giltirn

I agree that science in its current form is not particularly exciting. Personally, I think that engineering research should be paid for by giving money to researchers, and science should be a mission objective rather than just an alternate currency. For example, you could get a government contract to put a science rover on Duna, and you receive X units of currency for R&D and extra for completing the mission.

That has to be the best mod intro video I have seen. Nice!

Last night I tried to complete an ambitious mission to Laythe that I have been working on for a few days involving a refueler (which went first and went into Jool orbit) and a manned ship that was designed to land and return. Unfortunately the mission was plagued with problems: 1) Originally I did not think about aerobraking directly to Laythe - instead my refueler aerobraked around Jool but then I had to spend almost 2/3 of its fuel getting to Laythe and then doing the plane change to match the orbit of the manned craft. 2) The lander segment was planned for enough fuel to return from Laythe's surface for orbit but had virtually zero reserve. Unfortunately my orbit did not intersect any land and a plane change burn would have pushed me past the point where I would not have been able to get back to orbit after landing. 3) This is my own stupidity: the NERVA booster stage that brought the manned part to Laythe did not have a docking port, and hence had to be abandoned when I decoupled the lander. Fortunately I have developed OCD about backing up my save files at crucial times during the mission, so I decided to start over with an improved design; a multi-part ship built in orbit with a better-designed lander stage. The original manned part of the mission was built with the limitation that I only have reliable launchers that can get a maximum of 75T into space, hence the close margins on the lander stage. Assembling in orbit removes this limitation. We shall see how this pans out!

This is a fantastic mod, it has certainly made interplanetary journeys significantly easier. If I may I have a couple of suggestions: 1) Add a separate 'increment' for the node time - when on large interplanetary orbits an increment of 100 is not really large enough. 2) If possible allow the user to select which planet the periapse and apoapse are shown for. Thanks!

I just want them to improve SOI transitions such that you don't have to do correction burns every time you change SOI.

This seems to be something that only a small part of the community would actually want (I would find it very frustrating myself), and is hence probably best addressed using mods.

I'm hardly a pro at this game, but I have almost unlocked the entire tech tree without ever having to repeat a mission. Heck, I didn't even really do anything on Kerbin, just a crew report and straight up-and-down type job to get the first tier unlocked, then I did a suborbital hop, an orbit, a Mun flyby, a Minmus flyby, a Mun landing, a Minmus Landing then a Duna landing. I am planning a more substantial mission to the Jool system now. Never have I felt like I was grinding (apart from having to repeat transmissions multiple times).

You're in a stable orbit if the ellipse of your orbit doesn't intersect with the planet that you are orbiting (or its atmosphere) - look at the map view. If the velocity is stable it just means you have a circular orbit, which is not necessary to avoid falling back to kerbin.

Hmm, I have built lifters ranging from 5 to 75 tonnes and dropped them into the subassembly section and all of them don't have their struts attached when retrieved.

OMG, this is the most amazing thing ever. Now I just need some friends....

I think its good that people post these every week; it lets SQUAD know that we love KSP weekly and that they are not wasting their time preparing it.

I need my fix, man! *scratches*

GavinZac's idea is a very interesting alternative, I would also love to see the devs consider something like this.

Me too - I have just disabled sound completely.

Great job!

I like the idea of separating the science pools for transmitted science against return samples, or at least having some extra science that can only be obtained by returning samples. For more distant missions the devs could add a manned laboratory module for doing science in situ with the intention of these modules being deployed on space stations or planetary bases. I think this would give player motivation to set up infrastructure rather than just fire-and-forget probes.

Physicist (postdoc) here of the particle theory variety. In my line of work there are far sketchier models in common use than those used in KSP!

No solar panels until tier 7 so LKO is going to be filled with spinning, dark chunks of metal filled with the dessicated corpses of once-brave kerbonauts.

I've also been having problems with B9. I think the big control surfaces do not play well with the new ASAS - they tend to flap about madly causing the craft to shake itself apart. I posted about this before but noone else seems to have the same problem.

Sounds like a tough challenge, if you really want the thing to be a single-stage to orbit vertical launch craft. With a standard spaceplane SSTO you gain pretty much all of your speed while flying horizontally at around 25-30km. With a vertical ascent profile I would be surprised if you got much more than a couple of hundred m/s before you run out of air at 35km, even if you stack hundreds of intakes. This means you are basically building a single-stage rocket that has to haul around a load of dead weight used for only a tiny portion of the delta-V required to achieve orbit. Edit: Nevertheless, I would definitely use turbo-jets and whatever rocketry setup required to haul that thing from 35km to orbit. Try to spend as much time horizontal as possible between 20km and 30km, completely flat if possible without wings! I think the number is about 0.07 air per turbojet, not sure about jets (likely much more).

For more complex designs, parts counts often explode due to the necessity to reinforce the connections between attached parts with multiple struts. It would be nice if we could have the option to reinforce the joins between parts without adding additional parts, perhaps at the cost of mass. I envision a system whereby you simply activate some sort of connection mode and click two or more connected parts, then have a slider to reinforce the connection.

Man I wish I could have played KSP when I was 13, although it would have probably destroyed my social life!

I am having the same problem. I am using a fresh Steam install of KSP (latest version), with only B9 aerospace mod installed. Smaller planes work fine, but on any larger plane the control surfaces flap around like mad as soon as I activate SAS, and, depending on how well balanced the plane is, the nose will tend to drift off course. Sometimes the SAS fights me to the extent that I am unable to manually change direction at all. Turning SAS off I have no difficulty controlling the plane. This problem happens with 4 of the 6 stock B9 planes, only the two smaller ones are exempt (the VTOL and the smaller jet - can't remember their names). Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this?

People, please stop saying 'add moar reaction wheels'. If you have sufficient control authority to manually hold a course then you should have sufficient control authority for SAS to hold a course. 99% of the people with SAS problems (including myself) also state that they have more than enough reaction wheels/wings/RCS to manually prevent the attitude from drifting.

I just want SAS to hold a course while my craft is under thrust.