Steampunked

Hello again all. So a question about KER / MJ and Delta V readouts. When building ships with KER and MJ to see projected dV but I have a hard time taking drag and gravity in to account when estimating my lifter's dV. Any advice or rules of thumb? Many thanks!

Thank you Streetwind, that is very helpful!.

So I took a good break from KSP for a while and with 1.0.5 I have restarted a new career. One thing I'm noticing is a kill a lot of Jebs on reentry. Before the aero overhaul I just burned retrograde until PE was down below the surface of Kerbin for return and I'd just ride out re-entry. Now I am having to balance descent angle with how much time I spend at a given altitude for heating vs. deceleration. Unfortunately I have not yet found a comfortable return trajectory envelope. Does anyone have any suggestions or advice? Many thanks. ~ash

So the contrast and brightness on my monitor are quite high and bright, yet even in broad daylight, KSP is fairly dark. Do any of the game settings control lighting?

Folks, I wanted to contribute a thought here that no one else has mentioned. It's actually a small detailed and has nothing to do with orbital mechanics or any of those physical stuff that we have learned our way around in our adventures in KSP. This is not a widely known fact, but manned space flight does not function under standard pressure conditions. It is (currently) unfeasible to manufacture a space suite capable of maintaining an internal pressure of 14.7 PSI (standard pressure at sea level, aka "1 atmosphere of pressure"). The problem is that, in the vacuum environment of space, a flexible suite pressurized to 14.7 PSI will become too stiff to maintain any sort of reasonable motion range (this is due to ballooning). To counteract this, space suite internal pressures are maintained very low (with very high partial pressures of oxygen). The Space Shuttle, Soyuz, and the ISS all function at 14.7 PSI (it is worth noting that the Apollo program operated at 5.7 PSI and that the pressure in the LEM was even lower during moon landings). Any diver knows that going from a higher pressure to a lower pressure involves the risk of off-gassing nitrogen in solution with blood (severe off gassing results in pain and nervous system/brain damage and his commonly known as "the bends"). This means that prior to ANY EVA activities, an astronaut must spend HOURS pre breathing pure oxygen while stepping ambient pressure down to control this off gassing (US space suites operate at 4.7 PSI while Russian ones are at 5.7). In short, it will be traumatic to the body to rapidly transition between either the low pressure environment of EVA or the high pressure environment of the ISS/Shuttle/Soyuz. Going from low to high is uncomfortable but going from high to low is lethal.

I choked on a sandwich laughing when I got to this...

I work with one of the NASA project engineers (no longer at NASA...) who led up the transhab/inflatable habitat project. I sent him a link to the OP and he came over to talk to me about it. He thought it was really cool what Porkjet has done =)

Hey folks, I have just started doing interplanetary missions. So far Duna is the only planet that Ive attempted to visit. However, every time I set up my maneuver nodes and tweak them until I get an SOI encounter, I find that once I am in Duna SOI and approaching PeA, once I complete my burn to drop in to orbit around the planet I find that 2 things have happened: (1) I am on a very highly inclined orbit (2) My orbital speed relative to Duna is very, very low. Like 120m/s and my altitude is ~20,000 km. What am I doing wrong here? How can I insert in to Duna SOI such that I will not end up with a highly inclined orbit? Thanks!

I think that the majority of complaints regarding these sort of tests are coming from the fact that these sort of activities are not what the majority of users are interested in doing. We do not play Kerbal Space Program to test some widget at some specific velocity at some specific altitude. It simply is not fun. Now, having said that I completely understand that (1) this sort of contract could be viewed as a challenge and a puzzle and (2) having multiple semi-random parameters to change up keeps us from repeating the same exact contract over and over again. However, I go back to my previous statement of "this is not why we play Kerbal Space Program". Contracts should be about putting things in orbit and putting things on other planetary bodies. They should be saying "put a station with X capabilities and Y crew capacity at Z altitude or geosynch" or "put this proceduraly generated mission satellite in orbit around X planet at Y altitude". Or put a rover with A/B/C/ equipment on Duna at specific coordinates or a lander on the Mun in a specific biome and take a surface sample that MUST first be analyzed in an orbital lab before being returned to Kerbin. These are the sorts of things that players play KSP for.

