Brotoro

The Circumnavigation of Duna was done with an unmanned rover (although the rover was equipped with a cockpit to carry a kerbal, none was included). That rover is still on Duna, and would be usable by the Duna Mission crew -- I expect that they'll go visit it, since it's in an interesting location.

I get this same issue, even in Kerbin orbit. But it seems to have gotten more pronounced in recent versions of KSP. If you slide ahead of the wandering node (in the direction it's moving) and give a burst of thrust, you can stop it from doing that. But it's a bother.

Nerf them by making them less heat resistant? Sure. Their descriptions indicate that this was the original intent. I assume whoever is in charge of the Great Rebalancing will take care of this. BUT, I don't think these cabins should be made equivalent to a Lunar Module by making them more susceptible to crash damage. The Lunar Module had walls legendarily "as thick as three layers of heavy duty aluminum foil". Yeow! We need general purpose lander cans in KSP that are built for much tougher duty than that because we have to use them on all sorts of improvised ships, landers, and rovers...not just minimum-mass Moon landers.

No. I've done very little with Duna (because I found Laythe so interesting). And some of the stuff I did on Duna (my Duna Direct mission) was in a different universe.

The initial Duna crew will need 8 kerbals...so this is likely. I appreciate the Reputation...thank you, sir! And I'm happy that I inspire others. What takes the most time is writing it all up. If *I* had more free time, I could crank these out faster. Developing Duna. Getting the bases, exploration vehicles, reusable transportation system, and hopefully the equipment for exploiting local resources into place (but, then, that was the original plan back at the start of Long-term Laythe...and they might finally get resource exploitation, too). My problem with the New Crew is that I've done just about all I could think of to do on Laythe...but new things may occur to me. And I hope to send them some equipment for exploiting Jool system indigenous resources before they get rotated back to Kerbin. Sometimes ya just gotta 'shop. Yes, it does indeed involve the high-speed ejection of ions. There will be some enhanced verticality to its flight profile...perhaps not amazing. I'm sure there were plenty of new fishies in the sea that wanted to interact with a Big Hero astronaut. Excellent. If only we could get commissions from Squad for convincing people to buy their game. To All: Thanks for the feedback and rep. I appreciate it.

Yeah...I don't understand this argument that procedural fairings are unrealistic because we don't make fairings-on-demand in real life. We also don't slap one-shot rockets together in real life, but we do that all the time in KSP. And there HAVE been one-shot fairings in real life...the Skylab fairing on the Saturn V was only ever used once. The LM fairing used to test the Lunar Module on top of a Saturn IB had a unique top. And they were going to make a fairing for a one-shot test of the Lunar Module on top of the Little Joe II (until wind tunnel tests showed that the rocket would be unstable with that fairing and only the lightweight LM on top). The ATDA target used during the Gemini 9 mission had a unique fairing set-up. These are examples that I know of off the top of my head. The reason we don't use more customized fairings in real life is simply ECONOMICS, a limitation that does not apply in the same way as it does in KSP. Also, a procedural shroud in KSP doesn't have to be a one-shot deal. I have rockets that I debug and use over and over again for many missions...and I'm currently making a set of payloads to explore Duna that will be built to the same diameter -- and if we already had procedural fairings in KSP, I'd be slapping nearly the same fairing (with different length cylindrical sections) around all of these payloads. So you can STILL standardize when offered procedural fairings.

Sadly, yes, I have met people who think the Moon landings were faked. They also tend to have other bizarre ideas.

I've spent a lot of time going to most of the islands on Laythe (link also in my signature), and the thread has pictures from sites all around the moon...you may want to browse through it and find a site you like the looks of. Laythe has not had an art pass anytime recently, so the pictures still apply. Bsalis's thread about planting a flag on every island on Laythe (linky) also has pics of the many islands.

