Raptor9

Yeah, I wouldn't be too concerned about it. When Curseforge was announced as the official mod-hosting site back in the day, the Spaceport (pre-Spacedock site) people felt similarly irritated, some even spoke about feeling betrayed. But the years since have shown that Curseforge is still not the preferred mod-hosting site. Spacedock still reigns supreme, by a significant margin from what I've seen. I wouldn't hold that as an indicator of how the Squad team regards KerbalX (not saying you do). Even legal and PR people have their own personal opinions that may differ from the "official" positions or announcements that they put out in the name of the company that employs them. As someone that draws a very distinct line between his personal and professional lives, I can understand how interesting that dynamic can be. BTW, thanks for holding it down, and I'm not changing my individual direction.

This. +1

#18126

Hmm...the structural tube drag bug still appears to be present after some testing with the fresh structural tubes in 1.4.4. I didn't see it mentioned in the changelog and it's not closed in the bugtracker, just bringing it up in case anybody else was looking in to it.

KerbalX. That is all.

Well, I was drunk and playing 0.12 or 0.13 at the time, but I remember a few black flips a few seconds off the launch pad and then crashing and laughing...and that was my first lesson: "Check yo' stagin!"

Because the Mk1 lander can looked better. It would be rather odd to have an extra angular, bumpy front half of the LV-3A ascent stage, with a smooth passenger cabin back half, not to mention all the random RCS thruster blocks and the embedded gold donut on the bottom of the MEM you wouldn't be able to remove. It would just look really out of place. Plus the door between the Mk1 "cockpit" and the passenger "living quarters" lines up real nice. In general, I really don't see myself using the MEM for anything other than a standalone lander pod like in my LV-2 family.

The ones that can takeoff vertically. In all seriousness, I don't know. I've never really done a comparison test. The more recent straight-wing utility aircraft I made are decent, like the C7 120, 124, and 130.

Two updated landers today, the LV-3A and LV-3B. The slightly refined look of the new LV-3A is closer to the "Altair" LSAM from the Constellation program (or at least the particular concept of the "Altair" that I preferred, since there were a handful). The LV-3B didn't change much, but the changes between the lander pair is a result of a further refined strategy. Namely, the lack of an onboard rover on the LV-3A, and the shifting of the materials bay to the LV-3B. This allowed me to focus on the performance of the LV-3A; and as such, it's capable of landing and returning the crew to orbit on any air-less planet/moon in the entire Kerbol system with the exception of Tylo. Since it doesn't have to worry about a large ramp system or rover, the LV-3A can also be re-used if necessary. On bodies with weaker gravity (like the Mun, Ike or Dres), the descent stage has enough delta-V to return the crew to orbit; or use that additional dV budget to conduct large inclination changes to other landing sites from the staging orbit, and then use the ascent stage to get back. With bodies of higher gravity (like Vall or Moho), the lander can still be used normally as a two-stage lander, or refueled on the surface to return the entire lander back to orbit for another sortie. The LV-3B's major change is a different onboard rover. The new ER-3 'Mongoose' is the most capable rover yet, with the ability to carry 4 Kerbals, operate in complete darkness with it's fuel cell, it has a strong HG-5 antenna for transmitting onboard science data, and can be remotely-controlled like the ER-2. It also sits low, making it compact for shipment in the LV-3B's rover bay, and the wide wheel base reduces rollover tendency. To refill the LFO (for the fuel cell) on the ER-3, simply drive it back into the LV-3B's rover bay and stop over the floor-mounted docking port.

The easy answer is yes, it is always more efficient to land on an atmo-less body by going in the direction of rotation. However, sometimes it may not make that much of a difference, depending on the orbital/rotation characteristics of the body itself. For an example that a lot of players have discussed prior, is whether or not to enter into a prograde orbit around the Mun, or approach the Mun on a free-return trajectory, but requires entry into a retrograde orbit. In the specific case of the Mun, which has a rotational period the same as it's orbital period around Kerbin, the delta-V savings of landing prograde is quite small. You can determine this by comparing your Orbit speed readout to your Surface speed readout. A 20km equatorial orbit around the Mun requires 544 m/s, but is 534 m/s across the surface of the Mun, meaning that the "speed of the Mun's surface" in the direction of rotation is about 10 m/s. Now if you flip it around and compare the two speeds during a 20km retrograde orbit, the craft's orbital speed is the same, but the surface speed is 554 m/s. So in reality, choosing to land on the Mun from a prograde orbit versus a retrograde orbit only equates to 20 m/s difference of horizontal velocity that you need to cancel out from orbit to touchdown. If you have a ship or a probe that has such tight propellant margins that 20 m/s of delta-V is the difference between success or failure, I doubt many players could perform such a landing with consistent results given such a margin. Other planets/moons that have insignificant (less than 40m/s) prograde/retrograde "speed differences" are Minmus, Moho, Gilly, Ike, Tylo, Bop, and Pol. Due to either really low gravity, like Gilly or Minmus, or being tidally-locked with their parent planet, like Tylo. Even Dres is hardly worth mentioning with a difference of 55 m/s. These comparisons were done from low, circular equatorial orbits, but I doubt they would be much different from higher altitudes.

