jimmymcgoochie

I feel obliged to point out that in the OP’s list, “helium-2” is emphatically not a thing. The only element where the nucleus is solely protons is hydrogen, and that has one proton; adding any more would cause the nucleus to break apart as those positively-charged protons immediately repelled each other. The lightest feasible isotope of helium is helium-3. I’d also argue that LF/Ox as methalox makes less sense than kerolox- the ISP numbers are too low for pretty much every stock engine (vacuum ISPs of 300-320s for boosters and 330-350s for vacuum engines are exactly what you get with real kerolox rockets- the F1 used on the Saturn V first stage had a vacuum ISP of 305s, similar to the larger booster engines in KSP like the Mainsail, while the Soviet RD-58 upper stage engine had a vacuum ISP of about 350-355s, similar to the Terrier and Poodle), except for the Wolfhound (which matches the vacuum-optimised methalox Raptor’s 380s) and the NERV (which outperforms a methane NTR by about 200s of ISP; putting kerosene into an NTR is laughably stupid), plus the fact that kerosene is widely used as both jet and rocket fuel IRL whereas gas turbines are much less common for aircraft. One possible reason for picking methane instead of kerosene could be for ISRU purposes, since making methane from CO2 and H2O is easier than making long-chain hydrocarbons like kerosene, however unless KSP2 is going to model boiloff and/or buff rocket ISPs to match the better performance of methalox over kerolox it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Kerbalism is designed so that LF is assumed to be methane for ISRU purposes, but then it also says that oxidiser is hydrogen peroxide in its ISRU system, possibly to balance the ISP numbers back down to what’s actually seen in KSP; a strange combination of fuel and oxidiser that (as far as I know) has never been used by any rocket.

I don’t know about the game files, but there’s the Re-entry Particle Effect mod that activates some built-in but inactive stock re-entry effects- a plasma trail and some sparks. Maybe that’s what you’re after?

I suggest you do what the message is saying and delete one of the .dll files. You can also insert images into your posts using the “insert image from URL” button in the bottom right of the text box, to do that for an imgur image link you need to tweak it slightly, so https://imgur.com/aaIEt4f would become https://i.imgur.com/aaIEt4f.png, then you can insert the image right into your post like this: I’d also like to offer you a piece of advice that could save you a lot of pain in the future- never put mods in the Steam copy of KSP, it causes no end of trouble. Instead, copy the entirety of KSP (Steam/steamapps/common/Kerbal Space Program) and paste that somewhere else, then put your mods in this new copy. For reasons unknown Steam likes to meddle with KSP’s files and frequently breaks mods; in days gone by there was also the issue of game updates breaking mod compatibility, but that’s no longer an issue since KSP has reached its final major version (1.12) and only an occasional bug fix is expected now.

Unless there’s an atmosphere there’s no point using a space plane- especially for Tylo. A simple design of Mk1 lander can - FL-T400 fuel tank - Terrier is enough to land on Pol, Bop and Vall, plus you can stick an expendable stage underneath it and use it for Tylo too, so that one lander can do 4/5 moons. A Laythe SSTO plane can be done with relative ease compared to Kerbin, the lower gravity and thinner air makes it easier to accelerate and you’ll get closer to orbital velocity on air-breathers alone.

RCS not firing for controls but firing for H = avionics problem.

I've looked on both a tablet and a PC and I can't see your image in either. @Jeb x Valentina can you reupload it?

What happened to Dulok after Shrek left? On the one hand, the removal of a tyrannical despot with a Napoleon complex would be a good thing, but on the other hand there didn’t appear to be anyone obvious to step up and fill the power vacuum- which history has shown time and again will only lead to more problems down the line. All three of the sequels focus on Far Far Away whereas Dulok doesn’t even get a mention in any of them (to my knowledge at least), it seems a bit weird that after doing all that worldbuilding they’d just abandon it completely.

