capi3101

She's a pretty nice looking boat. Should be nice and buoyant, too. Given the length and the mass, I'd strongly recommend Kerbal Joint Reinforcement if you aren't using it already; I've had some issues with the connections on those Mk3 parts in the past. If that doesn't work, moar struts.

Yes, that's what was happening with that craft - it was flipping out on re-entry when the doors were shut but I could recover it safely by opening the doors. I will give the pilot SAS a try the next time I build a craft with a service bay. Thanks; glad to know it wasn't a bug, just craptastic design. Probably also explains what's going on with the Baywatch craft, the one that's not slowing down fast enough to deploy chutes safely - there's not enough drag being generated. I thought there was one a few versions back. Maybe what I'm remembered was folks saying there was one and it turns out they was wrong. I did write that post while seriously sleep-deprived. In any case, thanks for y'all's help; sorry if I wasted any of y'all's time but glad it wasn't a problem with FAR.

Alright - I think I need to attempt to make a bug report. Makes me nervous - because I sure as hell don't want to waste anybody's time here, and I don't want anybody to rip into me, either... I had a problem with one of my craft, the Lawsuit 7, flipping out and disintegrating upon re-entry. Just for the sake of trying to eliminate it as a possibility, I decided to take a look at FAR's debug voxels to see if anything weird was going on. This was what I saw when I did that: And when I opened the doors, this happened: So, I tried re-entry with the doors open, and the craft survived re-entry. In later permutations of the craft, I removed the Service Bay entirely. Later, after I had problems with a second craft (the Baywatch 7) exploding due to excessive dynamic pressures with each re-entry attempt (despite being almost identical to the revised Lawsuit 7 design), I decided I should try to see how things looked in a vanilla install of KSP with FAR alone installed: I'm attaching links to the relevant craft files and output logs for the two saves - Lawsuit 7 Craft File Baywatch 7 Craft File (Full Craft) Baywatch 7 Craft File (Capsule Only) Output Log (Normal Save) Output Log (Vanilla w/ FAR Only Save) I'm hoping I haven't missed any possible diagnostic steps. TL, DR: I think that an old voxelization bug with the Mk1 Service Bay has come back. I'm not sure what's going on with the Baywatch craft. Hopefully I'm making sense - I'm more than a little sleep-deprived at the moment..

Didn't have a lot of time to play yesterday - in fact, I only had enough time to run a diagnostic process to check for buggy mods. I think I've found one; going to report it to the powers that be shortly (assuming they haven't discovered it already).

@MrOsterman, I had a fairly convoluted set of mining operations set up in 1.0.2 on both Mun and Minmus. My own setup had a pair of converter units - one in orbit at the station, and one with the mining rig itself: This is my Minmus rig, obviously. The drills, converter / ore storage / fuel storage units and delivery modules are each on separate landers, and they're interconnected utilizing KAS parts (winches and connector ports). Now, this was from 1.0.2, before waste heat from the drills and converters became a real concern - which is why you don't see any radiators on those landers at all. No reason why they couldn't be added for a 1.0.5 rig. Anyway, the point of the converter here was specifically so that the delivery lander (shown front right) could top off its tanks after reconnecting to the rest of the rig. There was sufficient storage aboard the converter unit that the lander could top off both its fuel and its ore supply instantly, requiring a delay for fueling the storage unit every other trip. The delivery module would take off and rendezvous with the orbiting station, which itself had another converter unit: This is my Munar station. Here, the converter unit is towards the bottom of the station, with the delivery module docked at the time of the screenie (I apologize for the quality of the shot - it's the only one I have of the station, though). The ore processed at the station would be specifically used to refuel all the craft there - including the delivery unit itself. By having a converter at both ends, it was possible to build a lander with a very limited amount of delta-V while it was fully loaded with substantial amounts of ore. The system worked exceptionally well at Minmus. Not so much at Mun. TL, DR; I'd strongly consider doing both - it gives you tremendous flexibility.