I was hoping to use the LV-TX87 Bobcat engine as a dual engine solution for the 'Thunder 3' family, but it ended up being less powerful than I expected. The Twin Boar would have been extreme overkill for something like that. I'm not necessarily trying to make them more different, outside of the capabilities of the upper stages. The upper stage on the 'Thunder 3' has a little more performance, but has a less precise orbital placement capability with only 3 axes of control. The upper stage of the 'Thunder 4' has less performance, but carries more monoprop and has 6 axes of control, allowing very precise orbital placement (although this is mitigated by having an extended core stage with more fuel). Trying to make the double-engine setup isn't as important to me, since I would be making a lot of design compromises just for the sake of having a twin-engine. EDIT: Doesn't matter if a person wants to do it manually or not. The command is gonna be left over anyway from the abort sequence using the launch escape system. So either way, I'm just trying to declutter the staging list.

Another productive day. The M3V 'Gilly Logistics Kit' is updated. The updated IV-2A 'Badger' ISRU rig has a new fixed landing gear system that is wider and doesn't have to contend with the suspension effects of landing on the ultra-low-gravity Gilly. In my Satellite/Probe Revamp project, the 'Specter' Eve orbiter/lander and 'Echo' Eeloo flyby probe are published. These are a bit more difficult to use than some of the other probes. First off, the 'Specter' probe requires experience with Eve incremental aerobraking to safely get the lander on the ground without burning up. Some details covering this from my final verification mission are included in the 'Specter' Engineer's Notes in the OP. Full disclosure, there is a stack of batteries clipped inside the 'Specter' lander's Stayputnik core. The reason being is the atmospheric science experiment requires so much power to transmit the results back to Kerbin. Even then, it can only be done during the day so the solar panels can provide a few moments of juice to fight the battery drain. With the 'Echo', the propellant margins are pretty tight. The 'Thunder 2' upper stage is required to perform the entire burn out of Kerbin, so if you screw that up, you're not gonna make it to Eeloo if you're banking on the probe being able to correct the botched trajectory. After getting the probe into a stable 90km orbit around Kerbin, I had 2,560 m/s dV remaining in the upper stage according to Dmagic's modlet. After the burn was completed, I had a few hundred m/s left in the upper stage, so you have some wiggle room to spend either on the launch to orbit, or if you want to shave off a little time from the multi-year trip to Eeloo. Almost all of the 1,430 m/s dV on the probe itself is used for the plane change burn, with 90-100 m/s left for final adjustments before the fly-by. This is the last batch of pre-completed probes for this project. All of the probes I've been releasing the past week or so were just waiting on final post-1.4 tweaks and a full-up test mission. This isn't the end of the project however. There are still more I want to do, such as some more orbital probes and comm relays for Eve and Duna, along with possibly a few more for the Mun or Minmus. I've had more fun than I expected with these craft, mainly learning how to build small but detailed craft, squeezing as much performance as I can out of them. They've also forced me to learn a lot of skills I never even tried before, such as incremental aerobraking, interplanetary flybys, gravity brakes, and multiple maneuver node planning months or years in advance. _______________________________ EDIT: M3V updates: All EV-6 'Windjammer' Kits, EV-6 Support Kits, and Advance Equipment Kits are now updated. Additionally, I updated the EV-2L craft file with a small change. To hopefully prevent an accidental, and irreversible, staging of the capsules from the rest of the craft (where the heatshield meets the decoupler), I disabled the staging on the decoupler itself. The last thing I would want is for that to happen when in an interplanetary transit. Now, whenever you are about to re-enter the Kerbin atmosphere and want to jettison the auxiliary service module to expose the heatshield, simply press ABORT as if you were going to use the launch escape system during launch, and the capsule will separate as it would otherwise. Piece-of-cake. I'm probably going to update all the rest of my crew capsules this next week with this feature to prevent accidental staging. At least with staging the parachutes in space, all you have to do is right-click and select "Disarm" in the PAW.

