ArmchairPhysicist

I managed to kill all 6 of the Galileo crew because my shuttle decided that instead of flipping head over heals as happens with lift in front of mass, it decided to spin like a freaking frisbee. Needless to say they were unable to recover due to physics refusing to ever allow a shuttle of mine to reenter. Im moving to SpaceX style reusablity instead of NASA shuttle style.

Something that has bugged me for a while, any information you pull up on the bfr states that if\when it enters service (likely somewhere in the 2020-2024 range) it will completely replace all current SpaceX rockets. This includes the brand new falcon heavy. From what I can tell, plans to make the ITS and now very serious work to build the BFR have been in the works before falcon heavy became viable. So if the BFR concept has always been planned to replace everything, why did they use all the time and money for Falcon Heavy instead of accelerating the BFR? I can see some logic in being sure you have a heavy/super heavy lifter, just in case BFR got seriously delayed, but the FH resources could have gone towards ensuring the BFR program had a stronger financial backbone and thus more likely to succeed.

Over the last month I’ve been forcing myself to learn ssto Engineering the hard way. Build, crash, build again, damnit didn’t mirror that part, smash, rethink, lithobreak etc etc. Slowly but steadily I’m improving. Stage one was to make a cargo shuttle. Not ssto, simply reusable Shuttle with disposable boosters. Had 10k dv max even with an orange tank in its bay. This thing was perfect and taught me Shuttle re-entry aerodynamics (using FAR). Got Gud and started consistently landing on the runway. Stage two was studying lightweight ssto crew shuttles. No cargo capacity. Simply to put kerbals in space. Worked out the kinks (my planes no longer like feet), landed them safely without losing hardware. Stage three is to combine the previous two. Heavy cargo SSTO with 6k+ dv budget after achieving lko. Not going well. But I’m getting closer

Except you’re forgetting that weight is less of an issue once you are in space. Yes normally a heavier craft needs more fuel to due space things. But NTRs simply get around that by giving you higher efficiency for the same fuel volume. Only downside besides Engineering hurtles(mostly these have been all solved) is a lower twr. Go farther, but not as quickly.

But with regards to money, we’re dumping money into dumb projects that then get canceled every four years. All those billions could have been used on the already developed technologies and imagine where we would be? Nuclear shuttles between the moon and earth probably.

This has been really bugging me. In KSP for the most part, once I unlock the Thermal nuke rocket and the kspi thermal rockets (that gas core rocket is dope) I simply never use chemical rockets for space work. The efficiency of the nuke rockets is simply too good to pass up. The thing is that the efficiency of the KSP thermal rockets are the same as the real life ones. The timberwind had an isp of 850 at sea level and 1000 in vacuum. And this performance is normal for most thermal rockets, in fact we could probably increase this greatly given this was 1980’s tech. But if these rockets are so good, why don’t we use them? Is it stuck up politics? Some secret downside that isn’t well known? Maybe an unintelligent populace that hears “nuclear” and begins knee jerk protesting? Admittedly there is a danger of pollution if you suffer a failure in atmosphere. But accidents happen when you don’t know what you’re doing, and we don’t know how to overcome these issues because of the fear of nuclear science.

Have you ever suffered a collision? Everyone uses the *kesler syndrome intensifies* meme, but I’ve never actually hit anything except the spent stages of the same rocket (didn’t clear the booster before adjusting retrograde, things happened).

The biggest reason I’m trying it is that after all my years playing, I’ve never done it, and the waste is bugging me. But if I can just mine xenon with the config Edit I don’t need funds, which feels cheaty. However it’s a skill I want to master for late game. My play style ends up as a very expensive space program. I like 7.5m-10m launchers. Some projects had a 5 core 5m Launcher. It’s gets expensive but it works. If I could build a single core ultra heavy launcher, think 10m-15m, I could get it reusable due to the stupid amount of fuel and lifting power granting me a bigger margin for error. SpaceX style sea dragon. Would maintain profits but still be able to launch a 2001 style ship in one go.

Today’s career save was started to address something that’s been bugging me. Whenever we play the kerbal way, we end up wasting a lot of money incinerating nuclear rockets or smashing 5m asparagus boosters into the ground. Yes it may be the safest and most reliable way to go about things due to the simple nature of disposable parts and no pollution (please squad, uranium and reentry do not make rainbows and unicorns). However it’s still expensive. So ive tried doing the SpaceX falcon/bfr approach and its angering me. Yes, I can do a two stage to anywhere, that’s not the hard part. What’s getting difficult is the expense and complexity of designing the a booster that can put a heavy final stage into orbit, and have leftover fuel to deorbit, and have the heat resistance to not burn, and have the aerodynamics to not tumble through the atmosphere, and have the glide capability to land it into the 98%+ funds recovery area. Ive done it. My latest launcher bullseyed the KSC with enough accuracy to make modern icbms jealous. The problem is that in the time it takes to build the reusable rocket, Ive outgrown it and need a new size for bigger missions. This cuts down on time actually exploring. Do other players even bother recovering the first stage? Seems like it’s not all that worth it. One good thing that came of it was I accidentally developed a Shuttle/parachute style pod that I can pop a womprat with. It reenters nose first and flies like a missile using air breaks to adjust its speed and fins to steer. First test flight I landed in on the abandoned runway from orbit.

