capi3101

OP, your box is slightly better than mine (wife says she's going to let me upgrade on the next tax return provided nothing blows up between now and then - and I'm going to have a third kid come November, so an explosion is entirely possible). I have noticed lag before when playing KSP that does get particularly bad when terrain is in view. In the past I used a mod called LoadOnDemand that brought the game up to tolerable levels; alas that it's no longer supported as of 1.0.x. Your next best bet is a mod called Active Texture Management - the Basic level brings my box to a tolerable level, and it doesn't look too much like dreck (unlike the Aggressive Level, which you should utilize if your manufacturer's label is written in Cuneiform). I'm assuming you've also turned down your graphics settings; they don't have to be at the bare minimum levels, but they should be down there a bit. I don't have the game where I can play it right this second but I can look to see where I've got my settings, if that kind of information would be useful to you. Thought I had a link to ATM somewhere...guess not. Going to have to dig it up. If you run a Google search for "ksp atm" it'll be the first result. Pay attention to the instructions and realize that you'll come close to melting your CPU on the first load, and its going to take a while. Like, start loading the game, go off and play Monopoly, A&A or maybe a game of Catan with a three-year old, and come back to play KSP when you hear the theme music two hours later... Used to play the game with just 2 GB installed. Lag, lag, lag...it's tough to play a game on geologic time scales......

Last night I launched a Raven 7 to orbit. Its mission: to rescue two Kerbal scientists stuck in orbit, to retreive Bill from New Horizons (seeing as he's the only Kerbal still aboard the station at this point) and to retreive Wilta from Kerbinport to finish out her contract. Should've checked my launch window first...the Raven gets to orbit largely empty, so the first place I wanted to send it was New Horizons for a tank-up. Wound up with it in orbit on the complete opposite side of the planet #facepalm. Began the long slog of orbit after orbit to close the distance (and wound up overshooting while I was doing other things...). Meanwhile, Berris took Kathina, Jesny, Rolie and Handun on a voyage to Minmus aboard the newly launched Stratofortress rocket, which was named The Great Artiste. This brings my re-usable fleet back up to three craft: Straight Flush, Necessary Evil and The Great Artiste. They'll arrive in a couple of weeks. Bob dispatched the Minmusport Mun buggy to go pick up Adsey and Sanula; the mission to pick up Adsey was a bit hair-raising, with her capsule's periapsis a mere 6,000 meters off the surface of Minmus. But the rendezvous was a success. The Buggy is still on its way to pick up Sanula, whose capsule was barely within Minmus's SOI; a close pass between her capsule and the Buggy is scheduled for two days hence. In need of funding after the launch of The Great Artiste and the Raven, I accepted a mission to put a satellite in a Kolniya orbit of Duna, bringing my Duna mission contracts up to a total of four. Still have about 120 days left to the first Duna window, plenty of time to get all of that planned.

The non-accumulation applies over every trip you make to that body. So after the second trip, all three of them are at 5 points for Mun - in fact, if you look at it from the standpoint of just trying to gain experience, Jeb really had no reason to go back to Mun... Assuming each of the guys orbited Kerbin prior to heading out to the Mun, and assuming they've made no trips out to Minmus at all, they'd be sitting at seven points total - two for orbiting Kerbin (the most you can ever get from Kerbin) and then five for planting flags on Mun (the most you can get from Mun). And they'd all three be on the cusp of the two-star rating (one point short - still just one-star). That of course, assumes that you return them to Kerbin after each trip; points aren't awarded until Kerbals return to KSC. So you could in theory launch them to orbit, have them plant flags on Mun, then go plant flags on Minmus, and then shoot them into a brief Kerbolar orbit having done nothing else prior; they'd have zero experience points prior to the flight, but immediately upon return they'd all rocket straight to three-star status with a total of nineteen XP (two for orbiting Kerbin, five for planting flags on Mun, six points for planting flags on Minmus and then another six for orbiting Kerbol).

