el_coyoto

Yup, I know that you can queue several maneuver nodes in MechJeb, but the problem for me is more finding if a given Grand Tour exists. For example "Is it possible to do a Kerbin->Eve->Duna->Dres->Jool Grand Tour, and if yes, what is the departure date and the delta-v budget?". If I'm not mistaken, to generate such a mission plan, people usually use constraint solving algorithms rather than trying every combination of departure dates and trajectories by hand.

Yup, while searching a bit before posting, I found this : there doesn't seem to be any cargo bay, but the author was on the track to a "procedural shape" approach. So, basically, a "Procedural cargo bay / fuselage" mod (i.e. cargo bays are just a fuselage with no fuel and a door) or a more space station oriented "Procedural shapes"... LOL we're turning the VAB into a 3d modelling software!

Hi everyone ! Has anyone ever thought of making a Procedural Cargo Bay mod ? I'm thinking of this after reading a post about the new SP cargo bay and how people have different approach about their size : some people like the constraint of a small cargo bay and design clever payloads, some prefer having cargo bays as long as they can dream of... In terms of gameplay, the reasoning is comparable to other procedural mods (wings, fairings, fuel tanks) in that they soften engineering constraints by allowing to custom design each of your parts rather than using already developed and tested « off the shelf » parts. The idea would be having several cargo bay shapes that fit existing stock fuselages and allow the modification of their length, inner separations, etc. in the editor, just like Procedural Fairings or pWing. Being a C++ dev with no KSP API experience, I have no idea of the workload, but I suspect that making models that look nice despite the procedural aspect will be a challenge on top of the code itself. What do you guys think ?

Nice design, will steal it! I personally like the minutia required to fit a useful payload into our new, shiny, cargo bays, it mirrors a real life engineering constraint. On the other hand, *cough* Procedural cargo bays *cough*... would make an awesome mod.

^This If it's not the case, a few screen shots would help...

I think it might be because planning and designing a Grand Tour trajectory of several moon/planet flybys would be kinda hard in stock game. There are external tools like KSP Trajectory Optimization Tool that may help design such missions though... MechJeb seems to be already able to do "porkchop transfer window" picking, might be worth it to suggest a "Grand Tour finder" in the MechJeb forum, but I suspect the code for such a solver to be quite hairy and take a lot (too much?) time to integrate in MJ...

Never more than 4, around 2 or 3 for a "plant the flag on the Mun and return". The liquid first stage usually goes to LKO with the payload, then lands back on its own once detached from the payload. This stage might receive a few SRB to make sure it reaches LKO. I try to do the munar injection + landing + return in one stage, which is inefficient and convenient and might require either NERVAs or chemical + drop tanks. So, basically, for Kerbin SOI operations, as few stages (2 or 3) as possible to try to recover as much hardware as possible at the cost of some fuel inefficiency. Interplanetary missions usually get an additional dedicated transfer stage (+1 stage), and might include orbital rendez-vous in the case of Jool or very interesting scientific targets (another stage).

Probably the Kerbin Side mod, looks a lot like the Old KSC Upgrade...

As an avid user of the awesome KSP Parachute Calculator, I highly approve this post! <nerd>I even pulled the formulas into an excel file to generate nice graphs...</nerd> If you plan to land on Kerbin though, you can forego the calculator and do this in your head with a small trick : a small 0.1 t mk16 parachute lands a 0.8 mk1 capsule just fine, which gives us a 1/8 ratio parachute mass to rest of the ship mass. I.e. take your ship mass, divide it by 8 and this gives the mass of parachutes (not drogues) required to soft land on Kerbin. If you punch these numbers in KSP Parachute Calculator, you'll find a 6 m/s landing speed @ sea level, which is fine and comfy as long as it's Jeb in the capsule, rather than me... The calculator also works for all the planets and moons with an atmosphere in the Kerbol system. The thing to note is that the "braking power" (and thus touchdown speed) of a parachute depends on its mass x drag coefficient and atmospheric density, which itself is linked to landing elevation and the atmosphere of planet/moon you're landing on. Drogue chutes also work, but have less drag coefficient, so their use is more specialized... Fly safe! EDIT : not remembering the maths by heart, but the idea is computing the craft terminal velocity at a given height (landing elevation) with the chute(s) in deployed state, which increases the parachute drag coefficient A LOT (0.22 -> 1) and dramatically increase the overall drag coefficient.

First thing I do in all my careers is science spam around KSC, before launching anything. I'm also guilty of sending my kerbals to the most boring places in the Kerbol system, plundering as much science as I can from Mun and Minmus before doing anything fun. I revert to the VAB whenever the flight is not perfect, spending hours to tweak a sepatron on a radial booster so that it decouples nicely and other useless OCD stuff. I build everything perfectly balanced, if not symmetrical. Always. I like airhogging and OP stock turbojets. I can't live without Editor Extensions.

Building SSTO is indeed a more difficult challenge than rockets (at least in my case), but I also find it very rewarding. There are some very good resources on this forum, among which : Basic Aircraft Design Explained Simply With Pictures : this amazing and beautifully illustrated thread deals with aircraft and flight in general, but the explanations are really clear and might help you with general aircraft design (I've had several "ah ah" moments reading it although I've been playing for a while...). This thread troubleshoots several common SSTO problems, including ascent profiles (6th item). Of course, there are many more equally good threads that you can find on the Drawing Board. Don't hesitate to post pictures or videos of your craft, people here will be very happy to help you improve your planes and help become a better plane designer : you don't have to stay all alone in your SPH without getting help and input from the amazing community that populates this forum! Fly safe!

