Cavscout74

I did some further testing of the little atomic jet-powered plane I made last week, then had my Eeloo mini-lander carrier arrive & set up a low orbit around Eeloo. For the CX-8 jet, it turns out that a single small radiator is NOT enough to keep it cool. It will work for a few minutes, but then everything starts getting really hot. And the radiator was mounted on the engine, so it can't even help with cooling the cockpit. I did a short speed run out over the ocean, then turned back, flew past KSC into the mountains and just after getting into the mountains the overheating started That's getting a little warm - it got much worse before I got back to KSC. I thought about having Summer bail out, but the cockpit was so hot, I was afraid she'd go "Poof" when she EVA'd. The new version has a pair of edge radiators mounted to the probe core then offset aft so they're behind the wings. Still gets hot, but so far hasn't gone crazy - and since they're mounted to the probe core, they will cool the cockpit as well as the engine. I'm also thinking about sticking a pair of small thermal control systems in the nose storage bay for more rapid cooling on the ground. The down side is it will barely break mach 1 down low. The Eeloo mini-lander carrier deploying the first mini lander. It carried three of these to drop in different biomes. Each carries a basic set of science instruments (temp, pressure, seismic & grav) plus a landing site camera & surface sampler from Probes Plus. Power is provided by a small RTG and a bunch of batteries. An initial braking burn is performed by a "Landvermasser" retro-motor, which is then jettisoned & a "Jib" monoprop engine handles the remainder of the landing. Both engines are also from Probes Plus Two landers worked - this one, for some reason, had the SRB jettison instead of firing when I staged it. And it only has about 550 m/s dV with it's Jib engine, so it slammed into Eeloo pretty hard Second mini-lander slowing down after jettisoning the empty SRB Safely landed, gathering surface samples to analyze Finally, after a jettisoned SRB slammed into one of the radial LFO boosters, this launch actually managed to stay on course & make orbit. I ended up needing to use over 200 m/s from the transfer stage to make orbit, but it shouldn't hurt the actual mission - an emergency fuel station for Dres. The whole setup was originally built for Eeloo, so there was going to be plenty of excess dV for Dres anyway.

USI sounding rockets has a lot of 0.3 & 0.625m rocket parts. No solar panels that I recall, but it does have small batteries & parachutes, plus mini probe cores. Also, one of the other USI family of mods has a small inflatable escape pod (the DERP), and that mod includes both a tiny folding solar panel & a tiny monoprop fuel cell. I can't remember exactly which mod has it.

I'm really surprised and kinda disappointed by this. I haven't had it happen (yet) so I thought KSP was treating the surface experiments differently than other craft - I've had kerbals go sliding across Minmus for dozens of meters, slide into them & bounce off or stop without causing the experiment to move. I haven't been back to Gilly since I placed surface experiments, so that could be why I haven't seen it yet - maybe Gilly gravity is just too low to keep anything in place

I don't know why it wouldn't, but I've never actually tried - or even thought about that. I know what I'm doing tomorrow though....

No, the orange suits were always IVA only, not EVA. The new breaking ground sci-fi suits ARE orange on EVA for the vets

KSP doesn't work with multiple decouplers on parts. Only the (in your case) bottom one will attach to the core rocket. The only way to do something like what you are wanting would be to attach the top liquid tank to a radial decoupler, then the SRB's underneath with an inline decoupler to the LF tanks, then maybe add struts from the SRB to the core for stability. Alternately, you could figure out how long the SRB's burn for & match the amount of fuel in the liquid tanks to match the SRB burn time & decouple everything together

My career first manned Moho mission arrived yesterday & commenced investigations of the north polar anomaly. Several months in advance, a rover had been landed to scout out a suitable landing site as the terrain is quite hilly. Happily, a relatively flat valley was found just a few kilometers from the Mohole. Once all the pieces arrived & met up in polar orbit (station, lander & crew), it was time to put boots on the nearly molten ground. I also landed a new emergency fuel station close to the equator (the north pole was barely 3% ore) just in case. It's a variant of an Eve emergency fuel station I was designing - it's made to fit between two inflatable heatshields for Eve landing, so a few changes were necessary for the Moho version. In addition to trading the heatshields for a skycrane, I also added some extra thermal control systems & added some structural panels to allow any crew that come to the station to be able to have some shade. It mounts a pair of large solar panels, plus fuel-cells for night operations and a RTG for emergency power. It also has a moderate snack supply as well as automated greenhouse to grow more. For some reason, I didn't add any science gear. Since then, I have also made Eeloo & Dres versions (getting rid of the extra thermal systems & shade panels, then adding larger antennas & a second RTG, plus adding scientific instruments)