You're welcome to try it if you wish. Just don't expect great results... One thing to note about the experience system is that the points aren't cumulative for a given body; each Kerbal is simply awarded for the highest scoring activity they performed. For example - let's say you're headed to Mun with Jeb, Bob and Bill. You flyby the Mun (2 pts) when you enter its SOI, and then later orbit the Mun (3 pts). Jeb and Bob land on the Mun (4.6 pts) and Jeb plants a flag (5 pts) before you head back to Kerbin. Jeb will have 5 points of Mun experience (even though he did all those activities). Bob will have 4.6 points of Mun experience (since he landed on the Mun), and Bill will have 3 (since all he did was orbit the Mun). Then each level is based on total accumulated experience points: You reach one star at 2 points, two-stars at 8 points, three stars at 16 points, four stars at 32 points and five stars at 64 points.

Had one of those nights with only an hour in which to play. Used the time to bring Burlong, Malfurt and Miglas down from the New Horizons space station. Realized as I was hitting atmo that they weren't flying in any generic Raven 7 spaceplane - they were in Free Bird, which I had decided not to land on account of the fact that it only had Small Gear Bays (the little gear caused many a crash of the Raven prototypes). Of course, by that point it was too late, so I went ahead and rode it on in. Re-entry and landing were un-eventful; the plane managed to land safely at the KSC Runway without reverts, and suddenly I had three more Kerbals joining the two-star club. Of my current KSC staff of 17, that's now six in the "official" two-star club - Jeb, Bob, Valentina, Burlong, Miglas and Malfurt. Berris and Bill are also rated two stars at the moment but their logs don't show flag-planting activity on one of the moons and so I'm not counting them just yet, and then I've got five more Kerbals on their way back to Kerbin at the moment who are likely to join the club upon return to KSC. The big plan is to send them all up at once for a mission into Kerbol orbit, thus earning them all three-star ratings prior to the planned mission to Duna. Meantime, since Free Bird is landed (for "refitting" I guess), I need to add a new craft to my reusable space fleet. The plan is to send up a Raven tonight in order to collect a couple of rescue contracts, retreive a tourist from the Kerbinport station and return Bill to the surface. Bob (still at Minmus) might also pick up a couple of scientists needing rescuing over Minmus in the Minmusport space station's Mun Buggy. I need the kash at this point - I went ahead and upgraded my Tracking Station to Level 3, which completes all my KSC upgrades - but has only left me with about √150k. That's enough for a single launch; I definitely need to raise some capital pretty fast.

Mods compatibility; there are several I use that don't say they're ready for 1.0.4 yet. That and I just haven't done it yet.

If you have access to airbrakes, include them on your design; they'll help you lose speed without gaining a great deal of heat. Other than that, what ajburges said; it'd also help to know if you're using FAR or stock air.

With my persistence save corrupted and a week-old backup in hand, I decided after carefully looking at my backup that I should forget about the notion of a full restore. I replaced the newly offered Large Gear Bay parts test with my previously existing (and accepted) Aerospike test contract, and started accepting new ones. Did have to manually edit out two previously existing tourists from the roster and there are one or two others I imagine I'll have to do that to after they return to Kerbin. So: weekend's activities - the crew of Straight Flush planted flags on Minmus; they're on their way back with everybody except Bob, who is remaining behind at the Minmusport station to run the lab for now. I still have plans to bring him back in time for the upcoming flight into Kerbol's orbit. Meantime, two new rescue contracts have appeared for Minmus - and they're both Scientists. Meanwhile, a similar mission for the crew of Necessary Evil has taken place on Mun; Necessary Evil has returned to the New Horizons station over Kerbin at this point, with the science gathered having been transferred to a waiting Raven spaceplane along with the crew. I plan on landing those guys this evening, which should put the KSC staff aboard firmly in the two-star club. A new space station was launched for a contract over Kerbin over the weekend - the newly commissioned Kerbinport station is currently fully loaded with a group of tourists. Finally, I did attempt to launch a "new" space station to Mun in the form of a habitat module headed to Munport; alas that I forgot to attach an antenna, so I'm hoping I can send up a repair mission in the near future to fill out that contract. Maybe with Necessary Evil - there are a few of the new tourists who want to visit Mun. That Vulture 7 I sent up to refuel Free Bird after its trip from Minmus? Landed it safely last night on the KSC Runway. Wasn't dead stick, but I'd definitely say the craft was in a state of "relaxed stability" at the time on account of it being almost completely out of fuel...30 units of LF going in and she tumbled out of control at 30,000; I was able to take her out of the dive at 9000 meters about 130 klicks from KSC (this in FAR with the possibility of structural failure, mind you). Had to fire up the engines so she'd clear the mountains but after that I didn't use the engine at all. Came right in - had five units of LF left and about 100 of monoprop, and that was it. Bounced a couple of times on the runway but otherwise the landing went smoothly. Took a screenie; going to have to share that one at some point. Rest of the weekend was spent working on a previous design, the Condor 7. Finally got it back into orbit on "automatic" (read: probe core). Re-entry didn't go so well - curiously, the probe core itself overheated and exploded, despite it being securely nestled in a cargo bay. Lost control of the craft at that point, obviously - got to watch it go into the drink otherwise intact...