My Moon base almost ran out of water, which is problematic as there are two crew aboard who need water to, you know, not die. Hitting some life support modules with a hammer made them work correctly again (stupid Kerbalism bug) but even with fuel cells and water recyclers running at full tilt they’re still going to run out pretty soon. A resupply mission is being built with all possible haste, but in the meantime I have a few options: Option A, evacuate the crew. I’d rather not resort to this, but they have a lander with which to return to orbit and that has some water on board. They could wait it out in the orbiting station until the resupply mission arrives, however that is heavily dependent on the station being in a position from which the lander can reach it- not so easy when the base is roughly equatorial but the station orbits at about 150 degrees inclination (in the plane of the Moon’s orbit around the Earth, only retrograde because free returns). Option B, move the crew into the surface rover and do some exploring. Sounds great, except it’s dark and Bon Voyage is a bit iffy with Kerbalism fuel cells. It also doesn’t solve the problem of no water on the base, in fact it probably makes it worse as without the crew on board many power-hungry life support systems would turn off, reducing the load on the fuel cells and thus reducing water output. Option C, steal water from the rover and put it in the base. The resupply missions I’m using are self-propelled rovers with a klaw on the front, one is currently grappled to the base but could be used to grab the rover and siphon water out of it, then return to the base. This would be enough to keep the crew not dead until the next supply mission, with even more water than the last one, arrives to replenish their supplies.

I’ll take a guess and say you didn’t set your avionics to deep space. Near Earth avionics are exactly what they say on the label- they only work close to Earth (the limit is 2x geostationary altitude, or about 76Mm); beyond that they don’t give any more control than a science core, you can fire RCS forwards and maybe fire an engine but that’s about it.

I can't access that link, you need to make the files publicly viewable.

Those sound like the sort of numbers I’d expect for a heavily modded game- in fact I regularly get even worse memory use and load times when using the extremely modded RSS/RO/RP-1. You can reduce both memory use and load times by cutting down on mods, especially parts mods and especially those with detailed interiors- they use a lot of memory when a vessel is loaded but unless you’re a die-hard IVA fan they’re usually not what you’re interested in. The key is to be utterly ruthless- unless you absolutely must have a certain part in your game, delete it and save yourself a bit of memory; likewise any mods you don’t have a critically important use for, get rid of them. The same holds true for load times, only it’s active vessels you should delete- a save file can quickly bloat to be millions of lines and many megabytes in size, which must be read and written in full when loading/saving the game or changing scenes. Any vessels which have finished their missions or which you don’t really need to keep should be terminated to make your save file smaller and thus make load times slightly less slow.