+1 A good trick if you want to use the engine you're testing to take off is using an action group to toggle the engine. This way you can start it and still use the staging key to activate it at the right moment for the test.

Same here : I was stunned to see Editor Extensions (can't live without, thank you Padishar) updated the day after release and MJ (thank you Sarbian) almost the evening (for me) of the 0.25 release. These are just personal examples, but the rate at which mods get ported to 0.25 is amazing. These guys have families, jobs, are sometimes treated with less than the respect they deserve, and yet, they update like crazy! (and treat bugs, take input from us, add features and deal with critiques) I agree with Spark Plug, having such dedicated modders is a really unique and valuable aspect of this community. We should set up a "hug a modder" day...

Yup, it's called "atmospheric scattering" and its does improve the feeling of depth in a scene a lot. Although I'm not sure how expensive computationally it is (it's been a loooooong time I haven't coded graphics and shader stuff) nor how well Unity supports it. I guess we'll have to wait for the guys who did graphics addon for KSP (cloud mod, etc.) to give their 2 cents.

Just came here to say that, although I won't be able to help you, I just love the slogan!

TWR is "how hard can I accelerate?". This is mostly useful when taking off/landing (TWR ~= 2), and doesn't need to be very large when you are already in orbit or doing transfers, as Taki117 mentioned. It only means that you will need to burn longer for the same delta-v than a more powerful engine, but it shouldn't be a problem for most orbital manoeuvres, and can be as low as you are patient. I posted a few tips on what affects your delta v and how to improve it in another thread, you may find it interesting. Also, I'm not sure that KER isn't showing a buggy delta v for the interstellar turbojets, because 3 m/s in atmo and 8 m/s in vacuum seems awfully low, but as I've never played Interstellar (just watched Scott's Interstellar Quest) I'm don't really know...

You can find Active Texture Management in this forum thread, it will help solve your memory issues. You have the choice between a basic and aggressive version : you can do some tests to see wether you need the aggressive one, but I usually stick to the basic one (mostly because I like having reasonably crispy looking textures) and it lets me play with B9, Karbonite and a few other mods. Just be careful if you play KSP 0.25, the last forum posts seem to mention problems getting ATM to work with 0.25... Good luck and fly safe!

You can check a nice delta v map on the ksp wiki. Delta V means velocity change, that you can picture as acceleration if you want. As in space, there is no air to slow you down, your ability to change your velocity says directly to which places you can go.

Vessels can only be recovered when landed on Kerbin as far as I know. "Recovery" means getting back your crew and a percentage of the vessel cost depending on how far you are from KSC. "Terminate flight" on the other hand means remote destruction of the vessel and its contents, organic or not.

THANK YOU SO MUCH PADISHAR! While I had a lot of fun with 0.25, I was a bit saddened that my favorite and only "I can't live without it" mod didn't work any more. Thanks for updating so quickly, I'll be a very happy rocket scientist when I get back home tonight! +rep

I think you're right on the principle, and the upward acceleration from lift doesn't appear magically : it costs you drag. Lift helps fight gravity because it pulls your aircraft up. Doing the same without wings would require you to tilt the craft more so that the engine also fights gravity. So part of the engine TWR is "wasted" to keep your vertical speed positive. Thus a wingless plane/rocket/thingie will need a good TWR (2) to fight both gravity AND drag, while a winged designed will use some of its lift to fight gravity, meaning you can select engines with less TWR. Such engines are usually lighter, which is more or less the point of using wings : less engines required. It's a choice : either you try to spend as little time in the atmosphere with a wingless design, treating it as a hostile parameter and trying to escape it as fast as possible, or you try to use it to your advantage thanks to the lift provided by a winged design. The engine on a winged design will also spend less thrust fighting gravity (because of a more horizontal attitude), BUT as you've said, there's no free lunch and this "magic" upward acceleration coming from your wings has a price : more drag than a wingless design. Hope it was a bit clearer, it's sometimes hard for me to be concise and accurate in English...

Typical ascent profile goes like this (you mileage WILL vary) : 20° or 25° ascent from the runway. Watch your speed, don't go faster than terminal velocity, you would lose speed to drag When reaching 10 or 15 km, orient to the nose to keep a constant vertical speed (I usually go with 200 m/s) and build up horizontal speed. Drag and terminal velocity stop being a problem at the altitudes When your air intakes start being close to empty, try to reduce thrust (to reduce air consumption) and make sure your speed is still increasing : you will accelerate despite the lower throttle setting because there will be less and less drag to slow you down. Keep the "reduce thrust-build horizontal speed-keep vertical speed positive" cycle going until you cannot throttle down without slowing or throttle up without starving your engines. You should be rather fast (1000 m/s, 1500 m/s) : time to punch the rocket mode and get to orbit! Fly safe! EDIT : I haven't checked the new stock planes, and slowly started to realize that the Learstar is stock... Never mind the question about a picture of the plane. People may also come up with much better ascent profiles specifically for this plane...

As Sirine said, they provide maneuverability in the atmosphere, letting you glide/fly to your target without having to do a an ultra precise landing. They also let you reach orbit with a weaker TWR than a rocket would allow... Practical use : you can put smaller engines on planes and save on weight what you lose to wing drag. But, this is an excellent question : people don't always realize that with a TWR big enough (> ~1.5), wings actually make it harder to reach orbit because of the added drag.

Yeah, it would be cool if the menu defaulted to "action group #1" rather than "stage" when clicking the "Action groups" tab. Glad to see I'm not only one derping because of this...

When you read an article about Rosetta and think "don't poke the magic boulder"...