Cavscout74

Oh I've had planes & just about everything else bounce just about everywhere, I was referring to the BG surface experiments.

AFAIK they were dropped with the big KAS update a while back. Initially put as legacy to avoid breaking saves, then deleted entirely after another revision or 2 to KAS

Yeah, the Klaw is the opposite of docking. You usually need at least 1 m/s to get it to latch, sometimes more. And also you want to be as close to perpendicular as possible - if you're at an angle, it tends to slide off & send the target spinning away.

The lab also draws power when it's in use. It's actually just about the largest stock power usage except for ISRU. In addition to life support mods, there is also a mod out there that adds a small power drain for internal lighting, but I can't recall the name of it.

I didn't have a lot of time today, but I made some good progress. The R&D upgrade was finally affordable - not that it matters, I just barely got my last 90-point node at the same time and I'm a ways from getting anything on the next tier. Despite that, I've conducted my first LKO rescue of this career, bringing in another scientist, then my first Mun orbit rescue combined with first docking in orbit of Mun contract - I hauled a spare clamp-o-tron jr with the rescue ship & had my Kelrik attach it to the target vessel with KAS, docked with it, transferred that rescuee - another engineer - over, put the scrap vessel on a suborbital trajectory then undocked & recircularized just in time to catch the transfer back to Kerbin. As usual, all the important stuff was done in the dark, so I didn't get any good screenshots. At the same time as the rescue, I launched a load of tourists to Minmus orbit in a modified MTV-4. Now called the MTV-5, it adds an extra seat, better solar panels & a snack container in the nose for the trip to Minmus & back. They are still en route, but they should provide a welcome pile of funds upon their safe return. MTV-5 shortly after course correction maneuver Finally, my second crew rotated into MOLE station. They have a contract for an extended stay - supposed to be 90 days, but the contract is counting down from 30 days for some reason. With only 2 pilots available, mission control can't afford to ground Jeb for his stunt leaving Kerbin space, but they can leave him on the station for a while and let Val get the first Minmus landing. STV-3-1 departing MOLE station with the first crew while STV-3-2 waits in the background to dock with the replacement crew. STV-3-1 preparing for reentry. Val & Ambera safely splashed down & were recovered along with several MOLE experiments, giving a moderate boost to science. Tomorrow, I should be launching a Mun Outpost using a very improvised Girroc 2.5m launcher (multiple x200-32 tanks with a cluster of 5 Reliants & 4 Cub verniers - it's ugly & untested, but it should work), then a manned Minmus lander. I think I have the Pomegranate pod unlocked now, so I should be able to get Val, Kelrik & Ambera all landed together. It's also starting to look like I'm not going to have much ready to send on the first Duna window - I may have a probe or two, but with the limited choices of solar panels, antennas & batteries, they aren't going to be anywhere near as good as I usually have ready for this window. And with less than 60 days, I won't have time to get too many ready either - I'm sure build times will be 10-15 days each. Update: It turns out I should be able to get some good probes headed to the red planet after all.

I had two milestones in my 20% science career today - first station, and a combined first manned orbit of Minmus & first trip out of Kerbin's SoI. First up, the MOLE Station was launched at night from KSC and was able to attain a 95km orbit. Second stage boosting the station clear of the atmosphere before the third stage puts it in a stable orbit Orienting station for circularization burn. Note the separator drifting away that was used to attach the aerodynamic nosecone. Once it was available, Val & Ambera rode on a prototype STV-3 (Station Transfer Vehicle, 3-seat) to dock & become the first crew on the station. Ambera performing EVA to restore the materials bay near the nose of the station before she gets to work in the lab While that was going on, Jeb & Kelrik were in Minmus orbit. After one orbit and multiple EVA's, Jeb came up with the idea that they had plenty of dV, and it would take just a quick burn to put them on a Kerbin escape trajectory instead of returning straight home. Jeb also "accidentally" crashed into the HG-5 antenna before Mission Control could veto the idea. That little stunt - in addition to bringing back extra science and completing a contract for EVA in solar orbit - put them as the first crew to spend 30 days in space. They even managed a fly-by and gravity assist from the Mun on their trip home Preparing for ejection burn out of Minmus Next up for tomorrow is a LKO rescue mission, then a crew swap for MOLE station. If time permits, maybe even the career first manned Minmus landing.

