jimmymcgoochie

CA reaction wheels are really underpowered compared to the first 'stock' RW- for example the CA RW4 reaction wheel costs 60 funds, uses 60 Watts and produces a mere 0.0006 torque compared to the stock small inline reaction wheel which costs 250 funds, uses 100 Watts but produces 0.1 torque (over 150 times more!). The RW4-A triple reaction wheel costs 250 funds, uses 180 Watts and produces a mere 0.0018 torque which makes it drastically less effective than the similarly priced stock option. While the Coatl RWs are a lot smaller and lighter, they're drastically less powerful and could probably do with a bit more oomph. Quite a few other parts such as antennae and probe cores seem to be priced as they are in stock KSP which makes them very expensive in RP-1. The combined solar panel/antenna for the Surveyor lander and a few other antennae aren't configured right for RealAntennas either.

Just got an update for Kopernicus in CKAN for KSP 1.8.1 (Kopernicus 1.8.1-23) but when I loaded the game with the update RSS failed to load and instead of Earth on the main menu I got Kerbin. Checked the logs and Ceres caused an error: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/busog0wdpik8an6/AABj3tEc1AWHl4H-AqCVXWoUa?dl=0

The logs say you’re running out of memory so the game crashes. How much RAM do you have and what mods are you using? Mods tend to increase your RAM use, add too many and your PC might not be able to cope. Try closing down everything but KSP when you run it, maybe that will help?

There are at least four life support mods for KSP (five if you count RP-1/RO but that’s a whole different ball game) with varying levels of complexity, from the simple (Snacks, just give the Kerbals snacks or they’ll become tourists/teleport back to KSC/die depending on settings) to the more complex (USI-LS and TAC-LS, which require stuff like food and water) to the more comprehensive Kerbalism (which simulates CO2 production, radiation exposure, crew stress and more). Any stock implementation of life support would be decried as “too hard!” by those who want minimal or no life support at all, but “too easy!” by those wanting a more realistic system. I don’t expect any stock life support systems in KSP, it should remain optional like it is now.

Contract satellite montage: I also tested a novel landing system for the next Orange Plate landing on the Moon (Orange Plates are Moon lander probes, not interplanetary probes; those are Orange Bowls and I kept mixing them up before ). Turns out that even when scaled down to 1/4 size, landing gear are pretty sturdy plus very cheap (3 funds each) and lightweight. The landing went without any real issues, though I did need to remember to put the brakes on, and the contract was fulfilled shortly after: That makes five landers in five biomes on the Moon's near side, future missions will have a harder time trying to find new biomes without going to the far side which would require orbital relays to be put in place first. The contract money was enough to hire six new astronauts- say hello to Elvira, Elvira, Victoria, Brian, Dan and Dave: A bit of simulator work next as I try to land on Mars: Not quite what I had in mind, but as a basic proof of concept it went rather well. Next in the simulator were two new 350 ton launch rockets, designed specifically to carry a 10 ton payload to LEO: White Lake, a chunky 2-stage design with a 5m first stage powered by 6x H-1 engines and a 3m second stage with 5x RD-0109s; it had enough delta-V to put the payload into orbit with some fuel to spare, but would be more expensive and take longer to build than the existing 350t launcher- the first stage and boosters on the Orange Dinnerware series- which can put 9.5 tons into the same orbit with similar fuel margins. With that in mind, I tried a different approach: White River uses a 3m core stage powered by 3x LR-105 engines and four 2.5m boosters powered by hypergolic LR-87s. It's a single stage design with a little less delta-V overall but it's also a lot cheaper than the two-stage design, gets to orbit quicker and the 2.5m tanks are already tooled which saves on tooling costs. This design might be enough to put a Gemini-type pod into orbit, with a second launch carrying a propulsion module to throw it at the Moon maybe? Tooling costs are pretty steep, but the end result is pretty reasonable both in cost and build time terms. It will also start raking in data units for the LR87 which can only be a good thing. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/3PsKABC Coming up next time: The build queue is perilously close to being empty again, quick make some random stuff to fill it up!

