rhoark

Spoke too soon. The sensors aren't recognized by the action group window in the VAB with the mod installed.

It would be good from a UI perspective to be able to set a throttle floor, though from an engine perspective they ought to flame out under 20% or so throttle. (Actually, many real "throttleable" engines are not rated to throttle even under 60%)

Something has been bothering me for awhile and might be taken into account if a comprehensive balance pass is underway: Low thrust engines are typically intended for use in a vacuum, but ideal vacuum Isp requires a large bell nozzle. The KW Service Propulsion engine is representative of what a vacuum engine should look like. All the moderate-thrust stock engines have small nozzles. I think the 909 and Poodle should get improved atmospheric Isp at the expense of vacuum Isp (and still have the advantage of low profile). KW or others can provide the large vacuum nozzles, or else new parts could be provided with stock 909/Poodle stats but T30/Atlas models.

That's typical with a bendy rocket and the control locus away from the center of mass.

The gas should be inert in both cases. The difference is whether its the primary means of feeding fuel, or just kickstarting a turbopump. I'm considering in both cases the actual ignition is either hypergolic or a reusable spark plug - either way something that doesn't have to be accounted for in the gameplay.

I'm getting values fine, but the toggle function doesn't seem to turn the sensors on. Using an action group gets the job done, though. I wonder if there's a viable strategy for addressing two or more temperature sensors on the same craft. Parts in sunlight, or facing prograde with deadly re-entry will be different temperatures.

I think the options could be distilled down to two essential configurations that should work with all fuel types (the possible variations and details within each being irrelevant to gameplay) #1 Pressure fed: Consider tanks to be pressurized with xenon, implemented simply as having xenon as an additional required fuel that the engines won't run without. No restart limitations. #2 Turbopump: Igniting the engine requires a starter module. The starter module requires the craft to be under acceleration (including gravity) and consumes a small amount of xenon. The amount of xenon you bring determines your number of restarts. Once ignited, no further xenon is required, and if no restart is desired the igniter and xenon can be left on the pad.

Confirming in .83, lock throttle works fine - lock steering not so much.

Doing some reading about this, spark plugs seem to be a fairly standard design feature and are good for an arbitrary number of restarts. They are not the limiting factor. The issue is that the engine mechanisms have to be bootstrapped in some fashion to get the fuel flowing. There seem to be a number of strategies for this: running pressurized helium through the engine to start the parts moving (J-2) pressurizing the fuel tanks with helium to push the fuel through the engine (Lunar Module) solid propellant kickstarter (some sources say Merlin, but Google is too clogged with press releases to get solid info about anything SpaceX) external pumping mechanisms on the pad (F1, SSME) Additional considerations include: In zero-G a fuel consolidating RCS maneuver may be required before restart, if the tanks aren't pressurized Kerosene rockets have residue buildup that severely limits restart potential Ablatively cooled nozzles eventually ablate to the point of failure

I've wanted this as well. It should be fairly simple to put it in the modularfuels configs, so everything but hypergolics will have a restart limit.

For a radial part, I add the kOS module to the Kerbal Engineer tape drive.

Not weighing a lot is a huge deal, given the exponential nature of the rocket equation. Weight isn't the whole story, it's energy/mass ratio, but H2 is an ideal fuel for upper stages.

facing:pitch

I think its great you're going for accuracy out of the box with liquid hydrogen engines. It's a bit odd not to be using solid boosters in that case, though. Looks odd without that big exhaust plume.

Wikipedia knows a few ways to calculate logarithms

Lock throttle doesn't work in .82 You can set it and query it, but the actual throttle doesn't change.

You must be thinking of some type of fluoride compound. F2 at room temperature is a gas that's toxic at 100 ppm. I highly doubt anyone who ever unsealed a container without protective measures had the fortitude to go on to put their hand inside. Here's a list of things that react violently (including teflon) http://webwiser.nlm.nih.gov/getSubstanceData.do;jsessionid=AC447207B7DA645704401A5030842534?substanceID=335&displaySubstanceName=Fluorine&UNNAID=&STCCID=49%20040%2030&selectedDataMenuItemID=7 It's relevant because the only true tripropellant engine ever fired (ie, 3 fuels at the same time rather than a dual-mode engine) used fluoride, hydrogen, and lithium.

Overall its a good movie any space enthusiast should see. Two things had me peeved regarding accuracy: Hubble orbiting synchronously with the ISS Burning directly towards an object orbiting behind, instead of burning prograde to lower angular velocity

To give an idea of how difficult fluorine is to work with, its hypergolic with hydrogen, methane, water, aluminum, graphite, cotton, nylon, teflon, sand, bricks, people, and fire extinguishers.

According to wikipedia, an open-cycle gas core NTR keeps the fuel out of contact with the walls, allowing it to get as hot as you like for an ISP of 5000. However the "open-cycle" bit means it sprays radioactive byproducts out the back.

I know this hasn't gotten attention in awhile, but I want to put this out there before I give up. I can't get this plugin to do anything. (That's not entirely true - it adds on/off buttons to parts, so I know its installed.) New version of KSP, old, any kind of resources and rates, with other mods, or clean install. No resources ever get produced or consumed. If anyone has gotten something to work (preferably only with stock resources), please post the full part cfg.

The question of how to get 0 velocity at touchdown with a continuous burn is trickier than I expected at first. At least a second order nonlinear ODE, if not worse. Simplifying down to a purely vertical descent and keeping constant TWR instead of constant throttle, you can pull acceleration out of the rocket equation and integrate it to tell you that vertical velocity at the start of the descent burn should be (g w)/(h+r)^2-(g w)/r^2 where, g = gravitational parameter w = TWR h = altitude r = planetary radius then if you throttle down as you go to keep TWR constant, you should hit sea level with 0 velocity. I haven't tried this.

I've started using Hylian (Legend of Zelda) deity names. Din (goddess of power) for lifters Farore (goddess of courage) for manned upper stages Nayru (goddess of wisdom) for probes Tetra (number four) for tugs

If you arrive the wrong way, the cost of reversing an extremely elliptical orbit at apoapsis is pretty small.

The way NASA did it was the Space Shuttle. Side mount.