Verifying @WildLynx's observation - NavUtilities does work in 1.0.5, its usable but the display is somewhat dim.

Busy RL weekend, so unfortunately, I didn't have a great deal of time to play. Having to work overnight shifts for finals and undead week = good for the paycheck, bad for time to play KSP (at the time of this posting, the local time is 3:15 AM). On the plus side, my iPhone is working again (though I'm pretty sure I damaged the digitizer this time around). The last night I played was Friday, where the first thing I did was take my existing Lawsuit 7 orbital tourist excursion craft and redesign it into a multi-Kerbal rescue ship, which I dubbed Baywatch 7. After watching Baywatch gracefully bounce into orbit, I proceeded to do two of four rescue rendezvous, picking up Herbree (a scientist) and Phobie (an engineer) from low orbit. The two maneuvers cost more delta-V than I intended, such that I did not feel comfortable attempting a third rescue (especially given that I would've had to perform a pretty substantial plane change for it). FAR borked on re-entry - always seems to happen when Val is running the show - and I wound up having to revert the flight. Had it been successful, I would've netted about 104k in profit accounting for the adjusted cost of the craft. The revert at least gives me a chance to re-evaluate the design. I'm also thinking that I quicksaved before Phobie's EVA over to Baywatch (standard procedure for me), so I might be able to get my progress on the mission back easily. Still have two more rescues to pull - they're harder and they don't pay quite as well (what I get for not looking at the fine print first). I've also got two sat missions in the pipe, a VIP orbital trip and a Munar flyby to do. Need some better contracts overall. Bob arrives at Minmus for sci farming in another nine days or so.

Last night I decided to try out a remarkable piece of technology called a "pencil" to log my activities, on account of still having issues with my iPhone. Apparently there's even some (probably inaccurate) anecdote about the Russians using these "pencils" in their space program, so it seems appropriate for use with KSP....... My activities last night pretty much centered on two separate launches of the Lawsuit 7 6-tourist orbital joyride spacecraft; the kinks in the craft have been worked out at this point and she's performing beautifully now. I made √150k profit from the first Lawsuit launch (about seven times the adjusted cost of the rocket accounting parts recovered thanks to StageRecovery) and cleared out three contracts in the process. I picked up a three star contract to launch six tourists to Kerbin orbit (offering a total of about √250k), a seperate VIP contract to orbit (paying √26k, which I haven't done yet), and a Science in Kerbin orbit contract (which, given my sci sats already in orbit, was a quick and easy √19k). After doing the sci contract, I had enough money available that I felt comfortable upgrading Mission Control to Level 3, and picked up contracts to put a satellite in keosynch orbit and another in equatorial orbit. After this I decided to try and collect on that √250k tourist contract, and did my second Lawsuit flight of the night. I was able to recover a few more parts successfully as compared to the first launch - total adjusted operating cost was only √14k for the flight for √240k profit (sixteen-fold the rocket's cost). I picked up another Kerbin-vicinity rescue contract and upgraded the Astronaut Complex to Level 3 before calling it a night. At this point I'm considering adapting the design of the Lawsuit into a new, low-tech rescue craft; the Project Peacock craft from 1.0.2, as reliable as it is, has some technologies I haven't unlocked just yet (most notably I haven't got docking ports unlocked in my current career save). I've got four rescue contracts now offering √271k between them - it'd be sweet to pick off all four of them in a single flight if I can pull it off. Probably just need to swap out the tank on the retro package (maybe add a chute or two so StageRecovery can think about bringing it back intact) and add RCS capabilities for close-in work (if I have them; I'm not sure about that). The sat contracts are also on my short-term to-do list; they'll pay √211k between them and the Beep Beep probe design is capable of doing the job easily enough. Definitely got the R&D upgrade to Level 3 on my mind at this point - sure would be awesome if I can get it in before Bob makes it to Minmus...which happens in 9 days and 1 hour. All in all, pretty standard fare for an early career game.

@Youen I'm currently using Hoerner, and as far as I can tell Trajectories is working properly.