anyone else having significant issues right clicking on parts to interact with them? (x64 version)

So I enjoy doing Apollo style lander missions. In addition to this simply being my preferred way to go about things, it also serves the benefit that I can leave a lander on the surface and have a return craft to science retrieval (2 kerbals are needed of course). However, I have a very hard time building docking nodes in to my rocket stack. Clamp-o-tron to clamp-o-tron connections are very weak and tend to cause my rocket to turn in to a noodle when launching. How do you guys handle having docking nodes in the middle of your stack? ~ash

Sorry, I should have been more clear. On/Off toggle and if you choose to turn it on, have a slider that will determine how much persistent game spawned stuff you can have. If that's too complicated to implement than just an on/off would do.

Perhaps there could be a slider in the options tab to allow varying amounts of clutter?

Well, to your response about spawned items in orbit... the game could simply have a limit on the number of items spawned around a given body. I would actually like to see some persistence here... in fact there could be a whole series of missions that result in slowly building a station for a client (and possibly de-orbiting it eventually). Also, I think that entities spawned around a body should have less random orbits... instead of randomly spawning at 127567 meters, they could spawn at 5,000 meter intervals on varying inclinations at 5 degree intervals. At the end of the day, I think the devs need to realize that career mode is not a sandbox and that they need to foster more interaction with game created objects.

Good points all around, however I think part of the reason that the Contracts system is set up like it is, is that the devs intend for the player to treat the space program as if it were a private company. My only real suggestions are these: (1) Remove the science rewards from ALL contracts... this will give more consequence to the money we make from missions as we now have to pay for our own science missions to progress down the tech tree. and (2) get rid of the part testing missions once we've moved on to tier 3 parts (some early part testing is fine for quick and easy cash). We need most of the missions to let us interact with in game assets... either putting up a supplied satellite (spawned in to the sub-assemblies) or adding specific parts to a game-spawned space station. To limit the number of stations- the game could be limited to how many stations it can spawn around a given planet... and each one will be in a very different orbit (orbits and declinations that make sense and that are rounded to nice friendly numbers with lots of 0's like 120,000m @ 35 degrees instead of 134,577m @29 degrees). We could also be asked to land and repair or check up on or collect data from probes landed on other bodies or in orbit around other bodies. ~ash

I have been playing quite a bit of KSP since 0.24 dropped and while I know that the career mode is still very much a work in progress (need more mission types introduced, need less extreme RNG dependent scenario generation, need stranded kerbals to be spawned in orbits other than 0 degree inclination, etc etc) I still feel like Squad is undercutting themselves with how they married funds and science to the contract rewards. I posit that funds and reputation should be the sole payout for completing a mission (even a science/testing based mission). The player does missions to accrue funds to pay for his own missions for his own research. With higher reputation comes access to higher quality kerbals. Kerbals can be recruited to be pilots or to the research team. Higher quality pilots yield higher quality science from experiments, and higher quality research team yields higher quality science transmitted from probes (this also gives us a reason to actually use probe cores as well). Higher reputation also gives access to bonus mission objectives that otherwise would not appear for a given mission. I also think that we should do away with part tests past tier 2 or tier 3 parts. Instead there should be actual missions- investigate anomaly on Mun @ X,Y,Z coordinates (with a marker on the Mun to show where). Or put this company's satellite in orbit at X altitude and Y inclination. I also think that part costs should be re-balanced to be a little more expensive. As it stands, it feels like funds are just a trivial way of keeping score. Just my 2 copper. ~ash

Yup, raising my Pe above 70km worked. Much obliged!

When asked to test different pieces of equipment under different conditions, it seems that most of the time you have to activate the equipment through the staging tree when the conditions are met. However, I can't seem to get the "Orbit" condition to light up. For instance, I have been asked to test the radial rockets in orbit at an altitude of 72700-74500 meters. I am in orbit with a Periapsis of 73000m and an Apoapsis of 68000m. Do I have to be in a circular orbit with Ap/Pe between 72700m and 74500m? I've reverted this flight several times and I can't ever seem to get credit for the test. Thanks!

