jimmymcgoochie

I’m at the stage of considering a direct approach from the Jool transfer, bombing down at interplanetary speeds with an expendable booster just to slow down to a survivable speed before tanking into the atmosphere. Relies a lot on very precise timing though, plus I’d also have to capture the main ship into a high Jool orbit at around the same time which could get messy... Vall should be a bit easier, but now I’ve also discovered that using even one unpressurised pod (Mk1 pod or cockpits) makes the entire ship unpressurised- even when their habitats are disabled; really ruins the stress score, but there’s nothing I can do to fix that. Or is there? A little part hack here and there would do the job nicely methinks.

Fair enough. Maybe if they slowed the flashing down a bit though..?

@Spaceman.Spiff hang on- they removed the Friday emoji!? Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo(deep breath)oooooooooooooooooooooooooo

@king of nowhere maximum shielding, to the extend that it makes the plane sink if it lands in the water, but I still get huge radiation issues going down to Laythe from a 100-125Mm orbit of Jool, the best I’ve ever done is 48% irradiation to the surface and I might be able to push back out again in the high nineties; shielding efficiency is worse with higher difficulty levels so this might explain the discrepancy. I was at 1100 parts, trying to cut that down by trimming anything I don’t absolutely need to try and make the game (more) playable.

Depending on what I’m doing I can use anything from zero (on my old potato computer) to over 100 (my current RSS/RO/RP-1 game) and anything in between. I usually include MechJeb, Restock/+, KAC and EVE/scatterer/DOE/whatever graphics pack is applicable for my current solar system; Near Future mods are high on the list (and most of Nertea’s other stuff like SSPX and Kerbal Atomics), SCANsat is a must have and I like to use Kerbalism, even if it’s just the science config, to make gathering science more complex than just pressing some buttons and the experiments are done just like that.

Kraken montage: In other news, persistent thrust turns out to work pretty well- it runs about 10x slower than it should, so at 10x time warp game time actually runs at real speed- but further experiments will be required before I know it'll do what I need it to do. I also think I know how to get to Laythe and back without radiation killing the poor chump who gets sent down there- using one of the space tugs (slash spare Tylo descent stage) as an expendable booster gives enough delta-V to crash down through the Jool Death ZoneTM and only take 48% radiation damage by the time they land on Laythe, with the spaceplane itself handling the return and with some decent timing making it back out again without reaching 100% radiation. Laythe's surface has just 1% of the radiation that you get in orbit so staying on the ground until the last possible moment will be key; having to wait for even half an orbit before the escape burn could be lethal. I've also made some changes to Intrepidity's engines, swapping the Wolfhounds on the outer boosters for more NERVs- less thrust, but better efficiency and the way they're feeding fuel that's more important than outright thrust, I can break up the longer burns into bitesized chunks to avoid wasting fuel.

There are pros and cons to both options- Procedural fairings are more customisable, both in terms of shape and appearance, and will automatically adjust their shape to whatever payload you attach, whereas stock fairings have a limited set of colours and you need to build their shape manually, and also have a maximum radius; Stock fairings can be made open-ended or connect to other parts e.g. an LES tower, which procedural fairings don’t seem to do as far as I can tell- procedural parts tend to be for one specific use e.g. a fairing, an interstage shroud or an engine boattail, whereas stock fairings are a bit more flexible and can do any/all of those things if you want (this is based on my experiences in RO/RP-1, using procedural fairings in a more regular KSP game might be different); Stock fairings can have multiple stack nodes to mount more than one payload, for example a set of relays, which procedural fairings do not; In the end, it’s up to you to try them both and see which version you prefer.

This error message is harmless in the case of FAR, but to get rid of it I think you can: Open the craft; Edit it in any way; Save the craft. Try that and let me know if it works- I'd rather not be giving out useless/incorrect advice if I can help it

I just put Intrepidity through its paces in orbit, and oh dear... 2FPS at best, dropping to 1 at full power; 6 seconds of real time per 1 second of game time; at x4 time warp it actually becomes seconds per frame and still takes 3-4 real seconds per game second- and all this AFTER I stripped out a hundred or so parts by simplifying some of the secondary propulsion modules. This isn't going to be workable, 4 minutes of game time took almost half an hour and the apoapsis was barely half way to the Mun by that point. Solution 1: use some mods to cut down on part count- 5m fuel tanks carrying only liquid fuel would be particularly useful, supersized solar panels to generate loads of power would be good but could backfire due to part failures, even bipropellant (LF/Ox) multi-nozzle RCS thrusters would be helpful; but this would take away from the challenge of doing this as stock as possible- the stock system shouldn't need (m)any mods to do a Grand Tour even with Kerbalism. Solution 2: increase physics warp rate considerably, hope everything doesn't disintegrate (which is pretty likely). Solution 3: persistent thrust? Burn in the background so the vessel isn't loaded and the game doesn't chunk along at glacial pace, but not sure how that would work as I've never used it before. Solution 4: go with it as it is, let MechJeb worry about throttling down once the burns are done and pay attention to other things while KSP runs in the background for a very, VERY long time. Thoughts anyone?

