18Watt

Moved to Gameplay Questions and Tutorials for better visibility.

Welcome to the KSP forums @Pilotic! Yeah, that does indeed happen. Unfortunately, development on KSP1 has ended, so it is unlikely bugs will be addressed. If you'd like to submit to the bug tracker, I believe it's here: bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com. Honestly, that's probably not a game-breaking but, and I doubt it will be addressed. I do not know of a workaround or fix for that issue. Perhaps try turning off SAS before EVAing a Kerbal. Good luck, and again, welcome to the forums!

The 'Tab' button should cycle through active vessels. Once a Kerbal exits a capsule, the game considers them a separate vessel. You need to change the focus from the active vessel to the Kerbal. If the Kerbal is standing near the capsule, try hitting the 'tab' button on your keyboard. Otherwise, you should be able to select them from the Tracking Station.

Moved to Gameplay Questions and Tutorials. Also, welcome to the KSP forums @Windlass!

"No point in steering now." Doug McKenzie, played by Dave Thomas Movie: Strange Brew

I would add that in addition to auto-strutting the boosters themselves, I also autostrut the decouplers too. I also usually select 'Rigid Attachment' for both the boosters and decouplers. I am not 100% sure, but you may need to enable advanced tweakables to see the rigid attachment option for parts.

You just overpaid for materials by a factor of about 2,000, for a hammer that likely will not function correctly. What if I make a hammer out of bacon grease?

"Not everything which has appeared on the internet is truly factual." Abraham Lincoln "It takes a lot of wheat to make a bushel." Ruhl Rose (and probably others).

My first guess (without hearing the sound) is it's two or more propellers which are not perfectly synced. Propeller tips are traveling at or near the speed of sound. As there are a limited number of blades (2, 3, 4, 5, 6..), they produced pulses of sound. We synchronize our propellers to rotate at the same speed for two reasons: It reduces vibrations, more specifically destructive harmonics. That can damage or wear out a variety of components. The REAL reason is that wahwahwahwah noise is annoying as heck. Puts me right to sleep, which is not great as I'm the pilot. So we try to sync the props to reduce that wahwahwah droning noise. By the way, we do that with turbofan engines and straight-pipe turbojet engines too.

It's much easier to match inclination before you burn for Minmus. It's a small target to hit, having the inclination match as closely as possible while in circular Kerbin orbit helps greatly. I recommend that. Later on, you can start launching directly into Minmus' inclination. But that's a different discussion. For now, try getting to Kerbin orbit, then matching inclinations, then burning (or setting a node) for Minmus. A screenshot of your reentry craft might help here. I suspect your reentry vehicle is not draggy enough. Normally once you get deep in Kerbin's atmosphere the drag will slow you to safe 'chute speed long before you hit the ground. If that's not the case, your vehicle is too aerodynamic. One common problem is if your reentry vehicle tends to point into the wind, which makes it not draggy at all. If your reentry capsule is pointing down naturally on reentry, that probably will not work. That is a CG versus center of lift/drag issue. Again, a screenshot of your reentry vehicle would likely help greatly in troubleshooting. Good luck, and welcome to the KSP forums @Delusional Poet!

That is really really cool! I still can't believe you've come over to the dark side of the force, using rovers and such. Ah, you're bringing back some fond memories for me! Enjoying your posts @OJT! I very much hope that rovering works much better in KSP2. Love your rover design by the way.

We're on a mission from God. Jake Blues, The Blues Brothers

Welcome to the KSP forums @junovzla!

@Poppa Wheelie, fantastic transit of Duna and Ike! And you did both CBs with the same rover! Awesome! I really enjoyed seeing how you tackled that problem, and managed to re-use a rover on two CB's. Your rover was certainly interesting. The first thing I noticed was your choice of rover wheels. The wheels you used have not behaved well for me, so kudos to you for using those. I remember a year or two ago another Elcano veteran ( @Scarecrow71 ) used those wheels on Minmus, and I cringed because I've always struggled to use those wheels. Anyway, nice job, and I have you added to the leaderboards!