Did as you suggested (added canards) and it did help matters; I was able to get the Condor into orbit. Also swapped out the cockpit for a Mk2 inline, then added a Mk2-1 Adapter up front, attached a service bay to that so I could put the probe core into it, then an NCS Adapter to that, an Avionics hub onto that and finally an extended Communotron 16 to the end of that. Re-entry has proven...interesting. I've been making un-kerballed space flights and the probe core I've been using is an OKTO. Without fail, the OKTO has been the first (and only) part to explode on re-entry, this despite it either being nestled snugly in a closed cargo bay (and later in a closed dedicated service bay). I'm thinking that's probably some kind of bug at work - the rest of the plane survives intact up until the point where it usually falls into the drink (you know, because the probe core exploded and so I lose control over the craft at that point). I'd ask for help on this one, except I'm still in 1.0.2 and still using Garabidean (SP - not using the latest FAR version)... I suppose that's a question - can you still use Glauert with 1.0.2? Because if you can, I have no reason not to upgrade...

Not so much the magnet, but the winch cable certainly can. Fuel, oxidizer, monoprop......Kerbals.......... (No seriously - if you ever get tourists stranded somewhere, send up a rescue ship with a couple of connector ports, a winch and a wrench or screwdriver in a container and hook up the two ships in docked mode. Fiber-optic teleportation. Saved me from having to ditch a couple of high-paying contracts not all that long ago...).

I take it you're already shifting the LF as far forward as you possibly can after the de-orbit burn? I have to do that with my main re-fueling supply plane if I want it to remain stable. Maybe (and this is just a thought) replace the Mk2 cockpit with a Mk2 inline, stick a Mk2 to 1.25 adapter in front of that (empty out the oxidizer, of course), stick an NCS Adapter on the end of that, and then put a SAS cone on up front. That may play a bit much with the craft's aesthetics, but it'll give you some place to stick all your fuel up close to the nose and move the CoM forward. If you use FAR, you might even consider putting a Communotron 16 on the tip of the SAS cone and extending it while you're still in the SPH. Nice looking spaceplane, BTW.

Just came across this mod today - as a guy with a Bachelors in Meteorology, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing it working with all the bells and whistles some day. Going to be fun trying to land a spaceplane from orbit with a 20 knot crosswind... Do y'all plan on incorporating some kind of forecast function into the game? You know, say my Duna launch window is coming up in three days but the forecast is supposed to be bad, so I might want to plan for an earlier launch? How about the potential for damage from lightning strikes (ala Apollo 12)?

Alright - I could've sworn I took more screenshots than I apparently did (in fact I know I hit the F1 key more times than this). I didn't get the stability derivatives at Mach 0.6/5k but I did get the AoA sweep at least; I figured that'd give y'all something to look at. If need be I'll get the derivative screenie tonight; meantime here's the Condor: Not much to say about this plane other than what's in the comments. She doesn't want to pitch up very easily after takeoff but she'll fly well enough right up to the point where I want to kick on the rockets, at which point she's fully deflected upwards and still going down. For good measure I did prep the derivatives/AoA graph/sims for those conditions (Mach 3/20 k) and I got those screenies...probably not helpful but you never know. Should probably mention that the wing/tail/fin are all B9 procedural parts. The tailplane is an all-moving stabilator; the wings have an aileron and spoiler attached. I'm aware of the inadequacy of the fin/rudder.