Had another busy day in my career - went from early attempts at a 2-man pod capable of making Mun orbit to my career first manned landing, as well as an automated sample return missions from Mun & Minmus. OMV-2 performing braking burn. I didn't have any engine plates unlocked yet, and I made due with what was available. It did manage to get to Mun orbit & back, which unlocked another 90-point science node & instantly made this design obsolete There are a few nice shots of the first Mun landing, especially since it was just a few hundred meters from a landmark. Oddly enough, the automated Mun sample return mission occurred after the crewed landing. The design leaves a small base station with limited science behind to take care of those "collect science from the surface of..." contracts. The first design had one itty bitty flaw - no batteries on the base station, just the handful of EC in the drone core. Once I realized that, I used the remaining fuel to take off & crash it into the Mun I also succeeded in landing a small remote rover near Mun's north pole And finally, Val took a newly available jet up to investigate a pair of magnetic anomalies on Kerbin. The first was in the mountains to the east of KSC - which resulted in the loss of that jet, but Val was recovered successfully - and the second in the mountains to the north of KSC, which also resulted in the loss of the jet but another successful recovery of Val.

The pod is stock (actually a Mk1), but the nose, fuel tank & maneuvering engine are from Corvus CF. The nose has a built in docking port that is compatible with clamp-o-tron Jr, built-in RCS & built in parachute. I modified it (the parachute portion anyway) to work with the stock Mk2 pod, but it still works (too well) on a Mk1 pod also.

I continued to advance my 20% science career this weekend, with upgrades to the pad & tracking station after numerous tourist contracts. The pad upgrade allowed me to upgrade from a 2-seat tourist rocket to a 4-seater, which improved my income and allowed the tracking center upgrade faster than expected. Splashdown of the last OTV-2 tourist craft Launch of the first OTV-4 from Woomerang With the tracking center upgraded, it was time to complete the contracts for first rendezvous & first docking. Jeb performed the rendezvous with a previously launched KTV-1 (Kerbal Target Vehicle), then landed and a few days later Val got to perform the first docking of this career, also with KTV-1 Val's rendezvous with KTV-1, in preparation for docking - which ended up being in the dark. Of course. Almost.... Docking successful. Pictured here after timewarping to sunrise Finally, Jeb took a CR-01 up to investigate another anomaly and found an abandoned space center. I also discovered there is an entire set of controls at the back of the cockpit I never noticed before

I never actually used it either - it was already broken when I first heard of it, and AFAIK it still is

I've not seen any updates to the mod in a while. However, only the radial tanks seem to be causing problems, so as long as you stay away from them (or delete them) you should be ok.

I honestly can't remember what parts it happened on, although I'm fairly certain some were stock pods. I don't think BG has any inflatable parts, and I have very few from any of my installed mods - and most were higher tech than what I had unlocked when I found the bug. Once I figured out what was happening, I chocked it up to BG interfering with KIS and started making sure to unequip tools or put them in storage before boarding craft. I can try to check specific pods this weekend to see for sure if it's stock or mod parts.

I have noticed since Breaking ground came out, if a kerbal with an equipped KIS tool (screwdriver or wrench) boards a craft, the equipped tool usually disappears. Not every time, and at least once I've had it show up in the inventory of a different kerbal who was in the same pod. If I unequip the tool before boarding a craft, it seems to work normally for me.

It depends. I have no idea how it will run on my laptop which isn't new by any means, so I can't even make an educated guess right now. Even if it runs great, there's a good chance there is something I'll miss about KSP1 & still play once in a while

With only 10 craft in orbit, I'd say mods are the culprit. Having more craft to track does slow down the game, but 10 isn't very many. Do you have a dedicated graphics card or is it relying on the CPU for graphics? If you don't, I'd say the graphics mods are the main cause of your slowdown. You didn't mention Scatterer but if you have it, it causes a big drain on resources even with a dedicated GPU. It looks amazing, but it comes at a cost. EVE on its own isn't too bad, but some of the other graphics mods that use EVE have very detailed graphics that can cause the game to slow as well.

I got one of my tourists launches done, and Kelrik Kerman launched for his lonely solo week in LKO contract. The Jabbit 2 OMV capsule was outfitted with a probe core (since Kelrik is an engineer) and a solar panel to provide power for the week, plus an inline goo container to gather additional science. The snacks already carried will be sufficient for the week, so now its just a waiting game. If he can figure out how to get the hatch open, he may become the first kerbal to EVA also - I'm just about ready to upgrade the astronaut complex. Kelrik starting his week in space I have 2 more tourist craft building, and a comsat with two new science experiments, all of which will be ready after Kelrik returns from orbit. Jeb also took up another CR-01 to recon a magnetic anomaly in the mountains. Despite the emergency chute, he still smashed the plane up pretty good, but he found another strange monolith half buried in the mountain, and completed another contract as well as gathering some science. UPDATE: I had some spare time tonight & after the first tourist contract (I was wrong, it finished before Kelrik's week in space), I upgraded the astronaut complex. This allowed mission control to transmit instructions on how the hatch works on the Mk 1 pod, so Kelrik was able to complete the "Perform First Orbital EVA" contract & gather some science with a nice collection of EVA reports before finishing his endurance mission. Career first EVA Last sunset - by the next sunrise, Kelrik was beginning reentry Splashdown! I was a little late on my deorbit burn, KSC is over 70km to the west Finally, Jeb hopped in a CR-01 jet to bust the next speed record - 220m/s. Since the CR-01 doesn't have landing lights, he was ordered to wait for dawn before taking off Coming soon, I have a Mun sample return mission almost ready for launch, then more tourists. I actually need to do a quick pad test of my lander design before it goes - I did something unusual to cut part count and I want to make sure it will work at all before I launch. I also have an early version of the Dawngrazer (aka Titan) launcher entering use. It provides a little more dV & power than the Jabbit 2 (aka Atlas) for marginally higher cost, but the current 18t mass limit is preventing it from reaching its potential. I could upgrade the pad now, but I'm also close to being able to afford the tracking station upgrade, which will allow maneuver nodes, so I'm split on which I want to do first. Either way, I really need to get some more science coming in - at 20% science rewards, the flow is just a trickle and I'm barely halfway to my second 90 point node

