jimmymcgoochie

Looked like the second stage engine had an explosive failure to me, F3 or the TestFlight window would have proved it either way.

If stock KSP is causing your GPU to crash, then I'd suggest the problem is in the GPU, not KSP.

Repeated the Moon orbiter launch that failed last time, everything worked fine second time around and the probe is now in orbit of the Moon gathering all the science it can, while the upper stage successfully crashed into the Moon for science and profit. I also lost my two remaining Kerbals to retirements, but hired two more to replace them; I just realised as I write this that the new crew will be going for training on an orbital pod- Mercury or Vostok- so now there’s nobody that can fly my rocketplanes.

That’s not a relay…

Obligatory “you’re coming in retrograde” warning for that Jupiter probe.

First question- crew or no crew? For crewed vessels, maybe something like Angel125's Buffalo or Nertea's Near Future Spacecraft will have what you're looking for, or possibly NovaPunch which is currently being maintained by Linuxgurugamer (along with about half the total mods on CKAN); for uncrewed landers, I'd suggest Near Future Exploration (though that more or less requires Restock), possibly SSR Micro-Sat if you want something small and cheap to drop in groups. I don't use any mods specifically for landers, generally my strategy is "stick a rocket stage under a probe core, add legs and call it a day".

It’s not really a good idea to look at CoM/CoL when the plane is vertical in the VAB, look at it in the SPH instead.

Last year the GPU on my PC failed. Despite having the same processor and 32GB of RAM that it had before, running KSP through the integrated graphics system made it perform noticeably worse even with plain stock KSP. Looking down at terrain wrecked the frame rate most of all for some reason, something I’ve also seen when running KSP on an old potato desktop that was the cheapest in the shop a decade ago, so definitely aim the camera up as much as possible!I don’t recommend trying to use visual mods if you can barely run KSP without them. Turn the terrain details and textures down as low as you can, disable terrain scatters, turn off anti-aliasing, turn down part details and textures, turn off aero effects, reduce the number of patched conics to 3, reduce the max persistent debris to a very small number (but above zero, just in case), disable V-sync and turn off the frame rate limiter- this last one won’t do much when the game is running but can make a huge difference to load times as for some reason KSP loading is frame limited and I’ve seen three- or even four-figure FPS numbers loading off an SSD. Building vessels with more parts puts more pressure on the CPU and KSP is single threaded so modern multi-core, multi-thread processors can’t use their full potential.

I’ve had issues with this before, it went for nearly a year with the general discussion subforum returning a 500 response yet other pages were unaffected and I could access threads inside general discussion directly. It also affected other pages for a while and was inconsistent across different devices- PC, iPad and android phone and connecting via broadband or 4G. I think what fixed it for me was a total reinstallation of Windows in an attempt to fix what turned out to be a dead GPU, since I can access everything now (though I don’t recommend trying that just to fix one website!). I also cleared all cookies on my iPad and that works fine as well, so try removing all cookies and see if that helps you?

It’s a known issue with Parallax interfering with EVE city lights, check the Parallax mod thread and maybe there’s a solution there?

KSP 1.2??? That would explain it!

Launched a probe that was meant to go to lunar orbit, but two consecutive engine failures on the second and third stages torpedoed any chance of making it to Earth orbit, never mind the Moon.

