softweir

Is FAR actually working? That sounds almost like stock performance!

This is supposed to happen: MJ is packaged as an add-on computer, it isn't automatically added to other probe cores and command pods. Having said that, quite a few players use config files to add MJ to cores and pods, and some mod parts automatically use MJ if you have it installed.

It would help if there was a facility to display rotation axes as you move/rotate parts. Might make a good mod project. Hint-hint.

He meant stuff to go in the payload bay - motors, tanks and probe parts that will fit that rather odd space.

Because the idea of packing a dozen different devices into the phone would have seemed quite bizarre to them. remember: this was long before the age of extreme miniaturisation of today. We lived in a world of almost exclusively single-use devices: phone, camera, TV, tape-recorder, gramophone etc, etc. All these devices were bulky and heavy and couldn't be combined without ending up as heavy as the two original devices - so a camera built into a phone would weigh as much as much as a phone and a camera, and it would be a poor phone because of the weight of the camera and a poor camera because of the weight of the phone. (Building cameras into phones only became sensible when the cameras became digital and able to send images electronically.) There were combination devices such as the Swiss Army Knife, but the age of combination sound systems (radio/record-player/tape-deck) had only just begun, and all examples were non-portable, living-room equipment. Actually naming a device as a tricorder and suggesting it used three whole different sensing systems was truly sci-fi-whackjob stuff by the standards of the day, and about as much as they could get away with before sounding silly.

It has plenty of fuel tank - about 400m/s dV iirc, which is about plenty for LKO. My gripe is the shuttle fuel is fuel/oxy instead of mono for the OMS, but that's a matter of taste and I can work with it just fine!

Do you mean payload? Probes? The KSO is a shuttle, shuttles don't have upper stages so far as I understand them...?

What I do is place just one fairing (ie with symmetry off), add manual struts as need be with the start of each strut on the fairing and the end on the payload, then when that is done I take the fairing off, turn symmetry back on and pop it back in place.

Might you be able to simply add an overload module to the stock docking ports? Allow the stock module to handle docking and undocking, use yours to control hatches?

I think he said a wrong thing there. The danger with O2 is that it can react with almost any metal that might be used in spaceship construction: this is what happened to Apollo 13 - a short circuit in a motor used to stir the liquid in a LOX tank heated the motor enough to cause it and the O2 to burn together with an almost instantaneous explosion. But on its own, O2 can't burn with itself, despite that quote. Incidentally, even his hyperbole that O2 is the oxidiser of oxidisers is wrong - that honour goes to fluorine which is reactive enough it can oxidise helium!

We don't know what the news is going to be: the word "update" refers to "updated information", not an update to Spaceport. (Unless I have seriously misread something.) So you really ought to say "I am excited for a possible update to Spaceport; it really needs one".

Closure Distance would make a lot of sense to me - not so much when perfectly aligned, but when things are going a bit wrong and one has moved off to one side and needs to know if one has the distance needed to re-align without bumping docking ports. Edit: Exactly as Diomeda said before me!

That's neat. Can we use personalised .cfg's to override that behaviour?

The parachutes - to make them DR-safe?

Good luck on the finals! Maybe if you get a good result you can change your nick to "smart_chris"?

It was mentioned on the Egosoft forums round about v0.9. There were a few UT clips linked to KSP which looked interesting, so I decided to try it out. I bought it the moment Squad started accepting money!

As TheCanadianVendingMach said - the KSP files are 100% Steam-free and will work from anywhere on your system. At present, KSP uses Steam as a launcher and nothing else, not even DRM checking!

An interesting idea. Big flaw - smart material technology is a verrrry long way from hitting the high street. You could prototype the idea using compressed air, a number of computer-controlled valves and a few nozzles aimed at the inner layer. When you open a valve, a short pulse of compressed air at the inner layer makes it pulse against the body. You couldn't have more than a few active areas - because this is HARDWARE we are talking about and the cost rises in more than proportion with the number of valves - but it would give you a testbed for the code side of it.

Are you in career mode? If so, have you gone back and "bought" the relevant MJ parts and components?

What he said - I'm afraid. FAR tries to represent aerodynamics as realistically as is possible on a home PC. KSP does not! Designs that work in KSP's not-at-all-real drag-and-lift model can be almost guaranteed to fail when using FAR. (Some VERY simple designs may still work.) Things to look out for: You must make certain that Centre of Mass is ahead of Centre of lift. Use those buttons at the bottom of the VAB/SPH screen to see where these are. Do this for each stage, and also try draining tanks to make sure the CoM never moves behind the CoL at any stage during the life of a stage. You may have to do weird things to your payload such as make it launch fuel-and-motors first to help ensure this. Use fairings around payloads to reduce drag, but keep them as tight to the payload as possible - you may need to redesign payloads so they don't have too many sticky-out-bits. Make sure you don't have too much control authority. FAR makes them more effective - if they move too far then you will get instability. Right-click on flaps, winglets and canards to use tweeks to reduce their range of movement. Learn how to do a proper gravity turn. Start a very small turn shortly after the stack gets off the pad, ideally at about 100 to 200 m/s velocity. From then on keep the nose of the rocket pointing near the prograde vector - that is, make sure you aren't trying to fly your rocket sideways, or anything which might look at all near sideways! Don't overpower your rocket. The first stage should have a thrust to mass ratio of about 1.5 to 1.8 - certainly never above 2. Give up on asparagus staging, it is unrealistically stable in stock KSP and realistically unstable in FAR. Whackjob need never install this mod! Once you do get the hang of FAR then you should find your rockets need a lot less fuel and engine than you were used to, which could be important savings once we get proper cost-off-the-pad economics in Career Mode!

It tries to allow for mods it knows nothing about, but it works best when the mod-makers add config lines to their mods to tell CLS how to treat parts, OR we create the configs for them.

Adding the MechJeb module to the capsule will only add the most basic tools: MechJeb hides any more advanced MJ tools you haven't actually earned. In MechJeb settings, tick the "Hide MechJeb button". You can still add all the other MJ tools to the toolbar.

A real god could convince anybody just by performing a miracle that stopped them being a sceptic. A REAL God could wait until the sceptic dies and then resurrects them; very hard to explain away life-after-death!

Plant flag. Land at flag. Job Jeb done!

As for using "F", you have to make sure you are hovering over the fairing in questions. (But I suspect Tallinu is on the right lines and you have used the wrong fairing.)