Raptor9

Yeah, cool video. The way you have the LV-N's mounted on the back of the propulsion modules is much more stylish than mine. The music reminded me of The Martian.

Thanks. Glad you like them. In other news, a small update for my LV-3A, LV-3B and LV-3C landers. As I may have hinted at last week, I was looking at what what existing designs could be utilized in other locations; specifically, Ike. The main metric I was using to see if Munar mission architectures could be adapted to Ike was the surface gravity comparisons. Ike's surface gravity according to KSP Wiki is 1.10m/s2 (0.112g), which is 67% of the Mun's 1.63m/s2 (0.166g). Therefore, I made a small addition to my LV-3 family of Mun landers as depicted below. Minimal impact on the existing craft files, and it allows them to be flexible for Mun or Ike missions straight out of the box (or in this case, out of the fairing ) An EV-4 NTR Assembly Mk1 should have way more than enough delta-V to transport the A, B, or C-model landers to Ike orbit, but I haven't tested this yet. EDIT: Apparently, proofreading continues to be an amateur skill for me, as I failed to type "to" in the first caption text. Should read "...transport this lander to Ike." (Sigh)

Those are just really big craft files. In the SPH for example, I saved all those planes as subassemblies, then attached each of them to a large network of girder pieces. Then I lowered the whole network of connected planes so the girders themselves were below the hanger floor and the landing gear of all the planes appeared to be what they were all independently resting on. It was just for publicity I guess you could say. It's by no means a functional thing.

Just to add to this particular issue that I am also experiencing this issue in vanilla Win64 KSP 1.1.3. (Specifying 64-bit for technical reasons, I haven't tried non-64 bit KSP since 1.1 ). So far this issue has happened with the Clamp-o-Tron and Clamp-o-Tron Jr. ports. I'll give @Claw's fix a go.

If you're referring to the craft files above, they didn't exist in my 1.0.5. However, in theory you should be able to edit the second line of text in the craft file to version 1.0.5 for it to work. I've never tried it, but I would think that you could do this with any craft file that has the same parts as 1.0.5. For example, all the parts in the EV-2C-Titan 1P existed in their current form in 1.0.5, but since the inflatable heatshield didn't come out until 1.1, you won't be able to pull off the same trick with the LV-3D or LV-3E landers. You may have to reassign some action groups or tweakable values however. Again, I'm not sure if any of this would work without any bugs, but if it does you should be able to pull it off with most of my craft files on KerbalX. I don't have KSP 1.0.5 installed on my computer any more, so this is probably your only course of action if your looking for any of the other craft files for 1.0.5.

Featuring an expanded EV-2C 'Runabout' spacecraft line-up as well as the beginning of a near-Kerbin asteroid mission architecture. First off, the EV-2C mounted on top of the 'Titan 1P launcher, with a 'Thunder P' payload stage to propel it on a direct-Munar fly-by trajectory. The real-world analogue would be the Orion MPCV mounted on the SLS Block 1 with the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage; the configuration for Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1). The second configuration has the 'Thunder P' replaced by the 'Titan P'. The real-world analogue to the second configuration would be the SLS Block 1B with the Exploration Upper Stage for Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2). This is also the configuration for supporting initial near-Kerbin asteroid rendezvous's. The third craft file is a robotic asteroid capture spacecraft powered by SEP ion engines. For the real-world inspiration, see the video here for the Asteroid Redirect Mission. The main difference is of course the KSP asteroids don't have separate boulders to pluck from the asteroids. Another video that might be more similar to a KSP ARM mission can be viewed here. All three new craft files are uploaded to KerbalX. As usual, direct links to the KerbalX downloads are available in the first page OP. The first two are located in the VAB>Exploration Vehicles (EV) sub-section. The SEP-AC is located in a new section: VAB>Robotics.

They say that admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery...well I'm not ready yet. Tomorrow doesn't look to be the day either.

That's one way to drop your used aluminum cans at the recycling center...

