Raptor9

Galileo has been maintaining the Outer Planets mod unofficially for the moment HERE if you're interested. His stated goal isn't to change anything, but to keep the mod in working order. My plan was always to accomplish full exploration of the stock Kerbin system within the stock game, but then move on to Outer Planets. At that point, Nertea's mod collections will be my ticket to Sarnus and beyond. I see you've already dove into his Station Parts Redux pack. Amazing isn't it?!

These parts and IVA's are breathtaking! @Nertea, quite possibly the crown jewel of your mods thus far. Bravo sir, bravo.

@Kurotenshi55 & @Cisco Cividanes, welcome to the forums. @Kurotenshi55, regarding larger diameter reusable rockets, I've messed around with creating Falcon 9/New Glenn-style rockets in both 2.5m and 3.75m sizes, as well as SSTO's in 3.75m. However the amount of payload that they could deliver versus how much effort it would create for a single launch really turned me off from the ideas. Maybe down the road the designs will gain more traction in my play-style, because I do think the concepts are cool. @Cisco Cividanes, I'm glad you're getting use out of the lifters. I know some players have made the argument in the past that standardizing rocket lifters economizes a players time, in theory reducing the total amount of gameplay they get from KSP. Personally however, after launching into Kerbin orbit thousands, if not tens of thousands of times by now (since v0.13), building rockets piecemeal for each launch would have driven me up the wall. Thank God for subassemblies too!

By Cupcake standards, that is huge.

Regarding the original post of this thread, it's been a while since I've seen a forum post that I disliked this much. In a nutshell, the core message of the post was "Squad, if you don't like people stealing from you, just give your stuff away, it will make all of the thieves happier." @CodyTheJoker, since you've admitted to being young and don't have a job yet, let me give you a lesson in how the world ACTUALLY works. Nothing is free. Somebody has to pay for it. Squad isn't a charity, it's a business. Businesses need to make money to survive. That's why there is a paid DLC in the works. Squad needs to keep making a certain amount of money to keep paying their employees, the development/programming hardware, the electricity, etc. Giving your second-most-up-to-date software version away for free is one step away from deliberate business suicide. Essentially what you're arguing isn't that KSP should be free, it's that you want someone else to pay for it. At the end of your post, you say "I thank you for your time developers and community." If you want to thank the developers, pay them for the product that they are selling; that they've spent years developing, building, and are still supporting. I hope you don't take this as a frontal assault on you, but piracy is stealing. No one has to steal, it's a choice. If you aren't of legal age to get a job, there are always ways to make money for yourself. When I was in my early teens, there were things I wanted too. To earn money, I mowed lawns, washed cars, etc. KSP is a game that promotes problem solving, I'm sure you can solve the problem of getting the money to buy KSP without resorting to online piracy.

@RizzoTheRat, I apologize, I should have been more explicit. I meant that it was less delta-V to depart directly interplanetary from a low Mun orbit compared to a low Minmus orbit. As for what combination of gravity slingshots you use (Minmus to slingshot around Kerbin, or Mun to slingshot around Kerbin), that's something I haven't gotten hard numbers on. I will say though that if you can setup a propellant generation system on the Mun, you can use the same equipment in other places like Ike or Dres since they have similar gravity (just slightly less). The only thing you may have to change is your power generation capabilities due to less solar energy the further out you go.

