rakutenshi

Build your ship from the top down. Try to make your payload as light as possible to accomplish your goal (unless you'r whackjob, or someone like that, then make it out of boiler plate steel with room for 50 and it's own cable tv company) build your manouvering stage with the payload, this is what the LV-909 Terrier excels at. You should easily be able to get a LKO rescue ship that has around 1km/s dV to play around with, build your lift stage to get this into orbit without even touching the fuel in top stage. If you're good at making smooth gravity turns and sliding into orbit, you don't have to worry quite so much about TWR, however, if you have too steep of a trajectory, you need to make sure you have a very high thrust to weight ratio - this will allow you to make the circularization manouver in less time. SRB's are cheap, powerful, but very heavy, if you haven't upgraded your launch pad, you'll want to stick with liquid fuel. This isn't meant to be critiques, just general advice, maybe some of it will be helpful. Also - does anyone else think we should get a :dv: emoticon that displays "Δv"?

Just to point out an additional reason for staging like the Apollo rockets did. real rockets tend to have very little throttle control (assume this is to reduce weight as much as technology limits), so staging is a form of throttle control. Look at the Saturn V, for example. about half to a third of the total launch mass is in the first stage, by the time the first stage burns out, the effective TWR of the stage has just about doubled, also air pressure has decreased, staging and using a different set of engines allows for total recalculation of ISP And TWR with the new mass, significantly increasing efficiency. In KSP, rocket engines can be throttled from 0% to 100%, so having one large lift stage with a very high potential TWR is fully acceptable since you can literally adjust the throttle to be whatever TWR would be ideal for your current situation.

Just a point of clarification here- since you're using a modded install - you're just using standard LFO engines, right? not realfuels or anything similar, changing the fuel types and tech levels for engines with realfuels installed can have.. varied results.

It sounds like you're just building the payload/crew section too skinny for its mass. It may be worth adding some control surfaces to the portion of the ship that will be reentering, this will aid in 2 ways. 1.) More drag just by being there, as long as your center of mass is ahead of your center of lift/pressure these can also be used as passive stabilizers for reentry. (if you're coming in bottom first, you'll want to make sure the mass is below the center of lift when you're putting your payload together) 2.) Improved manouvering in atmosphere without relying on ASAS will allow you to bleed off more speed once the reentry has cooled off enough that you feel safe turning. Even pitching up 5-10 degrees can significantly increase the amount of drag your ship is feeling and drastically slow it down.

I personally like to build my rockets a little bit lighter on the main lift stages as far as TWR goes, but I add SRB kickers aiming to add about 400 dV to it get it off the pad. Once you've reached a decent speed (varies per rocket, but it's usually transsonic-ish) you really don't need a massive TWR, if you're using FAR you should be able to pull up the flight data and look for 'q' .. atmospheric pressure, once that number starts to drop, if you've throttle back your engines to save dV losses to drag, you should be free to open it up. But then again, I use radial SRBs just because I like watching them fall away. They're not fuel efficient, but they're usually a very very cost effective to give a rocket a kick in the pants off the pad.

"I could shave in half the time if RL had mirror symmetry mode."

am I doing something wrong or are all the stock parts and most of the AIES parts supposed to be showing up as non RO? Also a bit suspicious that I can only fit a 4m long tank on a redstone motor - any larger and I don't have TWR>1. edit: part 1 seems to be a result of a sneaky RF Stockalike config staying loaded (thought I got them all, but newp, missed it) part 2, similar to ANWRocketman's suggestion below, but not quite,, switching to a Balloon type RFP tank signifigantly reduced the weight of the tank itself and made things fly much much better.

Is this supposed to be working on CKAN yet, because I'm having nothing but fits with it screaming about anything that asks for RO in the dependencies on CKAN with the message "Module RealismOverhaul has not been found. This may be because it is not compatible with the currently installed version of KSP" edit - saw the little blurb at the very bottom of Fel's post... nm.

1st .. just wanting to say I'm one of the great masses that feels FAR/nuFAR are almost required to play KSP happily, even with the new (massively improved) stock aero model. 2nd, I'm nothing close to a computational fluid dynamicist, but I get the feeling that Ferram4 is, or has at least had several courses worth of exposure to it, so often when things go wrong for me in a save where I'm using FAR, even when it goes horribly wrong, my first assumption is that I did something wrong and honestly I don't know enough to differentiate between user error and an actual bug. 3rd. KSP Forums celebrates we love Ferram4 day and enters a golden age. @RyanRising, re:edit2, probably related to official release, it's no longer a super scary early access title, so your perspective probably has merit.

For stages that will burn out in atmo, fins with control surfaces and disable the gimbal, flipping usually means topheavy/front dragheavy, fins can balance out that quite a bit, almost always works for me, also try to make your TWR at least 1.5ish at takeoff. on larger rockets my first two stages will often have fins, stages that are going to be burning above about 35km or higher can forget the fins, though. (totally opinion based)

I've noticed the marker not always switching over to surface automatically when I'd expect it to, that may be part of the issue, also if you've added stuff to one side of the capsule and not in symmetry, that could do it too.

Confirmed, I got my second scientist by rescuing and he was a he. Just sheer (un)luck I think . I use rescue contracts because I'd rather build a 50,000spacebuck rocket than pay the pittance it would take to just hire a new one from the complex .

