Majk

I've managed, thanks everyone for ideas and encouragement! I've basically made a macaron out of two heat shields and avionics and a parachute for the filling. One of the heat shields exploded, but the other one just barely survived reentry from 180x40 orbit.

Great idea, but that didn't really work for me as I can't really build planes. So I tried one of the stock vehicles, but when I swapped the engine for something than I can unlock (I unlocked the first two plane nodes), I can barely reach supersonic speed. Not to mention, the "supersonic speed" experiment actually requires 450m/s, well over supersonic. Also, I got hit by the "Game thinks vehicle is landed but you're actually flying"). I guess I'll borrow the missing science using Alt+F12 ...

Is it expected that there are a couple of career points where it becomes increasingly hard to get more science if you don't rush the science gathering nodes? I am playing my first career and I am in the year 1958. I am currently struggling to get ~16 science point in order to unlock the fourth science node (the one with IR radiometry) and am frankly unsure how to get it, even though I am progressing quite well on other fronts: I've finished Early satellites in 1957 I have got Orbital engines, and first generation heat shields and solar panels 30000 money in the bank, 900 reputation and 1500 confidence I have a ~30 ton launch vehicle that can get reasonable payload to 300 x 2000 km orbit However, where do I get the science? From space low I can only get Advanced Biological sample that requires recovery. Since the experiment takes 1 day, I have to get to orbit and then re-enter. I can reenter without using propulsion (by simply leaving my Pe below 140 km), but the first gen heat shield doesn't seem good enough to protect my rocket from LEO. There is a lot of science awaiting me at space high, but my launch vehicles cannot get there. I don't feel I have the tech to put that extra 1500 m/s on my launcher. Even if I shoot straight up, my Ap only gets to something like 7000 km. There is some flying high (biome) science left to collect but only in biomes far away from Cape Canaveral -- not sure how to get there without planes / reentry. I don't have any crew modules or astronaut to get crew report or EVA report. I recall I was running out of options when unlocking the previous science node as well, and I only had a handful of science points left when I finally unlocked it. Any pointers on how to get out of this pickle?

The air-breathing mode doesn't use oxidiser. This means that you carry some dead weight. You should drain some of it, or better yet use some lighter tanks that only carry fuel. This way, you can add more fuel while maintaining reasonable TWR. Still, this will likely be insufficient. You can try adding even more fuel and engines, but only up to a point. I don't know whether single-stage-to-Mun-surface-and-back is possible with just rapiers. Perhaps you need to add some more efficient engines to the mix. I'd suggest aiming for Minmus first. UPD: I just made a quick assembly with 9 RAPIER engines, 2x Mk3 Rocket Fuel Long, 1x Mk3 Liquid Fuel (Medium) and managed to get to LKO with 1700 m/s left, which was sufficient for Minmus sample return. I suspect single-stage-to-Mun-and-back with just RAPIER is possible with better ratios and/or piloting.

The delta-v reading you see is based on the ISP of air-breathing mode of Rapier. The closed cycle has a vacuum ISP more than 10 times lower, which also means 10 times lower delta-v.

When Starship is done, exactly where will the Super Heavy Booster be recovered? The sources (such as https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-super-heavy-landing-plans) seem to indicate that it will be caught by the very same launch tower from which it started. However, this doesn't make much sense to me from orbital mechanics point of view. The booster doesn't have enough delta-v to become orbital on its own, so it cannot complete a full orbit to come back to the launch site. The booster must gain some horizontal velocity. If it was merely lifting the second stage to orbital altitude, this would be incredibly wasteful. Furthermore, the upper stage has about 7km/s delta-v, which is less than the orbital velocity at LEO, so it wouldn't become orbital even if it used up all of its fuel. Will the booster simply cancel all horizontal velocity it got, gain a comparable amount of horizontal velocity in the opposite direction to come back to the launch site? Again, this sounds incredibly wasteful, even one could argue that by staging the payload, the dry mass decreases significantly, thus improving delta-v of the booster. A naive solution would be to have a separate landing site to "catch" the booster. This is not without issue, because either you need to have a network of evenly spaced launch sites all around the world (clearly impractical), or haul the behemoth over land. Furthermore, you're severely constrained in the inclinations you can launch into. Last but not least, this would contradict the claim here in https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/30/elon-musk-says-spacex-will-attempt-to-recover-super-heavy-rocket-by-catching-it-with-launch-tower/ What am I missing?

