jimmymcgoochie

Have you looked at the log files? There’s one called KSP.txt or KSP.log inside the KSP folder that has some basic information in it, search from the bottom for exceptions, errors or crash reports. There are more detailed logs available but I’m not sure where they are on mac- search for Player.txt or Player.log, and output_log.txt and you might find them. Log files aren’t easy to read for beginners, so you can upload them to a file sharing site and then link to them here for others to take a look at. Try reinstalling the game from scratch (back up your game save files first!) or checking the file integrity if you can do that through the launcher. If that doesn’t work, try what’s suggested here: And welcome to the forums!

MechJeb can calculate transfers between planets, to and from moons and even between moons in the same system, make the nodes and execute them. There's also Astrogator which tells you the time to the next window and can place nodes for you (but requires a bit of manual input to adjust said nodes) and transfer window planner which can show you the delta-V required for transfers depending on when you start and how long your transfer takes- surprisingly there are often windows with low delta-V required that are a lot faster than the most efficient transfer burn. Kerbal Alarm Clock is almost a must-have for career mode when you have many different missions going to different places at once and can't keep track of all those maneuver nodes. As for recovering stages- StageRecovery and FMRS are two options that can recover dropped stages, though I think FMRS tends to work best for controlled stages whereas StageRecovery can do anything as long as it has enough parachutes. Both are pretty configurable, and the ability to recover a sizeable percentage of the launch costs early in career mode is a huge benefit.

Many mods have dependencies, other mods they need in order to work. Some of them might come with those mods bundled- module manager is very frequently included- but others don’t and you’ll probably find thinks to download them in the forum post for the mod you want or the github/space dock/curseforge page where you downloaded it. Check you have everything you need and also check that the mods you’re using are compatible with your version of KSP and are the right versions.

Running the game directly from the folder or through CKAN doesn’t record times, so my numbers are vastly lower in Steam than in reality. Which is a good thing, as I don’t want to be reminded exactly how much time I’ve spent in the game

You might be interested in KSC Extended- it adds multiple launch pads, rover spawn areas and more that you can launch from without blocking the runway and launch pad.

Hmm, this is an interesting one. So the game loads most of the way, but crashes before reaching the main menu? Look inside the KSP folder for the file called KSP.txt, that’s a fairly basic log file that might say what caused the crash- it would probably be near the end of the file, you’re looking for errors or exceptions. If you find something, or the sight of the log file makes you want to scream, upload it to a file sharing website and post a link to it here so someone can take a look at it. There are more detailed log files for the game, but without knowing your game version I can’t say for sure where they’d be. There’s also the possibility that your PC is running out of memory; try loading the game with task manager open and see how much RAM it’s using when it loads. Can’t help you any more than that without seeing a log file of some type, there are too many things that could be causing the problem. And welcome to the forums!

I think Tracking Station Evolved allows you to hide those orbits and surface points for both accepted and offered contracts.

Aim higher. Inflatable shields can take quite a lot of heat, but they’ll still cook if you go bombing into Eve’s atmosphere directly from a transfer orbit. Brake high in the atmosphere to capture into Eve orbit, then keep clipping the atmosphere to slow down and shed speed until you eventually drop down to land. It’s slower but safer. Did your lander burn up while it was pointing retrograde, with the shield first, or did it flip around and burn up because the soft, squishy bits got exposed to the heat? If it’s the latter, try to shift your centre of mass as close to the shield as possible to keep it stable. Inflatable heat shields generate a lot of drag so if the centre of mass is too far away it becomes unstable and will easily flip the wrong way and things get very burny, very fast.

Depends what you mean by ‘explored’, really. I’ve been to every biome on (stock) Kerbin, Mun and Minmus at least once, landed small bases with labs on Mun/Minmus for a while, put boots on the ground on Duna and Ike and probes/rovers/landers/planes on Moho, Jool and its moons and Dres. Never made it to Eeloo though, it was just too far away and I started doing planet packs before I got there. Now working on a career game in JNSQ where I’ve landed on Duna and Ike and am building another ship to visit Jool. And possibly Lindor too, depending on transfer windows, though it might require more stuff to be added to do both and the game goes horribly slow as it is...

