Payload

Close enough for you? That cluster is 4 aero spikes and one LV-T45 for gimbal. There are actually 8 boosters on this ship. 4 large and 4 small. I'm 100% positive this would still orbit if I went with 6 large SRB's. The wings didn't help either. In the launch orientation they are just extra drag. Also my gear were out and I didn't close the intakes either. Noticed after the circulation burn lol. I challenge you to do better with a main sail sir. I'm not sure approaching 20% is even possible without jet engines. That is pretty close to 16% all conditions nominal. Different strokes for different folks yea? Payload Orbit The rest of them

Ah indeed. That's what you get when you post on your way out the door and before you have had your coffee. But Of course I meant to say center of lift certainly.

WOW people getting all upset. Been playing this game for a while now. Near 1 does not mean exactly one. And no, 2.0 off the pad burning liquid is a massive waste of dV. As long as you are using efficient engines it's fine. Also, no one is going to be replacing a main sail with one ltv30. I don't mean exactly 1.0 TWR either. More like 1.5 is appropriate. Too much speed in lower atmo is just chewing up dV. Start slow and end fast is the key. Turn somewhere around 10k be full over by 60k. Best possible profile for type of vehicle I describe. Minimize lower atmo time and never burn south of 0deg while in atmo. Even though I noticed MJ does and that is horrible. I only use one LTv45 in my clusters to maintain gimbal control. I have tried with every other combo out there. If you insist on burning liquid in lower atmo, then you should def be using aero spikes and not not the horribly inefficient main sail engine. Most people use a solid booster stage to get them to thin air before ever lighting up a liquid rocket. In this game, that is passable because everything is free. Adding more fuel is seldom the answer unless your rocket is already way OP already and it has engines on it that are too heavy and costing you payload. I am constantly putting 30 tons worth of mining equipment in orbit on around 4500ms of fuel and still have fuel left to go to Duna and perform orbital ops when I get there. One orange tank and six boosters can put 20+ tons into orbit if you know what you are doing. No need for all this 4+ orange tank business. Not that I am accusing anyone here of that. Just that I am constantly seeing people launching fuel for fuel's sake which is not the way to do it. And yes my first reply perhaps wasn't worded clearly enough. Next time read what is there and not what you want to be there. I understand the youth are indoctrinated to ignore words such as Nearly, Virtually, Almost...Etc.

Stop using terrible engines for lifting is one thing. I cringe every time I see a main sail. Use aerospike clusters for lifting. Your initial TWR should start near 1.0 and end near 2.0 just before the stage is burned out. I see too many people building OP mods and such just throwing away dV because their ascent profile is garbage.

You have what is called an over stable rocket. Your center of mass is moving down too close to your center of LIFT. You need to redesign so that you have drag aft and the center of gravity forward. Think of how a throwing dart is made. The tip has little drag and high weight, the fins have low weight and high drag. These two things in conjunction are what make it fly tip first. It's a little counter intuitive at first, but it essentially means that your payload to orbit isn't heavy enough for the size rocket you are building. It's a common occurrence in this game. People try to throw more fuel at the problem when what is needed is the proper ascent profile. No amount of wings or RCS will solve this problem. RCS is for maneuvering in orbit. Wings only insure that you can fly the profile you intend to. They will not save an over stable rocket.

I love this mod. There are plenty of mods for this game for sure. This is the only one that you actually can't go without if you are building VTOL space planes.

OK, on the recent DLL builds, it says that there should be a window to allow a GUI change to MJ1 style. I assume this means no transparency. I really would like that. However, I can't seem to find this window anywhere at all. Any ideas?

Awesome man. That GUI was really the only thing that was bugging me as I had learned all of the other quirks. This mod is prime time now. Flawless functionality. I haven't even had it destroy any of my ships since the prior update. That is really saying something considering the bone stock docking ports can still sometimes cause a random destruction event. This makes my Kethane operations a whole lot easier and faster.

Does that kethane transfer block allow you to transfer Kethane between vessels that are not docked? If so, seems cool for people who hate docking.

No MechJeb most certainly does not suck. If you understood what is involved in what you are asking it to do, it's quite amazing that it works at all. I have absolutely abused the crap out of MechJeb with ships that are impossible for any human to fly. It continues to perform well within the realm of usability. Like any system, it has it's funny quirks. Mostly those stem from people's general lack of understanding of what it is actually doing. MechJeb2 Is still missing a few things that make my mining ops easy and repeatable. It's getting closer though I still use MJ 1.9.8 99% of time.

