Cryocasm

Just make an engine which uses water as its resource and produces negative heat (cooling).

Right, I was planning of having a low-part space tug, but thats for later. Now about your 2 jet engines, my texturing isn't the best, so how should we organize this in greater detail? I could send you the UV unwrap and a render of the engine from 3 sides so you know which color on the unwrap equates to what surface on the engine, or do you prefer a different approach?

Well, you see, the .cfg documentation on the wiki doesn't suffice for changing thrust effect size. I also feel that they are just simply GIANT exhaust plumes, but, owell. Well, if we round 6,000 m/s dV @ 50 Minutes, then your standard 750 m/s Trans Munar Injection burn weighs in at a burn time of 8.3 minutes. Personally, I actually prefer chemical rockets for these "short-distance" burns, because for a TMI burn at a 75KM parking orbit you simply need that puush. An orbit of 75KM around Kerbin is a mere 35 minutes, and 8.3 is 1/4 of it.

Truth be told.

I assume its possible with a bit of quick and dirty .cfg editing. I don't have the part packs though (right now), so I can't be more precise than that. I might download them in order to get a better look into lights myself.

IMHO its not too fidgety, considering that resources are delivered in the 1000s and consumed in the 10s per Kerbal per day. I could, however, make a system similar to Kethane, where you'd transport a certain "OmniLifeSubstance", and then be able to convert it into its derivatives O2, Food, and Water. Those engines of yours are fairly high up the list, I just need to finish a few more tests concerning CFG editing.

Hmm, I'll credit you in an easter egg in the .CFG files. Speaking of which, can you offer any advice on those?

Hmm, I was considering making some space station parts, but I think now I truly will. The node module will be the most "omnipotent": (I'll also add new O2, Water, Food, as well as Waste and CO2 resources for this) The node holds: Oxygen: 400/400 (1 Kerbal needs 100 oxygen for 24 hours) Water: 800/800 (1 Kerbal needs 50 water for 24 hours, this particular node itself also 50 water per 24 hours in addition to further modules) Food: 60/60 (1 Kerbal needs 3 food for 24 hours (3 meals)) ElectricalCharge: 1000/1000 XenonGas: 500/500 (for orbital adjustment) Monopropellant: 250/250 (for whatever purposes) Waste: 0/250 (1 Kerbal produces 30 waste per 24 hours (bodily fluids)) CO2: 0/250 (tolerance tank) The node can: Has 2 1 meter connection nodes, for the Hubmax up top (not included in this node), and for further modules/docking ports on the bottom. Has activated carbon filters, converting CO2 back into O2 at 140 per 24 hours (is passive, no electricity used, filter module will exist). Has Waste Management, using 100 electricalcharge per 24 hours to recover 25 water (not efficient, waste management module will exist). Has a built in RTG, producing 1 electrical charge per second. So, I'll draw a diagram at school on Monday when I'm bored in class again, but you can already guess: Big Battery Module. Big Solar Panel Device Machinery Apparatus. More Oxygen Tanks. More Water Tanks. 10-Meter long living quarters (can't wait for IVA, imagine floating through it). Cupola. Disposable-One-Way-Trash-Chute (basically a RT-10 booster ducttaped to a box and 2L bottle full of waste, launch in retrograde direction for best effect (will deorbit below 400km). Drugs. This system will also demand 2 freshly designed spacecraft, analog to the Soyuz and Progress: The Einheit-Astronaut-Capsule EAC-3 (for 3 Kerbs), with its Orbital Module and Service Module (just like Soyuz, but different name) The Fortschritt-Goods-Delivery-Robot FGDR-1 (for 1 ton), with its Orbital Module, Modular Cargo Module (1000 units of [resource here]), and Service Module (just like Progress, but different name) These sit atop their very own repurposed ICBM, the JEB-1 (designed by the man himself, Jebediah Kerman, to lift an effective 5 tons to <500KM orbit) As you've noticed, the design specifications of mine always state up to 500KM, beyond that you will probably have to double the stages, add boosters, or use a VASIMR powered trash dumper, which sets its PE to 0km, undocks the waste-filled module, and then burns to an intercept with the station.

Or literally gluing photovoltaic cells onto aluminum foil.

Trust me, I'm a practical physicist in improvising. About the Solar Panel, whats the exact orientation on the triangle? Is the tip mounted to the craft or one of its sides? I was thinking about making non-rigid roll-out solar "panels" (actually foils). Basically, an Aluminum Foil carton opens and out comes the solar "panel". It also has a string for retrieval. Irl, you'd need centrifugal force to keep the panel extended, but this is KSP, so that's not necessary. --- Edit: So I whipped together the VASIMR-P10 (Prototype, 10 kN) to test my entire pipeline, with texturing, Unity, .cfg editing, and so forth. I decided to build the space-dragster and send it into orbit with hyperedit and then proceed with testing the engine. Mechjeb gave me the following data: Craft weight (full tanks) 19.97 Tons. Thrust: 40 kN Surface TWR: 0.20 (Thats 20% of 20 tons! For a thruster of this efficiency, thats HUGE!!!!) dV: 5869 m/s (not huge I know...) Time to dV: 45:55 minutes:seconds. This dV is achieved through having 23400 Xenon gas onboard, the thrust can be continuous at ~66% with 6 Gigantor Panels. Quite the development indeed.