Pointing up gets you to space. Staying there requires you to point sideways. When launching, try to turn gradually to point east, which will build up your orbital velocity and will also mean you don't gain too much height and drop back into the atmosphere at high speed and a steep angle which causes a lot of re-entry heating. There are a few tricks that you can use to protect your precious science payload, and parachutes too: - Put science stuff in a service bay. They're low drag, very resistant to heat, and yet can be easily accessed when you need to; some experiments won't work when enclosed in a service bay though, just keep that in mind. And parachutes won't deploy when they're inside a closed service bay either, but they might if you open it, though it's been a while since I used one so I can't really say for sure. - Attach your parachutes near the top of your re-entry stage, which should not only be better shielded from heat but will also mean it lands pointing the right way up, reducing the chances of blowing up your crew pod with a hard landing. - Try to make your re-entry section base heavy i.e. the centre of mass is close to the heat shield, and not close to the pointy end. If it's top heavy, it can easily flip backwards and expose the important stuff like parachutes and crew pods to the heat of re-entry rather than the heat shield. If you're just launching solid booster powered rockets on sub-orbital flights, then turning to go sideways rather than up will probably help you most and there won't really be a need for a heat shield; if you're returning from the Mun/Minmus/another planet, it's OK to dip into the atmosphere more than once to bleed off some velocity before finally coming all the way down. Just make sure you packed enough ablator!

I don't think there is a way to execute a maneuver node while you're not controlling the ship, or at the very least within physics range of it. There's a mod that adds a part to keep different vessels staying in formation (action groups extended maybe?) when doing maneuvers, and MechJeb can execute maneuvers for you even when on another ship, if said ship is within physics range of the one doing the maneuver; but it will (probably) stop controlling it as soon as it leaves physics range so possibly not worth pursuing that option unless you're going to EXACTLY the same place at EXACTLY the same time. You might want to look into Kerbal Alarm Clock which can set alarms for maneuver nodes, so you don't miss them, if the problem is that you keep missing nodes because you're looking at something else at the time. Also- there appears to be a duplicate of this thread, are you able to delete the duplicate or edit it to say it's a duplicate?

Try Astrogator, it can tell you time until transfer windows for all the stock planets and a few planet packs too, and set nodes for you, plus it runs in the game. Small but rather helpful.

Something is wrong with my internet, it seems to have run out of story. Blitzed the entire trilogy in the last week, and already I’m planning to blatantly steal tastefully reference this magnificent work in my own little KSP story; though between this and KSK’s literary behemoth, it’s got a lot to live up to. Keep it coming! (or else I’ll send you to see Kommissar )

A couple of things might help you: If you're using a liquid fuel rocket, you need to use the fuel tanks that contain liquid fuel and oxidiser- a liquid fuel fuselage is a plane part and ONLY has liquid fuel in it, which is fine for planes but no use for rockets. Use FL-T100/200/400/800 fuel tanks for your rockets. Liquid fuel engines are also throttle controlled- use shift to steadily increase the throttle, Z to set it to 100%, control to reduce it slowly and X to set it to 0%. To launch a liquid fuel rocket the normal sequence is T (activate SAS to keep the rocket pointing towards space) Z (full power!) space (engage engines)

I'm not sure if I'll include the courtroom drama of the patent hearing in the story, not sure it would add that much when the outcome is a foregone conclusion and I want to move the story on towards the point where Tina actually joins the Space Program (spoiler alert, but given the title it's about as spoiler-y as saying that in Titanic, the boat sinks ). Although as she'll be an Engineer when she gets there (but with a good science background too), any tips on this area would be appreciated and could help with some of the more technical aspects that I'm not familiar with- most of what I know about rockets and rocket science came from either playing KSP or internet research of things from KSP- looking up the real life inspiration for mod parts, videos by Scott Manley et al etc. Screenshot illustrations probably won't be coming back in the chapters in future- while they can make a nice break in the text, it's fairly rare for them to appear in books and novels, plus when I've seen them in other stories I find they distract from the story and the pictures I have of the events in my head. I may add some kind of compilation at the end, which is quite common in biographies, but after the effort it took to get the Vulture off the ground (and keep it there!) that's not guaranteed.

There should be a log file within the KSP folder itself called KSP.txt, it will have some basic information and should say what exactly is causing the crash. You'll find more detailed logs here: C://users/your name here/AppData/LocalLow/Squad/Kerbal Space Program/Player.txt AppData is a hidden folder so you might need to enable 'show hidden' or just bash that location (minus Player.txt and with your PC username replacing 'your name here') straight into windows explorer.