As with others, I've had a few near misses. I normally have pre-planned orbital regions between 70 and 200 km altitude that I designate for dumping upper stages and such, others for orbital construction, and others still for low altitude space stations. I've also tried an ASAT mission by launching a small missile from a supersonic fighter in a zoom climb. Tried it a handful of times, only was able to achieve a direct hit once...it's hard.

That is a good point. One of the assumptions about the NTR-STS reusability was that an in-orbit propellant storage infrastructure would have been established to support such operations.

Here's a quick configuration example (and part shameless plug ). The Block 1 is a Duna expendable vehicle (lacking enough propellant to capture into LKO at the completion of it's mission), and the Block 2 is a Duna reusable vehicle. A little more gas is all she needed.

There was a multitude of possible missions and applications for the NTR Space Transportation System (I assume you meant that by Duna Transfer Vehicle?). @Majorjim and I both have referenced this document to get further insight into how many applications the "Copernicus" and/or it's various configurations could be used. Reusability was among possible mission configurations. If you don't want to skim through the 34-page document; in a nutshell, it could have been used for Lunar missions, near-Earth asteroid missions, as well as Mars missions of course. Different travel trajectories and tank combinations were also looked at, to include split missions. In a split Mars mission, the propulsion and propellant tank components of the "Copernicus" were sent ahead of the crewed version. This allowed the crewed version to expend more propellant for a one-way transit that would have been faster. After arriving at Mars, it would rendezvous with the ERV "Copernicus" (Earth Return Vehicle), and decouple the forward hab section and redock with the ERV. I'm still looking at ways to make my EV-4 'Longship' derivatives more modular, namely the crew module sections to accommodate different equipment for lunar or asteroid missions, like an MMSEV-alike vehicle. Just not sure if it's worthwhile at the moment.

Could you be more specific; this might be better placed in the Gameplay Questions section.

Not sure if you've seen this particular document, but it served as my road-map to making my EV-4 'Longship' a modular design for multiple missions beyond just imitating the Constellation 'Copernicus' MTV design. Had a lot of interesting variations and applications that NASA looked at for an NTR-powered transportation system. Heck, my EV-4 Block 1, 2 and 3 configurations are pretty much carbon copies of the image below. Page 2 of that document even references the Boeing Integrated Manned Interplanetary Spacecraft study of 1968 that my EV-3 'Clipper' was based on.

Yeah, in retrospect, that is a possible issue. I suppose I just don't have any SRB-equipped rockets that are light enough to encounter that effect.

So now that I have two operational Duna mission architectures finished (#1 EV-4 spacecraft, HLV-6A/B landers & #2 EV-5 spacecraft, LV-3D/E landers), I plan to return to a few areas that have been left unfinished IMO; namely closing some of the capability gaps that exist in Kerbin's SOI: 1) Stop procrastinating and finish testing the darned LV-2C Minmus habitation lander to support a greater surface stay mission beyond just a simple landing site. EDIT: CHECK! Finished and published on KerbalX; link in the OP in the VAB>Lander Vehicle section) 2) Finish the HLV-5 horizontal Mun lander and ISRU family of rovers. This will hopefully tighten the resource gap for generating propellant for the LITE upper stages. (inspired by ULA's CisLunar 1000) 3a) Expand the EV-2C spacecraft line to include more launchers and support modules. This will enable the following two additional mission architectures to be developed. 3b) Near-Kerbin Asteroid missions 3c) A reusable (or at least partially-reusable) Mun landing program utilizing either modified LV-2 'Grasshopper' landers or a new lander altogether. I'm not finished with Duna, however. I'm just taking a break from it for a bit to clean up and finish existing projects that have been gathering dust. I'm planning to release an update to the LV-3A/B/C Mun landers to allow them to be properly mated to an EV-4 NTR propulsion stage. This will allow them to be transported to the Duna SOI for missions to Ike. Additionally, I'm also working on Stage 2 of my EV-4 update so the Block 3 (seen below in an orbital assembly test this weekend) and Block 4 configurations and supporting modules are brought up to currency. The current version of the EV-4 'Star' truss is garbage. But since these configurations are planned for Dres and Eve respectfully, I'm not in a hurry to get them republished.

