TanDeeJay

I can confirm this is definitely working in 1.8.1! this makes docking so much easier! Love it!

That sounds great. I've got my 1st test in orbit and the alignment I achieved is dreadful. But I think that was partly because the port I was trying to dock with was quite a bit off centre from the center of mass. I have since redesigned to try and get the docking ports on the outside ring components as close to their center of mass as possible and also aligned with each other. Looks very amateurishly built, some of the segments are as much as 5degrees out. Will definitely check it out

I have been constructing a habitat ring for my space station and found that to get up I needed to break it down into smaller parts that I dock together in space. Now I initially thought it would be easy to align the parts using this mod, but I had to rotate the parts slightly on my lifting rocket to get the parts to fit inside the large faring. Now I've found that when i go to dock the parts, the rotational alignment is off. I was hoping that the rotational alignment marker would be at one of the N/S/E/W compass points, but I've found in reality that the alignment is off by about the amount I rotated the parts by to get them to fit my launch vehicle. So my question is would it be possible to add a function to this mod so that in the VAB/SPH, this mod adds a marker on a selected docking port displaying its rotational position so that I can set it at build time and be sure that when I get into space, I find my docking ports have the correct rotational alignment?

Yep done that! Also, when trying to insert into a polar orbit to match my mun polar orbit station from a kerbin orbit, I ended up in the opposite direction...

Is that signal strength based on when tracking was stopped or distance from the space centre? But arent asteroids that you've docked with treated like a ship instead of an asteroid, so that whrn you delete it it truly deletes it and not just stop tracking with the signal strength decay? Which would mean deleting depleted asteroids would stop them being navigational hazards immediately

Yes, as long as the tracking center remembers where they are. Once you stop tracking them it takes a while for them to disappear from the tracking station but they do eventually disappear... My question was about what happens to them after they disappear from the tracking station. Are they still there and a potential navigation hazzard or does the game truly delete them? My main concern was that equatorial orbit space getting poluted with depleted asteroids.

l learnt from this why you should build rovers with a good set of reaction wheels. I probably could have recovered the roll if I'd had reaction wheels. A lack of reaction wheels on that rover limited my driving speed to about 15m/s too so that 5 hours of science collection was quite painful. I can safely travel at least 5 times as fast with reaction wheels...

LKO opposite orbit collision seems impossible due to physics calculations being too slow for the extreme velocity difference... I wonder if I put a couple of class E asteroids in opposite equatorial orbits closer to Minimus ( even outside Minimus' orbit if possible), to bring the velocity difference close enough to make a collision detectable by the physics engine...

This is one I learnt too late... after I'd crashed a rover descending into one of the highland craters on the Mun after about 5 hours of real time driving the rover to different biomes collecting science... I'd been using quicksave, but accidentally hit F5 just at the start of the fatal roll... so all I could do with my quicksave was to watch repeats of the loss of hours of work... By the time I found out about those autosave backups, I'd already progressed with the game far enough and re-collected the science with a biome hopper that it was pointless rolling back that far, and besides, the relevant autosave backup had probably been autoremoved by that time... Since then, that autosave has saved me from some embarrassing mistakes... like when I hit 'Z' instead of 'X' while docking... I now shutdown the main engines before I start docking...

That was absolutely awesome! Which version of KSP was that in? ( that is, would a similar set-up work in 1.6?) I've seen that much flex tear some of my stuff apart. especially when multiple modules connected to a single asteroid. But your suggestion on the video of turning off the reaction wheels once you connect to an asteroid sounds like it would be worthwhile trying... recently, I have watched in horror as my convert-o-tron module parted company with the claw that was attached to the asteroid

just tried 2 probes at 80km, one prograde one retrograde... velocity difference when they passed was a little over 4500m/s. didn't have the camera angle right, so briefly saw about 3 frames with the other probe zooming past... at that speed, once less than 4k, they are past you in less than a second... you might be quite right about moving so fast that the physics calculations miss the collision. I have the Electric engine on my probes with 21k delta V, so plenty of dv to play around with

That was why I asked the question... I have a couple of asteroids I've depleted the resources of which are in prograde orbits... 1500km and 2500k orbits so was wondering if I deleted them, they would then cease to be... I just tried in the tracking station to delete the 2500k orbit asteroid, and it gave the warning about terminating a ship also killing any crew on board, so your right, it does treat them like debris. but tracked asteroids that have not been captured, just stop being tracked, and remain visible from the tracking station for a while.

