Amaroq

Yeah, mod incompatability would do it. If you're moderately competent at config files, you can figure out how to update your local ANVIL fairings yourself; at a very minimum, please inform the mod developer of the problem, if that turns out to be it!

Gentlemen, please don't take anything personally -- you are both very intelligent people with awesomely useful mods that have contributed a lot to the community. You disagree about the API - and sadly, in part due to my feedback to xEvilReeperx during WIP testing; I feel some responsibility. I would prefer you two to get along, or if not, at least keep cool enough heads that you've no forum-feud bad blood!

I guarantee this is what is happening: You have too much thrust, and you're turning too sharply. Think of your rocket's current behavior as "A high-horsepower race car accelerating constantly from a stop down the main straightaway and into a tight first corner." The car spins out, of course -- that's basically what's happening to your rocket. You need to re-learn the game with real aerodynamics, which means a very very different ascent profile than the "Up 10km, 45 degrees over" version. 1. Start your gravity turn almost as soon as you're clear of your launch clamps. 2. Try to keep your nose at the bottom edge of the circle created by the "prograde" reticule on the navball throughout the flight (while also making sure you're pointing above the horizon until your apoapsis is about 80km) 3. Throttle down as you ascend, so that you are sticking with a current TWR around 1.6 even as you bleed off fuel. (You can use Kerbal Engineer Redux to see the TWR created by your current engine, fuel load, etc.) Stick with it -- once you have it working, its way more fun with FAR!

Different topic - feature suggestion: "Minimum science value to alert me" - basically, an override to prevent very small values from appearing. For example, with the 90% or 'All' settings, I could use a value like "1.0" to prevent a low-value experiment from alerting me every time I change biomes while hunting for more fruitful biomes. I notice this most in an early-career, low tech "explore Kerbin to unlock tech" style game.

Blizzy, in particular, what was happening there was, if you place Toolbar adjacent to a stock display, e.g., directly underneath the altimeter .. then with a "short" window, such as his 1-button case, it would appear above, overwriting the altimeter .. with a "tall" window, it would appear below. More predictability was desirable given the frequency with which Science Alert gets used!

Mod compatibility test: works just fine with the toolbar/FAR/KER/Alarm Clock configuration that I was using during your dev thread, xEvilReeperx, and the "Kerbal 2" stock craft. Must find the offending mod and squash it - if it wasn't in that list it isn't as important as Science Alert .. which should tell you how essential I find this.

@phoenix_ca: They work with FAR and DRE on my install. Not that I'm a space-plane expert, by any means, but it looks like it functions "as designed". That said, I'd love a set of "heavy" wings that include a built-in HeatShield module and the black under-body texture .. perhaps with a minimum "width", so they couldn't be made super-thin.

Hey blizzy, you might want to add "Science Alert" to your list of Toolbar-clients; he's making some interesting use of it as an indicator light.

I'm having an odd bug - probably a mod-compatability thing, as I run many mods, so full spec below. The very first time I go aboard a vessel (either on the launch pad, on the runway, or a vessel already in flight), the ScienceAlert does not show up in Blizzy's Toolbar. It will not appear in the Toolbar for as long as I remain on that vessel. If I use the Blizzy's Toolbar "Configure Visible Buttons", Science Alert shows the word 'Science Alert' where it would normally show an icon. If I go back to Space Center, and either launch or join any vessel (even the same vessel), the ScienceAlert shows up in the Toolbar, from that point on, and appears normally in "Configure Visible Buttons". Spec: Mac OS X 10.7 KSP 0.23.5 ModuleManager 2.0.1 Science Alert 1.4 Blizzy's Toolbar 1.7.1 Kerbal Alarm Clock Kerbal Engineer Redux Ferram Aerospace Research Chatterer Deadly Reentry Distant Object Enhancement Goodspeed Fuel Pump Procedural Fairings Procedural Parts Procedural Wings RealChute RemoteTech2 AviationLights RcsSounds SamHall's Mk2 Cockpit TrimIndicator TreeLoader All mods updated with 0.23.5 releases if possible; all but yours on the most recent release; I haven't picked up 1.4a yet. Hope I'm not sending you after another wild goose chase -- its late tonight but I'll try Science Alert 1.4a in my "clean install" in the morning to rule out mod incompatibility, and get you a debug log from a reproducible case of it.

I know this isn't what you're asking, but Padishar's version is very stable.