It adjusted the dry mass and propellant volume capacities of the 0.625m and 1.25m stack monoprop tanks as well, to be consistent with other KSP tank mass/volume ratios. The dry masses were reduced, but with monoprop's horrible Isp to begin with, the propellant capacity reduction really had a negative impact. The same was done with the xenon tanks, but had the opposite effect. The xenon tank dry masses are also now less, but the capacity increased; resulting in a fairly significant delta-V increase for ion-powered craft Usually when I'm trying to limit myself to one propellant source for both attitude control and propulsion; for logistic reasons. This is usually the case when I don't require a lot of delta-V or TWR (like a lot of my Soviet/Russian inspired station modules), such as simple orbital adjustments or landing someplace of really low gravity (like Minmus). The KSP v1.3 LV-2A 'Grasshopper' had so much delta-V that it could hop through several biomes in one sortie to Minmus. Now it has enough for just one trek to the surface, and not much maneuvering around at the bottom. But the gravity around Minmus is so low it didn't nix the craft design entirely. The former monoprop-powered 'Cricket's in v1.3 had only limited delta-V margins for landing on the Mun (LV-2D) and Ike (LV-2E), so the monoprop balance nerfed them hard. But that's ok, it allowed me to streamline my lander line-up resulting in better designed landers and less mission overlap.

Some updates and some new craft files published. In the M3V area, the 'Ike/Dres Logistics Kit' is updated and redesignated as the 'Ike/Dres BiPropellant Logistics Kit', and supplemented by the new 'Ike/Dres TriPropellant Logistics Kit'. The only difference between the two is either the HLV-5B or D model included in the kit. Additionally, more brand new craft are posted as part of my Satellite/Probe Revamp Project. The first is an analogue to the "Dawn" Vesta/Ceres probe, and the second is an analogue to the "Juno" Jupiter probe. Regarding the 'Emerald Sky', during my final verification mission I ended up with just over 1,000 m/s delta-V remaining after getting into a stable polar elliptical orbit around Jool. This required a gravity brake maneuver around Tylo, but it is quite feasible with plenty of dV wiggle-room to get the probe into an orbit around Jool. All in all though, it taught me some more skills in interplanetary trajectories...and patience.

Hey Rune, welcome back. Yeah, it's always facepalming to see the old stations and base designs in a save when you upgrade everything.

It actually turned out to be about the same size as the previous skycrane/rover, but heavier and almost twice as expensive. But the launcher is cheaper, which saves about 27,000 in the end. The gold fuel tanks are a bit oversized for the craft, but I don't think it's that far off given our limited options in the stock parts. The Skycrane is actually quite nimble, with it's RCS thrusters and balanced layout. The previous skycrane was quite lazily thrown together, as was the orbital Cruise Module. The new skycrane is so well balanced that if you were to place it on the runway (with gravity-hacked to emulate Duna's) and hit the gas without the SAS on, it would barely drift in attitude as it climbed. And with the propellant load placed precisely around the center-of-mass, it retains the balance throughout it's fuel burn. All in all, I was very happy with how stable it turned out considering the asymmetric nature of the skycrane as well as it's payload.

Is it June already?...I really enjoyed this particular craft revision. The rover was a lot of fun to build. The skycrane was a headache; trying to get the perfect hexagonal symmetry, but only on four out of the six positions for the engine pylons. However in the end it came together better than I expected, and I'm satisfied with the results. For the rare reader that doesn't know what this is supposed to be analogous to, it's the Mars Science Laboratory; also known as the "Curiosity" rover and Skycrane. During my final verification mission, I launched the craft into a stable 80km Kerbin parking orbit. Then I used about 1,300m/s for the trans-Duna injection to send the craft on it's way, with just over 200 m/s or 18 seconds of burn time remaining in the 'Thunder 2' upper stage when I released the Cruise Module. While in transit, the Cruise Module has over 400m/s delta-V for course corrections and final approach trimming, so there really shouldn't be any issue getting this craft into the Duna atmosphere. I will note that since this craft uses a direct atmo entry from an interplanetary trajectory, it has a built-in safety margin of ablator. In order to see how hard I could push the aeroshell, the highest I came screaming in on a test run was 3000m/s at the moment of atmospheric encounter, with a 15km periapsis. I was getting temp warnings, but the craft held up just fine. When I did my final verification mission, I came in at about half that speed with a 15km periapsis. I wanted to stay in a shallow trajectory as long as possible to bleed off as much speed as I could so I could safely deploy my parachute. In the end, you could probably shave off some of that ablator to get more delta-V performance out of your upper stage if you wanted. Also, you will need a comm relay satellite overhead in the Duna sky to control the craft after you separate the Cruise Module. The antennas on the rover aren't strong enough, and the antennas on the Cruise Module are direct comms only. So once it's separated, the rover needs the relay.