The evolution of control issues was often frustrating: I was having problems with rockets rolling, so I added some radially mounted tanks to put engines on so that they could provide some roll control...until it became clear that they provided NO roll control. And it was only in a quite recent version when this was finally fixed. The way SAS changed from version to version...and not always for the better. Maybe it was version 0.19 where ships started wobbling like maniacs and bleeding RCS fuel like crazy. And this was after RCS strength had been nerfed, so you couldn't afford to be spilling it for no good reason. How SAS modules would actually fight AGAINST you trying to turn your ship...and having to constantly toggle SAS off and on when maneuvering. I recently played with an old version (it was all I had on a machine over Christmas to show somebody KSP), and I was agog at how terrible it was to fly ships in that version. I'm so happy we've come so far with this. The way SAS modules changed: When RCS was bleeding fuel, I added dozens of OKTO2 probe cores to my Tugs so they could change attitude without needing the RCS on... and then when we finally got proper reaction wheels, I had these leftover weird Tugs in space carrying a mess of probe cores for no reason. And then I started putting the standard SAS unit on things to provide torque (because it was less mass than the ASAS unit)...only to have all my ships suddenly show up in a new version with tiny reaction wheels on them when the Devs decided to make the old SAS part into a TINY part. And the time when all the ASAS units on most of my ships in space became useless...because all the capsules and probe cores suddenly became ASAS devices...but, later, the useless parts got to be useful again when they became reaction wheels. The time the decoupler bug showed up, and suddenly there was no decoupler force IF you had struts connected between the parts. And, OF COURSE, you had struts between the parts...because you needed struts EVERYWHERE. "Space Tape" had to be applied between all your tank sections and other parts to keep your ship from wiggling apart. Often 2/3 of the parts making up your ship were struts. Oh, I was SO happy when joints got stronger. Plus, back in the wobbly-wobbly-shake-your-ship-apart days, you had to remember to make an action group to deactivate the thrust vectoring on your Mainsails because otherwise they would shake your ship apart. Another thing I don't miss was the way my rockets would SOMETIMES (for unknown reasons) go unstable during boost (usually after separating asparagus boosters and then trying to arc over). It was the randomness of it that was frustrating. Ah, and the Good Ol' Days of rovers made using aircraft landing gear and pushed around by RCS or ion power because kerbals hadn't yet invented the wheel. And finding inovative ways to dock your ships on the surface of some celestial body to be able to refuel them...because kerbals **STILL** haven't figured out the high-technology that is the HOSE. Ahahaha...I just remembered how, if you didn't want a full crew capsule (maybe because you needed an empty seat to go rescue somebody), you had to find some way to get a kerbal out of the capsule...either making him climb down some trecherous ladder system (or just jump out...and perhaps die just so you could go rescue somebody else)...or arrange to drop him off at some space station. And if you wanted crew in a ship using Hitchhiker modules, you had to spawn crew-carrying rovers to drive them out to the ship (either from the SPH, or 'launch' them earlier and have them drive far enough away from the pad so their rover would not despawn when you placed the next ship on the pad).

Like other things in KSP, it would be nice if this choice was determined by the setting of the little icon you toggle with the C key (icon showing polygon...click-stop to standard diameter fairings; icon showing circle...drag to whatever diameter you want). - - - Updated - - - Also -- For these threads, it would be nice if, once the Devs decide on something, they could simply mention it in the thread so people could quit arguing back and forth about something that may have already been decided and locked down.

I posted Part 43 of my Long-term Laythe mission. My original Laythe crew members have finally returned to Kerbin.