Kerbal Engineer does not work. The parts are there and available, but various error messages show up in the data windows.

Nevermind... it's under flight control. Found it.

Folks, I have spent an hour or so looking through the internet and the forum to figure out how to get mech jeb 2.2.2 to work with career mode in KSP 2.3.5. As I understand it, the way to install it is to simply place the MechJeb2 folder in my <KSP Install Path>/GameData folder to the effect of <KSP Install Path>/GameData/MechJeb2 and then in order to use the program, place either the AR202 part on my vessel or use the MechJebPod as my command pod. However, in career mode, neither of these parts show up (they are supposed to show up under Control parts, I believe... but regardless they do not show up anywhere). Similarly, I checked the research tree and they are not there requiring an unlock either (similar to the Engineer mod where you must research the parts from the first step research tree). If someone could please explain to me the proper installation of MechJeb, I'd be very appreciative. Thanks!

While you may be referring to some political goings on that many of us are unaware of, as an engineer who works on offshore energy projects that have shifting work scopes (and often time shifting schedules and milestones), the idea of "scope completion" absolutely makes sense in the real world. "Scope Creep" is the enemy of scope completion. It is what happens when you keep expanding on to what your current objectives and milestones are. Eventually you have to lock in what your expected deliverables are going to be and stick to them. "Scope Completion" is just another way to say that those locked in deliverables are done. Currently the work scope for this game project is career mode, and that work scope is broken up in to many smaller tasks that needed to get accomplished along the way. Once the game has a functioning career mode the devs can sit back and say "check mark... the meat of the game is done". Just my 2 copper. ~ash

How do I install mods in 0.2? I have read the readme file and it simply says mods can now use their own folders for better organization. Thanks! ~ash

Please, Someone explain to me how to use fairings. I know what they are for but I cannot ever seem to get anything to (1) fit inside of them correctly or (2) fit them together correctly. ~ash

As an engineer working in industry I am always hoping for good results from these sort of school projects. Anyways, on to a critique. I would eliminate all non orbital milestones (learning to fly and build is part of the game and getting to orbit is the achievement). I would make orbital milestones 75km circular orbit, 150km circular orbit with a manned/unmanned category (minimum manned is 1 kerbal with bonus funds awarded for for using a 3 kerbal capsule). I would also like to see some sort of bonus metric based on numbers of parts and fuel consumed/unconsumed. Maybe they made a ship with a lot of parts but really dialed in their fuel requirement. This also assumes that they are not permitted to intentionally raise/lower their orbits in cycle so as to consume extra fuel. Perhaps you should include a fuel charge as a consumable so as to incentivize spending it wisely as well as not procuring a wasteful amount. Also, I would like to simply mention a thought. Space flight is based on some fairly complicated physics. You and I (and many others who play this game) enjoy the game for a lot of reasons. One of them is likely to be we enjoy complicated and technical things and we also enjoy sandboxy type games. KSP is a good marriage of the two. However, I think what your intent with this project is, is to provide your students a glimpse in to the real world application of math and physics. That's fantastic and I think KSP is a pretty decent way to do that. But I would stress that without taking the time to introduce your students to real orbital mechanics and stepping them through calculations and how the calcs can apply to KSP and predicting the nature of your flight, then I think the ultimate intent of your project is going to be completely lost and at the end of the day all you are doing is asking your students to play a game. You don't necessarily need to even get them to do the math themselves- just show it to them step by step and in the order in which you would normally do the calcs. Show them the rocket equation and show how changing different components of them will effect the behaviour of the rocket. Step them through Hohmann transfer orbits and the reasons for using them. Help them to understand why they raise and lower their orbital nodes at opposite nodes so as to conserve fuel and maximize delta-v expenditure. Show them a Delta-V chart of the Kerbol system and show some examples of how Delta-V can be calculated for transfering between bodies. There is a lot of math involved and at the end of the day not everybody is going to care. But some of them will, and some of those who will might never have been interested in the first place. So don't just throw a game at them- give them something interesting and challenging to learn. If it was easy none of us would be interested in the first place. ~ash