Last night's phone repairs did not go as intended - I must have re-seated that stupid battery two dozen times by now, but last night I couldn't get the freaking LCD to come off... So, after a big Foxtrot-India to the phone for the evening, I designed a science satellite/probe, the Beep-Beep 7 (I've used the name before but didn't feel like importing the craft from 1.0.2) and shot two of the things into Kerbin orbit - one polar, one equatorial - for money. Spent three in-game days getting the sats in position and made a fair chunk of change in the process. The replacement contracts included a Kerbin rescue mission and a three-star contract to launch five tourists to Kerbin's orbit. That one offered some really good money and I wasn't about to pass it up. Having traced the earlier issues with the Lawsuit 7 tourist craft to an issue with how FAR was voxelizing Mk1 Service Bays with the doors shut (still not convinced it's FAR - I need to do more tests), I removed the Service Bay and replaced the four Z-100 battery packs within it with a pair of Z-200 stack batts placed between the Command Pod and the Mk16 chute on top. The redesign worked without any issues arising, and I once again easily recouped five-to-six times the total cost of the rocket. I earned enough that I felt comfortable upgrading the Administration Building and R&D, bringing my entire KSC up to Level 2. Picked up another rescue contract, so I now have three of thems. Tonight I'll probably throw together a rescue ship (or import the Project Peacock craft from 1.0.2) and start picking up some folks. Bob arrives at Minmus in nine days.

Agreed - I can't wait to try that function out next time I go interplanetary.

As usual I logged my previous night's activities in a Notes file on a deactivated iPhone 3GS. This morning upon arrival at work, I've discovered it DOA. Going to have to crack it open and re-seat the battery again... So going off of memory here. Since ferram had a new version of FAR available, I decided to install it prior to gameplay to see if it would help my woes with the Lawsuit 7 craft stuck in Kerbin's orbit. I checked the voxels for the Lawsuit craft, and lo and behold I discovered a metric efftonne of them in the Service Bay up by the Command Pod - and I discovered that they went away if the Service Bay door was open. So I figured WTH, and tried a re-entry with the doors open. Jeb and company returned safely to Kerbin's surface with no unplanned disintegrations, freeing me from the woes I predicted in my previous post on this thread. Made a fair chunk of coin in the process too - something like a 400% return on the investment of the Lawsuit rocket, enough to safely upgrade the SPH and Runway to Level 2. I don't think I have enough evidence to pester ferram with a bug report just yet - I need to try uninstalling a bunch of other mods first and see if the problem persists. If it does, time to pester. If not, time to add mods back in until the game borks, then pester that poor underpayed and unappreciated modder instead... I picked up two satellite contracts and another two contracts to replace the ones I'd fulfilled, and did a trio of parts testing contracts - one for a Mk16 Chute, one for the Terrier engine, and one for a 2.5m Heat Shield while splashed down. Ended the night with a flight; I decided I would go ahead and follow monophonic's advice and build a rocket plane to do a high altitude aerial survey in the vicinity of KSC, using two FL-T800s and a Swivel engine for the boost phase and a whopping six Mk0 assemblies (Small Intake, Mk0 Fuselage, Juno engine) for aerial flight - six gets you roughly the same performance as a single Wheesley, at least in FAR; couldn't swear to that in stock aero. I have spoiled myself on procedural wings, it seems - I didn't like how kludgy the plane looked, but FAR insisted it would fly and that is something it did. I successfully hit all three waypoints even with the rocket running out of oxidizer while boosting up to altitude for the third and final waypoint. Jeb returned the plane successfully to the KSC Runway intact. Probably a good thing I had TAC Fuel Balancer installed (and that it works in 1.0.5 depite KSP insisting that it doesn't); at one point the plane went into a flat spin (tried to turn it a little too quickly) and Jeb's caboose was saved by pumping fuel forward - he came within 500 meters of kissing the dirt. Can't recall what I called that plane. I want to say I named it Crapbiscuit 7, but don't quote me on that. Feel free to use the name, though... Anyways, I owe monophonic some rep. Now I will take the time to figure out how to do that on these new forums. And then tonight my first order of business will be to fix my damn phone again...