I've given considerable thought how to set up a propellant generation network in the Kerbin SOI that is both efficient and practical, but I've never taken it down to hard numbers or mathematical equations on total energy in vs total energy out. It's probably not the best, but in my mind it has the least amount of overhead effort to maintain. 1) Location of assembling and launching interplanetary missions: low Munar orbit. It takes less delta-V to achieve Kerbin ejection velocity here than it does from Minmus orbit, even if you don't use a Kerbin slingshot; which is of course an option to reduce delta-V expended, but it requires more complex trajectories. The zero-inclination orbit provides an easier access route to/from Kerbin, and the shorter orbital duration allows for more frequent departure opportunities than Minmus. Plus it's close to the propellant generation location: the Mun. 2) Location of mining propellants: Munar surface. I refine all the propellants as necessary on the surface, and lift the fuel to munar orbit. The orbital fuel depot/shipping hubs are at low altitude (15km equatorial orbit) to provide a close orbit to equator ISRU sites so the fuel transports expend the least amount of fuel hopping up to the depots. You could reduce the fuel expended lifting to orbit by mining on Minmus and shipping it to the Mun, but you would lose a lot more fuel during the transit, and it adds a lot more tedious "economy management" gameplay, taking away from the actual exploring. 3) Fuel transport: large propellant fractions/efficient propulsion. The uncrewed fuel transports are essentially large fuel tanks with landing gear, engines, and attitude control. They have a high propellant fraction to reduce the amount of hardware weighing them down, and utilize Poodle engines that have decent thrust and the highest ISP, again to prevent fuel losses during shipment. All of the ISRU equipment remains on the surface in place since the hardware is heavy. You really penalize yourself by having a lot of unnecessary equipment repeatedly moving between the surface and orbit, like large crewed sections, or carrying drills, converters, large solar arrays/radiators. 4) Reusability: once it's in orbit, it stays in orbit. Pretty much the only launches from the Kerbin surface is new hardware, so the rockets need to be as cheap as possible, and the lifters only need to make it to low Kerbin orbit. Once in orbit, refuelable cargo transports or reusable upper stages dock to the payload to transport them elsewhere. For Kerbals, I send them up on SSTO spaceplanes to waiting crew transports in orbit to take them elsewhere, or vice versa to return them to the KSC. 5) Interplanetary versatility. To reduce the amount of hardware you purchase before you launch it from the KSC, try to make the craft as versatile as possible. It's a lot cheaper to buy spacecraft that can perform multiple functions, or be reconfigured to perform different missions, instead of purchasing two entire spacecraft for the two functions. This also means you expend less fuel and delta-V sending one craft versus two on interplanetary missions. And it also builds redundancy. (ie: Wrecked my reusable Ike lander? I'll use my reusable Duna lander to perform additional sorties to the Ike surface -since I ensured it has that tested capability- because the next transfer window to send a replacement lander is in 6 months, with a 8 month travel time, etc.). Of course you need to keep it within reason; adding too much additional equipment to a spacecraft to perform a bunch of different functions and you'll start impacting its performance. Regarding aerobraking and gravity assists, these are skills I haven't gotten proficient in, so I tend to focus on propulsive captures and simple departure burns. But again, I'm very selective on where I'm departing from to save on dV.

I know I've mentioned similar sentiments in the past, but after having a look at the all the IVA's of the latest build, I can't imagine how many hours of pain-staking work it took to do all this, especially those centrifuges and inflatable modules. The Near Future Tech mod set is still my favorite, but the new station part mod is so massive and with a lot of attention to detail. Also the terrain-leveling functions of those module legs are quite nice too.

I can't be more emphatic when I say "NO!". Unless they can be turned off and the existing PC setup be kept.

Aircraft trim provides for decreased pilot workload by adjusting fine control input. As an aircraft accelerates through different airspeed ranges, altitudes, or burns fuel or loads/unloads payload, it may be desirable to provide a small amount of input in one or multiple axes, to prevent a pilot from having to keep those control inputs in manually.

That's pretty much the MO for the entire gaming and movie industry, to release video games and DVD's on Tuesdays. Has been for a long time.