They invited twelve of the most prolific modders to go and see what they were doing. I'm fairly sure @linuxgurugamer is maintaining a solid 40% of all KSP mods ever released by this point and IIRC Galileo and Nertea were there too, among others. The problem with asking people what they want is that you'll get buried under half-formed ideas and poorly thought out opinions that are far more of a hindrance than a help when it comes to actually developing a piece of software. Scope creep is a killer and we've already got a year of delays as it is. I for one am quite happy to leave the dev-pestering to those who are the most qualified to do so.

These contracts seem like a lot of work, but they're actually pretty easy to do- you don't need to leave your crew there either and I;d advise you to get them out of the potential blast radius. Just launch a small, cheap rocket with high delta-V straight at Minmus, and as soon as you get inside its SOI aim straight at the ground and burn for maximum speed. If you can aim for somewhere near the seismometer then great, but if not it shouldn't make too much difference as long as you get up to maximum speed. A QBE, two oscar-Bs and a spark will probably be enough (add a solar panel to keep the power on and a reaction wheel to make it point the right way) and then launch one or even a whole cluster of them at Minmus- I've seen 40,000% readings on seismic detectors by doing that.

Chapter 4 - Aftermath Staying overnight in hospital when you're not ill or injured is incredibly boring, Tina thought to herself as she sat just after sunrise watching an early morning news bulletin. “We cross over to our scientific correspondent, Ensted, who is near the epicentre of yesterday's Kerbquake. What more have we learnt since last night?” “According to official estimates, the quake measured a 7 on the Merkalli scale and caused noticeable damage to buildings and infrastructure including power, water and gas supplies. The epicentre of the quake is believed to be approximately forty kilometres directly north of the Darude rocketry complex in the heart of this active fault line; as you can see from these orbital images, the ground has been shifted by several metres, severing what locals call the 'Road to Nowhere' on account of it being disrupted by at least three previous quakes over the last century.” “Are there any official casualty figures, and how long will it take to repair the damage?” “It's still too early for official figures, but the current estimates are in the region of 20-30 fatalities and around 1500 injured to varying degrees. Damage-wise, it could take a few days to get power, gas and water supplies restored and a few days after that before things like phone and internet cables are repaired. We also know that the Darude complex itself sustained moderate damage and will likely be out of action for a few weeks while repairs are completed.” “Thank you, Ensted.” The news anchor turned back to the camera. “Still on the subject of yesterday's quake: a group calling itself the 'Children of Kaia' released a statement this morning stating that the Darude launch complex was itself the cause of the quake, blaming the vibrations caused by rocket engines for weakening the fault line. They also claim that there was an active rocket test in progress at the moment the fault slipped, a claim which has been verified by a member of Darude staff; this staff member was keen to point out that the test in question was only a tiny fraction of the size of the Lindor 5 first stage that was tested at Darude over twenty years ago and which had no effect at all on the fault line.” Tina turned the TV off in disgust. Whoever those 'Children of Kaia' were, they clearly had no idea what they were talking about- how could a rocket test range have triggered a seismic fault line to shift over forty kilometres away, when that fault line had been unstable for hundreds of years and was actually about twenty years overdue for shifting? Why hadn't it failed after the four Acapello tests- including the static firing that gigantic Lindor 5 first stage at full power for its full three minute burn time straight at the ground- and why would a quiet day of only seven rocket tests whose combined thrust and duration was less than four seconds from the Lindor 5-1 be enough to trigger it? Did they somehow think that the DAGGER had caused the quake, forty kilometres away, while it was literally in space? She walked over to the window and looked down to the street just outside the hospital's main entrance, nine floors below. Traffic was flowing slowly but steadily despite the fact that around half of the traffic lights weren't working. A small crowd were standing just outside the entrance, and by pressing her face against the glass she could see many of them were holding placards and banners and moving them in a synchronised way, but if they were chanting or singing anything then it wasn't reaching this far up. A persistent trickle of ambulances kept arriving as rescue efforts continued, but only a few came with lights and sirens. The reason for that was fairly simple- after dropping off the Darude staff, Thombert had taken the Vulture and flown to various nearby towns, transporting dozens or even hundreds of people to hospitals in a single flight and greatly easing the pressure on emergency paramedics who were then free to focus on the most needy cases or help those freed from collapsed buildings, before eventually being forced to return to base before he ran out of fuel. Of course, the 'Children of Kaia' would see that as an action born of guilt for triggering the quake in the first place rather than a generous kermanitarian effort. It was another long and tedious hour before a doctor came round, checked her over and declared her fit to go home, closely followed by Mum and Dad. This became a problem immediately when they realised they