There’s a Kerbal Atomics patch to make most LF-only engines use liquid hydrogen, I think it’s called KerbalAtomicsNTRsUseLH2 or something similar on CKAN or could be found inside Kerbal Atomics itself if downloaded directly, which makes all nuclear engines from most mods use hydrogen instead with an ISP buff to go with it.

I’m genuinely amazed that you managed to run RSS/RO/RP-1 with just 8GB of RAM- in my experience you need at least 16GB and I could barely get KSP (1.11.2) to run in a playable way with 8GB on my old PC. The only thing you can realistically do is buy more RAM.

Get the log files for KSP, upload them to a file sharing site of your choice (preferably one that others can access, like Dropbox or google docs) and then post the link(s) here. You’ll find KSP.log inside the KSP directory, other logs can be found using this guide: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/83213-stock-support-bug-reporting-guide/ Are you playing KSP through steam? If so, try verifying the game files- right click KSP in your Steam library > Properties > Local Files > verify integrity of game files, then launch KSP again and see if that fixes it.

If the trick was to create Kerbal Slideshow Program!

Tried adding an expendable transfer stage to hurl Jeb at Laythe from a high (100Mm) orbit of Jool, burning aggressively to force an encounter with as little time spent in the deadly radiation zone as possible; Jeb still died before escaping again, and I discovered that all the heavy shielding on the cockpit means that the plane will sink if it lands in water- not good for a moon that’s almost entirely ocean!

I looked into water to hydrolox ISRU systems a while ago and until you unlock the big ISRU in one of the last life support/ISRU nodes it’s not practical even on Mars where water is more readily available than the Moon. It would take years to produce enough propellant for a single Moon landing because the rate of water electrolysis is so low, plus you have to either find or transport the water and deal with two weeks of continuous darkness every month. Storable propellants can’t be made, but they also don’t boil off and require smaller tanks. A suitable rocket could throw 50 tons or more into Lunar orbit, enough fuel for multiple Moon landings; once the 50 ignitions on the KTDU run out, swap it out for another one with KIS/KAS.

OK, hear me out for a moment: KTDU plus generic thrusters. KTDU does most of the work during the descent, generic thrusters with a TWR of just above 1 (or below 1 but also chunky RCS with a bit of throttling, fore by throttle switched on and toggleable with an action key) using the same fuel do the final touchdown, KTDU does the ascent, generics for rendezvousing and so on in orbit to save ignitions. I haven’t tried it myself, but I see no reason why it wouldn’t work.