The weirdest thing just happened to me... I was on imgur to get the screenshots for the latest update of my RP-1 career series (shameless self-plug https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/198428-terranism-space-program/) and I got distracted scrolling down through the imgur home page, when I suddenly spotted Kerbal Space Program on there, on a post about some stock market shenanigans. The internet is even weirder than I ever imagined

I thought you were laying out all the parts from your Rokea “Röckêt” flat pack, trying to find all the 15C screws and the ubiquitous Allen key...

Comparing a crewed spacecraft docking to the ISS with a tiny probe using an oversized docking port being hurled at a small spacecraft is never going to be similar. Like many other things in KSP it’s simplified and overpowered to make it easier to use- it is a game after all! You can turn the docking magnet strength down or off per part if you want a more ‘realistic’ experience, plus there are mods for angle snapping on docking ports, gendered ports, docking alignment indicators, docking cameras and even auto-docking. The stock system does the job in most use cases, for anything beyond that there are mods.

On the ground, I’ve always found that SimpleLogistics is a much easier way of doing resource transfers than trying to connect everything up via KIS/KAS, docking ports or klaws and it comes without the inherent risk of RUD/kraken attacks that sticking things together in dubious ways brings- just parking within physics range is enough. In space, you’ll almost certainly need to join things together to even use hoses, rendering the point moot as you’ll already be using docking ports or klaws.

When the game stops working on the loading screen it’s usually due to an exception that prevents the game from loading any further. You’ll probably find the cause in the log files, here’s how to find them: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/83212-how-to-get-support-read-first/ Grab the logs and share them here (use a file sharing site and post links, please don’t copy and paste the logs here as it’s almost impossible to read them that way especially on tablets/mobiles) as well as a mod list and your system specs- OS, CPU, RAM and GPU being the most useful.

It’s very hard to sugggest a possible cause when you’ve provided so little information. At a minimum, a list of all the mods you’re using would help as would information about what craft you’re trying to load; did you disable ‘show stock craft’ in the difficulty settings or move the craft file to the wrong folder (it should probably be in saves/your save/Ships/VAB or SPH)? Does it use parts from a mod you don’t have installed? The Craft Manager mod might help you identify those and what mods they’re from. Follow the instructions in this link, it makes it much easier for others to help you: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/83212-how-to-get-support-read-first/

Me: I might just make a crewed lunar landing happen by 1963 if I do everything right- @The Destroyer: Crewed Mars landing by 1963 Me:

Is it sad that I’m excited about unlocking fuel cells? That’s what RP-1 does to you I guess... But much more importantly, I did my first docking in RP-1, which was made much more difficult than it needed to be by the fact that every time I time warped the closest approach went from 0.0km to 3km or more, and physics warping also changes the orbits for some odd reason (suspect Persistent Rotation may be involved, might get rid of that and find out) plus a loss of signal right when the two probes were about 15m apart, causing them to float right past each other before I regained control.