weren't entirely sure where they were, had no means of getting back home and- most importantly for Tina- had to find both the DAGGER and its blueprints before going home as well. She was quite insistent on that last point. Johnbro, Desdas, Lurim and Richgan were also cleared to leave, and Tina was relieved to hear that the DAGGER was still safely stowed in the Vulture's hold and being guarded by Thombert. “With strict instructions not to let anyone near it until you arrive to collect it,” Johnbro elaborated. “Nobody with two brain cells to rub together messes with Thombert, so it'll be perfectly safe.” The blueprints, on the other hand, were gone; turned to mush when the quake had triggered both the water and foam fire suppression systems in the PAB and utterly ruined anything still inside. After hearing that the crowd protesting outside were calling themselves '(Da)Rude Awakening' and aggressively harassing anyone remotely connected to Darude, rockets or anything even tenuously related to space travel, Team Tina packed their Darude-issued overalls into a bag and walked out the entrance wearing normal clothes. The protesters paid no attention, until one of them spotted a rocket motif on the back of Tina's jacket as they were getting into a taxi and suddenly they surged forwards, transforming from peaceful protest to angry mob so quickly that the handful of police assigned to keep the peace could do nothing but try and avoid being trampled. The mob surrounded the taxi on all sides and began rocking it violently from side to side, screaming abuse and pounding on the windows, terrifying everyone inside. After about ten seconds that felt more like ten minutes, things turned ugly: someone managed to pry a metal bollard out of the ground and turned it into a battering ram, smashing one of the side windows; a hand reached through and pulled the door handle, but couldn't get back out again before the door slid back and got trapped between the taxi's C pillar and the remnants of the window and badly lacerated; more hands reached in and grabbed Tina's jacket, hair, anything they could reach and dragged her screaming out of the car and into the heart of the mob. All she could do was try to cover her head as she felt her clothes being torn to pieces and then a blinding white-hot pain shot up her left arm making her almost black out. Hospital security and the few police on scene pushed through the crowd and forced them back from the open taxi door and from Tina. Many in the crowd realised what they had done and scattered, with those two stubborn or stupid to leave corralled until police reinforcements arrived. Paramedics from the waiting ambulances came over to treat Tina and the unfortunate Kerbal whose arm had been trapped, taking both into the hospital. Tina's arm was broken and her whole body was covered in scratches and bruises. A doctor gave her something to numb the pain and everything went very fuzzy for a while before she came back around and found herself in a bed with her arm straightened out and a heavy plaster cast applied. A TV was on in one corner of the room showing another news bulletin and she spotted “Seventeen arrested after hospital protest turns violent” on the scrolling headlines at the bottom of the screen. “Are you feeling OK?” Dad asked. Tina hadn't noticed that he was sitting in a chair beside the bed and flinched away from his voice, making her arm throb painfully. Mum arrived with some new clothes and then had to help Tina put them on (which was extremely embarrassing) before leaving for the second time via a different entrance where the rest of Team Tina were waiting with another taxi. They got away with no trouble at all the second time round and were soon at the local airport where another protest was happening outside the main entrance. Everyone else got out the taxi, but Tina just couldn't do it, terrifying flashbacks replaying in her head. It took a solid ten minutes to talk her out of the taxi and only by forming a protective circle around her could she walk past the protest into the airport. A small business jet was waiting for them and soon they were airborne and heading back home. The flight quickly became a competition between Dad, Johnbro and Lurim to see who could snore the loudest and almost everyone else fell asleep too, but every time Tina started to doze off she woke up again in a panic with her whole body trembling in fear. She tried listening to music on her phone, some soothing piano to calm her nerves, and it seemed to help as long as she stayed awake. She noticed a voicemail message was waiting from an unknown number, but when she played it she recognised Samlas' voice. “Hi Tina, it's Samlas here. Just to update you- I filed the patent application yesterday afternoon, and this morning Rockomax and C7 Aerospace applied to have the case examined by an independent expert. Nothing to worry about, it's perfectly normal for this to happen and with the RAPIER just hitting the market they're understandably rather twitchy about someone stealing their ideas; from what I've seen there isn't anything to worry about and your design doesn't infringe any of their patents. I'll keep you posted on any new developments as and when they happen. Take care, bye.” The first part of the message alarmed her, but the rest was more reassuring. It didn't surprise her that C7 Aerospace and Rockomax were on the lookout for people trying to copy their latest product, especially something as potentially game-changing as a multi-mode air-breathing rocket engine that could conceivably be used for single stage to orbit spaceplanes. She tried one more time to get some sleep but her arm hurt too much. She got up and headed to the back of the plane where a small fridge held a variety of drinks and a small selection of sandwiches, picking a bottle of water and a kale salad wrap. She didn't like kale, but its