AHHans

Well, actually fusion only really occurs in the core of the sun. Which is only about the inner 20% - 25% of the solar radius. So with that the power density of the solar core is 20 - 35 Watts/cubic-meter. More than a compost heap (I think ), less than a camp fire. (For comparison: a Chernobyl type reactor had a thermal power density of about 2 Mega-Watts/cubic-meter! ) Then it will probably rather quickly collapse into a white dwarf. You might get some nova-like explosions during the collapse when one or the other kind of fusion sets in. But I don't think there is enough hydrogen in your average compost heap to keep it on the main sequence - or any of the other usual stellar evolution steps - for any amount of time. The really funny thing I noticed is that the average density of the sun is about the same as what I think the average density of a compost heap is. (1.4 g/ccm) P.S. I actually made the same total solar volume vs. volume of the solar core mistake when preparing an exercise sheet for 1st year students. And then got corrected by the students. How embarrassing!

Only if enough time has passed. But I don't know exactly how much is "enough"(TM). You only see Kerbnet when you control the craft. And just because a certain probe has detected an anomaly on one point in time doesn't mean it will remember that later, so if you check again later it can be that the marker is not there. You can speed up while scanning with kerbnet to make the planet "move" faster in your FOV. (But not to collect all anomalies while being AFK or so.) As I wrote: I avoid this problem by using the RoveMate.

Ah, O.K. Seems I misunderstood you. But because this seems to be an issue of the inventory system, there is a chance that it will be fixed (or replaced by another bug) in 1.11.

Hi @KerbalPilot178, welcome to the Forums. Unfortunately I don't have enough information to understand what is actually happening in your case. One guess is that the parachute rips apart because it was opened at too high speed, or the forces could have ripped the parachute from the rest of the craft. (Yes that happened to me once, but on Eve!) Can you post a screenshot (or video) of the situation? I think that would be very helpful.

Well, actually, I think it is the original bug #24855. (I.e. small asteroids have an effective mass of 150t instead of the mass they should have.) Unfortunately the things you can do are the same: wait until @SQUAD fixes the bug. Well, one thing you can do is upvote the bug(s) on the bugtracker: Prioritizing Bugs in the Bugtracker

Kerbnet works a bit like looking down at the planet with a telescope, you can only see - and thus put a waypoint marker - a limited area below your craft. The size of that area depends on your orbit (the farther away you are from the planet, the larger the area) and the field-of-view (FOV) of the "telescope" - i.e. the probe core or scanner - that you use. So to see a larger area you can choose a wider orbit, move the FOV slider in the Kerbnet window to the right (if you haven't done that already), or choose another probe core that has a larger maximum FOV. Or a combination of those. As @Caerfinon already mentioned: anomalies (monoliths, DSN antennas, Mun-arches etc.) show up as a "?" on the kerbnet scan when they are detected. One problem is that most probe cores have only a relative low chance of detecting a certain anomaly per day, the exception is the RoveMate that will detect all anomalies in its FOV. The drawback is that its FOV is rather tiny, but that can be (mostly) compensated by putting it in a high orbit. So in my current "I want to visit all anomalies" career I put a satellite with a RoveMate into orbit of all planetary bodies.

Yes, that would be great! And it probably would allow you to solve your problem. But I'm not holding my breath for @SQUAD to install it. Unfortunately I don't expect that to be implemented soon.

O.K. Sounds like it is a bug that allows you to pick up more than one experiment in the first place. A Kerbals backback is supposed to hold only one experiment.

Hi @BigFatGuy, welcome to the Forums! That has nothing to do with being good or not. I regularly need to reclassify (and rename) the craft I send up. @Vanamondeessentially said it already. Right click on the probe core (actually: any probe core or command-capsule / cockpit) and then there is an option to change it. What I wanted to mention is that the option is called "Rename Vessel". If you have more questions, then just ask.

Yes. No. I don't. (What? That wasn't enough? ) Not having actually done that, my thoughts about this are: It it probably easier to design a craft that is assembled in orbit. The largest mechanical forces that a craft is subjected to are during launch (and possible reentry, but you usually only care about a few parts during reentry), so having to deal with wobbly docking port connections is much easier in orbit than during launch. But if you really want to assemble the craft on the ground, then I see two possibilities: have the engines to move a stage from the launchpad to the assembly place on the stage itself or spawn only the new stage on the launchpad and have a transfer vehicle that can ferry the new stage to the assembly. I would probably prefer the latter. This also sounds like a perfect case for using robotics parts from BG. But did I mention that it is probably easier to do in orbit? Hmmm... Isn't that cheating? Like using a propeller powered first stage to get off Eve? [Edit:} P.S. Did I mention that I really hate waiting for 1.11 to come out?

I guess there are two major reasons why they didn't move equipment out from the receiver platform: one is that they didn't think this was an issue before the first cable snapped and it was too late. (See my comment about maintenance, in particular I consider inspections a part of maintenance.) And the other is that removing equipment from the platform means that there are experiments (observations) that you cannot do. Swapping out the equipment requires serious manpower and time So it's not something that you want to do every other day. (Apart from the question how much it will help to remove two tons or so of receiver from a 900 ton platform.) And you cannot just move to another telescope, it's not like they are sitting idle and just waiting that someone comes along and asks for observation time. The main reflector has one focal point. (Well "point".) You cannot just move the receiver from the focal point and still have a working telescope. But in the end I think the main issue is: yes there were things that one could have done! But to actually do that you need to be aware of the problem in the first place! And if you don't inspect the cables well enough to know that at least some of them will fail at well below their design limit then there is a problem. Or in other words: they say that at the golden gate bridge they are always painting somewhere, when they are done on one end, they start over at the other. On Arecibo they didn't do maintenance to the same standard.