Long-term Laythe - Part 43 Carrying Comsats Back when Beta 0.90 hit, the OKTO2 probe cores lost the ability to generate any torque at all...and my constellations of communications satellites (which don't actually do anything) around Laythe, Vall, Tylo, Bop, and Pol all lost their ability to orient in space...which makes them do even less. So, first item for today is to take care of getting some refurbishment and replacement comsat equipment headed off to Jool. The comsats in Laythe orbit have docking ports, so they can be refurbished by adding on a reaction wheel part -- but all the other comsats lack docking ports, so they will eventually need to be replaced. There were only a couple months before the next Kerbin-to-Jool transfer window, so I rolled four d4 to see how many comsats the KSC crew could have ready, and got 9. Below we see the launch of the comsat payload. Because this payload has roughly half the mass of the typical payloads I send out to Jool, it only required a two-booster version of the Reusable Rocket to get to orbit (despite also carrying a Rockomax X200-32 Fuel Tank that will provide fuel for the trip). You can imagine along with me, the fairing enclosing the payload prior to the nose cone being jettisoned. We get a closer look at the payload in the next picture as it continues on to orbit. There is a carrier bus (which is also equipped as a comsat) with eight comsats attaced around it. The central spine of the bus ends in a stack of reaction wheels with docking ports which will be used to refurbish the Laythe comsats. Note: The action group that separated the nose cone and fired its sepratrons also deactivated the torque of those reaction wheels...because otherwise the stack waggled around in a rather obscene manner during maneuvers. After depositing the payload into a roughly 100 km orbit, the Reusable Rocket sustainer separated and returned to KSC for re-use. To push the payload to Jool, a Tug that had previously been to Jool and back (at least once) was chosen. This Tug was residing in Kerbin orbit attached to the Big Gas Tank, and it was about four-fifths full of fuel that had been taken from the Big Gas Tank and from other ships that had docked there to offload excess fuel. In fact, it had MORE fuel than would be needed, so some was put back into the Big Gas Tank (leaving the Tug's central tank mostly empty) before the Tug was undocked and headed off to rendezvous with the comsat payload. When the Nuclear Tug rendezvoused with the comsat payload, it first docked its rear end to the comsat payload. Then the Tug separated the X200-32 Fuel Tank from the payload, moved off a little way, flipped 180 degrees, and then re-docked to the comsats using its front docking port. The fuel from the X200-32 Tank was transferred to the Tug's main tank (leaving the X200-32 almost empty). Then the ship was pointed prograde, and an action group was activated that undocked the X200-32 Tank and fired four canted sepratrons mounted on the tank. The sepratrons gave the X200-32 Tank a big enough kick to deorbit it, in accordance with my No Littering policy. Because of the low mass of the comsat payload (11.6 tons), the Nuclear Tug would have plenty of fuel to push the payload to Jool even without an additional rear tank attached. The trajectory plotted for Jool transfer is shown below. Jool will be near its node with Kerbin's orbital plane when the ship arrives, so an encounter is showing up even before any plane change maneuver is figured in. (We don't see the trajectory of the returning Grey Havens Express in this plot because that's being handled in a separate copy of the save file.) The 1,952 m/s burn would take only 12 minutes (as opposed to the nearly 20-minute burn I typically deal with when sending heavier payloads to Jool), so this burn was performed in one step (instead of my usual two). This resulted in the periapsis dropping down below 85 km during the burn, but that was no problem. The Tug was still firing when the ship passed out of Kerbin's shadow for the back-lit picture below. The Tug used about 66% of the fuel in its main tank for the Jool transfer burn. The side tanks on the nuclear nacelles were still full, as was the X200-8 Fuel Tank at the base of the payload (the fuel flow through the docking ports had been disabled during the burn). Whenever I get a transfer trajectory that leads to an encounter (as happened here because Jool was going to be near the node), I always seem to waste lots of time messing with that maneuver, trying to get an acceptable final equatorial orbit...and I'm never happy with the result. It's so much easier to just do the separate plane shift maneuver. Below, we see the plane shift maneuver that I set up (after the ship left Kerbin's SOI) for when the ship approaches Jool -- the node was located just three days before encountering Jool's SOI. Because the plane shift takes place far from Kerbol, it will only require 58.6 m/s of delta-V. That plane-shift maneuver node also includes the fine-targeting for the Laythe encounter. Below we see the maneuver results, focused on Laythe, coming in for a nearly perfectly tangential encounter. This is important for minimizing the velocity of the encounter and minimizing the heating during aerocapture (which might be an issue by the time this payload reaches Laythe, depending on when KSP 1.0 is released). This targeting is done using Precise Node to tweak the radial and prograde components of the burn to get the desired tangential encounter. That plane-shift burn, of course, is not going to happen