled... but; 3) 1L of LH2 will become ~70L of cold gas, ~800L of gas at room temperature. Has anyone here ever filled a coke bottle with LN2, fitted the lid and thrown it in a river. Kids, try this at home - its fun!!! So, bulk discharge of hydrogen (not a leak) will either fall and explode once it hits the hot ground, or explode from mixing with hot rocket sides and air.

I put my name to this petition. TT: you can have your favourable EULA. Just fix it so that it is appropriate for THIS GAME not some blanket piece of crap. If the modders leave, I leave.

What about turbulence? I know wings generate force perpendicular to direction of travel and are more susceptible to stalling with turbulent airflow. But a rocket launch must make for a heck of a huge atmospheric disruption

Well, in terms of casualties per capita per km, aeroplane is the safest I think. Like all machines, the greatest danger of failure is during a (I think it's the technical term) change of state. Takeoff, landing. However I've definitely seen on the news that planes have many times had low speed taxiing collisions, which can still be quite damaging to the plane. For rockets, the *most common* failure mode is still when changing state - like the recent loss of the FH core. But spacex rockets have so many state changes during a launch they have introduced a bunch of new critical failure points. And I agree, rockets have low structural integrity for unexpected force. And huge amounts of dense fuel AND oxidiser. So when a plane crashes at an airport usually no fire, if a fire, usually not an explosion. For rockets, an explosion is the Usuall result of a failure of the fuselage

I wish it was just an artists impression. Sadly, it is a still from that terrible (so terrible it was hilarious) movie Geostorm. You know, the one where they sent a whole shuttle up with only one guy on board. No wonder they had a climate problem, it was the CO2 footprint from all the shuttle launches But in real life... Does KSC really have the room for more launchpads? It looks pretty crowded on the map already. Maybe they can try to improve on the time it takes to recondition for another launch instead. I have no idea what actually is involved in reconditioning a pad. I guess you have to check everything critical isn't broken, but as long as the rocket got away OK I would think there will not be much to fix?