[Angry rant about antivaxxers deleted. After re-reading it I thought it didn't add enough to the discussion.] Maybe the short version is: before deciding on the "freedom" <-> "mandatory vaccination" scale please think about all the consequences and who will have to suffer from them. Because it is much easier to say that the non-vaccinated people alone should suffer the consequences of their actions than making sure that this happens. At least we don't have to discuss about the BS of vaccination & autism or similar here.

My first suggestion is to use regular struts to connect the fuel tanks that touch each other but aren't actually connected to each other. (I.e. the second tank in one arm to the first tank in the next arm.) With a little bit of fiddling you can probably fit that in the gap between the two tanks. That's probably the single biggest improvement for this craft. The next suggestion is as @Caerfinon said: activate autostruts. I personally use autostruts to "Grantparent" on nearly all parts. And finally: a station in space does not have to deal with strong forces / accelerations, so the mechanical structure can be fairly weak. - Once it is in orbit! The same cannot be said on the launchpad - where it has to deal with 1 g acceleration - or during launch - where the forces a even higher! So I would add some more struts to the craft to keep it stable during launch. I often add some radial decouplers to the craft and then draw struts from the decoupler to the part I want stabilized. That way I can fire the decoupler and the strut and the connection pieces will stay on the decoupled part. (And will deorbit if you do it right.) If every tank is strutted to a part on the central stack well above and below it, then that will make the whole craft a lot more sturdy and will also reduce the "floppyness" of the waist where the ring is connected. It does make some difference because fully fueled tanks are heavier than the crew quarters. But that difference is not significant here! [Edit:] Example of how to place the struts:

Well, the first part that you skimp on when you run out of money is maintenance. And Arecibo was in trouble for 15 years or so, since the NSF decided that after all its budget cuts it had to save somewhere and that one of the places it could do without was the Arecibo telescope. So in a way you could say that we at least got 10 more years or so of science out of it, compared to closing it when it started to become unsafe...

That! Still sad though!

Well, in this case it's not just TWR that determines how far or fast you can go through mountains. The material properties of the mountain and your craft play a major role. (Aaand we're back at the topic of fuel tanks made out of armor plate.)

Indeed! My impression is that you want to avoid maxing out the suspension travel - in both directions(!). I.e. don't have the spring strength so high that the spring doesn't really compress (mostly an issue on wolds like Gilly for obvious reasons), but also don't have it so low that you bump into the maximum compression with high speed. Getting that setting right is a PITA.

The short answer is that intentionally focusing on getting into a circular LKO is not efficient. The slightly longer answer is like @Streetwind wrote: if you do it right to begin with then at the point where you reach orbital velocity - i.e. raised your PE to your current altitude - you are effectively in an LKO. So it doesn't matter if you just keep burning burning or coast for a while and then continue your burn. For maximum efficiency you want this "intermediate LKO" to be as low as reasonably possible, maybe even still in the atmosphere. (Well not too deep in the atmosphere, and you wouldn't want to coast in the atmosphere.) The IMHO practical answer is: concentrate on getting your launch ascent right! You are much more likely to loose significant amounts of dV with a bad launch than you loose by first going to LKO and then to your target orbit. Also: if you are aiming for a specific target orbit (e.g. when you want to rendezvous with a station there) then it might be better to first go into LKO to make a better adjusted transfer to your target, e.g. by combining the transfer burn with a plane change.

You can use the "locked" camera mode as @peteletroll said. But what I do is to use the Navball! The pitch, yaw, and roll map rather straight forward to the display on the navball so once you learned to read the navball it is relatively easy to rotate your craft into the wanted direction.

I don't have anything to add to @Streetwind's answer, except may that if that didn't help you then please let us know.

I feel morally obliged to point you to the wiki page on CommNet! Yes, it does contain some equations but this page also holds (nearly?) everything you need to know about Kerbal radio communications. That close to Kerbin even the antenna inside a probe core can communicate with the with the smallest DSN station. So if you don't have a radio link then you either don't have a line of sight - e.g. because you don't have the extra ground stations enabled as @Superfluous J suggested - or your station has a problem - e.g. because it ran out of electricity, or because it is labeled as "debris" which magically makes craft uncontrollable.

You can use KerbNet, that displays you the coordinates of the position of the cursor. From there you can put a waypoint onto a suitable position, which you can then target from the map screen. That will give you a marker on the navball for the direction in which the selected waypoint is.

As @Boyster said: from the "Betas" menu you can choose which version Steam should install. To get to that menu you need to "manage" (or right click in the library list), then "properties", the "Betas" tab, and then there is a selection list where you can choose the version you want to have. "None - Opt out..." will install the latest version.

.oO(That bug again.) What I do is to put "activate lock" (not "toggle lock"!) on an action group, and then spam that key when I want to set the locks. Usually that sets the locks after hitting the key a few times. If that doesn't work, they the parts may actually be moving. Try reducing the throttle - or setting it all the way to zero - to reduce the mechanical load on the connection, spam the "set locks" button, and throttle up again. If that also doesn't work, then I'm out of good ideas.

You don't need probe cores if you activate the parachutes in the stage that separates the boosters. But to have them recoverable you need to follow them all the way down to the ground until they are landed or splashed down. Anything that is in the lower atmosphere but outside the physics range of the current craft (IIRC 2.5 km around the current craft) will just be considered "crashed" and is silently deleted.