Cavscout74

Thanks. Finally found the vid - or at least one very similar to the one I remember. It was an anti-ship missile not an ICBM, which makes sense why it needed to pitch down so soon.

So I can't find the video that inspired this, but there is/was a youtube video of a Russian missile launch from a Transporter/Erector/Launcher (TEL) that used a soft launch, followed by a pair or 2 of what were basically sepratrons to point the missile in the correct general direction after clearing the tube, then the first stage motor ignited. This is still very much a WIP but that is what I'm trying to do, although I would like to know if that is within the rules of the Kold War scenario before I spend too much time on it.

Landing - My biggest problem with getting something to Eve that can depart again is stability. It helps to stick an inflatable heat shield on both ends of the craft or even an inflatable on top and a regular heatshield on bottom (if it will cover the ship). Having some airbrakes that extend past the heat shields near the top of the craft helps too, although they overheat too quickly to be much help during the worst part of reentry. Then you have to survive ditching the giant heatshields - make sure to mount plenty of sepratrons, including some to push it sideways out of line with your craft. That is best done after at least drogue chutes are deployed. It is also good to put all the chutes, ladder and anything else not needed to go back into space on some form of decoupler so it can be dumped on the surface and reduce the mass you are trying to get back into orbit. Launching - Best engines to use are typically aerospikes or Vectors. You'll need around 10000 m/s dV from sea level, although launching from a mountain top is significantly easier & cheaper. Breaking Ground rotors can also be pretty good for boosting a launcher above the soup. Keep your airspeed low until you are out of the thickest part of the atmosphere. This was the last manned mission to Eve I did - only carried a single kerbal to the surface & back to orbit. IIRC it had a 1.25m core with a Vector, then 6 radial 1.25m boosters, asparagus-staged in pairs, with a mix of aerospikes & Vectors (4 & 2 I think). I used tweakscale to get the lower inflatable heatshield smaller than the upper (to improve stability). I don't remember what I had powering the second core stage, then the final craft reaching orbit was a mk1 pod with a terrier.

@SpacePixel Really nice work!!! Are any of those craft - specifically the small jet & the VTOL - posted anywhere?

Pretty normal for me. Also the more transitions I do, the longer the load time. Usually, I'll restart periodically - especially if I have something like a large interplanetary mission with a large number of ships departing Kerbin within a few days. It's been like that as far as I remember. If I play too long, I'll start seeing craft orbits changing without input too.

Finished getting my Duna mission on the way in my Out of the Sands career. Update here Performing EVA inspection of the Medium Crew Vehicle prior to Duna transfer: Lancer-Duna outpost performing transfer maneuver - the low TWR gave me plenty of time to reset all the parachutes' min pressure to 0.01.

Update 05:370 Manned Launches: Only two manned launches were conducted, both by Lightning spaceplanes. Unmanned Launches: Most of the unmanned launches were conducted in support of the two manned interplanetary missions. Only 3 other launches were conducted. Operation Morning Star: The manned mission to Eve orbit, announced on 05:163 consisted of four craft plus the use of a spaceplane to bring the crew to orbit. All launches were successful and the craft are currently enroute to Eve, expected to arrive in about 20 days. Operation Red Dawn: The manned mission to land on Duna & Ike, announced 05:305. A total of seven craft were launched to support the mission, not counting the second Lightning spaceplane that brought the crew to orbit. All launches were successful although the Duna Disposable Lander suffered an engine overtemp on one of its four Boar first stage engines a few seconds before first stage burnout & separation. No adjustments were necessary and the flight continued normally. Aircraft: Debris: One new piece of debris was left in orbit, by the Jool Large Relay during its transfer maneuver. JLRR-3-2 2nd Stage - 05:330 - 794X137km, 5* inclined orbit Ongoing Missions: The few ongoing manned missions at Minmus wrapped up & the crews returned home. There are a large number of craft of various types en route to various destinations. Only two completed their missions - the Moho Remote Rover, landing on 05:176 & the ACV-3, capturing asteroid YRK-979 & establishing it in orbit around Kerbin before running out of fuel. Moho Remote Rover - Reached Moho on 05:176 and landed safely in the highlands. After performing a series of local scans, the rover returned to its landing site pending further instructions. ACV-3 - Target asteroid (YRK-979) entered Kerbin's SoI on 05:208, and ACV-3 captured it on 05:213 and established an inital 28* 1490x31000km orbit. Over the next few days, inclination was dropped to zero and the orbit dropped down to a 1282 x 3435 km before running out of fuel. Will remain attached in standby mode pending further missions involving YRK-979. Remaining craft & status: Other: No construction is currently in progress, as all facilities were needed to support the two manned interplanetary missions. Upgrades to the KSC runway & the VAB are being considered for the start of the next fiscal year.