Thats just it, I have a couple of asteroids in orbit that have run out of resources, that I have declawed, which was why I was wondering what happens. I have had a collision with some space debris, but that was because I was oriented in a prograde direction when I decoupled an empty 3.75 to 2.5m fuel tank adapter I was using for aerodynamics... the decoupler ejected it quite a distance, and I promptly forgot about it and then started burning prograde, and the empty fuel tank then prompty took out a solar panel on my ship . I've seen Mun and minimus get in the way when I've been trying to define maneuvers. I imagine that a gauntlet of prograde orbit asteroids which don't show up when defining maneuvers could get in the way without you knowing until its too late. Normally asteroids are not in a prograde orbit, so would be far less likely to be navigational hazards, but so far, all the asteroids I've caught I've pulled into a prograde orbit... thus poluting that prograde orbit space... so... what happens when you launch prograde and retrograde into LKO? 2 ships flying past each other at 5k/s...

Just a question about asteroids. I'm wondering what does the game engine do with them once you delete them in the tracking station? It states that "you might not be able to find them again"... Space is big and finding an untracked object is of course like finding a needle in a haystack, or is it actually suggesting that the game engine removes them from the object list so you reallly won't be able to find them again? I have this qestion because I have a number of ore-depleted asteroids in orbit around kerbin, and wondering what to do with them. if I delete them, does the game still internally track them, so that they could be a navigational hazard whenever I head away from kerbin? I guess this all comes down to what are asteroids (at a technical game-engine level) are they objects that are created when you 1st start the game, and there are a finite number of them in the solar system? or do they get randomly generated everytime the game engine decides you "detect" an object?

That was INSANE! I LOVED the look on Jebs face! When he was surrounded by rentry flames, he seemed to be enjoying himself... A bit later when the flying asteroid was under control and gliding quite well, he seemed to be terrified for a bit Oh dear, now I'm going to have to try this Was that your video? What version of KSP was that done in? Now I want to download that clouds mod, and the city lights

At least it was a probe (unmanned I assume) so no kerbals were lost in the incident

So, I was searching for an asteroid to catch and found this A class asteroid that will hit Kerbin just below the equator in about 90 days. It got me thinking... a slight nudge from me and it would hit the equator. Has anyone managed to get an asteroid to land on (or near the space center?) (Multi color artifact at the top of the image, is (I believe) a fault with the high performance graphics card on my laptop, not a KSP bug)

Rendezvous with a class E asteroid in my un-tested asteroid catcher with 2 nuclear engines. Underestimated the burn length to intercept, and overshot by about 15K. That oft practiced maneuver to rendezvous with another ship didn't prepare me for the much lower TWR combined with a much greater dv... Then when I finally caught the asteroid, I discovered I was 4dv short of being able to pull the asteroid into orbit. Needed 862 dv to stop the asteroid escaping, but only had 858 dv available. Damn those Class E asteroids are big!

Thanks, I'll check that out once my son is off the computer...

Thats fantastic! Just one question, I'm currently running the unofficial version. Can I just migrate to this shiny new official version without loosing all my existing alarms?

Surprise surprise! I was using Flickr, because that was what I have been using for years now for posting to photography forums, so it was something I was already used to doing. Well, I guess if not many people have been linking to flickr here, then it isn't going to create too big a hole in all the threads on this forum That is what I'm talking about. Its about "somewhere to put your images so you can link them in threads here". and Flickr forcing a 1000 image limit on their free users and deleting their oldest photos to bring their photo count to that 1000 limit that will potentially break forum threads that link back to flickr. I've been trying google photos for hosting my photos posted in photography forums, and have had varying mileage getting it to work properly. I might have a look at imgur.