I love the more is less approach to wings now. It's just my opinion, but I hated the "lets just stack more wings on it" approach to spaceplanes. Glad to see the increased drag/lift ratios on the wings making the darts more viable. see lots of people who can't get their old onionwinged SSTOs to orbit any more, but with the new lifting body mechanics and all, delta winged muscle planes are the way to go it seems.

Aside from contracts specifically requesting something on the Mun, I avoid it, for bases/resources, etc, it's only a tiny bit more dV to get to Minmus, and a massively reduced amount of dV required to land/take off/orbit... the only thing the Mun seems to be better for is rovers, and I've been having absolutely horrid luck with the rovers - namely their inability to stop without RCS, even without applying throttle, brakes on, and holding reverse, they only go faster and faster... and then when I reload a quicksave they get dropped from low orbit and explode.

A very well documented way to get support for your opinions on an internet forum is to insult everyone else on the forum with a blanket statement. Considering the huge leap forward that they made with the aero modelling in 1.0, I'm willing to give them some leeway. even if it's still bad (in some people's eyes, other players absolutely love it, go figure, a forum with differing opinions on the same subject), it's a huge improvement over the previous aero model.

that's almost always caused by the center of mass being too far aft (behind the center of pressure/lift). Suggested fixes involve using smaller wing surfaces up front (maybe RV-8s) , and or extending the fuselage to allow you to adjust the center of mass - visible by pressing the top green button on the lower left near the symmetry and snap indicators. (Centers of Mass, Thrust and Lift buttons are all there). 2 Things to keep in mind. a. ) for a stable aircraft - the Center of Lift (will appear as blue) needs to be behind the center of mass (Yellow) but not too far back or you won't be able to maneuver at all. b. ) Land Gears - the rearmost wheels should be located slightly behind the center of mass. if they're too far back you won't be able to pull up when going down the runway.

I think that one is actually from an earlier build of KSP (pre 0.19), based on the launch tower being present behind the rocket, doubt it would fly very well, that really is some odd staging, it looks almost like the outboard fuel tanks , no visible engines on them, are mounted on double stacked decouplers...

I had a similar problem with getting credit for the explore Bop contract. The only thing I can think of is that the upgrade to 1.0.2 somehow borked it, I launched a new unmanned probe with a detachable lander, even after landing the probe and sending science back from both I got no completion credit for it. and reddeyfish - I think Magnemoe had a docking port on it since he did dock it to another base, but likely that one is because of the docking...were those contracts active before you upgraded to 1.0.2?

I think people who play their game a different way from the way I like to play are wrong and the developers should ensure that the sort of gameplay I don't support is removed from the game because only I am right. Seriously. If you don't like a feature, don't use it.

Many CB Radio Operators (truckers and the like) use dual CB antennas on their vehicles that have an effect known as co-phasing if I remember correctly. It increases the range perpendicular to a plane drawn from one antenna to the other at the expense of range in the parallel direction. (some reading material here)

yeah, because RL allows 10x time acceleration when you're burning your engines. The ability to add time compression is a major factor in the reason the devs decided to increase the thrust on Ion engines so much past the real life equivalents. a 4 day burn may be realistic... but for a game it's far too boring.

I still believe that looking at your available funds, even after taking the advances on a couple of easy contracts and realising "if I don't do this just right, I won't be able to afford to launch anything else" is sort of a proto-fail state. People seem to believe that having no specific predetermined fail state is tantamount to some sort of god-mode. I see many many posts in this thread claiming that because of the FAQ's statement that "The best "ekonomists" (rimshot here) in Kerbin have claimed that it’s technically impossible to run out of money," combined with "As you are given advances for contracts and you are constantly offered new contracts..." the whole concept of 'running out of money' is moot. They're conveniently ignoring the part where it says "it’s technically impossible to run out of money, though I’m sure people will still manage it." and "constantly offered new contracts, you should be pretty safe." - which implies that there is a fail-state built into the game. If there's not a 'game over' screen, then it would imply that it is possible to go into the negative on your funding, at a certain point, accepting contracts for missions that you cannot possibly complete due to limited budget, just for the advances, will drive you so far into the hole that you may not even be able to afford to launch anything. Well, it doesn't say game over. But what it does say is I have 10 contracts accepted and due within 2 weeks, and our ekonomists say that we're still 200 funds short of being able to afford to put a mk 1 command pod on the launch pad. The main driving force behind .24's contract system isn't the ability to fail at KSP. It's because there is a large number of people who are overwhelmed by a free-form sandbox mode with no set goals. You give them KSP And they look at it and go "what am I supposed to do?" You tell them "Whatever you want!" and they look back at you and ask. "What am I supposed to do?" Now you can tell them "do contracts." thus providing a much needed guiding hand that some people cannot p

From what I gather, the "impossible to run out of funds" concept doesn't mean you'll never be broke. It means if you screw up a big contract and blow all your funds, you'll be forced to go back to rescuing EVAs from LKO or launching commsats to scrimp and save and rebuild your budget. In many ways, that'd be worse than a 'game over' screen to me. If you had to start over after a game over, you fall back on the storyline excuse of 'I dont' have the tech/reputation/achievements to get better contracts yet.' .. but if you break the bank and screw up a mission, being forced to take the 'put a commsat in a 120km orbit' contracts because that's all you can afford to even attempt.. huge mark of shame.

Apparently there's an issue if you just update that causes some really strange stuff, but reinstalling a fresh version then dropping the mods in seems to mostly fix the issues. (and then the sabre fix by the community)

*eats cookies made by girlfriend and patiently awaits release of .23 version of B9 Awesomespace parts.