for another 295 days, but the maneuver node is stored with the ship so it will be ready when the time comes (and I set an alarm in Kerbal Alarm Clock to remind me). Did I ever mention how happy I was when Squad made the change that allowed future maneuver nodes to be stored with the ship? Because it's very handy. Heroic Homecoming I'm going to skip ahead here and take care of the Old Crew's return to Kerbin. There are a couple other Kerbin-to-Jool transfer windows that will occur during this phase, and I'll go back to them as needed in my timey-whimey ways if I decide there is anything else I want to send out to the New Crew on Laythe during that time (but they already have most everything I could think of to send them). When we left our Old Crew, heading home in the Grey Havens Express, the plane-shift maneuver prior to Kerbin encounter (which will happen very close to Kerbin), was already set up and stored (see the plot below). Because it happens way down near Kerbin, the plane shift will require over 500 m/s of delta-V...but the Old Crew was sent home with plenty of extra fuel, just in case, so this won't be a problem. Nelemy: "Whoa, Dude! What is this strange sensation? My snack bar wants to fall toward the deck. It's been so long since I've felt anything like this." Kurt: "If you think this acceleration is something, you're going to be in for a big shock when we land on Kerbin. Have you been keeping up on your exercise routine?" Nelemy: "Dude...there are DAYS left before we reach Kerbin...plenty of time for exercise later." Kurt: "I've got the Kerbin aerocapture maneuver plotted. The fine-targeting burn will take 192 m/s of delta-V. The aerocapture itself will put us through 2.6 gees...that won't be fun after 270 days in zero-G." Nelemy: "Ah, it'll be nothing. Aldner and I have been in zero-G even longer than you because we were waiting in Pol orbit while you guys explored the surface." Kurt: "Well, Pol hasn't got much gravity either." The fine-targeting burn is seen below. As pointed out before, even with eight nukes pushing, the big beastie that is Grey Havens Express doesn't accelerate very fast. Hellou: "Look at Kerbin! The city lights on the night side are beautiful. I can't wait to get home." Aldner: "Yeah. I guess it's been so long since I've been in Kerbin orbit...but I don't really recall all those lights. Maybe everybody is using a lot more electricity nowadays. OK...get strapped into your acceleration couch." With all those Tugs in the way, there was hardly any noticeable reentry flames on the habitat modules. Nelemy: "Arrrrgggggghhhh. Dude...Turn off the acceleration!" The aerocapture pass left the Grey Havens Express in an elliptical orbit with an apoapsis of 337,000 km. A small burn of 6.1 m/s aligned the orbit with the equator, then another burn of 7.6 m/s raised the periapsis (but still left it in the upper atmosphere) for an aerobraking pass to lower the orbit. After a couple more small burns to slowly raise the periapsis and make some even weaker aerobraking passes, a final 50 m/s prograde burn circularized the Grey Havens Express into an approximately 103 km circular orbit. The ship was home safe. All of the big central tanks of the Nuclear Tugs were empty, but the picture below shows that there was still a goodly amount of fuel in the side tanks of the nuclear nacelles. There is also propellant in some of the FL-T400 tanks that surround the habitat modules (which acted as cosmic radiation shielding during the return trip). Ours heros from Jool would be picked up and returned to Kerbin by none other than Jebediah and Bill Kerman, using an 8-kerbal Crew Carrier 6d SSTO rocket. Below, the Crew Carrier takes off on its six RAPIER engines in air-breathing mode. I always like to fly the Crew Carriers manually into space to see how much delta-V I have leftover for orbital maneuvers. The flight profile starts vertical, then at 5K the ship is tilted 20 degrees downrange to start picking up horizontal velocity. Above 15K, the ship is pitched over more to get the horizontal velocity up over 700 m/s before the RAPIERs need to be switched over to closed-cycle mode. The engines were cut at 44K when the apoapsis hit 115 km. I'm very interested to see if this ship will work well (or at all) under the new aerodynamics coming in version 1.0. The Crew Carrier made it into orbit with 983 m/s of delta-V remaining for orbital maneuvers. The boost wasn't straight East, so an 11 m/s burn was needed to match orbital planes with the equatorial orbit of the Grey Havens Express. Jebediah: "And...docked! Are you guys ready to head back to KSC?" Thompbles: "It's going to take a while to get all these samples and data packs moved over to the Crew Carrier." Bill: "Remember, we're only bringing half of the samples down on this trip. No use risking everything in one ship that Jeb is driving. We'll send another ship up later to bring back the rest." Once Thompbles, Kurt, Aldner, Nelemy, Hellou, and Emilynn (and half their samples) got transferred over to the SSTO, the Crew Carrier separated from the Grey Havens Express, and Jeb (or MechJeb, as the case may be) targeted the landing for KSC and set the ship down for a routine landing north of the launch pad. The crew disembarked and were finally safely back on Kerba firma." Bill: "Welcome home to Kerbin, folks! It's nice to have you back after seven years." Kurt: "Seven years and 78 days. But who's counting?" Thompbles: "That's what happens when you tack on a couple extra years because of Kerbol mega-flares and extended exploration." Hellou: "Emilynn and I have only been gone for five years...but our mission was supposed to be only half that long." Bill: "But we really appreciate all the extra work you did, especially in exploring Tylo, Bop, and Pol. It saved us from having to send out extra crews to get that done." Nelemy: "Whoa, Dudes! Look at the KSC! New buildings everywhere." Kurt: "Yeah...I like what you've done with the place." Jebediah: "Yup, we've come a long way since the old Barn." Nelemy: "Barn?" Bill: "Back before your time." Nelemy: (opens the faceplate of his helmet) "What's that weird smell?" Hellou: "That's fresh air, Nelemy." Aldner: "Air that doesn't smell like you, Little Buddy." Nelemy: "Dude." Just for reference, below is a picture of what the KSC looked like when Thompbles, Kurt, Aldner, and Nelemy left for their Laythe mission. You can see why they are impressed. Jebediah: "Uh oh...here come the reporters." Bill: "Get lined up for some photos. And then we'll have the medical checks, debriefings, press conferences, meetings with the President, ticker tape parades, and all that." Hellou: "Not before I get a chance for a bath, I hope. I haven't had a proper bath in years." Nelemy: "My feet hurt. When do we get to sit down?" One Month Later... After all the weeks of parades and parties and press conferences, the lives of our heros quickly reverted back to the normalcy of a kerbalnaut's time on Kerbin. Below, we see Kurt happening to run into Adlner on his way from the Astronaut Complex over to the VAB. Aldner: "Yo, Kurt. I see they have you suited up...you don't have a mission, do you?" Kurt: "Nah. They are doing vacuum pressure checks on the re-modeled Mk1 Inline Cockpit, and I'm the guinea pig." Aldner: "I'm glad they're reworking the Inline Cockpit. The visibility from the old version was lousy -- it seemed like I could hardly see anything out of it." Kurt: "True. What are you suited up for?" Aldner: "They had me doing 'reach around' tests in the new Mk3 Cockpit mockup, just to be sure all the controls are where a suited pilot can reach them well. I've been doing a lot of boring stuff like that since we got back. The life of an astronaut on the ground is not nearly as exciting as being on a mission." Kurt: "Well, you were never stranded for over three years around Moho like I was...not all missions are exciting. Besides...haven't you been entertaining yourself with that bevy of beauties that you named planetary features after during our mission?" Aldner: "Sadly, no. They've all moved on." Kurt: "What? Joysina from the Satellite Pub?" Aldner: "She finished her Ph.D. in Astrophysics, and now she's teaching at West Kafrica University. And they closed the Satellite Pub, anyway." Kurt: "Jenfir from the Launch Pad Tavern?" Aldner: "She now works as a distributor for Blastoff Beer Company up north in Koor City." Kurt: "Klaudiya from the Booster Bay Bar?" Aldner: "She's now managing the joint...which is now the Booster Bay Family Restaurant...and she says she's not interested in fly-boys anymore." Kurt: "Ah. How about Itsii from the Refueling Station Bar & Grill?" Aldner: "She married mission controller Gene Kerman, and now they have three kids." Kurt: "Wow. I guess a lot can happen in seven years." Aldner: "You know, what really hacks me off are all these changes around the KSC. All these eggheads and their big R&D center...which were hardly any help at all during our mission. And the young guys they have nowadays as astronaut recruits, shooting pool all day in the Astronaut Center. A couple of those punks were actually making fun of my Ban-Lon shirts! Ban-Lon is what an astronaut is supposed to wear." Kurt: "Yeah. They are all into that polyester crap." Aldner: "I tell ya...I need another mission so I can get out of this place." Thompbles: "Well, well! If it isn't the two guys I've been looking for!" Kurt: "Oh...Hi, Thompbles." Aldner: "Hey there, Thompbles. Nice polyester shirt." Thompbles: "Thanks. I don't suppose you guys would be interested in a new mission, would you?" Kurt: "New mission? Where are we going?" Aldner: "Yes, I'm interested. And you better not be joking, or I'll make you eat that shirt." Thompbles: "No joke. I was talking to Deke Kerman in the Astronaut Office, and they need astronauts for a long-term Duna mission. He asked me to put together a crew." Kurt: "I haven't heard anything about this." Aldner: "When do we go?" Thompbles: "It's a big project that Elon Kerman of Kerbodyne has been working on in secret. They've been designing and building the hardware, and they sold the idea to the Big Brass. We have one year to do the necessary training and get the ships boosted before the next Duna transfer window." Kurt: "Another big Kerbodyne project? I'll bet the Rockomax Mafia aren't too happy about this." Thompbles: "Rockomax will be doing some subcontracting. And they appeased them some by letting them choose one of the crew." Kurt: "Ah...so Nelemy is coming?" Thompbles: "Yes." Aldner: "Is there any airplane flying to be done on this mission? I hear that the air is pretty thin on Duna." Thompbles: "Yes...Elon says they have designed a plane they think will be useful to us on Duna. But mostly we'll be hopping and roving around." Aldner: "OK. I'm in." Kurt: "Me, too. No use sticking around here when some far lands are calling." Thompbles: "Great. We're having a briefing tomorrow at eight hundred in the Administration building. Be there." ...Which is why it took me a while to get around to posting this... I've been designing and testing ships for Developing Duna. See you there!