I finally did it. I sat down with a pen and paper to reprioritise all the nodes in the research queue. The new order focusses first on fuel cells (for crewed missions), then the early staged combustion engine node (which has an efficient and restartable kerolox engine in it, possibly useful for crewed missions?) followed by improved heatshields rated for Lunar returns (which also includes rover wheels and airbags for landing), then improved life support systems and then the Gemini-era capsules. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to use the Gemini pod and related accoutrements, or the stock (well, Making History, but DLCs are stock to me) Mk1-2 pod; the latter comes with a built-in Lunar rated heatshield, although the integrated heatshield wasn't all that successful on the Mk1 (Mercury) pod so I'll have to do some simulations to see which works better. In other news, Orange Bowl 2 lifted off (after Orange Bowl 3?) and set a course for Jupiter: Jupiter's gravity well is HUGE- it will take about 200 days for the flyby to complete, more than enough time to gather all the science data available. Unfortunately the gravity slingshot will then throw this probe out towards the orbit of Neptune, but none of the other outer planets are positioned right for a double flyby (that's for the 1970s) and it'll just have to float in the outer system forever, or until the RTGs fizzle out. Now for the main event- counting with rockets! Take one probe... Add another probe, and you get..? Uh, one probe? 1+1=1. Obviously. Someone was willing to pay nearly half a million funds to prove it either way so I'm happy. And now for the cursed Ceres probe: Engine failure on the launchpad, but they can be restarted on the ground infinitely so all I had to do was reactivate the engine and it worked fine. Until... Another booster engine failed during the ascent. This was OK as there are five more boosters on there which could compensate for the asymmetric thrust until I shut down the opposite engine and decoupled both. But then- another engine failed! And it wasn't the one opposite the one that had already failed, causing massively asymmetric thrust and the whole rocket began spinning uncontrollably. Those boosters use LR89 engines, which I've used extensively on the Grey [Shape] series and the Green Starling B/C so have the maximum 10,000 data units on them and a failure rate of just 1.2%. One point two percent! And yet I have THREE failures in one single flight?! The first was trivial; the second was manageable; the third was just the failure RNG being spiteful. I don't like doing this, but- REVERT! And would you believe it, another engine failed on the pad the second time round. Fortunately in this case that was the only issue and the launch went according to plan: A course was set for Ceres, although I seem to have missed the screenshot of that one; I'll get it next time. That contract money from the first docking went into KCT points for R&D to keep the research going. The VAB has plenty of points in it at this stage and Green Starling D/E variants can be built in as little as 6 1/2 days or another Orange Plate/Bowl in about 25 days. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/dLoHRV5 Coming up next time: It's probably time to design the second generation crewed mission and the rocket to launch it. I could try sticking it on the existing Orange [Dinnerware] launcher but I feel that's a bit inefficient and is probably too small to handle a 3m pod on the top like the Yellow Cookie's "2m pod on a 1.25m stage" trick.

I use Probes Plus with RSS/RO/RP-1 in KSP 1.8.1, some of the parts are configured for it but some are not or are poorly balanced (massively overpriced in some cases, overweight or underpowered in others). Probably best to either ignore those that don't work properly, or delete them from the GameData folders entirely.

Most (all?) real rockets with side boosters use separation motors to push them away once they’re out of fuel. These are usually mounted on the nose of the booster to let aerodynamics push the boosters away from the core and avoid the risk of collisions. The Sepratron rocket is provided in the game for that reason, although you only really need it for making your rockets ‘more realistic’ or when using very big boosters; the Making History DLC includes a fuel tank that has its own separation rocket built in to replicate the R7/Soyuz rocket’s boosters. You can get a similar effect in KSP just by moving your boosters so they’re attached to their decouplers near the top of the booster- when the decoupler fires it provides an impulse to the part attached to it, and since this force is acting above the centre of mass it will push the booster away at the front. Just be careful that you don’t accidentally hit anything at the back of your core stage when the boosters decouple, which is possible if you make the boosters pivot without moving away (making the back of the boosters hit the back of the core) or if you add too many separator motors (I’ve done this with the MH tanks, they separated but spun around and crashed point-first into the main engines because the separation motors were too powerful and burned for too long).

Aside from aesthetics, there’s no reason to use a spherical tank when a cylindrical one of equal volume would be thinner- making it easier to launch due to reduced drag or a smaller fairing- and easier to cluster together. There are a few mods that add spherical tanks that I can think of including DaMichel’x spherical and toroidal (ring shaped) fuel tanks, Restock+ (hemispherical stackable tanks in the standard sizes) and the massive 10m diameter stackable hydrogen tank from Cryo Tanks, or you could *shudder* use a procedural tank...