Even though it slows everything down, I reinstalled scatterer in my current career game & grabbed a quick shot of my Laythe floating base. It looked so good, I popped over to take a look at my Duna base too

I had some time this morning, so I took the long drive & swim from my Laythe landing site to the Sagan Sea base. About 10km was driving, mostly rolling hills till the last little bit when it dropped sharply to the water, then a 50km swim at 8-9 m/s. At least while swimming the Lynx Amphib could mostly be left on it's own while I did other stuff. Ambera took a quick swim to gather science in the shallows before continuing the trip Sagan Sea base finally in sight Once the Lynx Amphib arrived, Kelrik jumped out to link it to the base with a KAS cable. He also needed to flood the ballast tank closest to the rover a little to level the base. Once that was done, the rest of the crew took a quick dip before climbing on board the base. Ambera is the only one with serious work to do in the lab, Jeb & Vall are pretty much just pigging out on snacks in the crew quarters while Kelrik keeps an eye on the base systems. Finally, Kelrik went down to check out the ballast system & the SAFER reactor system Once everything was set, I timewarped till my Lancer base arrived, performed a correction at Tylo Pe that led straight into a Laythe intercept with a 130km Pe, then set up for landing, just a few km's from my target site. Despite an accident with some of the wheels on the base, it still was able to drive to a mostly flat spot near the fuel rover & spaceplane where it commenced drilling & refining operations. Now that it's in place, the landing engines can be jettisoned with their self-destruct charges. Oddly, when I did this, most of the remaining wheels blew up also. I haven't had that problem in a while. At least this base didn't get updated - the newer design omits the underside landing legs & just keeps the wheels to reduce part count & have the base be permanently mobile. So I lost the mobility, but it's sitting on a 12.8% ore lode that happens to be mostly flat, so it shouldn't be a problem.

For test flights I stick with just one as well, but that incident was a routine crew transfer in one of my most flown spaceplane designs. It's also the only time I had Kerbal Launch Failure pick on a spaceplane - prior to this, I actually thought it only applied to pad launches, not runway launches. For test flights, I've started building pilot escape pods into my experimental aircraft/spaceplane designs - decouplers on both sides of the cockpit, enough sepratrons to boost it up & away from the craft even in a 0/0 ejection and a parachute to land the whole assembly after the fireworks are over. Once I'm satisfied that the design is more or less safe, the escape system gets removed to reduce mass & part count. Plus it's just rude to the passengers for the pilot to eject without them. Escape pod test:

I tinkered with putting together a 1.3.1 RSS/RO install, but no luck so far. I decided to shelve that idea & jump back to my 1.7.3 career, as the vets were a few days from entering Tylo's SoI for their braking 2300 m/s braking burn, then flying on to Laythe. I changed up my original plan, put them in Tylo orbit briefly (for a contract) then did a second short burn to exit Tylo's SoI. Laythe was in a bad position for intercept & I didn't have enough real world time to wait, so I spent several hundred dV to force a quicker intercept - down to "only" 57.7 km/s dV remaining on the Alderaan. Once docked with Laythe station, there was a several hour wait for the landing zone to come back to daylight, then everyone transferred to the Laythe-Lightning spaceplane for the trip down. Since I was rushing, I made a dumb error that could be a problem - normally, I make sure my ground base with ISRU is landed before a crewed spaceplane lands, so I know it can be refueled for the trip back to orbit. The Lancer-Laythe base is still several days away from it's Tylo fly-by/gravity assist. If I botch the landing of the base, Jeb & company will be stuck for at least until the backup Laythe-Lightning arrives next year. Other than that one error, everything else went smoothly, with just a little 4km overshoot on the landing. I did enter a little early, but that was easily solved by retracting the airbrakes & keeping a little bit of throttle. Made for a nice, long flight through the upper atmosphere wreathed in fire. Once Jool was climbing over the horizon, it was time to slow down & descend Kelrik the engineer was selected to be the first kerbal to set foot on Laythe, and to test the atmosphere for breathability After he didn't drop dead, the rest of the crew climbed out for a flag planting before taxiing back to the rovers Kelrik also got a great pic in front of the geyser Then it was back to business, getting everyone transferred to the amphibious rover and also attaching several external science experiments before the long drive/swim to the floating base - which will be a story for another day since I ran out of time at this point.

