Killerblonde

My two cents are that there are already enough inaccuracies with KSP, such that any attempt at a 100% realistic reentry mod would end up being way to easy to reenter. (For example - orbital velocity is a LOT slower in Kerbal.) As such, the end should justify the means. The end should be a mod that makes reentry challenging and realistic at a glance, even if it involves fudging a few of the numbers or equations.

The original deadly reentry had some pretty nice heat shields with it. With a bit of fiddling around with cfg files I'm sure they could be modded to have a lower max temp and some ablative coating.

That's the same problem I had with it... annoying windows everywhere. Is there a way to disable them? It would seem to me like there would have to be.... EDIT: Also, to my knowledge, FAR only causes G forcing damage on larger vessels. A single command pod can still hurtle towards the atmosphere and take 44 G's straight down, and stands a better chance of surviving than going for a more realistic reentry. I don't want to be pushy or anything, and I know there are more important things to take care of first, but it seems like a rather large flaw in a realism mod to be able to make your reentry angle arbitrarily steep in order to be sure you survive it.

In RC1, I launched straight up, Apo at about 450km, fell straight down a +2km/s with mark1 pod into Kerbin's atmosphere, at about 30km started getting serious reentry, although the heatshield held up fine and only lost about 80 ablation points or so. I'm trying RC2 now. Edit: Same thing with RC2. I don't think that coming straight down pulling 15+ g's on reentry should be survivable - the heat shield would likely disintegrate under these conditions. I recommend nerfing it a bit - otherwise, successful reentry would be far too easy. Edit 2: Never mind - steeper reentry angle is more G's, less heat. I understand now. In that case, possibly have some kind of G limit on the heat shield for the sake of overall realism? Maybe the higher G's it receives, the faster the heat shield ablates or something.

Still no luck - can't install it. Can someone link a direct download so that I'm sure I'm getting the right thing? Right now I'm mucking about with github and tortoise svn.

Probably my fault, but I can't seem to get the plugin working. Do I just stick the extracted deadly reentry folder into the GameData section, leaving the cfg file folderless inside of it?

When I tried it, the mod 'worked', but it doubled my velocity all of a sudden when I came back to my space station after another mission. This ended very badly.

I too have been attacked by the Cthulhu. Squad released the Cthulhu to kill the Kraken.....

No idea, sorry. But it's awhile... the craft zips around the star for most of its duration, only taking passes by Mars/Duna and Earth/Kerbin maybe once or twice every 'year'. But it's a close pass, just too high a velocity to achieve orbit without aerocapture or a retro burn, (which would screw up its trajectory anyway.)

Getting back on topic... what do you guys think about having a space station, (or ship or whatever,) that continuously zips around Kerbin and say Duna. Essentially, the ship flings around one body, is flung to the other body, and then goes back to the first in a continuous cycle. An orbit around two planets essentially, with minimal fuel required for infrequent adjustments. This is possible in real life, (as in we did the maths and it's possible... can't find the article though.) Thoughts?

The throttle at 50% fuel consumption at 25% is a fuel consumption bug, not a feature, that will be fixed soon. In other words, don't rely on it for getting to other planets in the next update.

I agree. It took me awhile to figure out where the correct wiki was.

This game seems like it's trying to stay scientifically accurate, (or at the very least, hard sci fi.) The only cooling units we know work in space are radiators (think big extending wrinkly panels that disperse heat as infrared radiation) or a ridiculous space AC that literally has to vent hot air into space, which would run out of 'fuel' very quickly. (On that note, radiators could be used for controlling engine overheating, especially when closer to Kerbol; sorry if I'm going a bit off topic here with the suggestion.) But in any case, cooling systems will probably (correct me if I'm wrong devs) be in the form of radiators, if they're implemented at all. Anyhow, I'll have fun diving into Jool to see how far I can go in and still come out.

Given the vastness of space verses the size of a teapot, you'd never find it, (and if you did chances are you'd go past it like a bullet.) It's a good idea though. Maybe when you get within a certain range it appears on the orbital map like the other planets. It'd still be near impossible to get to, unless the 'range' at which it appears on the orbital map was really large. More of luck finding it than skill. Good idea, but I just don't see it working out.

Your understanding of chemistry should also include the fact that combustion doesn't happen without oxygen... now if your ship was a great big oxygen tanker we could see some fireworks, but the size of the gas giant would be irreverent, because your ship would be the limiting factor.

A solid core is plausible. At the very least it doesn't defy science, (we're already talking about FTL drives way down the line.) Although I think (don't quote me on this) the devs said they didn't want to have a gas giant you could go into, because of graphical limitations. Your ship will just get as far down into it as you can, and then you'll be crushed. (And that's pretty realistic.)

Keep you eye on the navball, make sure it's in surface mode, and aim your thruster to face retrograde. This way, assuming you have a decent descent velocity, you'll land straight down every time. All the other tips are good too.

If they do take the planets 'off rails', then you could slowly adjust orbits with maybe a few solar powered ion drives pushing on the surface. Keep them firing with 'unlimited' solar energy while you're off doing other things, speeding up time, etc., you'd maybe change their orbit a tiny bit over time. Pretty useless though, because it'd take forever and the devs would have to add physics for planetary collisions and what not.

This was a pretty bad mishap of mine: I had just landed 3 Kerbals on the Mun, and got one out to do a spacewalk. I got a second out to join the first, and the moment I touched the ground, my game lagged, and crashed. When I reloaded, one Kerbal was nowhere to be found an on an escape trajectory out of the star system, and my other Kerbal and command pod was en route to the Sun. They crashed into the Sun and died. I have no friggen clue how it happened. Pretty bad though.

On that website, I got Jesus' Carnage.... sounds good.