Cavscout74

Another possibility - if you are in one of the newer versions of KSP - you could have an engineer from a rescue ship remove the offending RCS module using construction mode.

I know, makes launches much more interesting when you never know for certain you'll make it to orbit, even on a tried & true design. The "best" failure I had was a spaceplane with 6 kerbals, the whole back half blew up. I had to bail them out & splash down via their personal chutes while never letting anyone get outside physics range from the others.

Fired up my fledgling 1.10 JNSQ career and put the first kerbonauts on Mun for that save. Another pair are headed for Minmus as well In addition to the manned missions, I also lofted a relay satellite into a very high (21Mm x 17Mm) polar orbit for a contract.

The short version is moving parts (like the fuel & oxidizer pumps) have to build up speed to provide all the fuel & oxidizer needed to produce full thrust. I know there are some people on here that can give a much more detailed account if you want. I would guess it also gives a chance to abort if something starts to go wrong with an engine rather than realize 2 seconds after the launch clamps are released that an engine is failing.

Well, let's just put it this way: every time I get the bright idea to build a shuttle, I build in some form of ejection system for the crew compartment. Otherwise, it gets expensive hiring new pilots.

There is quite a bit of science available at the space centers (original KSC, desert space center, Woomerang, Island Airfield, desert airfield). Early on the "easiest" way to gather that science is a pair of Mk1 pods turned sideways and used to roll through each area using the reaction wheels, with the Mk1 pods being the wheels. So you can collect data on the runway, at the spaceplane hangar, at the admin building, etc. It adds up but is a pain in the tail section. Also, every biome (grasslands, highlands, shores, water, etc) has science you can gather both on the surface & at low altitude if you didn't realize that yet. High altitude & in space tend to be once per planet/moon with a few exceptions. Launch in different directions to cover other biomes and make sure to grab reports in flight & after landing. Hope this helps. EDIT: Here is an example space center science gatherer:

@swjr-swisI was cruising MUCH lower than you, just 5000m for the trip. Also only made mach 2.1 at that altitude. Like I said, I was playing it safe today. And they were tiny drop tanks (single size 0 tank with filled nose cones). It's entirely possible they could have cost range from drag more than they increased range with the small amount of fuel. Well, if an F-15 in the real world can land with 1 wing, we shouldn't be surprised if Jeb can one up it with one wing & one engine missing in KSP!

The barnstorming contracts I found pretty difficult. Probably the hardest ones offered. The Island airfield hangars aren't too horrible if you have a small plane - the hill behind the hangars is what creates the most difficulty, at least it does for me. The research center one is HARD. I can't remember if I've ever completed that one successfully. If I did, it was in something very small & very slow. One other thing to watch out for - if you accept a speed or altitude contract and do something else (like launch a normal rocket) there is a good chance it will count staging of your rocket as a failure of the aircraft contract, even though you aren't attempting the aircraft contract. So only take them when you plan on completing them immediately.

Glad to hear it. Another type of contract it can give you are water rescues - IIRC, if you complete the build & fly a seaplane and/or (can't remember if it's either or both) the land a helicopter on the VAB contracts, you can start getting "Coast Guard" missions to rescue stranded kerbals on the water.

That is the lowest anyone could go and still be an airplane. Nicely done! I took it a little safer, jumping back to my 1.8 career and finally got around to flying @swjr-swis's Blackwood on a speed run from DSC to KSC. I did make a few little tweaks to personalize it, but the basic airframe remained the same. Even with four external tanks, I had to cut burners halfway through the trip to make sure I would make it. Very fun plane to fly, both responsive when needed yet still stable to fly. I was also just in time for my Laythe station to arrive as well, now I just need the crew to arrive. Between starting a few different careers and breaks from KSP, I haven't landed on Laythe in years, so I'm looking forward to it.

Val took the CF-01A Falcon up to 65km and circularized at that altitude (I didn't want to get ahead of my aircraft contracts) before returning to land safely at the Desert space center runway I actually overshot DSC and had to fly back about 150km, landing with a very small fuel reserve Then KSP struck again, and at this point I'm done with 1.12. If I play any more KSP at all, I'll go back to my old 1.8 save. Repeatedly had rover wheels crash into terrain when switching back to this rover or quickloading to go back to before I switched away. After half a dozen times, my patience is gone.