Ooooo...I highly approve of Precise Node being incorporated into stock game. I'm all in favor of Squad's choices that allow me install fewer mods!

Yes...I've been building a set of payloads to go explore Duna, and I've been restricting the diameter of the payload stacks to what I think is a reasonable maximum diameter.

Here's the ship that has the problem (but which used to work fine), a rover/plane from my Longterm Laythe series:

OK. I only suspected the changes to the ladder code because this bug first showed up for me after Squad said they changed the ladder code. They said nothing about changing ground colliders. But you may well be right.

Before you attempt this, please let us know where we can send flowers to express our condolences to your family.

This is a problem that is new with version 0.90. I have ships that kerbals could exit from perfectly well in previous versions that no longer allow the kerbal to exit (although they can get IN through the hatch)... And, yes, it's the ground that is the problem when it shouldn't be. I think Squad may have messed something up when they were reworking the ladder code recently. Good thing Squad did the 0.90 beta after they messed with this feature so they can get it fixed before their release version. Just think how bad things would be if the tried to modify some existing features (or, worse yet, add new features) without doing a beta release before 1.0 so we could help them find these problems.

Yes, I play with debris (I like to return to places and visit my debris sometimes), but I also try to minimize the debris I make, just to keep from overloading the game. And if it's 'uninteresting' debris I'm not likely to ever see again (such as dropped tanks in Kerbol orbit) I'll remove them just to keep from bogging down the game. I've been running my Save file since version 0.18, so I can't let too much debris build up or things get laggy.

I agree with Vaporo. Either make the flag planting work in a consistent manner (have the flag point away from the kerbal), or explain to us how the flag orientation logic works so that we can figure out how to get the result we want. Or...ad a Rotate Flag function.

I approve of being able to switch the altimeter from MSL to AGL. They could invert the colors of the display (to white on black) to make the change Really Obvious.

5450 m/s returning from Eeloo is my maximum. This was back before reentry effects, so the picture doesn't look exciting.

Bill, Bob, Jebediah, and Valentina are the four kerbalnauts that have accounts on this forum (with maxed-out reputation). Since this forum is obviously the Official ForumTM of KSP for letting us know what's up, these four will obviously by the official First Four.

That's nice to know!

Kred? (10 char)