Eric S

Yes and No. Harvester has said in the past that he wants reentry heat not to require heat shields. Before anyone gets upset about that not being realistic, keep in mind that we're reentering Kerbin's atmosphere at about a third the speed that you would enter Earth's atmosphere, so reentry heat would be much less an issue. You'll probably still need to pay attention to your more delicate parts, but you won't need dedicated heat shields. Then again, the devs may change their minds and go with full heat shields, or ditch the idea of reentry heat.

As another person playing with FAR/DRE, I can confirm that this works and you get full value, much easier than trying to reenter with a bunch of science parts.

No problem, glad to help. I've seen times it didn't seem to pop up that option at first as well, but it usually did if I retried it. Probably a bit of lag or clicking on the wrong item in my case as well.

If you're playing 0.23, yes. You just need to latch on to the ladder of the command pod, right click the command pod, and you'll get a "take reports" menu option (or something like that). Storing them back in a capsule works the same way as storing a single experiment result.

Heh, the first thing I though of when I saw this thread title was Hmm... either 1) Hiding underground because it's raining big orange tanks or 2) What rest of the population? Oh, you mean the previous participants in the space program that bravely participated before we figured out how to make the engines not blow up on the launch pad.

Ugh, I typed up an answer to this and didn't hit post, sorry. The DTS-M1's have a max range of 50 Mm, which is enough to get out to Minmus and just past it, but not to the edge of the SoI. The Reflectron KR-7 has a max range of 90 Mm, which is just barely past the edge of Kerbin's SoI. For Duna/Eve, you'll need at least the KR-14. So basically, no early career unmanned missions to other planets.

So you had contact while in Kerbin's SoI and for a little bit after you left, but not for long afterwards? Sounds like you used dishes with too short of a range. Which dishes did you use? Also note that your description only has one free satellite dish, and you want a free dish on at least two of the satellite dishes, otherwise you'll lose contact every time the one satellite with a free dish goes behind the planet. I do my early satellite networks this way: Three satellites, 120 degrees apart, at an altitude of about 776.6 Km, each with two (for interplanetary) or three (for kerbin/Mun/Minmus operations) dishes and a Communotron 16. At that altitude, the satellites can communicate with each other and ground control via the communotrons. The three dish satellites get targeted at "active craft", the Mun, and Minmus. The two dish satellites get targeted at "active craft" and the destination planet of the current mission. Later on, I replace the Communotron 16 with a 32 and raise the altitude, resulting in an arrangement that's less susceptible to loss of communication if a satellite drifts out of position, and switch to four dishes, two long range with the same targets as the two dish above, and two short range dishes targeted at the Mun and Minmus.

Worse, from the point of lab usefulness, you CAN move those results into a capsule with an EVA'ed kerbal. If that feature hadn't been added at the same time as the lab, the lab might be more useful. Not to say that I want them to undo that feature.

Thank you, I found it too as soon as I asked google rather than trying to use the forum search.

Well aware of that, and you shouldn't not worry about something just because it's "a silly little scripting language." If it doesn't run in a sandbox that you trust, assume it can do anything you would do. I said that I didn't know where I found the link, not that I didn't know who compiled it. Of course, since I can't "show my work" so to speak, you've got no reason to trust what I have to say about it. I can't find the source of the link, but I'm pretty sure you're right.

That really depends on just how overboard I went with the mothership design. I tend to use reusable drive sections, so I definitely keep those around. I've been known to dump sections I won't need for the trip home into Jool if I'm there. Anything that was designed to be used to reenter does so. Everything remaining tends to burn up on reeentry just so that I don't clutter up LKO.

I got the copy I use at <http://epsilonzero.nl/downloads/RemoteTech2_2013.12.18.21.39.zip> though I couldn't tell you HOW I found that link.

I haven't tested recent versions of this, but I know a little while back (0.22) that if a dish was targeting the active vessel and the active vessel went out of line of site, the dish wouldn't connect to anything. I assumed that the dish would continue pointing in the direction of the active vessel and establish communication with satellite dishes around the body, but this didn't happen. My solution has been to have two "mission dishes" on each Kerbin satellite, one pointed at the active vessel, one pointed at whatever celestial body that vessel's mission is going to take place at. Having "active vessel" continue to target the active vessel but connect to other dishes in the cone even if it can't connect to the targeted vessel would be nice, and possibly a bit OP for game balance purposes, as it would eliminate the need for multi-dish satellites around Kerbin in addition to not forcing me to go through my kerbin satellite constellations changing the planetary target as needed.