Testing my new KSP build with scatterer & the medium-res SVE textures. Looks pretty nice now. My 20% science career is plugging along slowly - in additional to the science & rep rewards turned down to 20%, funds are set to 30% (much lower & tourists contract around kerbin aren't profitable - especially early game when you can barely get to LKO with 2 tourists at a time), I also started using KVASS* for my launch planning so even the early game rockets I'm launching are taking 5+ days to "build" before they can launch. At the rate I'm going, I'll be lucky to anything ready for the first Duna window. But it feels more realistic - my old method was to wait 1 day (<18 tons), 10 days (18-140 tons) or 20 days (>140 tons) between launches, but even that allowed a very rapid rate of launches. Night launch of an Mun fly-by probe atop an Atlas-style launcher after booster engine separation. Mun fly-by probe crossing the day/night terminator My biggest accomplishment in this career so far, Mun Surveyor-1 landed safely and sent back data from the surface of the Mun. Landing site wasn't the prettiest - Kerbin is almost directly overhead, so no pretty "Kerbin on the horizon" screenshot, but nothing exploded, so it's a success. I had a few minutes before I had to wrap things up & I had Jeb take up a CR-01 jet for a pair of aircraft contracts - break 100 m/s & break 5000m altitude. Made for a pretty dusk flight to end the day: There is a tourist contract waiting on the launcher to finish building as well as a "1 week in orbit" contract also waiting on it's launcher, which a second tourist contract I haven't started building yet. Only mission control has gotten an upgrade so far, although I can barely afford to do either the pad or astronaut complex if I wanted to right now. All my 45-point science nodes are unlocked and I'm just 12 points away from my first 90-point node. My best launcher is an Atlas-style stage and a half design with a pair of Thuds attached to a decoupler with crossfeed enabled with a Valiant (basically a "half Swivel" from Restock or Missing History mods) as a sustainer firing through the decoupler. It works pretty well and typically gives me over 2400 m/s dV for most of my designs so far. Actually, it's usually a little over that - the dV calculator doesn't figure the half-stage very well. I've figured out I can drop the booster engines when I'm getting just over 3 g's acceleration, which drops me to ~1.1 - 1.2 g's with just the sustainer engine, * KVASS = Kerbal Very Simplified Planning and Simulation

Finish the surface revamps they've started for 1.8 & finish the old parts revamps they've been doing the last few versions - all the aircraft parts are untouched, as are most 2.5 & 3.75m parts. And then bug fixes

While messing with a new KSP install and launching a satellite into polar orbit for a contract, I discovered SVE adds auroras. Even the low-res textures look pretty nice, although the screenshot came out kinda dark: Tomorrow I'm going to try the medium res, and maybe see what scatterer does to my install.

I also tend to make a network with RA-2 relays around a planet then a single larger relay in a highly elliptical polar orbit - so rovers or whatever talk to the nearest small relay, which bounces through the large relay back to Kerbin, rather than trying to make a network of RA-15 or RA100 relays in a single launch. Especially early on, the large relay will get sent as a science probe that can also act as a relay, then later in the career the smaller relay network will get set up.