Last night after farting around a bit with the design of the Condor 7 I got back to work, bringing Ludine and her crew up from Minmus for a return to Minmusport and bringing Necessary Evil into dock at Munport. It was as I was entering Munar orbit that I realized something was seriously wrong - one of the tourists I had brought along for the trip to Mun had "Orbit the Mun" as part of their itinerary and I wasn't awarded for the contract. Brought up my contract list, and sure enough - the damn game had dumped all of my contracts. Again. Last time this happened, a reload from quicksave was enough to salvage the situation - in this case, it put me to just before Ludine's crew landed on Minmus, and the contracts still weren't there... So today I'm going to try to patch the contracts in my persistence file. I do have a backup persistence file - from a week ago (and I'm sitting here shaking my head because I've accomplished a lot this week), but most of the contracts I want to keep (like the Aerospike test and Explore Duna contracts) are still in there. I plan to just cherry-pick from the ones I've got and the new ones being offered. Might have to fudge with the crew files too (mainly for tourists). I'll make another "clean" copy of the current persistence file before I do all this just in case I screw it up; push comes to shove, I can just live with the new order of things. I'd be like cancelling a whole bunch of contracts and not getting penalized for it. I would want to bring Valentina and her bunch back to Kerbin at the earliest possibility... EDIT: Took this screenie the other day of a Vulture 7 refueling plane in orbit. Don't know when the next time I'll be able to post a screenie that looks quite so clean, so I figured I'd share it.

You can do it if you've got sufficient delta-V remaining. Basically, you need to look at your current orbital velocity and plan a retrograde burn of double that amount at the next apsis. Obviously, the slower your orbital velocity, the easier this will be to pull off (which is why klesh is telling you to raise your Ap - generally the higher your Ap, the lower your orbital velocity is).

Maybe I didn't ask the question well - at what magnitude of Mw should I expect to see lawn dart behavior for a given speed and altitude? And is the Mw what I should be looking at to try and predict that behavior? I did think to check the AoA graphs as well; I've read that most successful designs keep the dM/dα between 0.5 and 0.65. But to see if that's how the graph plays out, I kinda need to know the numbers involved.

Hey y'all, quick question - while I was at my in-laws I designed a plane that had crappy pitch authority, one of those that didn't really want to pitch up (but did) at takeoff and eventually got into an un-recoverable dive after a bit (and overheated and exploded). I know the usual tricks for fixing this at this point, but I was wondering if there was a good way of predicting this kind of behavior from the stability derivatives prior to takeoff (you know, fix the problem ahead of time instead of getting up there and realizing the problem exists). So, how about it - is there a value in the stability derivatives that should say to me "your pitch authority is going to go from suck to blow at this point"? It'd be a relatively high magnitude green number - I'm thinking Mw but I'm not wholly sure.

Last night I got back to work after an extended break. Launched Burlong, Malfurt and Miglas along with tourists Tamchell and Mauxy from KSC on a Mun-bound expedition aboard Necessary Evil, a new Stratofortress 7a-type craft (same as Straight Flush) and the third craft to join my reusable flotilla. Nothing particularly noteworthy about that flight; they'll arrive in the Mun's SOI in another hour's flight time. Meantime, Ludine, Pepe and Valberta arrived at the Minmusport space station aboard Straight Flush and transferred to the station's Mun Buggy for a surface excursion. Landing in Minmus's lowlands was a bit hairy for a minute or two but otherwise went well, the three white-suits each planting flags on the moon's surface. I realized this morning that part of the latest Minmus expedition is going to call for a change of plans. The original idea was for Straight Flush to return with its current crew of three as well as Kacella, Diissa and Bob, three Kerbals that were manning the Minmusport station. Six kerbals total...but Straight Flush's crew capacity is five. I'ma thinking what will be required is for me to return the crew to Kerbin aboard the Mun Buggy - which can handle six Kerbals, has the necessary delta-V for the journey and automated controls available for a return flight - and then return it to Minmusport later. Minmusport does have a fuel supply available to refuel the buggy once it returns, so the big trick will be figuring out which Kerbal I want to take to bring Straight Flush back home. I'm going to want Bob and Diissa back there eventually anyways, preferably after they've earned their three-star ratings... I've also come to the conclusion that I need to expand the New Horizon's space station again. The current station has four docking berths, of which two are occupied - one by the original space station core module (which is now a habitat module), and one by Free Bird. I want to be able to use the station as a staging point for a final flight into Kerbol's orbit in order to bring thirteen Kerbals - over 75% of my current KSC staff - to three-star ratings. By my calculations, though, when Necessary Evil and the Mun Buggy return, I'm going to be out of docking berths - unless I run a KIS/KAS spacewalk or two to add another couple of Clamp-O-Trons to the existing station. Planning that spacewalk today; it may or may not happen tonight.