A quick test flight of an orbital imaging satellite with a film return capsule. The science part worked fine, the return bit... not so much- the capsule overheated and exploded every single time in the simulations, when the re-entry profile should be survivable. Maybe it's a KSP 1.12 thing? This project will have to go on hold for a while until the return mechanism gets sorted out, either by an RO/RP-1 update or if I find an alternative part(s) to do the same job. The first real launch of this update is another Orange Cornet, completing a weather sat contract purely for profit. The next Orange Cornet had no contract to fulfil, but instead carried science experiments to a polar orbit to maximise the science yields. Once in orbit the avionics and engine of the second stage separated and deorbited, leaving the science core attached to the fuel tank and solar panels in orbit. There's no way to power a near-Earth avionics with these tech levels of avionics and solar panels so this is a necessary step to make the satellite function. Now for some simulations of a lunar orbiter/impactor mission. Newly unlocked Castor 1 solid boosters provide a useful kick off the launchpad, allowing a single RD-108 to push nearly 100 tons into the sky, while two RD-0105 upper stage engines will handle orbital insertion and trans-lunar injection. The Gamma-301 has served well so far with nearly double the thrust of the RD-0105 and a useful synergy with HTP powered RCS, but the longer burn time, superior ISP and lower oxidiser mass of kerolox mean that the RD-0105 is required for anything beyond LEO. Reliability on the RD-0105 isn't great though at 90% ignition success with no data units, so I'll probably swap some Orange Cornets on the build queue to use them instead of Gammas to improve the reliability on lower value launches. Despite PVG having some issues with the rocket, often cutting the main engine after about 5 seconds of flight or the upper stage tank's single MLI layer causing it to explode above 90km, in some simulations it got to orbit successfully and the second stage could deorbit itself with RCS while the third stage prepared for TLI. Fully guided TLI, then trajectory and attitude adjustment with the RCS followed by separation of the orbiter on top allows the third stage to move to a collision course with the Moon while the orbiter carries on to circularise at the Moon with four small solid motors. Whether the orbiter works well, barely or not at all will depend in no small part on the direction of the sun, since it has no attitude control of its own and must be properly aligned for the capture burn close to Earth. This sim was pretty marginal and the probe struggled a bit for power in lunar orbit, but the design is sound and two Orange Bugle rockets are now on the build queue. Now for a historic flight of the AR-3.1 as pilot Ilona Fischer becomes the first woman in space in February 1958, if only for about 30 seconds on a suborbital hop. I chose this pilot because her retirement date appeared to be the closest, however despite reaching space there was no bump to her retirement date and soon enough both she and fellow pilot Heidemarie Meyer left the space program. The other two pilots aren't due to leave for about a year, but I have well over a year's worth of research to do before getting basic orbital capsules even with the R&D upgrade I just did so it's incredibly unlikely that any of my starting four will be going to orbit. Another Orange Cornet contract sat launch went without incident and netted some more funds. Final scores after the R&D upgrade just finished and some KCT points were spent: Coming soon: Orbiting the Moon in 1958?

I think there's some kind of save file hack that can resolve faulty docking ports, but I don't know what it is. One way to find out would be to create a simple rover on the surface of Kerbin with a docking port on it, then dock two of those together and check the save file to see the docking ports' status, then overwrite every other docked docking port's status with that- a text editor such as VSCode or Notepad++ is recommended for this.

Update to the latest version of Scatterer and the problem should be solved.

I don't see it happening, even without current events. RosCosmos hasn't really done anything beyond low Earth orbit in its 31 years of existence, with two Mars-bound missions (Mars 96 and Fobos-Grunt) both failing in LEO and subsequently falling back to Earth; most of its efforts have gone into the ISS and joint projects with other agencies such as ESA and NASA. To put it bluntly, there's not much to add. Making History has a good selection of Soviet-era rocket parts- Vostok/Voskhod pods and airlock, engines and boosters to make a passable replica of the R-7 (and all the derivatives that use the same basic layout even now, 65 years after it first launched Sputnik 1 into orbit!)- plus the stock Stayputnik which is an obvious Sputnik 1 reference and even one of the four starter Kerbals, named after Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova.

Each docking port size is only compatible with others of the same size. In stock KSP: In the 0.625m size category you get the Clamp-O-Tron Junior and the Making History inflatable airlock (yes, that's a docking port too, but only when inflated); For 1.25m, Clamp-O-Tron docking ports- normal, shielded and inline in 1.25m and Mk2 fuselage variants; For 2.5m, Clamp-O-Tron Senior. Plenty of mods add docking ports, from the tiny Pico Ports to the gigantic 5m (and 7.5m?) docking ports from Near Future Launch Vehicles, but they're all size-dependent and can only dock to something of the same size. Some mod docking ports (e.g. in Near Future Construction and Pico Port) also have orientation constraints and will only let you dock if you're at a specific angle e.g. 90 degree increments, which makes orbital construction a lot easier as you don't have to dock everything at precisely the right angle. Stock docking ports now have the ability to rotate up to 15 degrees each, which can help with aligning things to build larger structures- or just to make everything neat and symmetrical; or to put it another way, perfectly balanced as all things should be.

