rhoark

Kerbal's engines have realistic ISP for kerosene rockets. SSMEs are hydrogen rockets, which do have higher ISPs, but then the fuel is much less dense, so you'd have a lot less dV in the same volume of fuel tank. For 2.5m engines you have increasing ISP for decreasing thrust going mainsail -> skipper -> poodle For 1.25m there's T45 -> LV-909 (replace T45 with T30 if you really need the extra thrust and are sure you don't need the control authority) You use the highest ISP one that gets sufficient TWR 4x LV-909s have the same thrust and ISP as one poodle, while weighing slightly less overall. The tradeoff is in part count and increased complexity in physical layout. LV-Ns have higher ISP, but weigh more. They are usually the best choice in space, but not on very small crafts, or things that only have sub-munar missions. Many people also like to roleplay the implications of the nuclear technology.

My daughter likes to make rockets and cover them with wheels and cylindrical monopropellant tanks ("for decoration")

Anyone proud thinking stock is hardcore need to play with Ferram, Deadly Reentry, and RemoteTech together. Re KW: It's good, but you definitely have to pare it down to what you use (for me its fuel tanks and fairings, but not the engines or struts)

Love the look of the SM-S planes. (The engines seem a bit OP though in terms of thrust and ISP). I plan at some point to take a stealth ship on a tour of anomalies.

FAR is probably complex internally, but as far as using, it goes like this: 1. Install 2. Enjoy more realistic aerodynamics 3. Keep moving the stupid windows out of the way because you don't really need to adjust anything on them.

The appeal of the mod is in giving you more mission objectives with practical implications. If that's not what you want, then you don't want it.

For some reason I was thinking target distance and relative velocity were among the memory mapped flight values, but I must have imagined it - so that'd be something to have.

This can be a symptom of excessive thrust-to-weight ratio.

Looks good, will use this rather than spaceport or dropbox for crafts in the future. (I don't like spaceport being cluttered with crafts, even if they do their best to segregate them, so won't contribute to that problem.)

The latest version of Kerbal Engineer uses a model that looks like some kind of retro reel-to-reel tape device. I plan to use an override cfg for my own purposes that loads Engineer, ProgCom, Fuel Balancer, Graphotron, and RemoteTech all on that one part. Probably a probe core ring version too.

Thanks I made a new setting level "Super" with max and min divisions the same, but distance doubled - works great.

I've started doing some simple attitude control stuff, so far so good. Here's my wishlist: 1. Window placement persisting between flights 2. Science instrument readings 3. Setting the current target from code

It's looking in the .20-style plugin data directory. The folders in the zip are probably still .19-style.

I'd like something halfway between the atlas and mainsail.

Terrain stays too blocky, too close. Is there a place in config files I could turn up the high-detail drawing distance beyond the slider max?

imgur album

I finally got this working (B9 obviously) A couple of Mk2 fuel tanks counterbalance the fuel weight, which drains from the orbiter and counterweight before the center. Engine placement and activation pattern counter the dry mass imbalance. Action groups 1-5 activate/deactivate engines to move the center of thrust progressively towards the orbiter side. (1-5 is each pressed once on the way to orbit, no pulse width modulation or anything like that.) The "boosters" are actually engines under structural fuselages and are not dropped. At 30s to apoapsis it does a partial circularization, raising periapsis to about -100m and delaying apoapsis a couple of minutes. The orbiter is then refueled to 2000 potential dV and the tank dropped. It carries up to 4 kerbals, but despite the appearance of a cargo bay does not carry cargo - the bay is full of monopropellant and avionics (SAS, RemoteTech control and command, antenna, ProgCom, sensors, graphotron, chatterer, solar panel, and docking port). Full album on imugr

Depends on your TWR and the deltaV of the maneuver - whatever gets half the burn before T0.

Recently started playing with B9 and RemoteTech, using IVA exclusively when the ship has Kerbals. No map view or manuever nodes (with or without Kerbals.) Album of commsat deployment

Forgot RCS ports and had to get a kerbal to EVA and push the payload out of the bay

B9 parts would look just like they belonged alongside stock if the textures were blurred slightly and the specularity turned down.

Flight Engineer gives you the vessel's current remaining dV potential, so verify you're in sync with the dV map at parking orbit. (dV to orbit is highly variable)

The X-37 began at NASA as part of the Space Launch Initiative to prototype technology for a shuttle successor following the Challenger disaster. In particular, X-37 was a demonstrator for improved thermal tiles and the avionics/autopilot. At some point, NASA decided it wasn't a priority for them, whereupon it was transferred to DARPA, and then the Air Force. There's no indication X-37A or X-37B did anything other than test thermal tiles and/or autopilot software; however, Boeing announced plans for a version large enough for crew or cargo. If that gets built maybe we'll see what kind of mission the AF really has in mind for the concept.

Vertically launching a winged vehicle is tricky, whether on top or on the side. A rule of thumb that's working for me with the vertical stack is whatever wings are on top, bigger wings go on the bottom. That helps the stability a lot. I'm planning to try a side mount soon by attaching engines radially to the core underneath the orbiter.

Radial liquid boosters are quite realistic, just not asparagus staging.