Clamp-o-Tron

That's not what it is- that stuff is called Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI), and it's basically space-grade Mylar sheets layered (of course) over each other to thermally insulate (of course) a spacecraft. It's quite good at keeping thermal radiation from moving around, but is abysmal at stopping heat conduction- which is why it's only used in vacuums where conduction isn't an issue. Most of the time, radiation shielding for your electronics won't be needed- you just want specially designed hardware to greatly reduce the chance or impact of a cosmic ray or high-energy proton flipping a bit. In extreme circumstances, like passing through the largest planetary magnetosphere in the solar system, what you're looking for is something like Juno's electronics vault, made of 1 cm thick Titanium, which- unfortunately- isn't very good at being lightweight, weighing about 35 kg for a square meter of shielding. For illustration, here's a picture of the installation onto Juno. (The vault is the box thing, of course). So a service bay wouldn't do much good- but it's still a good idea to add radiation damage to computers (probe cores), and a way to protect them from it in high-risk areas like magnetospheres or coronal mass ejections. And BTW- computers are by far the most vulnerable to radiation. Electronics are all around any spacecraft of course, but they aren't affected much, as the damage from radiation is usually microscopic, on the level that memory is encoded onto a hard drive. Mechanical components will almost never fail because of these issues, although there is one notable case where reaction wheels kept breaking because coronal mass ejections caused static discharges through the flywheel assembly, causing the steel ball bearings to deposit little bumps of metal on their casing, hindering their movement. This has been fixed with a move towards ceramic bearings instead.

No. Please don’t force players to find a hidden planet that would be several times harder than Eeloo to find even IF you could see it. This would heavily hurt sandbox players, people who want to do craftfile sharing, everyone who sees the parts in trailers and screenshots and YouTube videos, and basically everyone who isn’t part of a dedicated KSP community- probably >75% right now, and even more with KSP2 being more accessible and published by an AAA studio. Easter eggs should be cosmetics at most- and usually I prefer to see them as additional story points, or jokes between developers and players. Even not-completely-serious parts like those from the mod “Kraken Science” probably don’t belong as Easter eggs, nevermind integral parts of the game and its progression.

Clementine I think

Somebody show these to Felipe in 2010… he would have just about the biggest shock of his life.

The title says it all. Do you pronounce it Jill-y, like the name, or Gill-y, like a fish's breathing organ? Personally, I pronounce it Gill-y, with a painful amount of #3 as well.

as always, yes. I've made some things I haven't pushed yet, and am a bit distracted by another (secret!) project.

Just because SLS isn't reusable doesn't make it non-sustainable. It's also politically rock-solid. In addition to the Artemis crew launches (maybe 3 every 2 years?), which it is needed for continuing into the 2030s (Starship crew, (or any propulsive landing without backups) is a bad idea until it can be *very* reliable, and any of the other jury-rigged Orion on Falcon Heavy ideas don't really work) Anyway, to avoid going too off-topic, SLS production that isn't used for Artemis could pretty easily be harnessed for putting probes on very high-energy trajectories, perfect for your planetary science needs. The only problem is that there aren't too many of those missions in the works, and launch windows and the escalation of production are ramping up fast.

It was seriously studied as a US contribution to the future Venera-D Russian Venus omnibus, but I think international cooperation (aside from instruments) on that has more or less been ruled out by Roscosmos. Anyway, aside from TRIDENT, of which we will probably get a much-enhanced version of as one of the 2030s flagship missions, the other proposal (IVO) is a pretty big loss. There are a lot of probes destined for Jupiter in the near future, including Europa Clipper, JUICE, a Chinese orbiter "Gan De" and maybe an ISRO orbiter, but only "Gan De" has a possibility of doing extensive Io studies or even any flybys, and that's only one of many (very nebulous to western eyes) options for the mission. It makes sense to decline it though, it needs RTGs and those are very costly and scarce things. Anyway, DAVINCI+ and VERITAS are really important and really cool missions to such an oft-neglected planet. I kind of expect Rocket Lab to put out their micro-Venus-probe-on-Photon white paper soon, to see if they can get anyone to pay them for it.

https://science.nasa.gov/science-pink/s3fs-public/atoms/files/Neptune Odyssey.pdf Cassini-like orbiter with atmospheric probe, 16-year direct trajectory, operation into the 2060's. Launched on SLS Block 2 with a Centaur (probably V) in 2033. I would say it's quite possible.