Gas giants are mostly hydrogen, with a little helium too; oxygen is much denser than those and would naturally sink through the atmosphere, so by the time you reached an altitude with enough oxygen to breathe, the pressure would most likely turn you inside out if you tried. There's also the whole issue of hydrogen plus oxygen plus sparks (from lightning) equals MASSIVE EXPLOSIONS!!!!1!, which on the scale of a gas giant would be unimaginably destructive.

As of KSP 1.11 there’s a stock part: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Lightstrip_Mk1

A mod that magically conjures fuel out of nowhere? HyperEdit is your best bet.

Screenshot of the problem? If you’re using KSPCommunityFixes then you may have to open the drop-downs in the part windows to see the fuel tank size options.

Orange Cornet 4 was a navigation satellite launch, worked entirely as expected, pay no attention to the weird pink square sticking out of the avionics because PlanetShine got a dodgy update... A few flights of the AR-3 rocketplane bagged a lot of hypersonic science and some other experiment data along the way, with the odd X-planes high contract thrown in for good measure. I decided to add some wing strakes to make it look cooler improve the aerodynamics (somehow), which didn't make it fly any worse than before so that's a win in my book! I also discovered that the reason most of the RCS thrusters weren't working was that the RCS propellant is in the cockpit, but the decoupler behind it wasn't set to crossfeed. One flight got a bit more interesting though- and by interesting I mean EXPLOSIONS! It wasn't as bad as it looked though, two of the solid rockets in the emergency cockpit ejection system got cooked by a steeper than normal re-entry and could be replaced very quickly once the plane landed safely on the ground. The wheels are actually deployed in the image below, it's just a graphical glitch with the runway. And now to the main event- Operation Poke The Moon In The Face With A Rocket is go for launch! First attempt at launching, PVG decided it would be a good idea to separate stage two and immediately ignite and then shutdown the engine, wasting its ignition. Game fault = free revert, so I launched again with the engine one stage higher than the decoupler and it worked fine. TLI burn proceeded... ...and I cut the engine marginally too early so the probe would miss the Moon by about 300km. Which I was prepared to accept, right up until I started time warping and the trajectory changed dramatically- it went from lunar periapsis of 300km to not even reaching the Moon's SOI at all! Come on, KSP, what's with that? Missing the Moon due to pilot error is fine, but missing the Moon entirely because of a stupid time warp glitch is definitely not. With no save between launching and the trajectory glitch, I had to fly it again from the launchpad; third time was the charm as on this attempt it reached Earth orbit with no trouble and the TLI burn resulted in a trajectory that would impact the Moon. Ignore the white line coming out of the avionics, that's PlanetShine with a second buggy update. Just getting to the Moon gave out a very large quantity of funds... But this probe's going to get even closer! Bonk! A second large contract payout, with bonus science! Nearly 400k funds from those two contracts was supplemented by some hefty advances for other contracts, so for the first time in this career I have more than half a million funds. I'll probably spend half of that on the first R&D upgrade, which is needed for crewed orbital capsules. My four pilots will probably retire before that stuff gets unlocked though, which is a shame, but maybe some suborbital flights in the AR-3 will push their retirement dates back a bit? Coming soon: The AR-3 is capable of reaching 140km, if only briefly, so I might try some suborbital hops to keep the pilots amused while building more contract Earth orbit satellites and a second lunar orbiter.

What was that ascent!? Swerving 90 degrees one way then the other is NOT how you launch into the right orbital plane!

Not all parts can be used for EVA construction- large parts such as the NERV are simply too big and bulky. It's also quite common to have strange forces applied to your vessels when EVA constructing, if your engineer is moving relative to either vessel then clicking to attach a part can clip it slightly inside it, potentially allowing it to briefly exert a force on the vessel it's being attached to before the game realises it's attached; though 24m/s seems pretty excessive for that. It's a good idea to have your engineer grab on to something like a pod or ladder to stop this from happening, and to dock/grab the two vessels together to stop them drifting relative to each other.

The newest version of PlanetShine is to blame, go back two versions to (I think) 0.2.6.3 and it should be fine.