The reliability RNG decided to be particularly spiteful for me yesterday. First off, an engine failed to light on the launchpad; no biggie, just re-engage it and it restarts fine. Mid flight another engine failed, which was OK because the rocket has six boosters so I can turn off the engine on the other side and drop them both to save weight. But then another engine failed, causing massively asymmetric thrust and the rocket began tumbling. Those engines that failed have a failure rate of 1.2%; they’re as reliable as they can be and I haven’t had any major issues with them yet, but on this one flight I get three failures!? I don’t like reverting flights and would have continued with just the one booster failing, but after the second went it was unrecoverable so I reverted it. And another engine failed on the pad the second time round...

I’ll go through it step by step: Do you have the right part? Check on the launchpad that the ‘have xxx part’ criterion is checked, otherwise there’s no point trying to meet the rest. What do you need to do with it? Just have it there (these are usually called ‘haul xxx into flight/orbit’) or run a test (usually called ‘test xxx in flight/orbit)? If it’s the latter then you need to either right-click the part once all other criteria are met and then hit ‘run test’, or activate the part through the staging list. Where? There’s usually an altitude range e.g. between 3km and 10km or 200,000m-250,000m. How fast? Like altitude, there’s often a speed range for these contracts e.g. between 100m/s and 300m/s. If you think you’re achieving everything the contract is asking for but it doesn’t complete, get a screenshot (F1 key, they go in KSP/screenshots), upload it to a sharing site like imgur and then post it here; there’s a button on the bottom right of the reply box to add an image link, or you can just paste the link directly into your reply as text. What version of KSP are you using? Unlikely to be relevant but sometimes these contracts ask for old, deprecated versions of the parts which you can’t access any more and are only kept for compatibility reasons.

As far as I know the KSP file structure is the same regardless of where you got it from. Inside the KSP root directory there’s a folder called saves, and you’ll find folders inside that for each save game you make as well as training, missions and scenarios; the save files are inside the save folder they belong to e.g. all the saves for the ‘default’ game will be in KSP/saves/default. One way to hunt them down would be to create a save with a unique name e.g. find-this-file-please, then do a search for that file name to locate it. Some of the folders in the KSP file structure are no longer used, but to maintain compatibility for older versions they’re still there. You’ll find all the stock parts in GameData/Squad and if you have the DLCs their parts are in GameData/SquadExpansion/MakingHistory or Serenity (Breaking Ground).

I think dropping a spacecraft on someone would slightly ruin the moment. Perhaps you meant “Vall”?

