fulgur

Inside the cup is a large amount of plutonium. Inside the kitchen is a larger amount of plutonium. And now there is larger than critical mass of plutonium in the kitchen. In consequence, EXPLOSIONS. Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-SCIENCE-ha-ha-ha-ha-. I wish for a K-Drive ship to place me in a safe and secure Eve orbit within 5 days of launching. Alive.

56 (-)

Here are some pages I made! I have already sent the ship to Eki. I am now going to go and make some more pages. Tune in next time for strange things. It is entirely possible that I will be summoning the Kraken. It's a promising area of research - K-Drives are the future!

I do not want this game to die. I am an old young fogey and I like this game. Bah, humbug.

As opposed to me, who still can't program the last 50m of descent correctly and lives scattered in pieces OVER the surface of Minmus.

Ooh! Is that kOS or are you leading me up to bitter, bitter disappointment? Answer: On second reading... it was the latter.

The thing about Duna is that either you have lots and lots of wing, or you fly like it's a vacuum world. That is, you should use Vernors to VTOL. Or you may find yourself descending at considerable speed. If you do keep your current design, remember to land in a canyon where the air is thicker.

If you send it to Duna, you may want to double up your wings to make it fly better. Also I usually put stuff like ISRU I'm a mk2 bay, but you aren't using mk2.

It is really good. If you can though you should probably use a big drill, they're more efficient, and you definitely need more solar panels if you want to run the drill without cheating. I don't know your flight profile so I can't offer you tips on that, but as long as you fly like a space plane not a rocket you should be fine. If you are having trouble landing at the KSC, you should probably aim so that the orbit line looks like you will land after the island airfield. Oh yeah, and bigger wheels make it easier to land. Use mediums.

I like the psychedelic Coyote god at Gunnerkrigg Court. ALSO, you got MH! Does that mean you're getting BG too?

@Mars-Bound Hokie I have concerns about your lander. It is not equipped to follow the best flight profile as you have not added control surfaces. Therefore it cannot tilt sideways and accelerate through the lower atmosphere where the jets perform best. Doing a normal gravity turn is counterproductive as that gets you out of the thick atmo to where rockets perform best, but with jets you should accelerate to over 1000m/s before 20km and then switch to rockets.

Hey, @Mars-Bound Hokie, I was bored so I built you a simple SSTO! Link to KerbalX in the image. Here is an album about flying it. And since somewhere you said you were a filthy cheater you use MJ for ascents, I wrote you your very own kOS program. Basically, after installing kOS you copy-paste that to the 'KSP/Ships/Scripts' folder as something like 'ssto.ks'. Then you add a kOS CPU to your craft. Open the terminal and type in 'switch to 0.' to go to the right folder, then type 'run ssto.' (or whatever the filename is) to run it. (Those full stops are very important.) You can always press CTRL+C to abort the program and take manual control. I didn't write you a landing program because even filthy cheaters MJ users can land a plane, right? Also I'm very bad at writing in kOS and so my program would probably crash the plane. Incidentally, that program works for all RAPIER-only SSTOs, no matter how many engines they have. That is the final, final, final thing I am going to tell you about how to design your own craft.

Sorry but I am going to be away next week with no WiFi. On the one hand I will get a lot of playing done but I am not going to be able to share it with you :-(

If you like wings, you should get into SSTOs. After the awful inefficiency of your first nuclear-powered monstrosity, they get easier every time.