I would challenge the accuracy of that statement in the lower atmosphere. If your flying to fast in the thicker atmosphere layers you're actually burning more fuel than necessary due to excessive drag. That's why some rockets don't throttle up until going through Max Q. The amount of fuel spent to accelerate and maintain higher speeds are wasteful since the amount of drag acting on the rocket negates the benefits of the quicker acceleration. Once you get out of the lower atmo layer, drag will start dropping off rapidly enough that you can put the pedal to the medal again. But yeah, it's a balancing act to prevent gravity losses from creeping up again. Darned rocket science.... Having said that, I never reduce the thrust of any jettisonable boosters. Otherwise they're expending most of their power just lifting themselves.

The easiest way is to rename the craft file in KSP and then reupload/update the craft file on the existing craft page. You can of course rename the title of the vessel's download page in the Edit page, but that won't change the name of the craft in the craft file itself, just what shows up on the KerbalX craft page.

That transport looks like it has some design influence from @Cupcake...

That is a downside to making a very complex mission architecture like the Constellation series. A lot of documentation and explanation is probably needed for anybody that downloads it...or just kick them out of the nest and tell them to "go SPACE". But I hope you finish it before you lose your mind. Getting such a big project out the door is pretty gratifying after all the engineering, design and testing that goes into it.

Okay, this one has been a long-time coming. After several iterations (early versions can be seen in Red Planet Rivals video) and many redesigns, I've finally published my HLV-6A and HLV-6B Duna landers, inspired by NASA's cancelled Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0 which can be seen here in a concept video. Another set of complex craft designs, these landers are tested per my usual processes, but please let me know if any issues are encountered; namely bugs relating to the wheels on the rovers or such. The post above has more details regarding the 'Warthog' horizontal landers. Along with these Constellation-inspired landers, my EV-4 'Longship' series of NTR-powered interplanetary ships were overdue for an update/refinement. Also inspired by Mars DRA 5.0, these series of ships will need updates in stages. So far, brand new KerbalX uploads of the Block 1 and Block 2 EV-4 are complete, and all supporting modules for these configurations are updated as well. A complete list of updates supporting this effort can be found at the bottom of the first page OP. Hope you all have fun with these. PS: just to clarify the difference between these two; the Block 1 is expendable when used as a Duna transfer vehicle since it doesn't have enough propellant left to slow down into Kerbin orbit. The Block 2 however does have enough with the additional propellant, so the Block 2 can be reused if you so desire. Each EV-4 Block configuration will have a list of mission applications at the bottom left of the print.

@Eskandare this mod is awesome, very well done. I especially like how real the animation looks of the rotors at flight RPM's, and awesome start-up sounds. As a helo pilot in real life, I certainly appreciate the work that's gone into this mod. Can't wait to see what you do with it in the future. BTW, congrats on being featured on Modding Mondays.

Ha ha, that's what I told a colleague of mine from work that wants to get into KSP. I told him it was a great game, but use caution. ...once you go down the rabbit hole that is Kerbal Space Program...

I upgraded my landers to "Vernors" as well, but only on the landers themselves inside the aeroshell. The first reason is because they're much more powerful than the monopropellant RCS thrusters, which is needed when controlling the attitude of such a huge lander during the EDL sequence. The second reason is I wanted to have a single propellant type for orbital maneuvers, and another for EDL. My aeroshell uses mono-powered RCS thrusters and O-10 "Puff" engines for orbital adjustments/deorbit. This ensures the fuel reserves needed for landing aren't touched. The caveat is that my aeroshells are jettisoned prior to atmo entry, allowing the 'Vernors' to maintain lander attitude during EDL. Meanwhile, my test mission is complete. I've identified a list of tweaks and refinements to be made to the landers and my EV-4 'Longship' (pictured below) to ensure design deficiencies are corrected. I've even identified some aerocapture guidelines for my landers to ensure nobody melts the aeroshell (If using a fairing-based aeroshell of course).