The Intrepidity is nearly complete: On the top, the lower stages of the Eve lander; they're heavy and only have one purpose, so I'm aiming to go to Eve as soon as possible so I don't have to drag it around everywhere else. Attached just below the top cupola, four lander craft- Mk1 pod, FL-T400 tank, Terrier engine, some gubbins to provide power and some more gubbins to dock them to other things at either end. One has no shielding to be used on Eve, where delta-V is critical and radiation is less of a concern; two have maximum shielding to go to Vall, there's a spare in case of critical part failures as Jool is pretty late on my list of destinations; and one has a little bit of shielding to land on Tylo, and possibly Moho too as it has a weird little radiation belt around its equator. They have ~2400m/s or so of delta-V each, depending on shielding levels, so will be more than adequate for landing anywhere else- I tested one on Duna and with a single parachute stuck to the top it landed with no issues and made it back to orbit with fuel to spare. Below those, three boosters/space tugs- one of these will do the Tylo descent, another is a spare for that and the third will be used to throw landers around if necessary. There's a 1.25m>0.625m docking adapter on the fourth port where the Laythe plane will go, it can't be added on in the editor as it uses an inflatable airlock as its docking port, which has no front attachment node. The central core consists of a Hitchhiker, lab module and a greenhouse which I'll use to produce extra food when close enough to the sun and then switch off when it starts drawing too much power. Plenty of interior volume for a crew of three, no problems with stress, all fully shielded plus three active shields and the radiation detox unit in the Hitchhiker should mean radiation isn't a problem either; that RDU will be getting used A LOT around Jool! Below the crew section is a sort of service module, containing batteries, reaction wheels, food/water/oxygen for the crew to stay alive, nitrogen for pressurisation, hydrogen for the emergency fuel cells, many backup life support systems and lots of spare parts packed into a big cargo container. There are three active shields to protect against low level radiation, effective against up to 0.12rad/h which is much more than you'll get from the sun under normal circumstances, but will do almost nothing at all against the radiation belts of Kerbin, let alone Jool. Two enormous solar wings house a total of 44 Gigantor solar panels, with four more on the central module to provide power when the ship is under construction. Four Communotron 88-88 dishes- two on the body and one on each solar wing- cover long-distance communications. Under that, the propulsion module- the central core has 16 NERVs and a single Wolfhound engine, with each of the eight radial boosters housing another eight NERVs and one Wolfhound apiece. Each radial booster has its own solar panels, RCS and reaction wheels, radiators, control core and a small relay dish to allow remote control, as well as a small docking port on the top which could be used to dock a lander or the Laythe plane to, to get them where they need to be- or back to the mothership. Fully fuelled and including the Laythe plane, this thing is looking like it'll weigh close to 3500 tons; initially I thought I might be able to launch up to 400 tons at once meaning one propulsion module at a tine, however... Things get a lot easier when you can launch over 1500 tons on a single rocket! I tested it with four of the radial boosters for Intrepidity and it handled them with no trouble at all: Unfortunately things didn't go so well when I started docking them together for orbital storage- one three were connected up the whole thing tore itself apart in seconds. That pesky Kraken... I tried again, but launching most of the ship in a single go, minus fuel. Things were going well, right up until the boosters were due to separate; the game froze for over a minute, then... A quick test flight of the Laythe plane I'll be using proved a) it's more than capable of getting down from an orbit higher than Bop's, aerobraking aggressively in Laythe's atmosphere to a direct descent, landing, flying back to orbit and then escaping Jool's radiation belts again, and b) that if I do all that, the pilot will inevitably die of radiation poisoning several days before escaping Jool's radiation belts. It's a good thing I have some space tugs and maybe even one of the radial boosters to hurl stuff around much faster than the most efficient Hohmann transfer, between that and some good timing I might be able to dive through the belts, land, wait a while for the next escape window (radiation on Laythe's surface is very low, the atmosphere absorbs most of it somehow so it's relatively save down on the surface) and then burn like crazy to escape again. Now, I could try launching this thing in many pieces and building it in orbit... Or I could install the KSTS mod to pre-record a flight of that mega-rocket carrying some ballast as payload mass, launch a space station with it, then use the space station as an orbital shipyard to build the Intrepidity in orbit instead, costing me nothing but time- nearly 300 days in fact- and saving me a lot of hassle with docking thousands of tons of spacecraft together with the frame rates chunking along like a slideshow due to the huge part count. I'm doing a Grand Tour with Kerbalism on hard settings, why would I want to complicate things any further than I already have? The only problem with the KSTS route is that it sometimes goes a bit, er, wrong... That was supposed to be the same Laythe SSTO shown in the image above, but somehow it got utterly mangled when it spawned in and I barely managed to deorbit it before putting a replacement in orbit and docking it to the station for safekeeping. The first window to Eve is over a year away, so there's plenty of time to do some additional test flights to make sure everything works before I set off. There's also time to select my three plucky Kerbonauts who will be making this fateful trip- rather than use Jeb, Bob, Bill and Val I'm going for three totally new Kerbals, one scientist to run the lab and two engineers to repair stuff and do EVA construction. No pilots- between probe cores and MechJeb I don't need them.

I must have missed that, or my data was wrong. Either way it makes NERVs look even better.