I play with Kerbal Launch Failure, and generally use hard settings in career (no revert or quickload, kerbals can die), so LES is generally required. I've also started using the PEBKAC Launch Escape Systems mod. Even before I started using KLF, I had started using LES just in case, and had to use it twice due to design failures in the same design - radial boosters had more rotation than I expected at staging & they destroyed 2 out of 4 core engines. After the first one, I adjusted the design & on the next flight, the radial boosters managed to take out the core fuel tank just above the engines. I also am very fond of the new kerbal parachutes - Kerbal Launch Failure reared its head one day & blew up an engine on a spaceplane full of 6 kerbals one day. The crew compartment and some wing pieces survived, but not much else. I had to EVA each kerbal & deploy his or her chute, switch back to the wreck & EVA the next one, while plummeting towards the ocean below. I managed to parachute all 6 into the ocean & recover them all safely.

No pics, but my DSV-01 Alderaan entered Jool's SoI. After a 2300 m/s slow-down burn to get a Tylo intercept, she'll reach Tylo in 21 days, where she'll need to do another 2500 m/s burn at Tylo Pe to get into orbit of Jool. Not a bad trip - Kerbin to Jool in around 380 days on ~8800 m/s dV. Alderaan will be down to "only" about 54000 m/s dV at that point. At this rate, she'll have to refuel after "only" 2 more Kerbin-Jool <1 year round trips Then I got the idea to dust off 1.3.1 & see how that runs in comparison to 1.7.3. Now I'm torn - 1.3.1 ran so much better even with Scatterer & SVE installed that I'm wanting to go back to it despite all the stuff I like about the newer versions. Just a few simple shots of a jet flying back & forth between KSC & the island. Or maybe I should take a shot at running RO/RSS? Intentional ditching, just because the water looked so inviting. After a quick dip, Jeb took back off & returned to KSC

With all this talk about KSP versions, I got the urge to dust off 1.3.1 and then (remembering some issues I was having) created a fresh copy & start adding in the mods I've been using, minus one that was conflicting for me in 1.3.1 & sadly without Restock. But I did add scatterer & SVE, since I figured they should run ok in the older version. I still had them saved from when 1.3.1 was current, just never installed them at the time. Loaded way faster, and other than REALLY missing the Restock parts, it looked great and ran smoother than 1.7.3 with just the SciFi VE clouds & no scatterer. And thanks to @XLjedi , who ages ago posted a little file to revert 1.4+ craft files to 1.3.1, I was even able to use one of my newer spaceplanes without issues. Now I'm gonna have to try & revert the rest of them. Ugh, now I'm gonna want to play 1.3.1 all the time. All I'm missing are kerbal parachutes (and I know there's a mod for that) and the new Mk 2 lander can.

Yes, you'll need a relay - ideally 3 relays, equally spaced around the Mun to ensure continuous contact with KSC

I can feel your pain there, I had a similar thought when I saw the announcement. At least we can keep playing KSP1 until our laptops die. I did very little today, just got my Laythe fuel rover landed and a few course corrections. The fuel rover arrived in Jool at pretty much the absolute worst timing - needed a 100-200 m/s correction to get a Tylo intercept, needed almost 700 m/s at Tylo to get a Laythe intercept, then needed another inclination correction at Laythe. So I captured with just enough of a burn to get Ap inside Laythe's SoI & did a bunch of passes through the atmosphere to get Ap down to LLO before plotting my landing. Pictured here on its final pass, doing a small burn at Pe Landing was nice and close to my target. You can easily see the geyser where my other surface craft are parked Just a short drive to link up, now I'm just waiting on the surface base & crew.

I think 1.3.1 was the most stable & smoothest running for me, but I like a lot of the changes that have been made. The MH parts weren't too impressive at first since I already had 1.875m parts from mods, but over time I've migrated to using the MH parts more than mod ones. The BG parts are pretty impressive, but I haven't made too much use of them. It's great being able to make a prop plane - especially an all-electric one - but I could already do that with mods. I loved the addition of parachutes, launching from command seats & some of the part changes (especially the Mk 2 lander can that I actually use now), but most of the other improvements weren't as good as the mods I was already using for the same purpose. The main result has been 1.7.3 & BG run noticeably slower for me than previous versions, but that has felt like a steady trend since 1.4 rather than a strictly a 1.7+ problem. Still, I can't say I want to go back.