I'm also not sure you're going to get too many takers on the challenge, on account of the NO MODS requirement. I mean, if I'm going to Dres, I'm going to be using KER, Protractor maybe, Maybe separate categories for modded versus un-modded games. It's a good idea for a challenge, IMHO, but needs some refinement.

Working - can confirm.

I'm using FAR - I should mention that. Also have FL-T800s already. Is the issue with hitting multiple waypoints one of having enough fuel for the rocket?

Last night was a thirty-minute night; not much time to get anything done. I did look to see if there had been a 1.0.5 update for Firespitter and it turns out there had been; I'll need to check again to see which of my mods had the Firespitter dependency but I'm pretty sure the .dll file in that mod hadn't been updated (at least not when I had downloaded it originally). Overwriting the old .dll file with the newer version seems to have solved the issue I was having with Bob's Fireball 7, which is now on its way to Minmus for his first sci run. I made another attempt to deorbit Jeb's Lawsuit 7 with six tourists aboard. I've come to the conclusion that the changes I made to the craft prior to this flight are what's causing the repeated structural failures, and am now already faced with my first tourist rescue mission for 1.0.5. Those poor suckers paying customers are going to be in space for a good month until Bob comes back from Minmus and I unlock the tech I need to beam them out and haul their butts out of orbit with something more reliable, and in the meantime nearly half of my contract spots are going to be clogged with contracts I can't cash in. I'm tempted to quit and begin again (considering how early on it is), but another part of me wants the challenge of bringing those folks home with limited options for raising capital in the meantime. I mean, my current availability of contracts well and truly sucks; I've got three aerial survey contracts available, two near KSC but both above 18k with the Juno as the only airplane engine available and the Runway/SPH still at Level 1, the other below 18k but on the far side of the planet. I've got one to test a Thumper on a Kerbin escape trajectory, and another to test an Ant engine in a sub-orbital Munar trajectory. 300k in funds, about half the facilities at KSC at Level 2... Yeah, this is going to be fun. And to her credit, it wasn't Val that got the tourists stranded this time around...

Had some problems getting back on the forums here after the migration; apparently AOL dislikes messages to reset my password so much it didn't even bother letting me know one had flown into my spam trap. Big thanks to KasperVid for taking the time to get me back up and running again. Been jonesin' to get back on the forums... And boy did I really need to get on the forums this weekend. Friday I found a procedure to get a working version of KER running for 1.0.5, so I bit the bullet and upgraded. As usual, I kept 1.0.2 for archival purposes; I may or may want to go revisit that game in the near future. I've gotten reports from Firespitter and TAC Fuel Balancer that 1.0.5 is an unsupported version (though TAC seems to be running just fine; I have Firespitter only for the Procedural Fairings, which based on events last night seem to be genuinely borked.) I began a new career save for 1.0.5 following Streetwind's early career strategy, clearing most of the lower tech tree within four simple missions. I flew a couple of tourist contracts and was deeply concerned when my stupid tourist craft chose not to fly straight, but it all worked out and ultimately I started making a little bit of cash. Even managed to clear five contracts with a single flight (though in fairness two of them were chute-hauling contracts, one for a Mk16 and one for radial chutes). Saturday was when the weird stuff began happening. I had my tourist craft for six Kerbals, which I had equipped with a Mk1 Pod and three Mk1 Crew Cabins, a Mk1 Service bay with four Z100 batts, four basic fins and a heat shield. Three times in a row, this craft would make orbit, I would de-orbit it, and immediately upon hitting atmospheric interface (at 70k) the fins would explode and knock 20k off of both my Apoapsis and Periapsis, putting me in too steep and resulting in RUD every time. Reverting kept this from being an unrecoverable disaster for my early space program, but it sure was annoying as hell - especially the sudden adjustment to my entry profile. So. on Sunday I tried compensating - enter with Periapsis at 50k instead of 30k like I ordinarily would've. I also repositioned the Service Bay in the stack. That craft made it down and I cleared five contracts at once (once again). I followed that up with a few parts testing contracts. When I again had six contracts for Kerbin orbits and sub-orbits, I launched the craft again, this time taking the fins off the payload completely. This version of the craft loses control and explodes - doesn't matter where I put the periapsis. Obviously I need to re-learn a thing or two about entry profiles in post-1.0.2, if I need to be deploying my chutes sooner or what (I have noted that my 1.0.2 launch profile now seems to be off - my apoapsis seems to be getting higher sooner - and I'd like to think it's just a matter of relearning those aspects of the game again and not a borked mod or something). Meantime, the current tourist flight is stuck in orbit, at least until I can figure out how to get everybody down safely. I've also unlocked enough tech and earned enough cash to send Bob to Minmus for sci farming at his leisure. An attempt to launch that flight late last night met with failure - which I suspect had a lot to do with the fact that Procedural Fairings doesn't seem to be working properly at the moment. Well, it's good to be back in any event. Going to have to see what all I need to / can adjust from the old forum...