For aerodynamic stability and general good looking-ness? I'll have to put the landing gear off until I can animate properly. I have the concept laid out for it, but I think everyone expects far too much from it, considering that their thrust is even lower than that of the Ion engine. This at sizes of km². This would require an engine that can gimball out to 90°, which is, by game mechanics, 100% possible. However, through mechanical design, this is practically impossible due to the instabilities introduced as well as the massive torque forces of the thrust being turned 90°. The nozzle can only be attached on 1 axis (using a bolt through structural elements and the throat), which means it can only gimbal on 1 axis, which is currently undefined by game mechanics. I don't know about this one, I could make a skycrane setup if you wish though.

Thanks bro! Seriously, many thanks, do you want to have some sort of logo/advert on the booster of mine that I have devoted to be trashed full of these things.

My hopefully final question concerning modding is how this whole funny business works with thrusters and the like in Unity. I've managed to get my pipeline working with 3d models, textures, but now I need to make the integral engine parts, and I've read a few things about gameobjects and using their Zenith as the thrust orientation, but I'm unsure. Does anyone have any ideas/guides? (Hopefully .19 guides, figuring out how to do .cfg files was a pain because the tutorials are outdated).

Well, my chrome is generally buggy, it likes to tell me that I have no internet while playing CS:S and voice chatting with br0s. Chrome also likes to let downloads tear off.

Sorry that its been taking a while, for the past 5 days google chrome decided not to fetch the latest version of the thread, so until right now I didn't see your posts. I'll get too it very soon.

Think with portals. If you do a bit of research on the physics behind it you can begin to a get a feeling and imagination for what a different nozzle shape does and how it releases thrust according to its fuel. You've probably noticed that SRBs are usually broad cones with a wide throat, this is because the burning hot thrusting exhaust is coming from within the SRB, and isn't being mixed up in the combustor/nozzle. In Liquid engines, the fuel is either combusted and then throated into the nozzle, or combusted in the nozzle itself. In order to maximize the area which can pickup force from the reaction as well as orient the thrust beam nozzles are usually "cone" shaped, but actually they are more parabolic than conic. Some engines also have additional small tanks near the nozzles on gantries and strutting, these can add visual touch, and in real life usually contain cooling liquid or a hypergolic reactant pair, in order to restart the engine in space. Looking at many liquid engines also makes you find that they often have a ring around the nozzle, this "ring" or "tube" is actually for cooling, which adds nice detail. When working in Blender, choose the depth of your engine carefully, so that you don't have to do any funny stuff in Unity or for placement in KSP. If its thrust vectoring, you need to have 2 models. 1 "anchor" and 1 "gimbal". Accordingly identify it in the part.cfg file. Use ctrl+e to Mark Seams, this helps greatly with easy texturing and UV unwrapping. Here is one of my more recent experiments: It starts at a 2 meter diameter up top where it connects to other parts, and at the bottom has a 3 meter diameter and a fairly cone shaped engine, this is because its meant to puuuuuuuuuush thrust out at high power and somewhat lower efficiency, its an ascent stage engine. This engine has staged combustion and is more fuel efficient, while lacking the power needed for ascent, its perfect for intraplanetary flight at good fuel efficiency. This model specifically lacks the hypergolic fuel tanks for restarting, but this is only preliminary. If I remember correctly this engine is 2m in diameter. Any questions PM me, if it concerns the Blender -> Unity -> KSP pipeline or just the physics behind rocket propulsion.

well, you can fit the heatshield theoretically anywhere, and manipulate its position with DAMNED ROBOTICS. I'll look into it, maybe even make some fanciness for it. Well then it appears that Cabana Corp has made the engines, can I publish on your behalf?

You are most mechanically minded, I was indeed saying cool as in it looks good for the ladies on your airplane rather than cooling. Cooling is tricky with jet engines, especially when it comes to everything behind the exhaust. I'm surely looking into it though. As a kind of mega-heat shield to land your bases with on Duna once the atmospheric mechanics are upgraded? Anyway, after a really, really boring movie in class I devised my said solid-fueled surface-to-orbit stuff: The lighter variants are at the top of the page while the heavier variant is at the bottom. Keep in mind that I had to clip the parts heights because the page was simply too short. Oh, and, anyone who wants to advertise on my rocket can do so, just give me logos. The SB-500 Stage will have a duplicate of itself with the exact same performance but filled with logos, as if this were some kind of real-life project (totally not referencing Ariane 5 launcher).

Considering that I'm going to be buying the card in a few months I've got plenty of time to browse, and I don't feel like being cheap either (I mean, it was a great deal getting the GTX 550 Ti for only 130 $), but I'm sticking to nVidia for sure. This comes after a friend of mine had to buy a new mobo for his new AMD 7870 card which simply died on him 2 weeks ago, he wasn't overdoing OCing or anything, he awaits the manufacturers opinion because he sent it in by mail. I was starting to think that the X50 series is a bit weak for its price, and I was inclined to step up towards a 670, but I'll have to see about the room in my computer etc. Thanks anyway, and keep in mind, -force-opengl is a good fix for any 3D program (I used it on Blender to get a quick and dirty FPS gain, after it started feeling slow after I installed the Asus GTX 550 Ti.) Happy launching/computer burning.