Will installing either realism overhaul or RSS cause bad things to happen with GPP/GPP secondary?

I’m assuming RO is realism overhaul. What is rss may I ask?

Something I’ve been needing to know, are the thrust ratings in KSP the same as the thrust ratings of their inspirational real life analog? I was looking at the stats on SpaceX’s Raptor engine and saw that for a 1.3m (atmos configuration) and a 2.4m (vac config) this mf puts out 1700kn and 1900kn of thrust respectively. On top of that it clocks an isp of 330(SL) and 375(vac). I may be wrong but KSP brain is screaming “holy rockets Batman!” These ratings are light years ahead of any KSP 2.5 LF/O rocket. So I need to know. Are the thrust ratings the same or proportional in KSP to IRL? I feel like we’ve been cheated with the rocket ratings we have compared to the Raptor.

Any idea what the ec to mj math is? It wouldn’t be that hard to simply change the NF engines to accept mjs if it’s a simply as changing config files, assuming I know the ratio of ec to mj.

Is powerbuffer something I could do on my end? Unfortunately I only know enough scripting to break things. I thought they might have been removed or something, then aren’t in the power tab and then don’t show up in the tech tree. I do know what I’m doing when installing mods, but it’s possible I have a borked copy. I can always try redownloading the mod.

@FreeThinker I was testing things yesterday and I realized something that we need in this. Your modpack uses a unique electric resource called mega joules. Other electric propulsion systems use electric charge, but simply a lot of it. For example Near future propulsion uses power requirements in the thousands of ec/s. However even with antimatter 400gw reactors, because most of the power is actually mega joules and not ec, we can’t use nfp thrusters with interstellar reactors, even if the reactor would irl put out enough electricity to melt the biggest vasmir or mpd thruster. So here’s the solution I thought of. On your generator module why not add a mode switch button. The generators have three modes: mega joules, mega joules and ec, or metric s**t ton of ec. Obviously the less charged particles or thermal power would produce fewer ec/s, but if you could change to ec mode you could use futuristic power supplies in sizes and quantities that make sense. Edit. Also where did the dusty reactor and the gas core reactor go? Those looked cool af.

Awesome, I’m in your debt.

Would it be too much to ask for a link, I’m too dumb to find the tags button. Thanks

I built an Apollo sized Mun lander. Landed by the mun arch, fell over and broke My chutes. Quickly launched a copy ship with better legs, landed feet away from the very cozy Jeb. Picked him up, sent the ship back to Kerbin. ..... Profit?

Where might I find a download for the older 1.3.1 scansat version? I’m stuck on 1.3.1 due to mass mod incompatiblities.

Is there a 1.3.1 version of scansat? I’m stuck in the past due to incompatible mods.

I need something explained to me. Anomalies appear on kerbnet as a question mark, telling you there Location. However you don’t always spot them the first time passing over the anomaly. Can I simply set up a network of satellites around a body, go about my business and then come back and see what they’ve found? Does detection happen passively or do I need to sit there watching my screen waiting for the mark to appear.

Interesting, I’ve read tunnel in the sky, which is why i know the term Torchship, but never Have spacesuit, will travel. I suppose what I’m doing right now does sound a lot like this a cometary orbit, so thanks. I’ve yet to try the one where you burn the during the whole transit though, I think I’ll try it.

In KSP today I realized something, anytime in the past that I’ve performed a interplanetary burn, I’ve always thought of it as simply changing my trajectory. Nothing special, just orbital mechanics stuff. My current space craft. Exploration 2 A fusion powered Daedalus/2001 Discovery inspired spacecraft. It has life support to last it 75 years, fusion fuel to last it about 36 years at full nuclear awesome..... I mean full power. Oh and it has about 750,000 ms D/v, nothing special. Todays mission entailed visiting and landing on Galileo Planet pack’s Icarus, basically mercury. After transferring down to Icarus and doing science I then decided to visit Leto. I’ve never been out that far and I finally built a starship with the guts to make the journey. Heres where I realized I know nothing about space travel. I set up my burn to send me to Leto, only to see it would take 21 years to get there. That’s a long time but not unmanageable. However because I have the D/v I can simply burn straight towards Leto with a little lead and make it in 4 and a half years. All this time I believe I’ve been using something called a Hohmann transfer, which seems to be a very specific maneuver. My current journey will use something else but I’m not sure what the maneuver’s name might be. So if all this time my simple transfer was a very specific maneuver, are there other well defined maneuvers that might make my life easier? Tl:Dr I found out there are more than one way to get from Planet a to Planet b. This means there could be others. What might they be?

It’s so simple it’s diabolical. Thanks.

I can confirm that the boring Anomalies exist. I’ve found 2 green Monoliths and 1 normal monolith. Im setting out to find more exotic stuff like the mohole or the mun arch’s Also, Id like to extend my thanks for this modpack, I know it’s creators have real stuff they have to deal with. This pack is truly amazing, it’s made me want to launch rockets simply for the sake of visiting the planets and not just science. Tellemuno and Lili are my absolute favorite system. Landing on lili hard, but in a fun way.