I finally did that Moon rover thing I was talking about. Nothing fancy, just an old Orange Mug rover from many reports back stuck on top of a modified Orange Cliff. Direct descent Moon landing, just like I used to do many months ago (in real time- in game time it's the better part of a decade now), was successful at the "putting the rover on the surface in one piece"bit, less so for the "landing on the same hemisphere as the base" bit. I'll let Bon Voyage make up the difference. A veteran crew of Moon landers went up to do some crewed LEO contracts, which wasn't terribly interesting for them judging by their 2-4 month retirement extensions but made a tidy sum in contract money and also proved the latest iteration of the Yellow Croissant is fully capable of completing these contracts. This mission also took this save over to 1964- the year when I aim to launch a crew out to Mars, though they'll probably arrive in early 1965 due to the timing of the transfer window. As usual for these flights, the upper stage deorbited itself after stage separation. Onwards to Mars, where there's action on the surface- the Orange Island rover finally made it to its rover waypoints to complete the Mars rover contract after thousands of kilometres of driving and will now have to drive thousands more to get over to the Blue Pawn sample return craft. Beat that, Percy! It was also time to move the Blue King lander on the surface of Phobos- I ended up landing it in Stickney Crater to get a second batch of science readings, but after this I think it's probably best to head back to the orbiter and set a course for Deimos to get at least one sample from each for the return contracts. Simulations then followed for the crewed Mars rover, which weren't particularly successful... 800m/s at 10km altitude isn't a good thing, but some parachute tweaks should make it able to slow down in time. Hopefully. Staying with Mars, I also tried turning the Yellow Pain-au-chocolat into a Mars lander by sticking some landing legs and parachutes on it. This had mixed results- I had to add a heatshield to avoid the fuel tank incinerating itself (perhaps aerobraking with a tank with maximum MLI wasn't the best idea...) and then the final descent speed was a bit too high due to a slightly too late braking burn and, well... The idea shows a bit of promise so I won't be abandoning it completely, but it's clear more work is needed. I also took a look at a rather different destination- Titan. With low gravity, a thick atmosphere (600km total height and over 1.3atm at sea level) and orbital velocity less than that of stock Laythe, Titan is completely survivable even when bombing into the atmosphere from a very high apoapsis and with a negative periapsis, with no heat shielding required. With that in mind I created a tiny little science lander that should get a load of science from the surface. I considered a rover, but Titan has some "oceans" and stuff on it that might hamper rover-based exploration and besides- launching a cluster of probes like this could mean some land in the oceans and can produce useful data while splashed down, whereas a rover couldn't do that. The plan is to use the same chassis used on the Ceres/Vesta scanners, but replace the heavy scanning gubbins with eight landers, four relays and a really big folding dish: the landers use their X-band omni antennae to communicate to the relays, which then use their quartets of X-band dishes to communicate with each other or with the main craft, which then sends the signals home using its big Ka-band dish. It's a bit expensive as everything needs RTGs for power- solar panels are barely 1% as effective out at Saturn compared to at Earth- but the returns should be significant and having that many landers means that even if some don't land in the right places or get destroyed the returns should still be huge. Final scores: Coming up next time: I need to fix the typo in the White Huygens' name (that's the Titan mission, in case you didn't get the connection) and then there'll be a bit more work on a Mars lander and a bit of active mission management. A few transfer windows are approaching- Ceres, Vesta and Saturn are getting particularly close, though others aren't too far off either. 1964 should be an interesting year.

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best: Mk1 pod, FL-T400 tank, Terrier engine. Some landing gear made from cubic octagonal struts and BG grip pads for lightness, though regular landing legs would also work. A bit of RCS and a docking port to make it able to attach to other vessels, a couple of parachutes (a single main chute is all I needed, though you might want a drogue chute too) and it’s good to go. A nearly identical version that swaps the Mk1 pod for a Mk1 lander can, slightly better for airless bodies due to lower weight but its lack of pointiness made it less useful for Duna. In both cases there’s enough fuel to land on any airless body and return to orbit (except Tylo, where you might land and that’s it) and they can manage Duna as well due to the very low atmospheric pressure (ISP is almost at vacuum levels), plus it’s relatively small, low part count and light so can be used as part of a larger interplanetary mission- in fact I used these extensively in my two Grand Tour runs, even with the added weight that comes from Kerbalism’s life support systems and supplied they’re capable of landing on Moho, Gilly, Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, Vall, Bop, Pol and Eeloo. Yes, single seat only isn’t great, but for your first flags and footprints they’ll do the job cheaply and effectively.

Today I learnt: Saturn’s moon Titan has a lower orbital velocity than stock Laythe despite being many times larger (the ~1/4 gravity compared to Laythe probably helps) and a more favourable atmosphere for aerobraking. It’s entirely possible to just yeet a small probe into Titan’s atmosphere from a pretty elliptical orbit without needing any form of heat shielding or aeroshell as the re-entry heating is essentially non-existent. A fuel tanker I originally made to carry fuel out to the Moon to keep my reusable Moon landers running turns out to be a rather good interplanetary probe chassis (once the fuel tank is removed of course!) with plenty of space to mount antennae, solar panels/RTGs and a mission payload- like a cluster of eight landers and four relays to science the, uh, science(?), out of Titan.