You have wheels!

I can imagine a couple ways of cheating the delta-v readout: stow your engines and install them while you're in orbit choose a weird root part empty all the tanks connected to engines, haul the fuel in some other tank, perform a resource transfer and then stage it off hide your fuel behind a decoupler and enable crossfeed only on launchpad use engines with an awful sea level ISP use RCS thrusters use EVA pack If any of these are allowed, I'm not sure what's the point of the challenge. Even Dres can be done with just an EVA pack and a ton of patience. If they're all forbidden (along with the already suggested propellers), then I'm not sure what's the point of the challenge either. Have you read the "Challenge Submission Guide"? Not trying to be a dick, but this is not the first challenge of yours that's rather confusing.

I've landed on all 13 planets, dwarf planets and moons with a surface. I thought you guys would appreciate it.

When I tested without the radiator, it started overheating and I heard some explosions. Maybe you can do it with a smaller drill / smaller ISRU? I tried with a single tank as well. However, when the tank is vertical on top of the ISRU, the whole thing is simply too unstable to land anywhere but Minmus flats. If you put the tank horizontally and clip it through, you can land this. However, aside from the no clipping rule, it is difficult to position the drill such that its deployment doesn't make your ship roll. I'm not saying it is impossible , but it likely needs much better piloting skills.

I've cut the record in the low part category to 8 parts, and managed to bring a camera this time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cFz-VrsNlk Important info: KSP 1.11 + Making History Mods: Chatterer, BetterBurnTime + visuals 8 parts (Or was it 9? Hard to say.) Launch mass of 310,310 tons ISRU (duh) Two kerbals to each moon The design is so simple that it's almost an insult

I always try to do the smallest capture burn possible, so that I can get a good understanding of how much I actually need in order to minimize future designs. Plus the reentry fireworks are fun to watch!

Absolutely! Although I think there is a lot of room for improvement on the part count front.

@Superfluous JThank you! I really enjoyed the challenge!

Eve is done. I couldn't do it without ISRU and I also needed inspiration from Bradley Whistance's Grand Tour design, but it's over!

I use Chaterrer, Space Age and BetterBurnTime. Nothing adding any parts, affecting physics or science.

As part of my Kerpollo run, I did a Jool 5 with 30 parts (and 1375 tons): All landings had a separate lander and orbiter that needed to dock after ascent. I used both DLCs (although I think no part from Breaking Ground was used). No probe cores allowed (which means no space chairs). No intentional clipping (there probably was a tiny bit of it in the Kerbin ascent stage, that was consumed by Kraken in LKO) Mods: Chatterer, BetterBurnTime, SpaceAge No ISRU

My run with 30 parts restriction. I still have Eve to do.

Low part count doesn't necessarily mean low mass. Wait until you see the Jool mission!

This is my take on the Kerpollo challenge in an attempt to finally visit all bodies in the Kerbol system. A quick calculation suggests that I can have the whole science tree unlocked before Joolollo and Evepollo (maybe missing a couple nodes, but nothing unsolvable by Surface samples, EVA and Crew reports in the Joolian system, meaning I don't need to bring any science experiments on the later missions. I originally intended to do this in a career mode (without any contracts) instead of science, but trying to figure out how to do the Minmus mission with two command pods (there was no Mk2 pod yet, and I wanted to have both scientist and pilot present), all available science experiments, only 30 parts and limited funds seemed rather hard. It gave me another idea - let's just limit myself to 30 parts on each mission. Given that I'm fairly new to KSP, it felt at times like I've bitten more than I can chew. My settings are mostly hard difficulty with Science set to 100%, reentry heating to 120% and Kerbal G-force limits on. The challenge forbids using probe cores, and I interpret this as forbidding command chair builds. This means that the missions will not be very low mass. I expected the part count limit to be a serious issue in the earlier missions due to the lack of large fuel tanks, but I was mistaken. The early missions even had things like heat shields and landing legs, which were simply too expensive in the later ones. Kerpollo After getting just enough science from the launchpad to unlock the first tier of tech tree, let's build an orbiter. Minmuspollo Munpollo Drespollo Avoiding the docking port any longer is too costly, let's bite the bullet and accept the extra complexity in lander-orbiter design. I picked the closest single world target - Dres. Dunpollo Thanks to successful Dres mission, we now have a seismometer and variometer. These two experiments were one of the reasons I went to Dres first, as the atmospheric scan is quite juicy in terms of science. Eelpollo With all science experiments unlocked, it's time to go to Eeloo to collect another huge chunk of data. Mohpollo Moho was the only time this felt a bit grindy. Not much needed to be changed from the Eeloo mission. Joolpollo The part count limit meant that a single lander has to be reused on all bodies. As this was my first Jool 5, I didn't have a good feeling for how much delta-v is needed for orbital maneuvers, so I budgeted 6000 m/s for everything in Jool SOI. I expected the orbiter to stay at fairly eccentric orbits with the exception of Tylo, where the budget was just too tight. I budgeted meager 500 m/s to brake when coming back to Kerbin. Evepollo