high nutrient and energy density made it ideal for space rations and apparently it would eventually be included on interplanetary ships as both an air scrubber and a source of food, so her plan was to eat it enough that she got used to it and could eat it on a regular basis. So far this plan was having limited success, in as much as she no longer had to hold her nose while eating it to avoid gagging at the taste, but she was fairly certain that she would never enjoy eating it. On the way back to her seat, she noticed Desdas was still awake and sat down in the empty seat facing him. “What can I do for you?” he asked. “Distraction. Anything to avoid thinking about...” She shook her head sharply, trying to shake away the bad memories. “What is Project Elon? And why did you think I could help you with it?” “It's Project Eeloo, not Elon. As you probably know, building a single stage to orbit, or SSTO, aircraft requires an engine that works in atmosphere and in space, but the two are considerably different: an atmospheric engine can use oxygen in the air to avoid carrying internal oxidiser, giving it a much higher effective ISP than a traditional rocket, but that doesn't work once you get into the upper atmosphere so you need some form of rocket motor to get the rest of the way into orbit. The RAPIER- and your DAGGER- try to solve that problem by using air to supply the oxygen at low altitudes and then switching to an internal oxidiser supply at higher altitudes, but this is inefficient and the changeover point can be a bit, shall we say, unpredictable.” Tina remembered a particularly interesting afternoon when she got hold of an old oxygen tank and plugged it into an early DAGGER prototype to test that changeover, resulting in the rapid unplanned disassembly of both the DAGGER and Dad's greenhouse. “Now think about a planet like Eve- the atmosphere has no oxygen in it and the pressure at sea level is ten times what we have on Kerbin. No jets will work, and most rockets won't be able to function either or will have terrible efficiency as they fight against all that pressure. If we're ever going to get onto the surface of Eve and then get back out again, we'll need something different. That's where Project Eeloo comes in. Instead of using combustion to provide power, Project Eeloo aims to use a nuclear reactor as a heat source and use the local atmosphere itself as a propellant, avoiding the problem of atmospheric composition completely. By using the local atmosphere as propellant, there's no need to carry fuel for atmospheric flight and atmospheric pressure isn't an issue as we can just dump excess intake air and keep feeding the engine only as much as it needs.” “A nuclear engine that runs on air? That sounds a little bit too science fiction to be real.” “Oh, it's real all right. We made a prototype and had it running at full power for a good ten minutes using nothing but air and generating a decent amount of thrust. If we ever got one airborne and flying at speed, we think it could produce over two meganewtons of thrust under the right circumstances.” “Two meganewtons? How big is this thing?” Tina was picturing a small power station with wings whizzing through the sky. “We're aiming for a 2.5m profile with a maximum diameter of about three metres to give us space for additional cooling systems, and about 5 metres long without including the pre-cooler on the front.” That was big. Bigger than even the Goliath turbofan that powered the largest airliners and heavy lift planes, taller than Tina's house if it was stood on its end (the engine, not the house) and surely so bulky and heavy that it would completely upset the balance of any aircraft that tried to use it. “If it's that big, why do you need my design? That thing would eat my DAGGER for breakfast just with the static suction from the intake.” “It's that contra-rotating air feeder system you developed that I'm really interested in. Air coming through a shock cone intake and passing through a pre-cooler has to be slowed down by several times the speed of sound and compressed to feed into the engine, but that also makes it more viscous and rather difficult to control. If we could apply your design to Project Eeloo, we could get more air through the reactor more evenly and increase the efficiency while reducing the potential for overheating, which for a nuclear reactor could be, um, problematic.” “Yeah, probably best to avoid that. What are you using for fuel once you're out of atmosphere?” “Liquid hydrogen. Or at least, that's the idea, but that's even harder to deal with than compressed air and the fuel density is really low which limits the range.” “So why use it then?” Nuclear rockets were still rare, with only the LV-N 'Nerv' in use and even then only rarely, so for Tina this was an opportunity to learn something new. “Liquid hydrogen is a nuclear moderator and an effective coolant. When it's fed into a reactor those two things balance each other out and the reaction rate scales directly with the quantity of liquid hydrogen being added; it's very stable and very controllable, plus it heats the hydrogen by over two thousand Kelvin so produces a lot of thrust at very high efficiency.” “So, more hydrogen makes the reactor run faster but also cools it down faster to counter the extra fission?” “That's the idea.” He looked at her in a strange way, she couldn't identify exactly what it was. “You know, I've seen rooms full of grown adults who couldn't understand half of what I just told you. If you were a few years older, I'd hire you right now.” She finally realised what that look meant. Desdas Kerman, head of research and development at a reputable aerospace company and professional engineer, saw her as an adult, an engineer, even an equal. More than that, he had just told her that Tina, teenage schoolgirl and amateur rocketeer, had built something that an entire team