I have been busy at work, and have missed out on a lot of action in my favorite challenge of all time. This one! I missed @Pouicpouic's second Duna circumnavigation! And there is a fantastic video to document the journey! Not 100% sure, but I suspect @Pouicpouic is the first circumnavigator to do Duna twice. Edit: Just checked. @Pouicpouic is indeed the first Elcano participant to do two circumnavigations of Duna! Congratulations! Also, @OJT is making progress with a Parallax run around Dune, which is going extremely well. Well, maybe not perfect. Actually, if you only flip your rover once you are probably going too slow.. Also, @Poppa Wheelie has made progress at Duna AND Ike. I need to review those and update the leaderboards. I'm super excited at all the updates that happened while I was at work! I'll try to get the leaderboards updated tonight. If I've forgotten anyone, please let me know! I don't want to leave anyone off the leaderboards!

My suggestion is to mount the main landing gear to the center fuselage, not the wings or lateral mounted tanks. After mounting the landing gear to the center fuselage, use the offset tool to position the gear where you want them. The game still considers them mounted to the center fuselage, which for some reason makes them much more durable. Perhaps give that a try..

Moved to Breaking Ground support for better visibility. The rotors and turboshaft engine are not tied to the main throttle by default. I recommend using action groups to tie the Torque of the motor/turboshaft to the main throttle. I also tie the blade deployment angle to an action group, so that I have control over blade angle during flight. I normally tie the blade angle to the Translate Forward/Back controls, but use whatever is convenient for you. Note that when you attach propeller blades, they are set to Not Deployed by default. You will probably want to change them all to 'Deployed' in the SPH (Spaceplane Hangar), otherwise you will need to manually deploy them after launch.

One problem I see impeding the conversion to metric is the fact that it (in some cases) is a system designed to be universal, but does not take into account that some measurements 'make more sense' in other units. It is an arbitrary system of units (aren't they all?), which has been imposed on a variety of industries, regardless of wether it is actually convenient or not. To be clear, I do think most people (including myself) see an enormous benefit to having a single standardized measurement system. However, in some cases there is not a clear benefit to using SI units, aside from the standardization issue. This point is probably going to enrage SI fans, but I ask that you bear with me. If you truly want the world to convert to your way of thinking, it might be helpful to understand your opponent's point of view. (And not just insult them..) I use both Imperial and SI units, and don't really care which units are used, as long as the units are specified. However, this thread has made me consider which units I have switched over to preferring SI for, and why. I'll start with baking bread. I used to use Imperial units, such as cups and tablespoons to measure both dry material and liquid. However, for dry material (flour, salt, etc.) it makes much more sense to use weight (or mass) to accurately measure. Grams or kilograms are convenient units to use, equally manageable to ounces or pounds. I started weighing my dry ingredients in grams (SI). At that point, it made sense to also measure liquids in SI as well, in mL or L. For baking, I've been converted. I use SI. However, when it comes to cooking I do not find SI units convenient. I'll use an example of preparing a batch of Hamburger Helper for a family of 4. A typical meal would use 1 pound (lb.) of hamburger. One pound is a meal. How much is that in kg? 0.45 kg. That's a subtle point, but I'm hoping the SI fans will see the difference. I need one meal. I get 1 pound of meat. Let's take that a step further. I have two teenagers in the house. I add 50% to everything. Now I need 1.5 pounds of meat. If I was working with SI, I would have to take 150% of 0.45 kg. Yes, I'm ok with math, I need to add 0.225 kg to my original 0.45 kg. So now I need 0.675 kg of meat. But using pounds the math was much easier. So while I use SI for baking now, I still prefer Imperial for cooking. And that does indeed bother me somewhat. Why can't I use SI for all my food preparation? Well, the answer is, I can! But it does not necessarily make sense to do so, at least not to me. In a bizarre world, let's say that somebody decided that for consistency the entire world needed to use Imperial units for everything. For folks who prefer SI, how would that make you feel, to have Imperial units forced on you? If everyone used imperial units, there would no longer be issues with consistency, everyone would be using the same units, just like they are with SI. (Yes, I do understand that Imperial units are in some cases FAR from consistent.). My point is that I do agree with the concept of a worldwide standard of measurement, which is SI. However, that does not, in my mind, mean that other measurements are inferior or need to be eliminated.