The ones on Kerbin pretty much are; though in theory you could build a rocket to do the job, getting it to the point where you need it at the speed at which it needs to be going is much trickier in a rocket than in a plane. And hitting more than one waypoint at a time also adds to the difficulty. Planes aren't atrociously difficult to get used to once you know what you're doing, and if you get to the point where you can use them well they can save you thousands and bump up your profit margins significantly. Had one in 0.90 that was able to take up a Mun lander and bring it back - that Mun mission cost a whopping √3000, the price of fuel...looked like total crap but it did the job.

The fun ones are rescue contracts around Mun and Minmus, IMHO. Those can also be quite lucrative; made nearly √450k for two Minmus rescue contracts just this past weekend, got me to the point where I could upgrade the R&D to Level 3 (finally).

I've heard that there is a PID tuner mod for FAR; haven't tried it out myself but I've been meaning to check it out. I'm the same - try to make a simple little adjustment to line up on the runway, suddenly have to adjust my pitch to maintain my glide slope, things like that.

Some of the surface survey ones are flat out dangerous...had one where I was supposed to do a spot above 17,000, a spot below 16,000 and a spot on the surface. No problem, right? The spot on the surface was in the middle of the damn ocean...no matter how many times I tried, I couldn't ditch intact. Wound up cancelling that mission... Which I suppose brings up a point: those missions where you get some funding prior to finishing the contract? You shouldn't hesitate to cancel them when you get to the more challenging bits if and only if A) you don't feel like doing them and you'll still make a profit on the contract even if you cancel it. You might lose some rep, but rep's pretty easy to earn. Something to consider the first time one of your tourists decides they want to go sun-diving. I wouldn't knock tourist missions too much - they're good money, especially if you can start reducing costs by using reusable craft (read: build ferry craft, and start using spaceplanes to bring up fuel/more tourists). Tourism missions have largely funded the full KSP upgrades in my own space program. Survey missions...yeah, those are dull as hell. Good way to pass a quiet Sunday afternoon, though.

Weather kept me off my box last night, so no KSP. Spent my time researching pitch stability, trying to figure out if I could determine with FAR's stability derivatives screen when I've built a design that's a lawn dart (which has happened a LOT lately). I think I've got it figured out, but I won't know for sure until I can get back to playing the game. And then I'll have to deal with the problem of having to get to used to the sucky performance of my home box again...

Which is when you use RCS to hold the craft's AoA at a high angle - which is also something the shuttle did. I employ a combination of the suggested techniques - airbrakes, high AoA and S-turns - on most of my craft during the re-entry process; my Vulture 7 spaceplane usually doesn't even display heating bars during re-entry as a rule, which the OP should take as a measure of the effectiveness of these techniques.

In that case, be sure you're draining out the oxidizer in the SPH. While you're at it, do the same for the monoprop in the cockpit; this plane isn't going to space, it needs neither. If you've happened to unlock the AV-R8 winglet (available with Flight Control, a 45-point tier tech), those make for great horizontal stabiliators in low-tech. They make for good canards even after you've got some better parts unlocked. The Delta-Deluxe is a pretty reasonable piece for a low-tech fin/rudder, though. How are you for gears? I'd turn the brakes on the rear gears up if you can. EDIT: You might not want your CoM and CoL to be right next to one another. If you're into mods, I'd suggest one called RCS Build Aid. Among its many useful features is a "dry center of mass" marker that shows you where your CoM will be when the craft runs out of gas. For planes, it's a handy way of being able to tell if your CoM is going to go aft of the CoL at some point during the flight. In stock, you could just drain all the tanks completely and use that position to set your CoL - but that gets tedious once your planes start getting bigger, and you have to remember to put the fuel back if you want the plane to run at all...