I decided to google the whole problem again, and stumbled across the solution. Its very temporary (I'll buy a new graphics card, it does feel as if the GTX 550 is outdated), but it works. On a Unity Forum thread I discovered that a guy fixed it using the command line -force-opengl. I replicated this fix to discover that I now have my beloved 60+ FPS, however the program jitters from time to time. This is excellent, I've also found that it in fact has to do with my system, Unity 4 doesn't necessarily like ASUS Gamer OSD, and I just so happen to have an ASUS GTX 550 Ti. I don't think any benchmark would've been able to reveal this though, owell. Next GPU is a Gigabyte GTX 650 Ti or similar, lets see how that works out. Thanks anyway, I'll try the benchmarks when I feel like burning my computer and putting some life into it, probably in the far off lands of Winter Time, when my room is 15 C° instead of this crappy near 30 C° temp that I'm getting. Summer is gonna suck for my comp, ._.

I'll take it with a cool casing and such? I've been feeling the need for atmospheric engines to be radially mounted to ascent stages.

Right, so. The current state of things: I've decided to restructure my work, and in my first addon pack, there will be a focus on "sets" of KSC to LKO systems. The requests here will be labeled as "misc.", which adds ominously to the pack in one way or another. The Orion is a bit tricky and special, however it will remain as its own entity and I'll get around to it eventually. Right now I'm devising several several systems, which base on Asparagus Staging (aerodynamic, look at the Soyuz Rocket, which uses the strap on boosters as parallel engines) and on putting more boom the closer to the bottom you get (Solid Fuel powered first stages with the Orbital Achievement Stage being the last stage before the payload). I've also thought up and written some notes on the new Life Support stuff coming soon (version 0.20 ?), this includes Greenhouses, as a water-consuming food and oxygen producing orbital module, both as Kerbol-Powered or as Light-Powered variants (which needs a bit more energy..). I'm still thinking of a logical way of reclaiming the most resources possible (waste management-water recovery, CO2 -> Oxygen via Activated Carbon/Plants, Hydrogen Scrubbers (so you only need to take Oxygen with you), etc). Greenhouses will most likely form the basis for all manned interplanetary missions and bases, as its too expensive/toll taking on the player to constantly launch resupply rockets that arrive 3 months later anyway. What I'm working on currently is the Soyuz-Style stuff, in 1 meter and 2 meter variants (attachment surfaces).

I'd recommend waiting for a transfer window where Moho is at its farthest from Kerbol, as this is where your intercept velocity as well as Moho's own velocity is at the lowest possible. I also recommend taking some Kethane equipment with you, and some bigger engines for the Moho insertion and home-return burns. Don't forget to abuse Eve's high gravity for slingshots, this can save fuel both on the way to Moho and back. I don't really have much more to say, I've thus far only landed on Eve (unmanned, parachutes), and inserted into Duna Orbit without using Ike.

Why isn't there a tool that posts exact stats? Then you'd see that across the board that my system is running fine on Unity, KSP is more of a drag on memory if anything. I will emulate this: There are no faults during Unity 4 usage, no BSOD, no gfx driver crash, no memory leak, no program crash, and so forth, thus far all operations were successful from clicking the .exe to clicking the X in the corner. Unity 4 uses about 160 MB of ram, out of 8175 total available. Unity 4 remains very low on my CPU 2, running below 10% save for asset imports when it peaks at 50% from time to time. Unity 4 consumes 2.4 gigabytes out of ~1862 total GB available. Unity 4 doesn't use my GPU intensively (I used ASUS Smartdoctor and SpeedFan as temperature sensing programs), remaining below 70 C°. To me this can only point at a throttling problem, as the console has no errors whatsoever pertaining to system usage. I've changed versions from Unity 4.0.2 which KSP uses currently to the latest, 4.1.2f, it showed a remote increase in performance, possibly an increase around 5 frames, and no perturbations in system usage. The thing being that I'd really like to make stuff for KSP, but now that Unity (which is a program that I was always fond of) runs extremely slow does really piss me off hard. I rageposted last night I'll admit that, however posted this here after sleeping around 9 hours and drinking a cup of tea. I do believe this is a bit more elaborate than my responses until now. I haven't been able to find a config file for Unity in its folders, and I prefer not to do stuff with the Registry as I've seen too many people crash/burn/destroy/incapacitate their computers doing stuff that they know too little about. I'll see if I can allocate it to another core, if Unity doesn't want that then I'll be sure that its throttling somewhere.

I don't need computer advice, I know how my system runs and it runs the way I want it to run. Period. Now, more importantly is Unity being a piece of sh*t that I seriously want to toss out the window. A reinstall didn't do much more than eat another 2.5 gigabytes.