Qumefox

The easiest way to do what your asking is to just build in stages. That way they'll be automatically grouped. For instance, if you want two stages containing four decouplers each around a central body. Instead of setting symmetry to eight and adding all of them at once, set it to four, add one group, then the other.. This will give you two groups of four instead of having to manually break up the group of eight. You can also break up groups. If you click the group in the staging list, it will expand it. Then you shift click (or is it ctrl?) to select/deselect individual parts in the group so you can move them.

From what I can tell, to really get a stable aircraft in KSP currently, the plane needs to be relatively long, and have roughly equal lift sources both in front of, and behind, the center of mass. Short planes with only one primary lift source (one set of wings) centered at the center of mass tend to be VERY sensitive to up/down pitch.. It's like trying to balance something on the end of your finger. I think the issues right now are due to the inadequacies in the current (lack of) aerodynamic modelling. Parts are given simplistic behavior performance criteria (lift, drag, mass) which leads to workable designs in KSP ending up totally different than what you'd expect in reality. Vertical stabilisers for instance. In reality, to put them on the back and they help keep your plane pointed in the right direction thanks to the lift/drag they cause.. in KSP, well, it doesn't really seem to matter a whole lot where you put them. A lot of the better flying planes i've built don't even have them.

Easiest way is to just *add* the new capsule to your existing craft file, instead of trying to replace the existing capsule with a text editor. For instance: start a new craft with JUST the new capsule you want to use then save it. open both .craft files in notepad, and copy the whole PART{} block for the capsule from the new craft, and stick it somewhere in the old one. Open your craft in KSP and there should be two capsules now.. Your existing ship + the new capsule just floating.. Pull the parts off the old capsule that you want to reuse, and stick them on the new one. then delete the old capsule.

You can edit the persistence file to 'replace' ships you have elsewhere, but unfortunately this doesn't help you, since you have to get something landed on the mun in the first place to replace. Getting to the mun really isn't hard. Get a ship/lander/whatever in an prograde equatorial orbit (do your gravity turn towards 90 degrees on the navball) then when your in a stable orbit, do a prograde burn just as Mun starts to rise over Kerbin, and you should get a Mun intercept.

Actually, it seems to be a common misconception around here, but the exhaust of NERVA engines isn't radioactive. The propellant is heated via a heat exchanger. It doesn't pass through the core itself, nor does any core material actually get ejected from the engine (under normal circumstances), though your mileage may vary on on that on crashes.

Well. considering we're dealing with objects that are moving through space here.. something in the image has to be telling us *when* the objects will be at those locations. Not just *where* the locations are.

Or, you could just use the + and - on the numpad to zoom in and out like I do with no plugins. heh.

You're going to have to tell us, the resolution of that pic is too low to read it.

Depends on what engine your using. If your using mainsails, 3 large tanks seems to be the sweet spot. Personally I prefer and have better luck with aerospike clusters though. I have a 44 stock part first stage I use with most things that will reliably get ~20T into a 150km kerbin orbit with fuel to spare.

Yay for grammar nazis. And that's the only crawler/transporter the US uses to move rockets. (well, they have two.. Hanz and Franz) There are multi-wheeled vehicles used for moving heavy objects, but AFAIK, they aren't used to move aerospace parts, and aren't rated anywhere near the 12 million pound lift capacity hanz and franz are (though one of them is getting refitted to up it's capacity to 18 million pounds, for the SLS program.)

Except NTR's aren't nuclear bombs. The reactor in an NTR going critical wouldn't explode, it would melt. Also, they wouldn't be first stage engines. The NTR's developed in the 60's were designed to be operated in space, and use conventional saturn V first, and likely second stages to get in orbit. A failure on the pad would actually be a best case failure for something with a NTR on board, because a chemical rocket explosion would be unlikely to seriously harm the shielding/containment of an NTR engine.. Plus launch sites are purposely built away from everything else to minimize the danger to people from accidents. No, the real danger with an NTR engine is a craft failure at high altitude/sub orbital.. or in an unstable orbit that will eventually decay and have the engine re-enter and land in a populated area.

Using the better version of the image: [ATTACH=CONFIG]34653[/ATTACH] This is my interpretation. ** Things i'm fairly certain of ** - The object at the top of the red line is the magic boulder. - The 6 evenly spaced dots next to the red line are indicating altitude (but who knows on what scale) - The orange sphere is Duna - The pyramid is being being shown to be on Duna's south pole by the connecting line. - The red line is indicating the magic boulder will be over Duna's south pole at X altitude - The three lines indicate an angle.. the two long lines being the reference lines, and the short one showing which angle to measure. ** Complete guesses on my part ** - The three dots in a row represent the inner 3 planets ** NFC ** - What object the angle is referring to - The meaning of the four figures/structures Synopsis: Well, if this is a map, then in this environment, it has to be showing us two things.. Where and when. I think *where* is over Duna's south pole at an altitude of 6'something' (6km? 60km? 600km?) The rest of the image has to indicate *when* the object (magic boulder?) will be there. I really wish Nova would let us know when we're close on stuff.. Because for all we know, the SSTV image could just be the result of one of the devs letting a creative 12yo loose with MSpaint just to torment us. lol.

You could likely also get rid of half the ailerons on the wings and it stay just as controllable and reduce your part count. Though since these parts add lift (which IMHO they shouldn't, at least not significant amounts like they do now) you might have to rebalance some.