Get your log files. The easy one is KSP.log, that’s right there inside the KSP root directory (if you downloaded KSP via Steam, just right click KSP in your Steam library and click “browse local files”; otherwise it’ll be wherever you told the installer to install it), the harder one is Player.log which is more detailed but buried in a folder tree behind a hidden folder- on Windows you’ll find it at C:/Users/(your username)/AppData/LocalLow/Squad/Kerbal Space Program, the AppData folder is hidden so you’ll need to turn on “show hidden folders” to see it. Put the logs on a file sharing site, preferably something easy to access and free from viruses like Dropbox or Google docs. Post a link to those log files here so people can look at them. You’re in the unmodded support forums so I assume you have no mods installed? What KSP version are you using, any DLCs, OS and PC specs?

Does loading a different save file work? (If you don't have another save file, try starting a new one and see if that works/if you can then select that from the main menu) It might help if you can post your log files- the easiest one to find is KSP.log, you'll find that right there in the KSP root folder (if you installed KSP via Steam, right click KSP in your library > browse local files; if not, go to wherever you installed it using the installer); a more detailed log file is available but is much harder to find- on Windows it's at C:/Users/<your username>/AppData/LocalLow/Squad/Kerbal Space Program, AppData is a hidden folder so you'll need to enable "show hidden folders" to see it.

Check your keybinds (main menu > settings > controls > editor(?)), I believe it's the same key you'd use to toggle angle snap in the editor which is X by default.

If you see #autoLOC_(numbers) then it’s a sign that your KSP install is a little bit broken, or maybe a lot. If you installed the game via Steam, first back up your saves (copy+paste to desktop) then uninstall and reinstall KSP via Steam, disable Steam cloud sync for KSP (right click KSP > Properties > untick the Steam cloud check box) and then verify local files (with the KSP Properties window open, click “Local files” then “verify integrity of game files”) to make sure that you have a pristine copy of KSP. Then right click KSP > browse local files, make a copy of the Kerbal Space Program folder and paste that outside Steam’s folders, and put your mods into the copy. If you aren’t using Steam, I still suggest uninstall/reinstall (with a fresh download) to fix this issue; Steam has a nasty habit of corrupting modded KSP though which is why I mentioned that first- never mod your Steam copy of KSP!

Rolling back a version of Procedural Parts fixed the paint issues, at least on everything I've looked at so far; I haven't looked at anything that got mangled last time but I might be able to do some save file hacking to fix it, maybe... First launch today is the second Blue Bungalow Mk2, following its twin a day later: It was dispatched to Venus, course correction plotted- only an hour later than its sibling despite leaving a day later, oddly enough. The new science experiments returned a nice haul of science data as they flew out of Earth's SOI too. And now for some pure eye candy- my first Saturn flyby, ever! A minor course correction was enough to swoop past the south pole of Enceladus at a mere 3km altitude; sadly no geysers detected, which could be because a) the south pole was in darkness due to Saturn's position in its orbit so the geysers simply weren't active, b) EVO's effects didn't load correctly/at all or c) both. Either way it gave a nice little science boost, although I missed an opportunity by forgetting that once the Saturn flyby contract was completed it would unlock flyby contracts for the moons, so I didn't take the Enceladus flyby contract until after this flyby was complete. With the RTGs depleted noticeably from when the probe was launched, power is a bit of an issue especially when trying to dump half a gigabyte of image spectroscopy data; that single experiment was using the most power, lasts the longest and producing vastly more data than all other experiments combined, yet had a really poor science reward for it, so I switched that off and the power situation was largely resolved. There should be enough power to complete the remaining experiments and transmit their data before leaving Saturn's SOI. The probe also came fairly close to Titan, getting a glimpse of its distinctive orange colouration; with a bit more trajectory finessing, maybe a Titan flyby would have been possible instead of Enceladus? Final scores for this report: The first of the new Green Condor Mk5 weather sat rockets launched with no issues at all; the first Orange Cliff Mk4, not so much- it reached its initial orbit fine, but ran out of RCS propellant and power before it could boost to its final tundra orbit. Both shortages have now been resolved (hopefully) and future models should be able to reach their target orbits without such issues. I also looked at adding some SCANsat parts to the Blue Draughtsman probes going to Ceres and Vesta, however the parts required are far too large and heavy for a Blue (700t) class probe. Rummaging around the craft files I came to the White Planck, the Moon fuel tanker that's built to take propellant out for the reusable Moon landers, which can handle about 40 tons of payload with a decent delta-V. Chopping off the propellant tank and replacing it with some SCANsat parts, solar panels and RTGs created a probe that has a delta-V of about 9km/s- which should be more than enough for this mission. It also has the added bonuses of using existing parts and tooling, reliable engines with many restarts, reduced lox boiloff due to the distance from the Sun and it can be launched using a two-booster White Cloud which reduces launch costs. Coming up next time: Maybe I'll do that Moon sample return thing that I said I was going to do last time, or maybe I'll forget about it again...