Thanks Hope they were useful. ___________________________________ In a random project this morning, I completed a more quantitative investigation on how viable a Falcon 9-style rocket would be in terms of cost-savings. I get the occasional suggestion to do reusable rockets, but the repetitive launching sequence always became tedious for me. To make an analogue to the Falcon 9 (an orbital-class two-stage rocket for launching satellites), I used an extended 'Javelin' booster stage, re-engined for better TWR and atmo ISP, and a 'Javelin 2' upper stage. After a few tries I was able to successfully launch a 0.5 ton satellite to a 100km orbit with plenty of upper stage fuel to spare, and recover the 1st stage back to the KSC relatively easily. So I started looking at the cost and performance breakdowns. For comparisons sake, I'll call the reusable rocket the 'Javelin R' and I compared it to the 'Javelin 1' and 'Javelin 3', but I didn't include the launch clamps. A 0.54 ton satellite payload was used for the delta-V calculations using DMagic's Basic Delta-V modlet, however I just used raw vacuum readouts and didn't take into account gravity or drag losses. 'Javelin 1' 'Javelin R' 'Javelin 3' Initial purchase cost 3,913 20,679 8,114 Cost break-down Rocket & fuel (expendable) Upper stage and all fuel (expendable) 1st stage booster (recovered) Rocket & fuel (expendable) Cost per launch 3,913 2,341 (if recovered on the launch pad or runway) 2,708 (if recovered anywhere else on KSC) 8,114 Total delta-V (Vacuum) 4,378 m/s 4,819 m/s (assumes 1/3 of booster fuel used for 1st stage RTLS) 5,782 m/s Advantages Straightforward launches Can reach higher orbits than 'Javelin 1' More precise orbit placement capability It's cool and all the rage nowadays Can place a satellite anywhere in Kerbin SOI Disadvantages Lacks precise orbit insertion capability More precise timing and sequencing required for each launch Higher inclination trajectories eat away at dV due to increased cross-range RTLS Almost twice the funds-to-dV ratio than 'Javelin 1' So the conclusion from all of this from my personal gameplay and practicality viewpoint: I'm only saving about 1,200 by using a reusable 'Javelin' rocket variant to place satellites into LKO, which isn't worth the additional tediousness I'd be imposing on myself to launch a lot of satellites into orbit around Kerbin. However, depending on what the final orbit altitude and inclination is, it might be occasionally worthwhile in an early career grind (when funds may be tight) to use a 'Javelin R' and attempt a recovery back at the KSC instead of using a 'Javelin 3', which sometimes might be overkill. From a strictly performance stance, the 'Javelin R' might be a decent balance between the 'Javelin 1' and 'Javelin 3'. TL;DR Bottom line: I'll keep the craft file around for possible publishing in the future. Still not sure what sort of rebalancing KSP 1.4 may bring, but if the performance remains the same, I'll look into publishing it for all you launch-land-repeat enthusiasts out there.

So many different jokes I could make about this...but I won't, I'll keep it classy. EDIT: Just looked at the IVA for the 3.75m PXL-9 Astrogation Lab, that holographic spinning globe is amazing! And then I started laughing after reading one of the computer screens: "You didn't say the magic word"

From the FAQ section on the OP: Q: One of your craft appears to not be working as intended.A: This is a common comment I see on KerbalX. First thing I'm going to ask you to do is try the craft out in a vanilla (stock only) install of KSP. 9/10 times a mod is altering the behavior of the craft or interfering with a designed feature. I am not without my mistakes, but I thoroughly test these craft in stock KSP before publishing them on KerbalX. Another reason may be using the craft in a different version of KSP than it was intended. I'm always happy to troubleshoot issues, but the first two questions I will ask are "Do you have any mods installed?" and "Which version of KSP are you running?" To add to that, several weeks ago I purposely tried to get the ER-4 to wobble during launch by introducing several rapid control oscillations, and was unable to. So there is probably a mod responsible...

Congratulations and good work @boolybooly. Impressive you've been maintaining this challenge that far back into KSP early access. I just looked through some of the screenshots on the first page. It's amazing how far KSP has come since then.

That is definitely the most original KSP video I've seen. I don't know how you come up with these sequences @Cupcake....

CisMunar Tutorial Part 2 is live... ___________________________________ Also, in an un-related note, I don't intend to publish any more craft files until KSP 1.4 comes out. Besides the obvious visual changes that will be occurring (as announced in yesterday's KSP Weekly), I suspect there may be a few subtle stats re-balancing of some of the existing parts. This is pure speculation on my part, but I just don't want to have to potentially re-do some of the work.

Looks like you've fully implemented the bleeps, sweeps and the creeps.

CisMunar Tutorial Part 1 is live...

To premise this topic, I'm not sure if this is a bug, or a limitation of the stock fairing behavior when used as an "interstage". I'm trying to use an open fairing as a lower fuselage of a cargo lander. After launching the craft to orbit and jettisoning the bottom cargo bay "plug", I am unable to insert cargo or other craft into the open bay. IMPORTANT NOTE: Anything jettisoned from the lander can be maneuvered inside the cargo bay just fine, but anything launched separately cannot. To anyone wanting to reproduce this behavior, you will need to perform two launches. Anyone that has any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to comment. @Rune, you might find this of interest since this is the DC-X-style cargo lander I teased you with.