Heheh, when I first started I had no clue what an inclination even was - at least you know the right question to ask!! If you select another object (ship or celestial body) to rendezvous with, you will see two little tags like the AP and PE tags for Apoapsis and Periapsis. The secondary tags are AN and DN, for Ascending Node and Descending Node. If you're trying to reach the Mun, then the best time to change your orbital plane is when you cross the Mun's orbital plane -- which happens twice an orbit, once at the Ascending Node and once at the Descending Node. If you're still working on getting an equatorial orbit, you may find the pink/purple direction tags on a Maneuever Node useful -- the yellow circles are Prograde / Retrograde, the blue ones adjust Eccentricity, and the purple ones adjust Inclination. As far as launching directly to an equatorial orbit, aiming your rocket towards the "90" heading on the Navball provides the best fuel efficiency towards an equatorial orbit. Welcome to the game!

Starstrider, I found that legible. I suspect it'll work well for your power-user, who really wants to take full advantage of the feature-set, but its verging on intimidating for the novice user who just wants to, say, add a cometary belt to the default settings. It seems like sizeType would go inside of the "size" block, under the new schema. Edit: The following is incorrect: Also, you may want to consider moving this .cfg file inside a "Plugins" sub-folder, so that ModuleManager knows to ignore it. E.g., CustomAsteroids\Plugins\asteroids.cfg As Starstrider discovered when he investigated, the actual mechanism MM uses is an "ignore this directory" tag: Reference My apologies for the error.

I doubt hiding is going to happen, as we discovered Uranus in 1781, Neptune in 1846, and Pluto in 1930, so if KSP simulates the 1950s-1970s space race, all the planets in the system should be discovered. For the "transmission issues", you might enjoy the mod Remote Tech 2, which does implement communication limits, including occlusion of line of sight.

I used the Kerbal Engineer Redux mod to keep track of my lateral speed during my descent, and especially in the late stages. Even slight speeds led to tipping for my first craft. Also, assuming you have a well-balanced RCS thrust, you can use the RCS docking "translate", letting your main engines deal with the vertical velocity, letting SAS deal with keeping you vertical, and using translate to kill your lateral momentum.

Remove the control surfaces on the leading edge of the wing - that would be my first guess. Also, I'm surprised that you don't have a small control surface trailing the tailfin. Incidentally, a micro-light plane such as what you're building will be much more maneuverable (in this case, it seems "too maneuverable"); I actually find it easiest to fly if I build something that looks approximately like an F-14 Tomcat, using the Mk2 fuselages, two jet engines with full circular intakes, multiple control surfaces along the trailing edge so that I can assign some to roll & pitch, and others as pitch & flaps. The trick is, the heavier plane is less maneuverable, which makes it easier to fly. Finally, I tend to use "T" (SAS) to keep my plane level and straight down the runway and on my initial ascent. Once I'm level at cruising altitude, I'll enable the FAR controls (FAR "DCA" is a must if you're on keyboard), set the trim (Alt-S) to about what I observed SAS was at, and disable the SAS. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you've got it, its fabulously fun. Finally, if you haven't found it, read keptin's fabulous Basic Aircraft Design thread -- I re-read it on occasion, and learn something new to try each time.

Did you try "disable star dimming?" The skybox is pretty dim compared to the enhanced planets, but I'm not seeing a problem like that.

Ahh, my bad.

From the April 1st build, mate. Re-download, they'll go away. As noted by Chris below, my post is incorrect. Please ignore.

@shortspecialbus, RemoteTech is working with my 0.23.5. You'll want to grab the viperfan hotfix from a couple pages back. That said, Cilph makes no guarantees; he's working hard on the feature set for the next revision, and doesn't have things in a state where he can readily build an 0.23.5 for us, so if it doesn't work, then we're on our own.

Kevlar = more weight, but better stopping power. Silk = less weight, less stopping power. Nylon = compromise/balance between the two.

^^ I usually start my gravity turn as soon as I'm clear of my launch clamps, to get at least the first ten-twenty degrees. I also throttle down to maintain a TWR between 1.6 and 2.0 until I'm above the re-entry point (say, 30,000m); I use KER to keep track of my exact current throttle setting. And yeah, gentle, steady turns; I try to keep my nose within the circle shown by my "surface" prograde vector until about 40km.

^^ Agreed. At work we're replacing a server called "Mars" with one that's smaller and lighter -- I'm trying to get it named "Duna" That and for teaching my two-year-old about space, and what a planet is ... that she is on one, the moon is one, and that little red dot Mars is one ..

I've been running it with RT2 the entire time in your dev thread; no issues yet.

Every quality aero mod includes FAR compatability - b9, taverius, coffee, procedural wings, etc.

So there's actually something really funny here -- if you know your "can climb" speed, you can just raise the gear once you're past that speed and applying up-force. Surely not the way a commercial jetliner would work, but a very Kerbal way to get airborne!