Playing KSP plus reduced heating bills? I call that a win-win situation!

Right… First of all, why are you using stock parts in RSS? Unless you’re using SMURFF at full power to make them more realistically balanced, you’re going to have a really bad time of it. Stock parts are woefully underpowered compared to reality- fuel tanks have ridiculously high dry masses, engines have terrible thrust to weight ratios and so on- so I strongly recommend you either use SMURFF to rebalance those parts, or look into Realism Overhaul instead. Secondly, the wing positions are wrong. Take the fins off the tail and put them near the nose as canards instead, then shift the main wings back a bit. Right now those elevons on your main wings are going to provide zero pitch authority as they’re right on top of the wheels plus the fins further back will cancel out their pitch effects, while the fins at the back don’t have much leverage to lift the nose off the runway; by swapping to canards on the nose you increase the pitch leverage considerably, pull the nose up (generating more lift) rather than pushing the tail down (generating less) and if you shift the main wings back those elevons can come into play too for extra pitch control, not to mention the fact that your lift will be more balanced relative to the centre of mass. And thirdly, the main landing gear is a bit too far back. Move it forwards a bit and you might find pulling the nose up on three runway much easier.

No option for spagbol? Technically Kerbin’s sun shouldn’t be called the Sun- that term belongs solely to Earth’s Sun, Sol; but for simplicity’s sake it’s referred to as “The Sun” in game because people expect that to be the case. Many people will refer to it as Kerbol (i.e. Kerbin’s Sol) and some planet packs even rename it as such. If you use a KSP planet pack your sun (small s) might be called Ciro, Grannus or Fate/Destiny (binary stars, so you’d have two suns) but it will only really be the Sun if you use Real Solar System.

The launch of my new and improved (read: downgraded for reduced cost) contract satellite launcher went exactly according to plan- right up until the batteries ran out... Oops

We’re going to need the full logs, as well as your KSP version and mod list. Without that there’s almost nothing we can do to help.