There is a contract pack that offers assorted aircraft contracts - "Giving Aircraft a Purpose" Adds assorted one-time aviation challenges (altitude & speed, barnstorming, landing on VAB helipad) plus regularly offering "airline" contracts where you have to build a plane that holds __ passengers and fly from one of the runways to another. It of course requires Contract Configurator as well, like all contract packs. Found here: I know the header says version 1.6.1 but I'm using it in 1.12.5 with no problems, and I've used it in just about every previous version of KSP as well.

Had a wide range of missions going on in my career the last few days. Jeb was stuck test flying a new patrol plane While Val got to test fly a prototype spaceplane. Currently she only had it up to mach 3 for a contract. Mach 4 & 35km altitude are next. It's performance is marginal with the panther engine but should improve whenever I get the whiplash unlocked. While the pilots were off flight testing, Kelrik & Ambera were up at Woomerang testing a newly developed scanning arm, along with a new rover design My Eve probes also started arriving. The first was the Eve Pancake Lander, which ended poorly - it lost orientation, turned sideways during atmospheric entry & mostly broke up. The tough lander can survived entry but the parachutes did not. Surprisingly, the can absorbed most of the landing impact, allowing the contents to survive, including the probe core and several science experiments. But with no antennas and no power source, it is just an expensive piece of debris on the surface. Oh, yeah, the floats for ocean landings survived as well. The Verona-Formalhaut probe/lander combo faired better, with the Formalhaut making it through a hot but survivable entry and safely landing I did have to wait for dawn to start sending back science to preserve battery life.

As a long-time ProbesPlus user, I just found another use for the Verona parts - they are a perfect fit for the Sentinel IR telescope

There was already a lot of little bits & pieces of info about KSP2 that had me a little iffy about when I would get it. Recently, after a break from KSP1 I started playing again, and my excitement for KSP2 was growing. Then they published system requirements. I guess I'll be trying it at some future date after getting a new computer. And since I just bought a computer last year and it still doesn't meet even min requirements, I suppose it will be a while before I buy or play KSP2

This was an old modded electric plane I made for exploring Duna long before a robotics DLC was even announced. Uses four little "Buzzer" electric props (from Modular Rocket Systems IIRC), although two could be shut down for cruise - which reduced power drain to less than what the solar panels produced, giving unlimited daytime range. Seats 2 kerbals in the "Observer Cockpit" from Airplane Plus. I don't remember exact numbers, but stall speed was very low: <25m/s on Duna, <15 on Kerbin IIRC. It was small enough that it wasn't too difficult to fit onto a rocket for the trip to Duna, except that you needed a pretty big fairing to cover the wings. While anyone can deploy the surface experiments, it is better for an engineer to deploy the power generating items (solar or RTG) and better for a scientist to deploy the actual experiments. Engineer-deployed power sources generate additional power based on the engineer's experience and scientist-deployed experiments generate science faster, also based on the experience of the scientist deploying them. Also, they are only useful for one deployment per body, not per biome. I suppose you could deploy multiple sets to gather data faster (not certain on that) but you won't get extra data from them.

My first round of Duna probes arrived around our closest neighbor, with a lander, science probe/relay and another science probe that went on to Ike orbit. Then my Moho science probe arrived and (barely) entered orbit. Lastly, my first batch of Eve probes departed - a science probe/lander combo (copy of the Soviet Venera 9), another different lander, a science/relay satellite and a dust sample return probe, but no pics of them yet. Duna lander - since I use "require signal for control" turned on, I had to ballast the lander with a fuel tank to orient correctly for entry. I barely regained signal with the fixed antennas to stage away the heat shield & ballast. I was <1000m altitude, with all chutes deployed, still descending way too fast when 1 tiny little bar popped up, allowing me to deploy the DTS-M1's and stage. Pioneer-Duna entered a highly elliptical polar orbit to complete both science gathering & communications relay functions Pioneer-Moho arrived, burned off all the fuel for its NERV transfer stage and most of the monoprop carried by the probe itself to establish its own elliptical orbit

I made some more progress in my 1.12 career, with the first Moho probe launched, a few more rescue missions, new jets & the first space station around Kerbin in this save. Pioneer-Moho departing Kerbin. I always appreciate when the game hands me a "Test NERV engine ...." contract long before I can research the NERV. Jeb taking up a new CF-05 Viper jet for a spin at dusk Kelrik & one of the rescuees returning for a safe splashdown Finally, first crew docked with the Manned Orbiting Lab to begin operations.