The rocket equation: Delta-V =g0xISPxln(m0/mf), this tells you how far you can go; g0 is standard gravity, 9.807m/s/s; ISP is per engine, let’s assume 350s for the Poodle; m0 is the wet mass of the craft including all the fuel; mf is the empty mass, after all the fuel has been burnt; any excess propellant e.g. monopropellant counts as dry mass for this equation since you’re not burning it in the engine. ln is natural log. The mass ratio is m0/mf, or in simple terms how much of your rocket’s mass is fuel compared to not-fuel; in stock KSP this is limited by fuel tanks which have a mass ratio no greater than 9, so you can’t have a mass ratio above 9 even if your rocket is made of thousands of fuel tanks and one tiny engine. ln(9) is 2.197, so let’s put that into the equation: delta-V = 9.807 x 350 x 2.197 = 7541m/s. This is the fundamental limit for the Poodle engine, no matter what you do you cannot go higher than this on a single stage. Swap to the Wolfhound with 380s, the maximum possible delta-V is 9.807 x 380 x 2.197 = 8187m/s. If you use multiple stages you can get more delta-V overall, but just remember that for each stage, whatever it’s carrying on top is counted as dry mass, so your mass ratio will be even lower and so delta-V will be reduced on that stage. If you actually want to get somewhere and do something useful when you’re there, your mass ratio will be worse than the ‘ideal’ value because of the extra weight of your payload and to get a usable thrust to weight ratio so you actually get there without sitting for hours and losing delta-V through cosine losses, which happen whenever you burn in a direction other than directly prograde or retrograde. Now the NERV is a little bit different because pure liquid fuel tanks (which are all based on aircraft fuselage shapes- Mk1, Mk2 and Mk3) are less mass-efficient than LF/Ox tanks so the best mass ratio you can get is 8 (ln(8) = 2.079) but on the other hand, ISP is more than double what any LF/Ox engine can manage so the maximum delta-V is higher: 9.807 x 800 x 2.079 = 16314m/s. The Dawn ion thruster is another level up from the NERV with a massive 4200s ISP, however xenon tanks have really poor mass ratios of 2.728 (ln(2.728) = 1.004) and the thrust is really low. Maximum delta-V with those is 9.807 x 4200 x 1.004 = 41620m/s! And just for fun, monopropellant- the Puff engine has an ISP of 250s, slightly better than RCS thrusters, and the best RCS tank has a respectable mass ratio of 8.5 (ln(8.5) = 2.140); 9.807 x 250 x 2.140 = 5246m/s. Not nearly as good as even the least efficient LF/Ox engines which manage 290s ISP in vacuum. TL;DR version- LF/Ox delta-V can’t go above about 7.5km/s on a single stage using the best stock engine (Poodle), or about 8.1km/s with the DLC Wolfhound engine; NERVs can get twice as much delta-V but their thrust is a lot less, ions can get over 5 times as much but their thrust is puny in comparison. NERVs are the best choice for long-range flights because of their superior delta-V compared to LF/Ox engines and their much greater thrust than ion engines, which also require electricity to function and producing/storing that power adds mass, reducing delta-V. Getting to and from planets in the stock system isn’t all that difficult, as long as you travel at the right time- there are various tools and mods that can help you time your transfers to use as little fuel as possible, meaning you can carry a bigger payload, use a lighter rocket or go to more places. Orbiting Duna and Eve with a crewed craft and returning is feasible with LF/Ox engines, though for larger vessels or trips further afield e.g. the moons of Jool, nuclear is the best option.

@Souptime I looked it up, and it turns out that my home nation Scotland is a bit of an outlier in that the age of majority (legal adulthood) is 16- everywhere else in the EU (and the UK) it’s 18, though many of those (including the rest of the UK) will allow marriage at 16 under certain specific conditions. Now that I’ve got the malaphors out of my system... Re. mods, so far I’ve mentioned several Near Future mods (Aeronautics and Launch Vehicles mostly, though others were on my mind when I wrote some details of spacecraft), Cryo Tanks and Engines, Mk-33, Mk4, Luciole, X-20, SSPX, SCANsat and JNSQ of course. There could be more that I’ve forgotten, it’s been a while and I’ve played various different KSP games since I started playing KSP- stock, stock with OPM, JNSQ, stock with Kerbalism, RSS/RO/RP-1... That being said, I don’t necessarily intend to ensure that everything I talk about has a real KSP analog- for example the Lindor V is essentially a Kerbal Saturn V with three stages and burning hydrogen in the second and third stages (the stock+MH Acapello only has 2 stages and wouldn’t make it to Kerbin orbit in JNSQ) and the Trailblazer is loosely based on a design I used in a career game in JNSQ to go to Duna, though that ship had zero life support because I wasn’t using a LS mod in that game.

I’m trying to do this without using parts mods, just what Kerbalism includes itself and what it does to the stock parts. DLCs are stock in my book so I’m using both of them and Restock just changed how the parts look rather than how they work so that’s fine, but so far the only part I’ve used outside of that so far is the 3.75m docking port from Restock+, and I can probably remove that since I now have a nice little launch rocket that can handle up to 2 kiloton payloads...

So this whole thing is your fault then? I’m trying to build a much smaller craft than your Dream Big, just to make the game run at something close to real speed for the several hours of burn time I’ll end up with

That log just cuts out in the middle of a line, no obvious errors before that so it could be a resource issue (running out of RAM) or you just need to leave it running for longer to let it load. A mod list would help, as would the more detailed Player.log found at C:/Users/your username here/AppData/LocalLow/Squad/Kerbal Space Program

A dozen LT-2s can support a ~100 ton craft landing on Eve at 5m/s, so I see no reason why four can’t support a 15t craft at 3m/s on the Mun. 15 tons does seem a bit heavy for a Mun lander though, screenshots please?

Radiators do absolutely nothing against re-entry heating, they’re only useful for dissipating the heat that your ISRU equipment generates. If you want to shield your drills more effectively, put them inside service bays which should protect them as long as you keep it closed, or inside fairings.