Hi there @dragon0072, welcome to the forums. Videos are a huge time-suck for me that I do rarely. I'd rather spend the time designing new craft to publish, or actually playing my KSP career. Having said that, I was working on a Cis-Munar Economy Tutorial video a little bit this fall. The playthrough is all filmed, I just had to put it together into a proper video. What halted the project was moving to a new residence and getting a new mike that actually sounds half decent, so I can provide voice-over explanations and narration. I recently got a new headset for gaming, so the tutorial is back on the KSP "To Do" list hopefully (I haven't tested the mike recording yet). The video tutorial itself covers setting up an entire economy from scratch, starting with launching a couple of propellant depots from Kerbin, using scanning equipment to find suitable mining locations, HLV-5A and -5C landers delivering a crew and MIR rovers to a small ISRU site, landing an IV-1B ISRU rig to the Mun, and finishes by demonstrating a fuel transport sortie to an orbital 'Depot Station' using an HLV-5B. So your two ideas would be covered in the same video.

With the new year comes a new "thread re-branding". A new video, a new logo, and a modified catalog title. The previous Raptor Aerospace video was drastically outdated, containing only atmospheric aircraft from v1.0.5. The new thread video contains a more adequate representation of the full catalog, but is really just a sample of all that is available. And you can only do so many different camera sequences. Some shots will preview craft I have yet to publish (because I've been busy and haven't finished the graphics). Notably the EV-7 'Skipjack' is seen close-up and through several configurations, along with a new specialized 'Pol Logistics Kit', and a clip of the new Duna surface modules.

Yes.

That wouldn't be possible since the the LV-2A doesn't have a probe core (unless you modified it). A couple things you need to understand. 1) The LV-2C isn't a crew lander, it's a pre-positioned habitation lander equipped with a suite of science experiments, like the Materials Bay. It's sent ahead of crews to a target biome, and after crews arrive the ER-V can do basic sensor measurements of adjacent biomes. 2) The LV-2A is designed to carry only a single Kerbal, land to a target biome, take measurements, and then return to an orbiting research station like 'Wernher's Station' displayed in the OP. Refuel monoprop, and go again. It's design is minimalistic on purpose. The concept is that the first EV-2C mission carries an LV-2A to the Minmus orbital research station. Each follow-on EV-2C mission replaces the LV-2A lander with a monopropellant storage module in the 'Titan 3P' payload fairing. This allows more LV-2A refuelings and re-use for more landings for surface measurements, which feeds the data into the research station for long-term, continuous science generation. Normally, this drives an EV-2C crew compliment of a pilot and two scientists. The pilot flies the lander to collect the data, and the scientists remain at the research station to process the data. Alternatively, you could replace one of the scientists with an engineer if you're trying to get some Minmus orbital XP under his/her belt. When it comes time to use the LV-2C habitation lander, you have several choices. You can either send more LV-2A's to the station and watch the scientists and engineers struggle to land without SAS, or you can send an LV-2D 'Cricket' to shuttle crews down two at a time (the LV-2D has a probe core). And if anything else, strap a couple EAS-1 External Command Seats to the side of the LV-2A and take crews down that way. You can do whatever you want, I don't care.

I agree, this is more of a novelty base. The part count could be reduced by half if each of the main modules like the lab and habs mounted solar panels and/or antennas on their roofs, and you simply docked a fuel tank/fuel cell module directly to one of them; and didn't bother with any of the fuel pipes or other smaller parts. But in my opinion it looks way better than my previous outpost modules for the Mun, but those were much easier to assemble together. This Duna base looks like a much more permanent and long-term outpost. Speaking from a "real-life analogue" perspective, any permanent outpost like on Mars/Duna is going to be assembled over the span of many years, if anything due to the long travel times and large gaps between the transfer windows. This is sort of my way to give myself plenty to do while waiting for the next transfer window. This concept encourages the following: 1) Extensive pre-landing scouting using probes, remote rovers and/or crewed landings using the LV-4B to survey suitable outpost sites. The site will cover a large footprint, so a large flat spot is needed so parts of the base aren't partially hanging off either side of a narrow mound. 2) More in-depth pre-mission planning into surface base layout and requirements. 3) Something else to do on the surface aside from land, plant flag, record instruments, sit on hands and wait over a year for next transfer window. The content in the video below is what my base concept is modeled off of, to include displaced landing, ISRU, and field research sites from the main base. If anything, this reduces the part count issues of having it all in a small area. And it gives me an excuse to use more rover action.