Yeah, I'm a huge fan of Edna, Dres, and the rest of the other barely-in-hydrostatic-equilibrium dark grey rocks. JNSQ Mun looks AMAZING imho. Edna and Dres are a huge challenge to send crew to (with Kerbalism), which I love, and are difficult (and scientifically rewarding!) enough to justify large Saturn V-scale boosters launching uncrewed orbiter and lander combinations. The Joolian and Lindorian rocky moons are also enticing for orbiters, but this may be because I like to play Pokemon with my probes. On that topic, I've got a mission in very early stages of development to gather truckloads of science from the mysterious world of Nara. With enough Near Future Propulsion (and maybe Far Future!), I think I can send several tons of payload into Nara orbit in just about 10 years- better than the 30-odd you'd have on a direct Hohmann transfer. Screenshots will come if I ever do that, I wouldn't be surprised if many people here haven't ever seen Nara or Hamek up close.

IDK about how the naming would work IRL, but it makes sense given that the variant’s core is using an RD-0120 or -0122 hydrolox engine and tanks, instead of the kerolox used by the boosters and most other Angara variants.

The engine offset is part of the full operational variant, and is not just some developmental half-way. The offset is probably to allow testing of propulsion systems alongside the main OMS. If I misunderstood the question, the variant Dylan is making is the X-37B (despite the crew services name). The X-37 was before it was adopted by the DoD, and the X-37C is a future (larger) variant capable of holding some number of crew. That’ll probably never be built though.

Planetside Exploration Technologies, primarily. JNSQ Minmus

Just raising the prospect of the Pegasus satellite in BDB. I know what they meant, the name just struck a chord and reminded me of this thing.

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Looking excellent! Will look good with the new LM, and I hope you can figure out a way to make it fold back. By the way, would it be feasible to make this kind of thing happen? It may need some modifications to the SM geometry but IIRC the current one is shaped a little like that too. @golkaidakhaanait can be probably be done with a patch to use whatever is installed. Either that or just a deployment animation.

I’ve had similar issues to this one (maybe not the specific cause), and had the same instinct. I updated KJR, the same problem presented itself. I uninstalled KJR, the problem was still there, and my rockets were wet noodles now. I don’t know the specifics of @Pepethecat’s problem, but I do know when something similar happened to me KJR wasn’t the culprit.

I would agree, but different people have different tastes. This is still a really cool proof of concept that might allow for easy UI switching a la Texture Replacer.

Actually related to the nosecone and ascent cover part... Dylan made the cover as an SAF fairing, and the part it needs to attach to needs to decouple on its own to reveal the parachutes. This arrangement of SAF and decoupler on the same part might be responsible for the bugs with the part, including spacecraft non-responsiveness to attitude commands, craft spawning in 400 meters above the launch pad, craft spawning in 10 meters below the launch pad, standard rapid-shaking and disassembly kraken, and thousands of kPa of pressure and degrees Kelvin of temperature.

Being someone who has played the private beta, I can tell you that it's not ready to go public yet. There are some major bugs associated with one of the parts, and the rest need some polishing. It'll come out in due time though, I always trust Dylan.

Ever heard of NF Spacecraft? Seriously, this is a nice little runabout, even if I wouldn't use it for reentry or atmospheric flight due to its massive windows that I think are unrealistic for that application. The tethers are the highlight though, they add something to a station by making centrifuges unnecessary (Kerbalism doesn't realize that though). https://space.stackexchange.com/a/17132

A high-energy particle detector at L1 would be a fantastic setting. but in space. Something goes wrong, as per the usual movie plot, and the crew of 5 (who manage the drones who manage the DOMs) has to get back to Earth- somehow. I don't know, I can't write a plot, maybe something goes terribly wrong with a propellant depot in LEO needed for fueling their return craft, and they have to find a way back into DLRO before rendezvous with an asteroid-mining rig, where something else waits them... Yeah, it's terrible. But the setting is cool.

That seemed like an awful lot of debris. Maybe it's lighting, maybe it's something else. At T+6:08, there's a rather large ring of something floating around, somewhere in between the lower CGTs and the thrust section. They landed the booster and orbited the crew nominally, so a moot point, but I wonder why this happened?

I don't think that there's a way to set altitude and velocity, but there is a way around that. Just use the alt+F12 menu, go to cheats-set position, and edit the altitude. It's not exactly the scenario you want, but it's the best way to get precise altitude and velocity numbers. I'll see if you can do the math for that Spoiler: hint