DerekL1963

Crew manifest, as mentioned above, is your only option other than to EVA between crewed components - regardless of how they are attached to each other.

I'd love to see an option to sort by total mission time or to output a file with total mission time... If this mod also allowed you to add/remove crew in the VAB I'd consider marrying it.

I can only find an option for manned craft...

Is there a way to determine the theoretical (I.E. with max crew) life support remaining in a currently unmanned vessel on orbit? (Other than with tedious math and trying to locate all the containers I've got attached here and there.)

Airbags aren't powered by explosive charges, they're gas generators and the difference is far more than semantic as (among other things) the former is uncontrolled while the latter is controlled. Asking people slanted and deliberately misleading questions is neither reasonable or useful.

Yep, the plume from the SRB's is going to be a significant problem. And the exhaust is generally... neither pleasant or healthy.

Nonsense. The vast majority of boosters are developed 'on spec' - without a specific program in mind. Offhand, the only US exceptions I can think of after the first generation are the Saturn I and V and whichever Titan derivative it was that was the final Dyna-Soar booster. (Though there's persistent and credible rumors that Dyna-Soar booster was funded on the QT out of 'black' budgets for the NRO.)

A lot of people "say things" in a cargo cult like manner here on the forums because all they have are the "forum rules of thumb" and little clear understanding of the actual principles or of the often vast tradespace ruled out by those "rules of thumb". Rather than simply "minimizing the number of LV-N's", you need to look at your T/W and mass ratios and the overall performance of the craft. I built a large tug, and six LV-N's turned out to be the "sweet spot" for performance as that held burn times and mass ratios down to a reasonable level. Shorter burn times are good because means any pointing errors have less time to propagate and because the longer the burn the more conditions deviate from the ideal ones inherent in your maneuver node. (Maneuver nodes are mathematical fictions that apply all the delta-V at a single instant at a single point in space - a ten minute burn will be a better approximation of that than a forty five minute burn will be.)

Where your fueling stations go depends heavily on where they fit into your operational scheme... In one setup I used tankers to move fuel about (the tugs being refueled were too large to reasonably dock) and in the end it made more sense to put my huge tank farm down low (around 100km to stay clear of my 75km parking orbit and to use less fuel getting the fuel into orbit) and use tankers to refuel my tugs in a 200km orbit.

You'll have to be a bit more specific than that... because your image appears to show them being correctly handled.

Why should people not be frustrated when they can't get help in the location that's supposed to be used for such things? Yes, some questions get asked over and over - that's what happens in the real world as new people come into a game or discover a mod. That goes doubly for a mod as complex and non-intuitive as this. The airlock is available for those who can't deal with that. (And the FAQ and the wiki are just barely this side of useless. They're badly incomplete.) Most mods are 'user supported' in that most basic questions can be answered by experienced users. For those can't be bothered, well, again, the airlock awaits.

I've never seen a rocket flip with MJ at the controls that wasn't badly designed. Nor does it need one as a burn isn't measured by time it's measured by delta-V.

Since no rockets are built, not payloads are built. Since no payloads are built, not rockets get built. Since no rockets are built, not payloads are built... In a viscous, never ending circle.

No, it's not apples to oranges - it's comparing like to like. You didn't compare Mars missions. You didn't compare capabilities. You didn't express goals... you simply voiced a desire for low costs, and I gave you a way (as irrational as your original one) to lower your costs even further.

Shoot, if money is your issue, how many Model-T's could we buy for one Curiosity?

There is no such thing as "hopelessly dependent on MJ", there is only "playing the game in ways that some people do not approve of". To that I reply, the approval of a self appointed gatekeeper is not necessary for my or anyone else's enjoyment of the game and the fault thus lies with those who think there is, not with me. In addition, there are other people like me - not only do I have poor eye hand coordination (I had the misfortune to be born out on left hand side of the bell curve in that respect, which was then made worse by things way off topic here), but I also didn't grow up a gamer (I was an adult by the time PC games hit the mainstream) and thus have neither twitch reflexes nor the WASD keys engraved in my muscle memory. Without MJ, KSP would literally be almost completely unplayable. I don't feel robbed or hopeless, I feel enabled. [[Citation needed]] You state this as a fact, when it's actually an opinion. Different people get enjoyment from different aspects of the game. My lightbulb moments come from solving difficult engineering or operational challenges, not from twitch reflex challenges. I however do not make, as you do, the presumption that people who don't enjoy my playstyle are "playing wrong" or "robbed" because I understand that people are different and enjoy different things. KSP is a sandbox, not a rail game, and there are a myriad ways to find enjoyment not One True Way to "win" at playing.

Very cool and very useful. Notke, would you considering adding a link to the first post?

The point of a free-return Mars mission isn't science, it's engineering and research and development. It's the Apollo 7 and 8 of Martian exploration wrapped up in a single mission. And considering that in terms of preparations for Martian exploration we're barely at Liberty Bell 7 levels... we should be thinking in terms of Apollo 7 and 8. One the things, probably *the* key thing that's holding back space exploration is that we spend so dang little time on engineering - since every mission must succeed and must succeed in terms of science, the result has been a crippling conservatism in engineering.

I was being generous as "concepts" are even lower on the scale. Absent any serious engineering, no we can't have reasonable expectations on it's performance because we don't have any useful information on which to base those expectations. (Let alone to refer to is as "awesome" as you did.) Not to mention it's precisely nothing like a liquid fueled power reactor - liquid fueled power reactors maintain their fuel in a liquid state, it never enters a vapor phase. (And the vapor phase is critically important as it's likely a fair portion of the heating will occur in that phase, as well as driving the design of any nozzle cooling. You also need to make sure the propellant doesn't condense inside the reactor, etc...) Nor do they store their fuel in a liquid state (it's stored as a solid), etc... etc... Claiming that something about which practically nothing is known is a "very good engineering solution" is the very definition of hype. (And it's a hype that's all too common in the mostly engineering illiterate space fan/supporter community.)

[[Citation Needed]]

Not only is nobody sure how to build a NSWR, nobody has even looked at doing do, there haven't even been any significant studies made or modeling done. It's about as close to complete vaporware as an engine can be. It pretty much only exists in Zubrin's proposal, and that proposal is at a level that's pretty much just a glorified BOTE.

Submariners manage under conditions that would drive others insane. (Though some say that's because they've a protective inoculation of a different form of insanity.)

My guess is is seperate ports, Polaris A-3 used helium gas for TVC on the second stage.

You'll need that time too... because with 'Active Vessel' no longer in play, your game will now revolve around the "rebuild your network" mini-game. Heading out of Kerbin orbit into the deep black? You're not in anyone's cone. Making a burn on your way to Jool, you're not in anyone's cone. Etc... etc... "Active Vessel" is a key tool that removes a great deal of drudgery from the game. Removing it won't end PEBKAC problems, it will only change their source. This is a complex mod and PEBKAC is to be expected as people climb up the (quite steep) learning curve.

No. And Helldiver, what's the difference between the three different versions in the VAB in 1.07? (And all three still have the bad Seperatron install.)