They aren't as simple as that. Rather than try to explain it myself - because I've only tinkered with them - check out this post by @XLjedi

I''ve had a busy two days in my career - Eve crew returned, Moho crew launched, craft continue to trickle into Jool every few days, and I continued testing my heavy mobile base on the Mun. First up - testing the HMB-1 and disposing of the old non-mobile Mun base. Since the new base in mobile, there wasn't much need for a separate rover, so that was destroyed first. Then came the old base - with all the parts, the fireworks lasted for quite a while before the whole base was gone: here, the engineer looks over the automated greenhouses on the upper deck. Since this prototype was launched, I have improved on the design - it now includes a science lab and some of the internal layout has changed - ISRU is now on the upper deck, and the drills have been moved to the aft cargo bay to make conditions in living quarters (in the forward bay) more bearable. Next, the first Laythe-Lightning II arrived & docked with Laythe station. Now we just need the DSV-01 to arrive with crew, which is just over 2 months away. The biggest event was PCC-01 Avalon returning to Kerbin with the Eve crew. This was also the most complicated as the Eve Lander needed to undock from Avalon and rendezvous with a drone heatshield & parachute assembly, then Avalon needed to dock with the Lightning crew shuttle for reentry. Finally, Avalon was an older model & was retired by crashing into the Mun at 4700 m/s and a new Avalon II was launched to replace her.

In flight, it only changes the part you click on. Only in the editor do all symmetrical parts change

I don't have an exact value for you - it will vary depending on your gravity turn, etc - but probably around 2800-3000 should get you above 70km. I'm sure someone will come along with a more accurate number

Janitor's Closet does that, I'm not sure of any others

1. Only Pilots give SAS ability. 2. You have two options: a. Add a probe core to the lander. Even without signal, the scientist will be able to fly it with SAS from the probe core b. Add a CH-J3 Fly-By-Wire Avionics Hub - with signal back to KSC, that allows non-pilots to have SAS.

It is the stock inflatable shield, just tweakscaled to have a 3.75m folded size. I'm not sure exactly what it works out to inflated, but it just barely covered my base. My career didn't have too much more excitement yesterday - mostly course corrections for my Jool fleet. I did finally remember that I landed a remote rover on Eve months ago that was equipped with a large scanning arm, so I took it to go find a Pancake Dome for a contract. First it found a basalt formation, which it scanned, then within a few hundred meters it drove up to a pancake dome: Then I had my career first Eeloo lander arrive & land mostly intact. My wife asked me a question moments before landing & when I looked back at the game, I was still going way too fast. Happily the landing pads have a high impact tolerance, and acted as sacrificial parts for the rest of the craft, preventing worse damage. I lost a few science experiments, but most survived. I lost a Goo, surface ore scanner & some DMagic experiments, but I've had a lot worse. It's hard to see screenshots, but even some of the parts that did survive ended up bent. One of the hinges is nearly torn into two pieces. Still, I'll take the partial success - all the really important parts survived (probe core, battery, antennas & RTGs) and it had most of the science experiments to send back.

I hadn't built a mobile base in a while and decided I would take some time with one today. Still a bit of a work in progress - I totally forgot to put a lab on the prototype, for example. It also makes heavier use of part clipping than I'm usually comfortable with, so it will probably get some changes before I'm satisfied. It's not really visible in any of my screenshots, but there are a pair of hitchhiker cans in the in the forward cargo bay, offset into the fuel tanks in front & behind the bay with mostly just the ladder & hatch visible in the bay. Initial testing on Kerbin revealed that the wheels were stronger than the runway, but the wheel to fuselage attachments were not Happily I had a spare Sarnus launch vehicle laying around, along with four Granok 3.75m launchers that were converted into radial boosters to loft this beast to the Mun The Mun prototype was landed - without any explosions, although it was sliding sideways for a while - near my existing mining base, about 4 km away, so it gave me a chance to try out driving this on the Mun. Despite some oddness and 2 near-disastrous rolls that were barely recovered in time, I made it in one piece. For reasons I don't understand, when the brakes are engaged (lit up on the overhead display) the wheel brakes are released, and when the brakes are disengaged (no light), the wheel brakes are on. I haven't messed with the large rover wheels all that much, is this "normal" for them or is something glitched? I don't remember seeing this before, but it has been a while. That's not a rover. Now this, this is a rover