I have been testing MJ2 lately. I can tell you one thing to make sure of is that you NEVER enable auto warp on the landing auto pilot. I can also tell you there are some times that the game will add phantom accelerations to your ship that aren't apparent. Problems with autowarp. Mechjeb sometimes starts the warp before it stops burning the engines. You can imagine what happens then. 1.9.8 never has this problem. Mechjeb can control and maintain the phantom accelerations if you use warp with physics or just don't warp. Restart the game after you have the orbit setup. Then initialize the landing guidance. That seems to put a stop to the phantom accelerations for the most part. Use the F5 key a lot. Kethane rocks! (for relevancy)

Ok dudes I did some more testing. The problem of the connector turning into debris and disappearing has indeed been solved from what I can tell. Things I have learned so far. 1. Mass Matters!! I have found just grabbing things and dragging them around is usually OK. However, when switching to docking mode, things can get ugly quick. Make sure you aren't hooking up something that is really light to something that is really heavy. This obviously has exceptions but it kept spontaneously eviscerating my drilling vessel until I actually filled it with kethane. 2. Placement Matters! Try to get the connectors on top or on the bottom of your vehicles. Kinda like a docking port. Radially attaching does work. Just not as well. On the bottom or top, and you'll be way less likely to have a mass destruction event. YMMV.

Yea man. This thing just plain doesn't work. I can see the draw of a thing like this but... If you can even get it connected to anything without destroying something. It never works again. It turns the connector part of the winch into debris and it stops working for docking and if you reload with debris set to 0. It just disappears all together. I really need this for kethane transportation. Getting tired of using robotic arm docking which is almost as buggy. The last time I did that, It blew all my tires.

You need to give it a material.

If you are using blender it\'s pretty easy to generate an Ambient Occlusion map that you can add to give it some subtle shadowing. I also tend to use normal mapping in blender to help get a more realistic texture for some things. In the end they all need to be added to your final texture. KSP currently only uses one.

You need to make those all one part when you are done. You can do that by selecting them in object mode and pressing 'join' on the left panel also 'cntrl-j'. You only need 2 objects for a SRB. The main model and the collision mesh. Also you should set the shading to smooth before you export. That way those hard edges wont be noticeable.

Most people know that NASA launches rockets and delivers payloads to space (at least they used to). They also conduct many experiments with atmospheric aircraft. When they do so, they employ what is known as a chase plane. This plane follows along side the test subject to provide film footage and give real time feedback. Over the past several weeks I have been modeling several liquid engines and boring fuel tanks. I grew tired of this quickly and decided to model something with a few more curves. I give you the preliminary model of NASA\'s premier chase plane and also the Air-force\'s supersonic training aircraft, The T-38 Talon. This still requires some modeling and then the texture process can begin. I can\'t wait for this game to have more than just a defuse texture and some real wheels and animations. I hope to have this ready by that time, if not long before. I have noticed Harvester\'s tendency to work at break neck speeds. I can only say that I will do my best to keep up. 8)

I really need to make a video tutorial about using Blender for KSP work. For now, I will tell you that you can hit the 'N' key in edit mode and select just the face you want to measure then select global from the menu and you can find the exact node point in blender. This can also be used as a caliper if you select two faces and switch the mode to local.

As a pilot, you should note the differences between air speed and angular velocity.

I would just like to add... To join meshes in blender all you must do is select the items you want joined in object mode and hit join in the tool bar or CNTRL-J. I also tend to remove internal faces if possible.

It is actually centered. I guess the best I could do is move it to the top but I have other models that are even shorter that don\'t do this. hmm i\'ll try some things.. and report. EDIT: Well I tossed the model and made another one that does work. Not sure what bugged out on that one but it was even smaller than the one that didn\'t work.

you need to make sure your unwrap doesn\'t go right to the edge of the grid. Give a bit of room.

That doesn\'t work. So far, the only way I\'ve been able to make it work is how I described.

Well I have made several engines over the last few days just practicing. I have made a small Lander Engine that explodes on the pad every time. I have checked the collider and It\'s dead on. I have even changed it around some but nothing works. All my other engines are fine but, this one goes boom every time. It\'s strange. I have included the blend file with it. See if you have the same problems.

LOL this is the greatest thing ever. I have done it!!! I have created Detachable Rocket Curb Feelers!!!!! 8) Today is truly a great day for science!