I'd rather the hitchhiker and lab modules get rotated to match the capsule, having off-center ladders means you don't have to run your ladders over RCS quads. Though it's easy enough to rotate the hitchhiker or lab module yourself, press 'e' twice and shift-'e' five times.

Pretty sure that the small increments are 5 degrees, and it takes 5 shift-e to rotate the habitat to line up with the mk1-2 capsule (not an exact match, but six of them is too far). I'd actually prefer it if the hitchhiker and lab module were permanently rotated by the same amount so that the ladders line up without having to place RCS quads over the ladders/hatches.

Yes, but I liked your answer better, the real world implications of multiple wings is fascinating stuff. I always thought that the reason multiple levels of wings went away was because faster craft produced more lift, so less wing was needed. However, if that were the reasoning, they would have kept the multiple wings and just gone with shorter wings because they'd be more structurally stable. See, you really can learn something new every day.

This. Trying to figure out how career mode will play out at this point is sort of like trying to figure how how a full, normal game of chess would play when all you know about the game is all the rules pertaining to pawns. We blast through the tech tree now because that's the only thing that matters, and if you're min-maxing, you're planning missions according to how much science they can return. That may very well change when we've got other factors to consider. This isn't to say that we shouldn't ponder on what else career mode may bring, just that judging science by how it feels when it's the only thing in the game may not reflect accurately on how it feels when it's just one part of a complete career mode.

Harvester specifically mentioned contracts as one of the parts that will flesh out career mode in the "closing ceremony" of the recent KerbalKon.

Is it possible you had FAR installed when you previously played? That tends to reduce the delta-v required to reach LKO by about 1 km/s.

The airflow around any given part is going to depend on any other parts in the vicinity of that part, the direction of the airflow, the speed of the airflow, etc. While you might be able to factor away the latter components, you can't precompute the first one since there's no way to precompute it prior to the craft being built in the VAB. Think about it, the whole point of a nosecone is to reduce the drag of the craft, which means that it's going to affect the airflow of anything under it, assuming it's pointed into the airflow. If the craft is going sideways, it shouldn't help the other parts, and will only be adding drag to the craft.

I did so as soon as I had something I wasn't embarrassed to show. I assumed that after I posted that to the geography thread, it would find it's way anywhere that it was useful. I may get around to doing this myself at some point, but if anyone beats me to it, I won't complain. I already had this information from ScanSat for my own use, I did this to be helpful, and seeing how it's just a recoloring of a ScanSat map with a legend attached, it's not like it's valuable intellectual property that I'm going to fight over control for, so I give permission for reuse of this for any purpose other than shaming or terrorism (and if you figure out a way to use this map for terrorism using anything other than stenography, I'd like to know). :-)

OK, I realize I need practice picking colors, but here's the closest thing to a decent biome map I've been able to set up for Minmus. It doesn't line up as obviously as the Mun or Kerbin biome maps do. The best way to line them up is to look at the flats, the shapes are quite visible and fairly distinctive. If anyone would like to know how to make these (the first time was a learning experience) or want to make this in different colors, just ask, it's not hard once you've got all the pieces (and there's a version of ScanSat that works in the current version).

I believe the devs have said that internationalization is going to wait until it's closer to release, so it's not like the fact that it hasn't happened is an indicator that it won't happen. Someone has a french translation up on Spaceport if I remember correctly, so it's possible that you could go that route and not even have to involve the developers before they're ready for the official translation to be done.

It most certainly is, I had a spaceplane I designed in 0.22 that was just enough to get to orbit, play around a little bit, and then head home. No chance of having enough delta-v to go to the Mun or Minmus. That same spaceplane shocked me in 0.23 when at about 30 km altitude, 2300 m/s velocity, it was still both climbing and accelerating. It was in a 122 km x 20 km orbit when the engine finally died, and only needed 60 delta-v from the rockets to circularize at 122 km (I was still low enough in the atmosphere that drag ate a little bit of the apoapsis). It was originally designed as a bit of an airhogger, five ram intakes for one turbojet engine.

OK, I'm going to apologize in advance for the eye-bursting colors, the incomplete status, and any errors, this is me manually filling in between the lines on a map. Consider the garish colors encouragement to prove that you can do better. And yes, any complaints will get that response. The very light gray is the Slopes biome for the most part, the dark gray is stuff that I didn't get around to finishing yet. The south pole is a mess of a lot of different biomes according to ScanSat, and I don't think they should be there. OK, had never used Paint.NET before, and just figured out what global mode does on paint filling. Expect a much better version of this up tomorrow. EDIT: Stayed up too late changed it to something more accurate and a little less eye-bursting.