I hate it when I do something like that. One of my favorite parts of the KAS & KIS mods is letting me salvage mistakes like forgetting antennas or chutes. I've also messed up by not reading the body of the contract - to me, when it says "mine x units of ore from Minmus & return to Kerbn" that means land it on Kerbin. But it actually says to put it in orbit of Kerbin - I've landed with tons of Minmus ore, only to not have the contract complete because I came straight to Kerbin reentry from Minmus and had to repeat the whole mission because I was never in a stable orbit of Kerbin. I managed to get my CB-02 flying better and tested it with a few loads. Much to my surprise, it can take off from the Island airfield even loaded - barely, it can just start getting the nose up when I run out of runway, but it's enough to get it airborne. I changed it to use a different cockpit and added one of the 1.7.3 grip strips (with their 60 m/s impact tolerance) to the tail for added protection against minor tail strikes. Rack of 4 fuel-tank bombs. They dropped cleanly but weren't very impressive when they hit. They are connected by a structural panel with a self destruct charge set to 2 seconds, so they drop as a unit then the structural panel gets destroyed & the 4 bombs fall freely Another run, dropping a cluster bomb - I came in too slow this time & was well short of KSC. This image is the second set of detonations, there was a first set about a second before this set. The cluster bomb is made from bunches of the spherical tanks attached to two girders with a single pylon to drop from the bomber. Like the 4-bomb rank, a self-destruct charge destroys the girders, letting the spherical tanks fly off on their own. After I was happy with my bomber, I went back to normal space program functions - several course correction maneuvers, then I hopped over to Laythe to check on my crew there. The floating base was out of ore for the automated greenhouse, so it was necessary to resupply from the shore. While finishing up that task, Kelrik was looking over the micro-ISRU by @Angel-125 . I love some of the little details he adds to his mods, like this "Squishy things" warning. Finally, I gave my main install a rest to check on some further changes to a new KSP build I'm using with some different graphics mods & trying to prune as many mods & mod parts as possible without radically changing things. So far I've knocked down the number of patches it has to load on start by over 200. Anyway, I sent up Jeb in the first orbital flight of that career, and caught a nice shot of hm coming back down

Just a few course correction in my career. Most of my time has been spent on building new aircraft. The first one had some serious yaw instability at first, but after some design tweaks (thanks again @bewing ), it is much better now. It's also a heavy pig, and will barely break 300 m/s down low with it's twin Panthers on full afterburner. But as Summer Kerman (chief test pilot while Jeb is away on Laythe) can attest, it can make a mess of the space center with the 6 underwing rockets. Prior to fixing the stability issue, it also provided Summer with plenty of parachute experience, so she had some frustrations to work out and both the VAB and R&D suffered her wrath. After I was satisfied with the CB-01 Stryker light bomber, I started on a heavier bomber. I don't have a proper name yet, so for now its going to be the Hercu-bear. It flies pretty nice right from the start - elevator authority was too low, which was mostly fixed by putting in some negative angle of incidence to the horizontal stabilizer. At low speeds (ie landing), it still needs some additional authority to get the nose up. The main issue remaining is landings - they leave a little room for improvement. Since the nose doesn't want to come up enough, the nose gear hits first, bounces & causes the tail to strike the ground Once it can land safely, then it will be time to test it with a load in the bomb bay. It has a dorsal girder running the length of the bay to be used to attach ordnance to in the future, as well as a convenient place to stick batteries, an antenna and any other small parts I can think of.

You can pick up rocks without a contract. It only gives science one time for bringing it back. I don't recall landing anywhere on Mun that I didn't find Mun rocks, but I can't swear to that - once I found the first couple, they weren't something I spent time looking for. I only noticed them when I ran over them.

Thanks for the responses everyone. I switched from the all-moving canard to a two piece stabilizer & control surface like @bewing suggested & it flies pretty normal now. It's still a little weak in yaw - perhaps a larger tail would help - but even getting 5 degrees or so yawed left or right, it settles back to prograde within 2 seconds instead of going the other direction instantly. I didn't have to eject once on this morning's test flights.

So I was messing around today with an aircraft I had designed a few days ago. It wasn't for anything important, but the design seemed like it had potential when I first flew it the other day. With further testing, however, I've found it has very poor directional stability. My poor test pilot has either used the pilot ejection system or bailed out on every flight but one. The first improvement was adding a pair of basic fins underneath to supplement the delta deluxe tail fin, then I switched to the AV-R8 fins with control turned down to 50%, set to yaw only. Neither made much difference - if I get even slightly off left or right of prograde, it snaps into a spin that is only recoverable if I've got a few thousand meters of altitude. Speed doesn't seem to matter - mach 1+ or <200 m/s, it spins equally well. The only other craft I've had with this much instability were a V-tail jet (which flew perfectly well when switched to a conventional tail) and a spaceplane that just needed a shallower reentry angle since the high AoA reentries I was trying to do blocked the relatively small rudder. What am I missing on this one? This was the cleanest screenshot I have to show the layout. Approximate locations of CoM & CoL are marked. That's at full tanks, but I haven't flown it long enough to deplete too much fuel. The homemade rockets don't effect CoM much - it moves aft a little more with all 6 plus a pair of drop tanks under the fuselage. But it's still ahead of CoL. And the spinning problem was noticed before I added anything too it. It's actually pretty tame flying as long as you don't yaw more than 1 or 2 degrees left or right. Second version, loaded, with the basic fins Clean, version 3 with the AV-R8 fins. Yes, that is a pretty high angle of incidence on the canards, but the CoL was nearly at the back of the wing before I increased the canards incidence