Is everybody else getting too much radiation in Solitude's system when using Kerbalism? The planner reports 4 mrad/h in LSO and 15 mrad/h almost everywhere else (this is consistent with the magnetopause which shields 11 mrad/h). However, the actual radiation I experience in LSO and Guardian surface is about 560 mrad/h, while radiation in deep space is those 15 mrad/h. This makes it somewhat unplayable, for example a Space Camp contract in a fully shielded station uses about 50% of lifetime radiation allowance of each Kerbal involved. Since you need three instructors to lead the camp and you get three new recruits, the total allowance of your workforce doesn't change. I bumped the allowance up, but that in turn makes interplanetary too easy. I see that there are no radiation configs in Kerbalism or After Kerbin for the bodies in this mod, so this seems to be defaulting to that of Kerbin from stock. I was thinking whether scaling is an issue here, after all, Kerbin has radius of 600 km compared to 800 km of Solitude. So I thought that perhaps I'm getting the readings I would get 200 km higher for Kerbin. However, this is not the case, a 275 km high Kerbin gets more than 2 rad/h, while 175 km orbit gets around the same radiation as 75 km high Solitude orbit. However, this wouldn't explain the radiation I see on Guardian surface. Are you guys getting the same reading? Anybody tweaked the definitions to make this workable? EDIT: After a bit of digging, I understand why this is happening for the planets, but I'm unsure why is the radiation in deep space only 15 mrad/h. Kerbalism defines the radiation on the surface of the sun, which is set to 27 rad/h. As the radiation scales with inverse square distance from the center of mass, we get around 15 mrad/h at Kerbin in stock system. Archangel has radius about 10 times large. If we keep the surface radiation the same, this yields an 100-fold increase anywhere else. The observed values are less than that, because Duna is further away than Kerbin. So, the fix is to reduce the radiation_surface of RadiationBody[Sun] to 0.5 or so to make it equal to stock. I can make a MR with the radiation definitions if that would be appreciated.

I really like the way how Kerbalism adds life support considerations and modifies the science collection. That being said, I'm really confused about the scientific value of the long term experiments. Take, for example, R.E.L.A.X. You need a Lab with the experiment module, which alone weighs 8 tons. The base needs to support two Kerbals, which means a sizeable chunk of batteries to survive the night, and a lot of solar panels, as the experiment eats 50 EC/s. You also consume 10 tons of ore, which you either have to bring along, or you need to a drill and a biome that actually contains a decent amount. The Kerbals need a substantial supply to survive a couple hundred days the experiment takes (multiply that by two because no amount of batteries lets you run the experiment around the clock). Plus, with the default setting of 80% shielding efficiency you need to do a crew rotation for the guys to even survive the experiment. Mid-career, you probably didn't fully upgrade VAB or Launch pad twice, and the limits on vessel size, weight and part count means it's multiple launches. This further complicates things, because you either need to design everything to be assembled in orbit, or you need to a fairly precise landing and fiddle with KAS. You're doing all these launches, put in tremendous amount of funds, need to unlock a fair amount of tech ... and on Guardian (which I believe has the same Science multiplier as Mun) you receive just 100 Science over the course of a year. Compare that to sending a light return mission . You can easily do that on level 1 VAB and Launch pad with not too much tech. Without bringing any scientific experiments, doing EVA report, Crew Report and Surface Sample nets you 120 Science in a couple minutes. A couple hundred kilogram beacon filled to the brim with science payload can do even more. Don't get me wrong, I liked assembling my little surface outpost, and I plan on extending it. I just wish I was rewarded more compared to just grinding the same old lander to the 8th biome on the same body. Which I still did, but there's no way I'm setting up R.E.L.A.X. in all those biomes.