Well, in all fairness helicopters in the real world are not easy either, so KSP certainly got that part right. If its any consolation, I've made a few working helicopters in the past but every update, Squad changed something with the props & rotors, and my design would totally break and have to be rebuilt from scratch. After the second time, it just killed it for me.

@Zxy44 First off, let me just say that I am not a hardware expert by any measure. However, it strikes me as odd you are having problems with 1.9 as the new unity version KSP switched to in 1.8 generally runs better than previous versions. I would guess its due to the CPU, I believe that is a 4th gen CPU which is pretty old (2013). Just yesterday, I was told by the IT department at my job that we can't install an offline standalone version of our aircraft maintenance manuals on any of our computers because the standalone requires a core i5 processor, and all our computers are i3's - so it might be an issue where the new Unity engine needs a newer CPU. When you listed 1.7GB did you mean Mhz? If so, that is a little slow - KSP doesn't need multiple cores so much as raw speed on a single core due to physics calculations not being too easy to share. Most newer laptops I've looked at had 2.3 Mhz base speed (and I just bought one last month due to a catastrophic coffee spill) Also being an older laptop, I'm guessing cooling isn't as good as newer ones - and even my new one gets pretty warm running KSP with dual fans. 8GB ram & pretty much any graphics card should be plenty for stock KSP, so unless there is something wrong, neither should be the issue. Your best bet might be to use an older version (pre-1.8) until you can upgrade your system. It kinda sucks, but if it was working before it should at least allow you some KSP time even if you miss the newest bells & whistles. The second DLC was actually released for 1.7.2 IIRC, so you can still get that if interested. I don't recommend using my method to get an upgrade (spilled coffee next to laptop, while I was grabbing paper towels, it ran under the laptop & got sucked up by the cooling fan & distributed throughout the laptop resulting in lots of popping noises & smoke), as I really wasn't ready to spend that money at the time.

Looks very interesting, looks like my "test" KSP install is getting fired up tonight....

That's one of the things I like about this forum - almost every time someone says "can someone do the math on...." a few hours later, someone has actually come along and done the math.

Made a little more progress on my manned Duna mission for Out of the Sands, with the final launch completed and the first few transfers performed. Didn't have enough time to get the rest done today though. Also got a pair of craft launched to Jool - a twin RA-100 relay & a remote rover for Laythe. Launch of the crew vehicle to haul my kerbals back & forth to Duna - I apparently missed a stage when figuring out the dV, because the Sarnus first stage was enough to get a 140km Ap with ~200 m/s remaining. I actually staged it away after leaving the atmosphere, as I realized it wasn't needed. The second stage has nearly enough dV for the round trip to Duna before I even fire up the nuke engine on the actual crew vehicle. I think I could've used just a 3.75m launcher instead of the 5m. Maybe I had a flashback from my JNSQ install..... Laythe rover climbing away from the Dessert space center at dusk Hard to see, but the Duna Racer contract probe departing for Duna - it performed fly-by's of Mun & Minmus, with the final destination as Duna.

At any time, usually 2 - my current career (typically hard mode, no reverts/quickloads) and a sandbox to test stuff without permanently killing my kerbals. There may be one or more other game installs, either to test out new mods or check out a new version while waiting for all my mods to update. Those don't get a lot of use though.

Just noticed that docking sim. First try, something weird happened - after getting pitch/yaw/roll to zero, and I started adjusting y/z axis, it started pitching up without commands (up to 1.0 degree/sec without me touching the keys). After resetting it, came soooooo close the next attempt - I wasn't watching the roll, and it drifted to 2.2 degrees. Third time was the charm. So, who else kept trying to use the keys they're used to with KSP docking?