Sort of...I was still playing around with it about the time I decided to stop publishing new stuff last fall, due to the announced re-balance following the 1.4 release. So I still have it, but I haven't touched it since. When I go to revise it, I'm going to try to do better, and I've learned a few more craft building techniques I want to apply as well. I make no promises, but that's where it stands. _______________________________ EDIT: Update roll-up for today: EV-5 'Drifter' Block 2 for Eve (and associated lifters), the SEP-AC Mk1, and the EMU subassembly. Currently working on the M3V logistics kits for Ike/Dres and Gilly, and a revision of the ER-4 Duna rover/skycrane. There will actually be two variants of the Ike/Dres kit now, a "Bipropellant" kit that has an HLV-5B for just LF+O, and a "Tripropellant" kit that has an HLV-5D for LF+O and Monoprop. Additionally, I want to make a note in saying that I'm intending to keep the SVR-16 'Ranger', my space shuttle analog, DLC free. First of all, pretty much no DLC part really fits into any aspect of it's construction, either to make it look better or function better. Also, I never use it anymore. It's pretty much gathering dust in the corner of my proverbial SPH after I finished using it to build 'Pioneer Station'. However, I do intend to update it in the near future. It's by far my most downloaded craft (by a significant margin), which I attribute to it being such an iconic mainstay of the American space program. We all know space shuttles in KSP are hard due to the limitations of design. But as my building skills evolve, so do my designs and strategies; and I think I can do better. My goal is to make it more controllable and predictable throughout the launchpad-to-orbit phase. The orbiter itself probably won't change much, but I am going to swap out the OMS engines and revert back to Mk55 Thuds I'm thinking. The O-10's just don't have the TWR or efficiency, and replacing the bulk of propellant on board from monoprop to LF+O allows a player to trade delta-V for fuel cell endurance, or vice versa. With the stack configuration, I'm going to attempt to make the lower end of the "payload balance range" more compatible with minimal mass payloads. Unless you are hauling fuel, ore, or a crap ton of I-beams to orbit, a player would be hard-pressed to reach even 20 tons, let alone the max rating. Even though it's original purpose in real-life and my KSP save game was to build space stations, I want to make it more practical for other missions. Mulitple satellite deliveries, retrieving payloads, etc.

I wasn't trying to change anyone's opinion (that rarely happens in online debates anyway). I was posting my opinion (which is more thoroughly spelled out here), counter to your own and other's for those that were undecided or unaware. If someone were to visit this thread, and was unaware of this discussion prior and were in the process of forming their own opinion, I think it would be healthy to see multiple viewpoints so they can form their own. I'm dismissing it because I interpret the matter differently. And I am interested in the issue, which is why I'm here, I simply don't agree with you.

And more speculation, cherry-picking conjecture, fear-mongering...

Well, it does need updating to incorporate the changes of the three individual craft within the kit. However, even though the craft file of the kit itself is still the 1.3.1 version, it should still work if you needed to use it now.

My 'Sky Lab' space station is updated. Keep in mind this does require some assembly by the first station crew that arrives. But the graphic (and the Engineer's Notes in the OP above the download link) explain the few steps you need to perform. All in all though, I think it turned out well.

Most days at work I wish I could have a conversation with nobody. Unfortunately, nobody ever seems to get it. Inb4 someone makes a KSP forum account with the screename "nobody"

In some instances, perhaps; it really depends on a number of things. A big factor might be a change in mission strategy for a given destination. Obviously I was going to the Mun without difficulty with just the 3.75m parts prior to the DLC. But I switched my early Mun craft to the DLC for the sole purpose of it being a "more true" Apollo-Saturn analogue, which I thought was more fun. Fun always trumps other factors for craft decisions. (Which is why I try to keep part count low for larger vessels/stations. KSP slideshow isn't fun for me) Yeah, it's interesting to see the scale of it compared to the EV-2L in the far right screenshot around Gilly. The EV-2L is lined up for the docking port, so it's not a size/distance illusion at all.

First of all, a roll up of the last day or so. The SLV-M 'Tender' monopropellant service/lander vehicle and LV-2B 'Heavy Grasshopper' Minmus habitation lander are now updated and published on KerbalX. Also, I updated the EV-2L to include a capsule protective shroud with the Launch Escape System. And now for the new craft, the PD-1080 'Dromedary'. As the PD-32/64 'Camel Hump' depots were derived from the LITE upper stages, the PD-1080 is derived from the NITE. It retains all of the functions of the NITE except one: serving as an upper stage for payloads. However, along with transporting propellant and serving as an orbital depot, the PD-1080 can still transport payloads that are docked to it in space. Download link available in the VAB>Robotics section of the OP. Also, I updated most of the VAB category graphics, so you can more easily see the new craft versus the older craft that need updating. There is still plenty to do however, with more brand new craft to finish testing and publish.