@Mars-Bound Hokie The problems seem similar. The RAPIER and the Whiplash come into their own when they are flown like a spaceplane. Your designs look like traditional landers, which appears to be why they are failing. Those engines are optimised so that once you get past 400m/s they actually increase thrust (due to more intake air). This means that the best designs accelerate at an angle of 5-10 degrees until you build up 'respectable' speeds (ie 700-800m/s) and then you can slowly pitch up. However, from looking at your pictures, you aren't taking advantage of the jet engines. Rather, you are treating them like rocket engines which act best in the atmosphere. You appear to be doing a traditional gravity turn and your wing pieces do not have control surfaces, so you cannot pitch over enough quickly enough and take advantage of the thicker air. A plane-based design (it doesn't have to be a SSTO, one of the better low-tech ideas is to use wings to get into the high atmo and then decouple jet engines) is good for jet engines as you start off pitched over, however I have done a couple of rocket-based designs. In essence, you have a couple of easily-fixed problems: The orbiters are not aerodynamic enough. I would suggest using a C7 2.5-to-1.25m adapter to make the nose less draggy. This also lets you carry more fuel. They do not have enough control surfaces. While you have a lot of reaction wheels, adding a set of Elevon-3 or 4s (the biggest ones) would give you better control in the lower atmo and let you save weight. The flight profile does not get the most out of the RAPIER/Whiplashes. If you use a traditional gravity turn, you do not take advantage of the thick air. Instead you should pitch over to 5-10 degrees initially and (after achieving 500m/s or so) begin to pitch up VERY slowly. This will mean that you can get up to over 1200m/s on jets, over 1/2 orbital speed. There are a couple of finer points; for example, IDK anything about your flight profile but at around 18km your Poodle will achieve maximum ISP and you can activate it then, while your jets are still running. Also, your RAPIERs should be switched to closed cycle at around 23-25km, not when they initially fall off in thrust. Basically, you want to squeeze as much speed as possible out of your efficient jets before switching to less efficient rocket engines. One final point: testing has proved that RAPIERs (even when closed-cycle is not used) are far, far superior to Whiplashes after 400m/s. They outperform them on jet mode alone.

Your RAPIER design is un-aerodynamic. Also rocket-RAPIER designs are not very good as to get the most from a RAPIER you must pitch1 over and get to 400m/s ASAP. The idea is to get as much speed as possible on jets to conserve oxidizer due to the awful rocket ISP.

If we do go for LS I would prefer USI-LS as not overly complex, or otherwise use the cryogenics mod. I would suggest the part mod Restock+ which adds parts you never knew you needed. IE longer 0.625m tanks and a smaller Terrier (for smaller payloads). I think all maneuvers should be added to KAC and required to be finished by the next player. Or people going to Eeloo and back would get too much time with the save. (If you installed Valentine's Star, aka Extrasolar, you get 1000-year trips.)

One of the things I discovered when testing my own ladder drive was that if you make it the right size, the Kerbal will constantly hit his head without [W] being held and so you can switch to the probe and make a controlled ascent with a gravity turn and everything.

In actual fact it also contains some Space Rocks. One at Kerbin L4 and 2 near Dres (to be an Asteroid Belt).

Hi GreenTurtle, I think this is a really cool idea! @KerikBalm updated his Modification of Inner Planets mod to 1.7 and is in the process of adding BG surface features. Speaking of which, are you using the DLCs?

I second the motion of making helicopter cockpits. My helicopter program consists of a single tiltrotor as I can't make a good-looking 'copter. Also, I prefer SSTOs. They have more control authority (= easier to fly).

The fact that whenever I am doing anything routine, I feel a really strong need to swap to my Sandbox save and make Yet Another SSTO. It's even worse now I 'get' the props and am wrestling with the fiendish challenge known as the thin atmosphere of Duna.

Hi, sorry to bother you about an undoubtably stupid question: Where are the .cfg files for the tanks located? Because I am using Lf instead of LH2 and I want to change the really cool tanks to use Lf. But I can't find them in the Parts folder - that only contains the folder NuclearEngines. Thanks

I tried out my first this morning. My observations were: Really smooth up until 300m. Then it flipped out when the drive was engaged. You can accelerate by toggling SVI. When you are over 300m you can regain control by de-toggling SVI. I also made a ladder drive, but I don't think that counts (as this is about abusing BG.)

Cool! What did the Flight Director believe?