Hey all. It's been a full week since last I was on the forum owing to RL events; I have a new baby boy in the house now, born last Thursday. Still in KSP 1.0.2 for now; checking in this evening, though, I found instructions for how to install a working version of KER for 1.0.5, so the update will begin in the very near future. I've spent most of my time (when I could play, of course) working on tweaks to the [I]Albatross II[/I] fuel delivery plane - which I've been able to get into orbit successfully at this point - and on a new craft, the [I]Peregrine 7[/I] heavy passenger liner, my first fully-fledged Mk3 craft designed to haul 20 Kerbals at a time to orbit. I've had some success with the design but I'm pretty sure an install of Kerbal Joint Reinforcement is in my near future; those damn Mk3 parts are unexpectedly flimsy, [I]especially[/I] the cargo bays. Managed to kill all four of my orange suits in my litterbox save when the plane broke up after re-entry during maneuvers to bring it back to KSC. Did play my career save on Saturday; I pretty much had time to bring some ore up to Munport 1 and process it, then return the Wildcat lander to the drilling site. I landed too far off and still haven't taken the time to try to move the lander closer to the rest of the rig just yet. I've got tourists en-route at this point; hopefully they'll be able to go home right away when the time comes.

They do add some unnecessary drag by the tail. If you want to keep them, I might suggest stowing them inside a cargo bay - you'll save some mass going that route, rather than including a dedicated monoprop fuselage section. Incidentally, the cargo bay would also be a good place to put a probe core for the craft if you ever want it to do unmanned operations (like rescues) if for some reason you didn't have access to Drone Cores (say in a mid-career save), and the walls of the cargo bay make excellent mounting points for prograde- and retrograde-firing RCS linear ports; you no doubt know already that places to put those can be tricky to find when it comes to spaceplanes. The cargo bay is just a suggestion in any event. I myself haven't found much utility in AIRBRAKES other than as, well, brakes...and IMHO agree that the "just brake" setting should be the default. That is what it is, though.

Glad to hear you made space. A couple of last things then - if you've got access to AIRBRAKEs, consider using them in your design; they'll help with the re-entry heat tremendously, as will keeping your nose pitched up during re-entry (i.e. high drag profile) for as long as your craft will tolerate it (if you've got leftover RCS set up for attitude control, you might consider using it for this purpose, but don't sweat it if you don't). If you use AIRBRAKEs, make sure you set them specifically for braking purposes only - i.e. don't use them as pitching or rolling surfaces - they'll just slow you down if you forget to set them up properly (particularly annoying during the speed-up part of the flight). Set them as soon as you're below 70k.