I don't know anything about modding, so here's my best shot at turning this into a smug report. The Database.VesselsInSoi is cleared on two occasions -- in Database.Awake, and ResearchBodiesController.FixedUpdate (and that happens once a week). ResearchBodies.OnLoad fills the VesselsInSoi map and it seems that it logically expects it to be empty. However, ResearchBodies.OnLoad seems to be happening more often than Database.Awake, and nothing clears the map prior to this. One could speculate that an unhandled exception upon loading the ScenarioModule would be detrimental to its lifecycle :-) Perhaps the correct fix is to perform this cleanup in Database.ResetBodiesforLoad, but I truly don't know what else could be affected.

I too encounter a lot of issues with ResearchBodies and I finally got down to debug that. It seems that entering a SOI of unresearched body is the culprit. The configuration: KSP 1.10.1.2939 (OSXPlayer) Research Bodies 1.12.0 Contract Configurator 1.30.5 no DLC, no other mods Steps to reproduce: Start career Set ResearchBodies difficulty to Medium (which means Jool is researched, but none of its moons are). Disable CommsNet Use cheat menu to upgrade all facilities and unlock all science, set infinite propellant and electricity Build a rocket consisting of: OKTO2, Small Reaction Wheel, Sentinel telescope, FL-T100 tank, Swivel engine and launch. Use cheat menu to set Jool orbit with semi-major axis of 10^8 meters. Check that everything works correctly: Select vessel, sentinel telescope, click Research Bodies. GUI is shown as expected. Go to map view, all moons are hidden as expected. Go to observatory. It is shown as expected. Go back to vessel, burn retrograde to get Laythe or Tylo encounter (you may need a bit of tuning here) As in step 7, everything works well Enter Laythe or Tylo's SOI. Save game (if not done automatically) Everything is broken now: Switching to the vessel causes NullReferenceException. Clicking Research Bodies when above 200km does nothing. In map view, all bodies are shown in full detail. Switching the observatory locks the input, plays observatory soundtrack, yet no Observatory GUI is shown. The game has to be killed. This issue then persists: Start game again, load previous save. Switch to observatory. Works again. Open tracking station. All bodies are shown. Close tracking station without loading any vessel. Switch the observatory. Same issue as in step 12. Switching to tracking station seems to trigger the bug. If I have a broken save like this, open the tracking station and close it, the issue manifests itself even in saves where there isn't any vessel in unresearched body's SOI. That is, a completely new save will show all bodies in tracking station, observatory won't load, ResearchBodies does nothing ... The only way to fix is to restart KSP (reloading save doesn't help). Workaround: Set researchState = 100 to the body you encountered, and Remove VESSELSINSOI completely After that, everything works as expected with RB. Logs & save: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1c-BIXkrsacEEvHbqt7qSZ30CakMCHbXp?usp=sharing Things that might be of interest: [EXC 10:05:41.641] NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object ResearchBodies.ModuleTrackBodies.Update () (at <4bc8e47f29f64133a2b8c06daa020953>:0) [ERR 10:05:54.424] Exception loading ScenarioModule ResearchBodies: System.ArgumentException: An item with the same key has already been added. Key: Laythe at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[TKey,TValue].TryInsert (TKey key, TValue value, System.Collections.Generic.InsertionBehavior behavior) [0x000c1] in <ad04dee02e7e4a85a1299c7ee81c79f6>:0 at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[TKey,TValue].Add (TKey key, TValue value) [0x00000] in <ad04dee02e7e4a85a1299c7ee81c79f6>:0 at ResearchBodies.RBGameSettings.Load (ConfigNode node) [0x003a2] in <4bc8e47f29f64133a2b8c06daa020953>:0 at ResearchBodies.ResearchBodies.OnLoad (ConfigNode gameNode) [0x00011] in <4bc8e47f29f64133a2b8c06daa020953>:0 at ScenarioModule.Load (ConfigNode node) [0x0000e] in <610de40702034962a21710e37d23e4e7>:0 at ScenarioRunner.AddModule (ConfigNode node) [0x0005e] in <610de40702034962a21710e37d23e4e7>:0 Hopefully you can reproduce this now. And if not, at least we have a workaround.

I encountered an exception similar to https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/179363-getting-exceptions-and-cant-return-to-the-ksc/#comment-3477493 and https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/19510, and figured that it might simply be broken. Your reassurance made me investigate again. One binary search later, it was caused by a landed piece of debris on Guardian. Editing the save file to change its type from "Debris" to "Lander" fixed the issue. Yay!