@Laie beat me to it, but I was about to say the same - it would be extremely difficult without some form of autopilot / auto-hover mod. In the past I've tried to set up autonomous mining/refueling stations where a fuel tanker could land on a docking port on top of the surface mining facility, and never had luck with that.

Hah, I downloaded it recently too. The original was one of my favorites as a kid - and I downloaded the original as well. I haven't had much time actually playing the new one, but its installed. I had major issues getting it to recognize my saves, which killed some of my enthusiasm right from the start.

My step-daughter had a doctor's appointment today & wanted my wife to go with her. All went well and as they were leaving, the receptionist says to my step-daughter that she took after me more than her mom. Which is even funnier because she looks like a younger version of her mother and has very few of her biological father's features

OPM is quite good and AFAIK is still kept up regularly, although I haven't used it in a few versions. For a bigger challenge, JNSQ is a 2.7x scale Kerbin system with a few extra planets (similar to OPM) to finish the system. Beautifully done, with a whole new set of challenges - still doable with stock parts, but really makes you work for it. Those are the only two I've had any experience with and like all of them, they are currently waiting for Kopernicus to update.

That's the challenge - you have to take off and land as a plane

Breaking News ---- Operation "Red Dawn" officially announced Dessert Space Center, 05:305 - After weeks of suspicious launches that many observers believed were intended to support a manned mission to Duna, an official announcement finally came. Operation Red Dawn will place a crew of kerbonauts on the surface of both Duna and Ike. As expected, the first class of kerbonauts will be performing the mission. The mission outline calls for Jeb, Kelrik & Ambera to perform an Ike landing shortly after arrival. After gathering surface samples and refueling the lander, they will return to orbit & then dock with the crew station in Duna orbit. From there, Val will pilot the prime mission to land on Duna, leaving Jeb at the station. A small fleet (already in orbit) will be heading to Duna in the next few weeks- crew station for Duna, supply vehicle, crew transfer vehicle, disposable Duna lander, reusable Ike lander, Lancer-Duna outpost, Buffalo-Duna Rover, and the Buffalo-Ike Mobile Mining platform. Also unveiled were new surface EVA suits, with photos of the crew training near DSC.

I've seen similar statistics before too. I'm pretty sure you'll find the active members on the forum are much more likely to have been everywhere than the "average" KSP player. As far as where I've been, everywhere in stock plus Sarnus & all of it's moons with probes in the Outer Planets Mod planet pack. I also had probes going to the other 3 OPM planets, but started a new save before they arrived. That was back in version 1.3.1, and I traded improved graphics mods for the OPM pack, so I haven't been back to it. Most of the time, I start getting bored with my career once I have a Laythe base established & a few crews have rotated through. I recently started tinkering with the JNSQ planet pack, but have only been to Mun & Minmus in it so far.

I made a short lived attempt to correct the issues I was having with the solid rocket SSTO challenge. The part bouncing & weirdness seems to be fixed now - but now my wings departed on their own shortly after takeoff. The wings are the two objects above & behind the soon to crash spaceplane Miraculously, the pilot survived the impact with the ocean at nearly 300 m/s.

Must be dead, somebody even broke in my house, fired up my computer & deleted all the offline copies of KSP on my computer and backup drive.

My usual engine choice for crewed pods for trips to either of the moons: 1.25m pod = Pug (from Restock, 1/2 thrust of Terrier). The stock Spark works too, but since I have Restock installed anyway, the Pug is a 1.25m engine, so no size changes to deal with. 1.875m pod = Terrier 2.5m pod = Cheetah I usually end up with a ~0.5 - 0.75 TWR at full fuel, which is plenty for orbital operations. Basically, I pick the vacuum engine one size down for crew pods and it works pretty well - it does require engine plates or creative use of aerodynamic fairings to cover the different sized engines at launch

My SSSTO-1 & -2 had the radial SRB's (Thumpers or Kickbacks) attached to the wings and had no issues, only the SSSTO-3 attached the Thumpers directly to the core and had the issues, so it sounds like you are onto something. Thanks for the tip