Your thinking about the crawler/transporter that was used to move rockets from the saturn program, then the shuttle, from the VAB to the pad. It cost millions (~$14 million each or so) instead of thousands, and was tracked instead of wheeled.

Show us the journey!

unfortunately on eve, that's just a glider.

They did, however, even the early ones worked more efficiently in 'less dense' (high altitude ) cooler air. I guess I can sum up the issues I have with the current jet engines as modeled in KSP with this statement. If you want maximum fuel efficiency, you fly low and slow..(I just tested it) which is pretty much the opposite of how you get the most out of jet engines in real life. Actually the normal jet engine does gain some efficiency with altitude (seemed to peak at 3km or so).. it still wants to go slooow though or it drops off. The turbojet however wants to stay on the ground and go 60m/s to maintain peak efficiency.

That doesn't write off what I posted, which was that a jet engine outside it's environmental operating range (in space, in a different atmosphere) shouldn't continue to burn fuel at the same rate as if the same engine at sea level in an oxygen enviornment... We don't have to micromanage the oxidizer/propellent ratios manually for maximum thrust for chemical rockets in game.. They run as efficiently as they can all the time. I'm just asking for jet engines to be the same way. And bringing up air density is just arguing semantics. It's what I was meaning with altitude, since it's primarily what you get with increasing altitude, along with drops in temperatures. My point though.. is that actual jet engines have subsystems that maintain proper fuel/air ratios for proper combustion.. just like chemical rockets have subsystems that maintain proper oxidizer/propellant ratios.. When a jet engine lacks enough oxygen to run, it'll flame out, and cease using fuel entirely (won't make noise either ). Right now we just get a throttle attached to a fuel valve pretty much and engine management be damned. I think the 'air density' behavior should be fixed too, since the thinner the air, the better jet engines work... to a point.

Yes.. using an actual protractor held against your screen + math.. and anyone with half a brain is going to end up making a spreadsheet to do the math for them after going through it once or twice manually. That or using one of the online calculators. So in the long run it comes down to a) holding objects up against big expensive LCD monitors to measure angles repeated times, plugging numbers into a spreadsheet, and using said data do do your burns... Or using a mod that takes the place of holding objects against expensive monitors, and the afore mentioned spreadsheet. If your 'planning' somehow manages to skip the whole 'holding things against your monitor' stage, then i'm all ears. Though I don't see how it does.. If your not using a mod that measures the angles for you, your doing it yourself mechanically.. which is the part *I*, and i'm sure many others with monitors they'd rather not see scratched. would prefer to avoid.

I don't agree. The future information readouts and automation that get added to the game will most likely not be integrated permanently in the UI, say, like the altimeter, etc. My guess is they'll end up like our current mods.. They'll be modules you can add to the craft that provides them. If you don't like them, you don't have to add those parts to your ships.. Said modules will also mostly likely NOT be available early in the game. They'll end up being campaign mode unlockable parts. They also WILL be needed, at least the info displays, to make a lot of progress in campaign mode once an economy gets implemented and and we stop having unlimited parts/resources. You won't be able to just continuously build/explode random ships and progress much. At least that's my hope. WHat i'd like to see is this; (and I really don't know how much this coincides with what the devs envision) Sandbox - just that.. unlimited resources/parts, all parts unlocked, do whatever you want mode. Campaign - limited parts, limited budget. limited technologies until new ones are unlocked. Completing campaign missions/goals rewards you with larger budgets/unlocked technologies, etc. This mode should emphasise efficiency and doing things right, and reward the player for being as efficient as possible.. For instance; Unused budget for this mission will roll over to the next one.. and any ship parts, staging or otherwise, that are returned to the surface of kerbin intact, are able to be reused for future missions without having to rebuy them, or at least, can reuse them for a greatly discounted refurbishment cost. (say 1/4 of 'new part' price)

I don't have much issue with protractor and KER. both just give you information. All either of them does is replace an actual protractor and spreadsheets. They also likely both give you information that will probably end up in the vanilla game at some point too, even if it's as a campaign mode unlockable module.

No, they don't. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/23576-Do-Jets-Work-On-Eve

I have to question KSP's jet engine modelling now though after playing with it more. I know this is a game, it seems they're still trying to (eventually) achieve parts that basically work and perform roughly like their real life counter parts. How they seem to work in KSP currently: Fixed fuel flow (full throttle at sea level uses the same amount of fuel as running one in space) Efficiency decreases with altitude. thrust decreases with altitude. How jet engines behave in reality: Fuel consumption decreases with altitude. efficiency increases with altitude, until it hits optimal, then starts decreasing again as the air gets too thin. thrust remains relatively static from sea level to optimal altitude, then falls off as altitude increases past optimal. I'm not sure how hard it would be to make them behave properly in game.. but at minimum I think the fuel usage on current parts should be changed so that the less thrust they make, the less fuel they use. and when they get to 0 thrust, they use 0 fuel. (since well.. if there's no oxygen to support combustion, your not going to be using any fuel either...)

Aaaaannd.. Nova is correct. (not that I doubted him, was a good excuse to strand more kerbals on Eve ) Jet engines in fact, do absolutely nothing at any altitude on Eve. Experiment completed.. I'm going to bed.

By the way, the atmo may start at 97500 on eve, but aerobraking doesn't start to work until you get below 90k. slow process.. almost out of (non-jet)fuel. trying to save what I have left to get a day side deorbit.