As long as units are specified, it's no big deal. Even if the entire world bowed to the wishes of the metric crowd and went metric, you would still have errors if the units were not specified. I see this frequently. I need 500. 500 what? Liters, farads, metric tons? As you can imagine, that is a source of frustration for me. Another example of something which would be odd for me to use metric for: beer volume. A pint is about 470 mL (taking a guess). Yeah, if they rounded it up to 500 mL it would amount to the same thing. But I think a large portion of the world would prefer to order a 'pint' of beer, not a half-liter. Interestingly, other alcoholic beverage sizes have gone metric, even here in the US. A 'fifth' (of a gallon) is now sold as 750 ml, a half gallon has become 1.75L. A quart of oil is almost exactly 1 L, but here in the US it's still sold by the quart or gallon. I've even seen motor oil sold by the quart in Canada, which does strike me as odd since they supposedly went metric decades ago, and the difference between a quart and a Liter is very small, almost negligible. I do find it amusing how worked up people get over units. They're just numbers.

Yes. Speed in knots or Mach, altitude in feet. Flight Levels are hundreds of feet. US and Canada report altimeter settings in inches of mercury, although the setting is available in most of the rest of the world in hPa, kPa, or millibars. Fuel is ordered in gallons, mass is in pounds in the US and Mexico. Not sure about the rest of the world, but in Canada fuel is normally weighed in pounds, but ordered in liters. So that can be odd.

The current version of KSP has an alarm clock built in, which works very well. However, two extremely popular mods have been Kerbal Alarm Clock (KAC) and TWP (Transfer Window Planner. There are a few ways of handling (installing) mods. I just drop the mod folder into the KSP folder called 'GameData'. The GameData folder can be found in the directory where the KSP files are stored. Typically when you open the KSP folder, the GameData folder is at or near the top of the list. Simply drag the mod folder into the GameData folder, and restart the game. I'm uncertain wether the KAC mod functions with the latest versions of KSP, which have an alarm clock built in. It should still function.

If I was getting better with age, yes. Sadly, I'm probably more like 15 watts now..

Moved to Add On Releases at @zer0Kerbal's request. Just curious, how many mods to you manage @zer0Kerbal? Or have you lost count?

@linuxgurugamer, I though you meant how did I get the sats in position, not wether they’re required or not. I feel a little silly now.. I think my point is that you don’t need to bring a bunch of relay sats in one launch with your plane- you can deliver those with separate launches. I forgot that there is a game setting where probes will work even without a com signal. I never play that way, even in sandbox. But I actually enjoy peppering the solar system with satellites, not everyone does…

I don’t think that was specified in the challenge, and I’m pretty sure you won’t have any problems getting a few relay sats into position. But for others, here’s how I did it. In every save I have, the first thing I do at every CB is dump a bunch of relay sats into orbit before I try doing things on the surface, or where I might need to use a weak antenna- like going into an atmosphere at high speed. Of course, the save I’m using for this challenge only had one relay sat in position, not enough. I personally enjoy building delivery vehicles which can drop multiple relay sats in one launch. I ended up with 6 relay sats around Duna, which I felt was overkill. You know where this is going, even with 6 relay sats in orbit I still managed to lose com signal for a few minutes on one entry. So to add additional relay sats I started placing a relay antenna on my transfer stage. After getting a trajectory into the atmosphere, I drop the glider, and the transfer stage then does another short burn to keep it’s PE above the atmosphere. Doing that I then end up with another relay sat in orbit every time I bring another vehicle to Duna. I think I’m up to 9 or 10 sats in orbit now. Honestly, 6 should be plenty, but losing coms during an entry almost ruined my day, so I now go for overkill. I also considered bringing a bunch of sats with the plane delivery vessel. However, that would make the delivery vessel bigger and more complicated, which I did not want to bother with. That’s a possibility though. The short answer to your question: I used separate launches to deliver the relay sats. I did not try to bring them with the plane in a single launch. Edit- I spent a lot of time and DV placing sats in polar orbits, offset by about 20-40 degrees. I now think that was a waste of time. My gliders all entered on equatorial paths, so there was no need for polar coverage. I would have been better off just leaving all the sats in roughly equatorial orbits. Edit 2- To use the transfer stage as a relay sat, it will need a probe core, reaction wheels (some probe cores have those), and electric. Obviously it has an antenna too. Since we’re using 3.75 m fairings the additional mass of that stuff is insignificant.