Last night's activities (still in 1.0.2 pending an official update to KER) began with more work on the [I]Albatross II[/I] heavy refueling plane. My calculations for the craft's desired wing loading said "make the damn thing longer", so I stretched it out to 29 meters in length and was able to put on a set of crooked arrow wings that gave it a 0.5 t/m[sup]2[/sup] wing loading, and did a test run. Plane flew reasonably well; I hadn't put on any main wing surfaces so I had the elevators on double duty for the test. Got her going a bit too fast in the 10-14k regime; she ultimately cooked herself. Tonight if I find time I'll try to add finishing touches to the plane and see how she handles a test flight. After that (thirty minutes all told) I went back to my career save. With the [I]Albatross II[/I] not ready for deployment yet, I opted to send a [I]Vulture[/I] refueling plane to Kerbinport. Take off was serendipitous - I managed to get a 1.6 kilometer rendezvous with the station prior to the plane's normal circularization burn (i.e. before the plane reached apoapsis), so I circularized and killed my relative velocity to the station at the same time. First time I've ever pulled that off - and I probably couldn't plan to do that again. [center][img]http://i.imgur.com/u5ZqOyy.png[/img][/center] I was able to dock up immediately, and transferred sufficient fuel to refuel the tanks of [I]Enola Gay[/I] and [I]Project Peacock[/I] both docked at the station. [I]Enola Gay[/I] departed for Mun with Cerxie at the helm and tourists Neillong, Eldorf and Arissa aboard; she arrives in another day or so. Excess fuel was drained from the [I]Vulture[/I] into the station's holding tank and the plane was sent back down to Kerbin, successfully landing at KSC with no issues. With a crew to service on its way and with Munport still not full of fuel, I decided to send Theogel and Verise back to the Munar surface to pick up an additional load of ore for fuel processing. Landing near the Munar mining rig was successful (with no real issues for once) and their [I]Wildcat[/I] lander was completely refueled from stores still on the surface. The game crashed on me as I was sending Verise out to unhook the Wildcat's winch from the mining rig, so I'll have to wait until tonight to see if that has set me back any at all. Tonight will be the last time I know for sure I'll be able to play KSP for the foreseeable future, so y'all know I'm wanting to wrap up a few things if I can...

Okay...just checking one last thing here real quick. Your plane - what's it's mass? I'm guesstimating a little over 30 tonnes; is that close? I'm also only seeing three rocket fuel parts. Assuming they're all full, your plane is carrying 8 tonnes of fuel specifically for the Aerospike. 8 / 30 = 26.7%. That ain't enough gas - not by a long shot. I might also second the notion of using RAPIERs, assuming this is a sandbox plane and/or you've got them unlocked. Only catch there is that their vacuum Isp is only 305 seconds, so you'd need a greater propellant fraction: 1 - e ^ (-dV / Ve) = 1 - e ^ (-1800 / (9.8*305)) = 1 - e^ (-0.60221) = 45.24%

I might also suggest you take a quick look at your engine setup - I fly FAR myself, but I keep track of the stock jockeys and their guidelines. Last I heard the guideline was one Turbojet and one rocket (in the neighborhood of 200 kN) per fifteen tonnes of mass at takeoff, or one RAPIER engine per thirteen tonnes at takeoff. Again, you'll want a little over two-fifths the total takeoff mass of your plane as rocket fuel if you stick with the Aerospikes (which are, in my experience anyway, good engines to couple with Turbojets).

Which aero model are you using, stock or FAR? If FAR, I might think you were experiencing [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_tuck]Mach Tuck[/url], and the solution would be a bigger tailplane. I don't know if the same solution would apply in stock or not. One thing I do know is that you lose pitch authority if your tailplane is in line with the main wing (you don't get as much torque from the pitching surface); moving them downward may have killed the oscillation, but may have contributed to your current issue. You shouldn't be burning enough fuel in atmo to cause that big of a shift in your CoM, just looking at the design of the plane. Do you use RCS Build Aid? It would show you which way your CoM shifts as you burn fuel. Real handy tool for any serious spaceplane designer.

[quote name='eddiew']Ask if she can get an extension? KSP waits for no man/baby :>[/QUOTE] I'll swing the idea past her. You are willing to pay for my funeral, right? :D:D:D