Clearly the top secret Minmus terraforming program is a resounding success.

Made a little progress the last two days - 3 unmanned probes headed to Duna (no pics), my first Mun & Minmus direct missions were flown plus a launch failure and played with the US2 Advanced sub-satellite. MCL3-1 burning for Mun with a crew of 3 freshly rescued kerbals Val checking out the US2 Advanced Sub-Satellite for proper deployment First MiCL3 to Minmus to finish building a rover ended up in an abort when - ironically - I tried to jettison the abort tower & fairing, and the debris destroyed the fairing base. While the abort tower was already gone, the abort function still separated the pod, allowing a safe escape. The crew actually did go to space - barely - before landing safely in the grasslands to the east The second attempt at the MiCL3-1 went better, landing within 100m of the incomplete rover, making it fairly easy to finish the rover - after eventually figuring out how to use the build function, since I hadn't used that system yet. I still prefer KIS/KAS to the stock system though. The completed rover made the 1km trip to the target destination while the crew prepared for their return to Kerbin. Driving this was worse than trying to drive on ice. Did they make Minmus more slick since I last played?

I tend to use fairly standard launchers, and name them: 1.25m Jabbit or Horned Jabbit, 1.875m Dawngrazer or Steamglider, 2.5m Girroc, 3.75m Granok. I don't remember what my 5m or some of my reusable launchers were named. The names were from creatures fin an MMO I used to play. I'll typically have several sub-assemblies of each size with different length fuel tanks & possibly different engines. Individual small craft designs tend to get abbreviations based on their use - OMV= Orbital Maneuver Vehicle - a manned pod with limited dV & RCS, typically what I name the basic Mk 1 pod to get a kerbal into orbit in early career, or MPV - Multi-Purpose Vehicle, usually the 2-man pod with much more dV, usually enough for trips to Mun/Minmus. OTV# is Orbital Tourist Vehicle (# seats). If there are variants, that will get an additional abbreviation (ER = Extended Range is the most common). Then I just add a sequential number to each one I launch (MPV-1, MPV-2, etc). The design gets saved as (launcher) (craft abbreviation) so something like Dawngrazer MPV-ER or whatever. Relays usually end up with an abbreviation, altitude & A/B/C for the (usually) 3 relays in the network. So the second "medium" altitude relay around Kerbin at 500km would be MKR-500-B. Science probes get usually historic probe names plus destination (Pioneer-Duna, Surveyor-Mun, etc). Large craft - something like to take a crew of 4+ kerbals to for missions to other planets and are not disposable get a class designation and individual names, usually running in alphabetical order from a list I made a long time ago: Exploration Vehicle 1 (EV-1) is usually named Avalon, #2 is Babylon. Space Stations will get a basic name (Kerbin Fuel Station or Minmus Science Station or whatever) but whenever I kill a kerbonaut, I rename a station in his/her honor. Preference goes to more complicated stations first - a fuel depot with no crew quarters tends to just stay Kerbin Fuel Station while a research station that I built out of 8 separate payloads, with greenhouse, science lab and quarters for 20+ kerbals will be one of the first to be named.

My 1.12 career continued to progress, with the 2nd manned Mun & Minmus landings. Jeb performed an unauthorized maneuver, slinging his capsule out into kerbolar orbit before returning. Kelrik gathering a greenstone to bring home while Jeb keeps the lander warmed up Val & Ambera plant a flag on Mun Testing a miniature Mun rover before sending it off to space The second attempt landed safely and did some exploration before having to stop to recharge it's batteries. The first attempt suffered an unexplained structural failure & exploded near the Mun's surface (ie a clipped part reacted..... poorly when I staged away the transfer stage during descent) We also started providing rescue services to other space programs operating somewhat recklessly around the globe, using a shorter ranged version of the Dawngrazer multipurpose vehicle, repainted in red & white "rescue" livery.

Could you be missing one of tweakscale's dependencies? I ran into different problems, but I was missing one on my most recent build & it messed my game up pretty bad till I found the missing one.

Make a backup just in case, but it shouldn't harm anything. And the persistent.sfs should be the only file you need to edit. I regularly personalize my kerbals when I start a new career with no ill effects.

I know this has made the rounds of KSP for a while, but I didn't realize it was supposed to be a game guide....... * *courtesy of KSP Facebook page, I have no idea where it originated.