So, those pentaborane super-rockets I made a while ago? Turns out between then and now someone has (very inconsiderately) added a rated burn time of under 150 seconds to the RD-270M so now none of them work. Back to the drawing board, I guess... As it turns out, a sick day off work meant I had most of a day to burn and spent most of that time iterating on the previous Black Emperor 750TTLEO rocket to the point where it didn't use a single RD-270M at all- the core became hydrolox with six M-1s and the boosters became kerolox with 2x F-1A and 1x E-1 slotted in between for a bit of extra oomph off the pad; the boosters were comically oversized as they had to hold both the kerolox mix for the booster engines but also a significant quantity of hydrolox for the core stage too, acting as drop tanks in the same way that I often do with solid boosters in stock-ish KSP. In the end it proved more than up to the task- while total payload to LEO is down to about 700 tons, that's still more than I need to put the various component parts of the Mars ship into orbit, plus it doesn't need any new tooling beyond the newest avionics available (which pay for their own tooling the first time you use them, the cost goes down by the same amount as it costs to tool them; ironically enough I then unlocked another tech node with the last avionics upgrade shortly afterwards...) The only trouble with that whole plan is the cost- about a million funds per launch, with four launches required to assemble the ship (plus a lander that I really should think about designing...) and I simply don't have that kind of cash. Fortunately, I do have a means of getting it which involves sending two crew down to the surface of the Moon and bringing the pair already down there back home. Moontage! And now for the egregious bug, tentatively blamed on Procedural Parts: Brian and Dave drove the rover over to the Yellow Muffin X lander to return to orbit; note the correct paint job with the white, red and black pattern. I then drove the rover back to the base, just outside physics range, then when I switched back to the lander... Paintjob gone! This happened every time I loaded a craft- in the editor, in flight, previously built craft spawned in via KCT on the launchpads- and it's always resetting the tanks to the default values of plain metal sides and custom ends (annoying circles, see below); weirdly the paint scheme on the sides seems to persist the first time the craft is loaded even though the settings have changed, but load it again and it resets itself to a single colour. I've rolled back PP to see if that prevents this issue, but several crafts have already been affected and I may have to redesign some stuff to fix whatever hasn't been launched yet. After returning to the station there was a bit of an awkward moment as disabling the lander's generic thrusters also caused one of the Yellow Pain-au-chocolat Apollo craft to undock; worse still, its RCS thrusters refused to fire due to a strange propellant imbalance. Pilot Ann jetted over and managed to sort things out, docking back to the station and fixing up the propellant issues before Dave and Brian joined her for the return trip. During their five day return trip there was plenty of time to launch some probes. The White Tombaugh was first, suffering a minor mishap as part of the fairing got stuck on the edge of the S1-S2 interstage for a while after separation but proceeding to orbit without any harm done. A periapsis kick to lessen the transfer burn duration, an apoapsis kick to avoid the atmosphere and a near 30 minute burn hurled the probe off towards Pluto at a staggering speed. No chance of an orbit out there, but the probe is aiming to bomb into Pluto's "atmosphere", which makes Mars' look like Venus', or attempt a blink-and-you'll-miss-it flyby of Charon. Next to launch was the first of two Blue Backgammon Mk2 orbiter/rover missions destined for Venus. The first Blue Backgammon worked pretty well and has returned a plethora of science, but the Mk2 features better science experiments and minor tech upgrades across the board. Following on the heels of that launch was the Blue Draughtsman Venus, the first of a series of Blue Draughtsman probes that will head to various planets in the next year or so. Featuring more and better science than the Blue Backgammon Mk2 orbiters, this probe should rake in the science. The second Blue Backgammon Mk2 wasn't ready in time to be launched with these probes so will launch when it can to catch the tail end of the transfer window. A few days later, Ann, Dave and Brian returned to Earth, definitely didn't explode because the Apollo heatshield is bugged and lets the capsule behind it overheat on re-entry and splashed down safely, completing two contracts- the first, rotate the crew of the Moon station, paid a handy half million; the second, expanded Lunar surface outpost, paid out ten times that amount, enough to build all the parts of the Mars ship and tool all the parts that needed tooling for it too. Final scores for this report: There has also been a veritable flood of science coming in recently- over 3000 points since the last report!- which gave a ton of KCT points and allowed nearly every tech node that actually has something in it to be added to the queue. Not that I plan to actually get that far along, but you never know... Coming up next time: The second Venus rover, maybe a sample return device to get all the samples currently stuck on the Moon's surface back to Earth (five in the rover, five in the base being processed at a heady 3B/s) and possibly the launch of the Nuclear Space Tug. I'll also assess the damage to the planned vessels' paint schemes and fix it where possible, though anything currently in existence is probably borked for good