of professional rocket engineers and nuclear physicists hadn't even thought of despite huge research and development in the very same area, and which he considered a technological breakthrough of such importance that he had had her and her scrap-built rocket flown half way across a continent to study it in detail. That realisation was profoundly moving. “That's possibly the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.” “Well, it's entirely true. There will always be a place for you in my team if for some reason your career as an astronaut doesn't take off.” Tina snorted. “Dad jokes?” Desdas looked at her blankly. “Astronaut? Take off?” “Oh... right. Totally meant that. I was just testing you.” “Uh-huh. One more question- how exactly are you going to sell the concept of a barely shielded nuclear reactor inside a jet engine spraying radioactive waste into the upper atmosphere to the public?” “Well, we have a lot of safety systems built in to-” Tina interrupted him. “Desdas, an angry mob almost killed me this morning because I was wearing a jacket with a band logo on the back that happened to include a rocket, just because they listened to some deranged conspiracy theory about rocket tests triggering that kerbquake. If you told them you were building a nuclear jet engine...” Desdas turned noticeably pale. “Even though it would be greatly beneficial to the environment to replace oil-burning jet engines with ones that ran on just air, people are scared of anything remotely nuclear- if you told them MRI machines used nuclear magnetic resonance imaging they'd never go to a hospital again, or worse, smash the machines to bits- and they'll believe whatever moronic nonsense fits their conspiracy-addled view of the world and dismiss any and all evidence that disproves it as part of that conspiracy.” “Your hand is bleeding.” She looked down and saw that she had clenched her fist so tightly that her fingernails had dug into her palm and drawn blood. Alarmed and slightly frightened by how angry she had become during that rant, she broke off the conversation and headed to the small toilet at the back of the cabin to get some paper towels to mop up the blood. It took several minutes of slow, deep breaths before her heart stopped racing and she felt calm again, and slightly embarrassed by the outburst. When she returned to the cabin, Johnbro and Richgan had joined Desdas around the table and were setting up some kind of card game that required many packs of gummy bears and three packs of cards. “What's with the gummy bears?” she asked as she took the remaining seat at the table. “We don't have any chips and it's against company policy to use real money for any games or gambling-related activity while we're on the clock.” “Hang on- you're getting paid to sit in a private jet and play card games?” “It's a perfectly legitimate business trip, and we're not “playing card games”, we're “performing a team-building exercise”. There's a difference.” Johnbro replied. Tina was not convinced. “So what 'team-building exercise' are you doing, and can I join in?” “Ever played 9-card switch?” He saw Tina shake her head and explained. “ It's pretty simple: everyone gets nine cards, then you can choose to swap up to four of them. The goal is to get two or more of the same card, or a run of consecutive cards, with more and higher value cards being better. Matching colours beat the same set when they don't match, and matching suits are even better; getting two identical cards, like for example two nine of diamonds, is a snap and beats most other sets, and three the same is a triple snap; the best possible hand is a straight triple triple flush, that's three triple snaps for consecutive cards of the same suit.” Tina was nearly cross-eyed trying to understand the straight triple triple flush but the basics of the game seemed simple enough. “And the gummy bears?” “Everyone puts one, um, bear, in at the start of each hand. Once everyone has swapped cards, you can put more in if you think you're going to win, then everyone else either has to do the same or drop out. Of course, you can always put in more even if you don't think you're going to win to try and trick everyone else into dropping out but that's risky.” “And try not to eat any of your gummy bears while you're playing, either.” Added Desdas. Half an hour later, Tina's hoard included nearly a hundred gummy bears, most of a bar of chocolate broken into squares and a hastily scribbled IOU from Johnbro. Richgan had been eliminated twice; Lurim had joined but went all in on his first hand and lost immediately; and both Desdas and Johnbro were barely clinging on with two bears and one square of chocolate respectively. Their predicament was worsened considerably by the fact that Tina had twice resorted to essentially giving away gummy bears to keep the game going and the addition of the chocolate for the same reason, plus the fact that Tina was now regularly snacking on her pile. They were saved from any further humiliation by the plane arriving at its destination, where they were met by Thombert and the Vulture. The truck with the DAGGER on its back and a small car were driven out of its hold before the little jet performed it party trick, folding its wings and tail and driving into the Vulture's hold using electric motors in its wheels. The convoy of two drove out of the airport's perimeter and almost an hour later Tina watched as the DAGGER was- very slowly and carefully- lowered down by crane onto a wheeled platform and wheeled down into her workshop/shed. A quick exchange of email addresses and a round of handshakes followed before the K.V. Roe team drove off. Even though it was still daylight, Tina immediately went upstairs and fell asleep in her bed fully clothed. For some reason, when the angry mob descended on her this time she fought them off by pelting them with gummy bears and slept