(I couldn't find a thread discussing this issue, so started a new one) I'm sure everyone who is a flickr user is aware by now of the impending changes to free flickr accounts... namely: previously, free accounts got 1Tb of storage in the next 2 months free accounts will be limited to 1000 photos. see http://blog.flickr.net/2018/11/01/changing-flickr-free-accounts-1000-photos/ for more details.. Bugger!! This means I'm going to have to delete some 1300 photos from my flickr account before the Feburary deadline when Flickr will start deleting them for me starting from the oldest 1st. So being an amateur photographer, this means that I'm going to be basing my image deletion on if I think the image is worth keeping in my flickr account, so all those KSP screen shots are going to have to go elsewhere This is potentially going to impact any thread in this forum where images are being hosted on flickr. Who else is going to have issues with their KSP forum threads due to having to delete images from flickr? And what options are you using to replace flickr for your image hosting? (anyone who is NOT using flickr already, could you post info about where you do host your images, so those of us who have to move off flickr can see whats worthwhile looking at as a flickr replacement?) Cheers, John

It is possible to meet the other ship without having to guess the "pitch and yaw a bit" by always burning towards your target to speed up and get closer, or to burn retrograde to slow down. I'd do all the other bits mentioned here, but once your distance gets less than a few K, burn retrograde until the speed difference is 0.0m/s (as I get better at doing that maneuver I've been reducing that distance to less than 2k) Note: the greater the initial speed difference as you approach the rendezvous point the further out you need to start burning to slow down. HebaruSan's suggestion of burning retrograde at 45 seconds from the encounter sounds like a brilliant idea that I'm going to have to try. I've always previously just looked at the distance. 45 seconds out would mean the burn would always start at an appropriate distance from the encounter, rather than the way I currently guess as to what is an appropriate distance. Once I've reduced the speed difference to 0, then I set the SAS to target mode and burn prograde (or manually point navball at target marker if SAS can't target another ship) (now you need to be careful here... if you killed your velocity difference at 5k, then you can speed up more than if you killed your velocity difference at less than 1k) if your closer to 5k distance, then use your main rocket to increase your speed to 20 - 25 m/s if your a lot closer, it might be safer to use your RCS thrusters to increase your speed ('h' key) to a smaller value as you get closer you'll need to decrease your speed to ensure you don't overshoot. But... when decreasing your speed, point your SAS at the retrograde marker if you need to use your main rocket to slow down, or point your SAS at the prograde marker to use your RCS ('n' key) to slow down. (never slow down to less than 0m/s as that will start pushing you away) if the target marker and prograde/retrograde markers are not aligned on the navball, when you slow down, you'll want to slow to 0m/s again, and then point at the target marker again. Well, thats how I do it anyway... there may be more efficient methods, but this way your not trying to guess which way you need to pitch or yaw. Rendezvous in high kerbin orbit is similar to in low kerbin orbit, its just that if your starting from a low kerbin orbit, you just have a greater difference in speed between your 2 ships that you need to neutralize. One thing to watch is that when your setting your rendezvous maneuver, just watch that your maneuver doesn't put you into the SOI of Mun. that will throw off your rendezvous orbit. do an orbit or 2 more of kerbin if you need to, as that will change the rendezvous point. Actually, thinking about this, you probably don't need to worry about this, as your stranded ship is already in the same orbit as Mun, but not in the same place on the orbit, so forget I said that NOTE: HebaruSan's point 8 is extremely important! You want to perform your burns with navball set on target... Too many times I've forgotten this step only to find I've just changed my orbit to intercept the ground, and then not had enough fuel left to correct Cheers, John

ah ha! That is totally awesome! Now I just have to figure out how to install it.

Mine has about 3400dv at the moment, and I'm lifting a probe core not a command pod. The last test launch, I managed an AP of 120k with an orbital speed of 1600m/s. If I'd held off firing the last 1 or 2 stages, I might have made orbit. I've lowered the thrust output of all the seps to between 20 and 50% to get twr for each stage to around 2, but I need to spend some time aligning all the parts as stage 5 currently starts to roll more than I can correct for with the advanced reaction wheels. I might push the final stage seps back to 100% as I'm trying to circularize my orbit by that point and no point holding back on the thrust.