I tried to upgrade this game to 1.10.1, but it failed due to drag cube issues; tried 1.9.1 and it mostly worked, but there was a weird graphics issue that made the game totally unplayable, so 1.8.1 it is for the forseeable future. I took some time today to look into various different first and second stage options for the trusty Green Starling, comparing different engines' delta-V, cost and build times as well as the upper stages' reliability and engine restarts. Surprisingly, by switching the first stage to a H-1 engine instead of the LR89 and upgrading the avionics' level and service module type, I could get a version with more payload capacity than the C variant (with the extra SM tank on the nose), but which is a few hundred funds cheaper and takes about a day less to build. The gains aren't huge, but given how many of them I'm launching they'll quickly stack up; there's also the possibility of adding a bigger extra SM tank to hold much larger payloads which would open up the commercial satellite contracts that require several hundred units of payload each time. Another ambitious contract, though if I can do a crewed Lunar flyby then staying in orbit for a day can't be that much harder, right? After completing a few satellite contracts and ploughing all the funds I could spare into KCT points for R&D, it was suddenly 1959 and time to launch Orange Bowl 3 to Mercury: Slightly inconveniently, that was also the time when Grey Sphere 3 was approaching Mars so I switched to the latter without pointing the former's solar panels at the Sun, causing it to drain the batteries dangerously low before I fixed it: Phobos and Deimos were invisible during the flyby, not because they were hidden by Mars, but because they're just really really small. Orbital velocity around them is under 5m/s so if you can capture into their SOI they're a great place to explore for minimal fuel. New contracts were offered once the Mars flyby contract completed- much like Venus, I took the orbiter, atmospheric probe and lander contracts to be done in a single mission, plus flyby and landing contracts for Phobos and Deimos. Theoretically this could all be done on one mission, but it would probably require some assembly in orbit first and I'd rather deal with the logistics of the planet and the moons separately. Lots of science, lots of funds and lots of free KCT points: After the failed KSP version upgrade attempts, I came back to try a Mars lander design which didn't work: After rebooting my PC after a particularly nasty game crash, I spent the funds on a hundred KCT points, split evenly between the VAB and R&D, and added two more nodes to the queue The RoveMate comes with a built-in Bon Voyage rover autopilot which drives the rover in the background, which is rather useful for a planet the size of Mars, although I've heard that it doesn't necessarily work that well in RP-1. Worth a try though, right? Odds of landing Kerbals on the Moon by the end of the decade are pretty much nil right now since it'll take that long just to get the Gemini missions up and running. While it's possible (if you know what you're doing and prioritise your research properly) to do a flags and footprints landing on the Moon as early as 1957 (https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/197774-terminal-velocity-a-rp1-career-series/), I think 1965 is more than feasible if the required researches get done in time and I actually take the time to build the rocket(s) needed to do it. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/ffBGPPu Coming up next time: Maybe I'll finally take a swing at making a proper 350 ton launcher, or go through the research backlog and reprioritise it. Transfer windows for Jupiter and Ceres both open soon so it's a bit of a race against time to have the probes ready for when that happens.

I haven't had too many issues so far, but crashes are more common than I would like- today I got one that meant I had to reboot my PC because it was acting weirdly. I put SPEngines in today but dropped it again, looks too complicated at this stage when I'm almost at 1960 and building rockets is hard enough without the endless options that procedural engines would give.

Tried to upgrade my RP-1/RO/RSS game to 1.10.1, failed due to drag cube issues; tried 1.9.1, also failed but due to a weird graphics issue in KSC view that made everything beyond a certain distance disappear. Oh well, looks like I’m stuck with 1.8.1 for the foreseeable future.

First up- Grey Sphere 4 heads off to Mars on the slower transfer window: Game-crashing stack overflow not shown . The difference between this and the earlier window that Grey Sphere 3 took is pretty striking- while Grey Sphere 4 left Earth only 44 days later, it will arrive at Mars over 300 days later. Next to launch was Orange Plate 2, heading up to the Moon with all the latest surface science experiments: In the end I had to fly it back out of its first landing site because the terrain was so bad, and fly over to the nearest flat-ish bit before landing. Another new biome: Mare Fecunditatis- Sea of Pregnancy? Who named these things? Many more tech nodes are being added, but the backlog is so long now that I won't bother showing each individual node that I add on. Highlights from this lot include the 80 point materials science and electronics nodes to unlock all the next generation parts. The contract payout for landing on the Moon funded the next upgrade for the Tracking Station: I've also skipped the usual accept satellite contract > build Green Starling > complete contract cycle; they happened, but what's the point in showing them when I've done so many of them? On the subject of contracts, though- I just found out that I didn't actually launch a scanning satellite to the Moon and there's a contract to do just that slowly ticking down. Cue a hasty retrofit of the Grey Tet Mk2 to carry a radar altimetry scanner and some large solar panels, imaginatively named Grey Tet Mk3, which was added to the build queue: Two more Orange Bowl probes are under construction (so far) for the Ceres and Jupiter windows, but due to the improved communications tech and tracking station I could turn down their antenna strength to save mass and power while maintaining signal no matter where the planets were, whereas before they would only just be in range when the planets were closest. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/jNw6sJR Coming up next time: Three transfer windows approach for three different planets, each with its own flyby contract. Deploy the probes!