soundly until the next morning. After the second alarm didn't work, Mum had to go in and wake her up. “You're going to be late at this rate.” “Late for what?” Tina tried to blink her eyes into focus. “School, silly!” “School?” Her brain was still half asleep. “Yes, that big building with teachers in it where you go to learn things.” “No school on Sunday.” She curled up again to go back to sleep. “Today is Munday.” Mum replied, throwing the curtains open and making Tina hide under the covers from the bright sunlight. “Munday, fun day, time to get things done day! Get up!” That was a quote from Tina's favourite book- when she was four. “Not going to school. Sick.” “You're not sick, it's just a broken arm. You write with your right hand anyway.” “Hurts too much. Need to stay in bed all day. Doctor said so.” “The doctor said nothing of the sort. Take some painkillers and get a move on.” Tina refused to budge until Dad started eating her stash of gummy bears; when she chased after him to get them back, Mum stripped the bedsheets and took them down to wash them leaving a horrified Tina with a bare mattress and a pillow with no pillowcase. With no other options, she reluctantly headed downstairs in search of food, ignoring her parents' smiling faces on the way. “I don't even need to go to school, I'm a rocket scientist,” she muttered. “Does the rocket scientist know what an iambic pentameter is?” Mum asked her. “A poetic technique with lines that consist of five unstressed syllables, or iambs, each followed by a stressed syllable.” Dad replied. “And how is that related in any way to rockets, science, engineering or anything remotely space-y? On the plane yesterday, Desdas said he would hire me if I was a few years older.” “Well, you're not a few years older, so you'll just have to go to school until then.” Tina's phone rang and interrupted their argument. She recognised Samlas' phone number. “Hi Samlas, is this about that review thing?” “Unfortunately, no. Do you know anyone named Tebal?” “Yes, she tried to steal my rocket at the Science Fair and ended up dropping it on herself and nearly blowing up the Science Fair.” “Well, someone has filed a counter-claim on your patent application claiming that you stole the whole design from one Tebal Kerman, demanding that any and all physical items and documentation be returned to their rightful owners and threatening dire consequences if they are not.” “What!?” That slimy, scheming- “I told them exactly where they could stick those last two points; there's nothing they can do to enforce it and plenty of things we can do to stop them trying. Their evidence isn't worth the paper it's printed on, but they're insisting on having the matter resolved in a formal hearing.” “Is that bad?” “I suspect they're trying to intimidate a low-budget attorney into giving up without a fight, which to me says they didn't do their homework and don't realise they're picking a fight with K.V. Roe or else they don't usually deal with patent applications. My money's on the latter; no self-respecting patent attorney would touch this application with a bargepole.” “Are you sure we'd win?” Tina heard her laugh on the other end of the line. “I've been doing this job for nearly thirty years, Tina, and in all that time I've never come across anything this terrible. I showed it to a colleague who knew nothing about the case and he genuinely thought I was writing an example for a 'how not to do it' section in a textbook. If they don't back down, we'll wipe the floor with them.” “Thanks, Samlas.” She hung up and explained the conversation to her parents, whose assessments of Tebal matched her own. “Take the thrust chamber out and hide it somewhere. That's what Desdas and Johnbro were most interested in, and even if someone tries to steal the DAGGER it won't work without it.” Dad went outside to start dismantling the DAGGER while Mum helped her get dressed before driving her to school. It felt strange walking up to the school gates after the events of the last three days: everyone else was still talking about the Science Fair but to Tina that was a distant memory. Just before she reached the entrance she was cut off by Tebal in an electric wheelchair with her leg in a cast, her cohort of cronies running after her. “Well, if it isn't lickle tiny Tina. You couldn't copy my look any better than you copied my rocket.” Cue laughter from the cronies, at least two of whom looked like they didn't actually know why they were laughing. Tina was unfazed. “Nine years later and you still can't come up with anything better than 'teeny Tina'? And tell Daddy's lawyer he should stick with weaselling out of speeding tickets and parking fines instead of picking fights with multinational aerospace corporations. I look forward to seeing your pathetic attempts at patent fraud land you in the trouble you deserve; until then, have a nice life.” Tebal's smirk faltered badly and for once she had no retort to come back with. Tina walked past and headed into the school, feeling strangely elated. For almost a decade Tebal had been the bane of her school life, always teasing and taunting her because of her short stature, but now she knew that nothing Tebal could say to her would ever bother her again. She had built a rocket that had flown into space; Tebal was a spoilt rich brat and a petty school bully whose antics had finally come back to bite her. She took her seat for Geography 3B, but her mind was elsewhere. If she took some glass out of the greenhouse, maybe used an old washing machine or fridge with the innards removed to reduce weight and make some space, extended the intakes around the sides, added some control surfaces to the fins, then maybe, just maybe, it could work. No, it would work. Next time the DAGGER flew, she wouldn't be watching from the ground: she would be sitting on top and launching herself into the sky. Chapter 5

You might find some of what you're looking for in Near Future Solar/Exploration and/or Restock.

NF Solar I agree- for a pure stock solar system, you don't really need (m)any additional parts except for utilities- if you want to do planetary mining then stockalike mining extension, space stations > station parts expansion redux, and so on. Restock/+ are good options to make the game look nice, and if your PC can handle it go for some prettiness mods- Spectra or SVE or something similar. And turn the science multiplier down so you have to gather most of the available science on Kerbin and within its SOI before you can venture to other planets, it's more of a challenge that way. If I had to pick one more, I'd go with SCANsat- great looking parts which match the Restock aesthetics, active planetary mapping over time which can be useful for picking out landing sites and another use for satellites after showing up somewhere and getting science from space high and low.

It's a NERV with a magnetic containment nozzle? Put me down for a hundred!

Will this mod do away with the idea of radiator parts only being able to pull a small amount of heat from any given part? It always struck me as odd to have a radiator that can emit 1000kW of heat, but only pull in 50kW from any specific part, for example, or to have a cluster of radiators manage to overheat themselves in some kind of bizarre feedback loop while everything else around them is barely above ambient. Sounds like an interesting concept and one I imagine will work well with NFE and heat control.

Try shifting the centre of lift a little further back or the centre of mass a little further forward. SAS will tend to pitch the nose up over time because it tries to keep pointing in the same direction, but as you fly the curvature of the planet means that that direction becomes more 'up' as you fly; faster planes are affected by this more obviously than slower ones and Kerbin's small size makes it pretty conspicuous after only a few minutes of flight. You may want to consider using an autopilot mod, there are a few to choose from:

You can try it, it might help. I think I explained how to do that in the thread you linked to but just in case- Make a shortcut to the KSP.exe application > open the properties of the shortcut > add --force-opengl to the end of its target. If you use the shortcut, the game will open using openGL; if you click the app itself or use CKAN to launch it, it won't use openGL. You could also try turning scatters off, downgrading your terrain settings and if nothing else helps try this: Open the settings file and change UNSUPPORTED_LEGACY_SHADER_TERRAIN = False to True That will make the game use the old, pre-1.8 terrain which is uglier but might resolve the problem.