Raptor9

Well it looks like my break from KSP the past several weeks is going to be coming to a rapid end. Question, If I throw a Kerbal into that "cryo-volcano on Vall" that you all mentioned, will he be ejected into a suborbital trajectory? And with those hinges and rotating joints, looks like stock props, helicopters and tilt-rotors might finally become a thing. Oh man...the possibilities. And it comes out in 24 days?! WHAT?!

After a lot of tediousness, 80% of the catalog has been updated to 1.7.0, mainly to address the changes to the RCS and Vernor thruster model revisions. Thankfully (and I do mean thankfully), the singular Linear RCS port was a straight drop-in replacement...the idea of having to replace all of those throughout my catalog makes me shutter. The rest will come eventually as I am sort of on a KSP break again. The main reason I decided to update what I have was after discovering a couple designs that were defective. The 'Scout-Outrider' probe's staging was messed up, the EV-3 NTR stages' RCS axis assignments were seriously borked (not sure how that happened), and the behavior of my EV-2 LES shrouds changed in 1.7. This amounted to quite a few designs that needed to be updated, so I just bit the bullet and did a bunch more while I had KSP booted up. The last thing I wanted to mention is that if any of my graphics display a legacy part on them that has since received a revision, the graphic just hasn't been updated. The version number of the craft on KerbalX should indicate what parts it has. If a craft has 1.7.0 as its version number, it has received any applicable part updates up to that version, despite what the graphics may display. You will find a lot of legacy parts on my graphics since I am not gonna redo every graphic every three months to keep them up-to-date with simple part revisions. One such example is my EV-1A 'Skiff' on the 'Arrow 3' launcher. The upper stage still has the legacy, gold-foil-wrapped LV-909 Terrier engine on it; however it does in fact have the new LV-909 model on the craft.

I played around with it in it's early days, but it never had a significant impact on my gameplay either way. I don't consider it a cheat; I consider it an extension of the stock gameplay mechanic for vessel recovery. Click the magic green button at the top of your screen when landed on Kerbin and your Kerbals and capsule are essentially picked up by recovery assets and transported back to the KSC. For a reduction in refunds of course to cover the implied resource impact of such an employment of recovery assets. Not to mention the Recovery Transponder strategy in the admin building. To me Stage Recovery is no different than these other "implied space program operations" that run in the background to support the main form of gameplay.

Nope. While the spacecraft and rockets that you listed are certainly significant and interesting in their own right, within my KSP play style they would simply duplicate capability that I possess with existing rocket lifters. I've made prototypes of Falcon 9 and New Glenn analogue rockets before, and they only ended up saving me a few thousand funds per launch compared to relatively inexpensive and expendable rockets (using the stock career settings). Adding on to that the additional time it takes to recover the rocket every...single...launch...and my motivation to launch anything is quickly overcome by the tediousness of it all. I would rather spend my KSP time exploring deep space or other planetary bodies. I've been playing KSP since early alpha days, so I've probably conducted thousands of rocket launches to Kerbin orbit. I don't need any more time spent on that element of this game.

Yeah; I always believe that the primary reason to build anything that specific in KSP is whether it provides you the inspiration to do it. Whenever I build things out of more necessity than inspiration it usually turns out like crap. And thus far I haven't been inspired by Lockheed's lunar landers like I was with their MADV. However, I have wanted for some time to build a "vertical"-style crew lander that is dual-use for Vall and Tylo. The idea is a relatively large lander that is single stage, with the dV to make a round-trip to the surface of Vall and back to orbit without refueling. For Tylo, it would have enough dV to land on Tylo, after which it would be refueled on the surface prior to ascent. If it ends up looking like the single-stage Lockheed lander from last year, so be it.

If you're asking if I plan on building either of them, the answer would be no. I already have several Mun-capable landers, both single- and two-stage, from 2x Kerbal to 5x Kerbal capacity. I briefly looked at a scaled-down, fuselage-stripped version of my LV-7A as a larger single-stage lander that would give a larger propellant margin compared to the LV-2C, but in the end I determined that the LV-3A and HLV-5A already fulfill that requirement since their two-stage modes aren't always necessary for the Mun.

@prototype, the purpose behind "soft" depreciating parts (in that they are hidden from view in the VAB/SPH, but still present in the game) is so that it doesn't break your existing saved games. This allows you to still use any existing craft that are in orbit, landed, etc. However, any parts that receive a revamp should be considered on a temporary grace period before their older versions are "fully" depreciated (removed from the game entirely, as is the case with those zDepreciated parts in the changelog). The parts that were fully depreciated in the 1.7 update have been "soft"-depreciated for over a year (since March 2018), meaning that players had a full year to gradually phase in craft with the updated parts into their save. Once parts are fully-depreciated, this allows them to be removed from the KSP folders, reducing the overall memory footprint. Since you said you only play stock, you essentially have two options: 1) remain on 1.6.1 until you are finished with your current save, or 2) before deleting your pre-1.7 KSP install, replace those depreciated parts on any existing craft in the VAB/SPH, launch (or Alt-F12) the replacement craft to the older craft's location, and once you have phased in all the new parts, then upgrade to 1.7.0. As it stands, any part that has received a revamp since 1.4 or later should be considered on a similar temporary grace period, but will eventually be removed from the game entirely. So it is wise to upgrade craft sooner rather than later.

No thank you. However, if it were to be included, I would ask that it be a toggle in the settings, separate from the other launch sites like Dessert and Woomerang.

'Vernor' thruster, O-10 'Puff', 24-77 'Twitch', LV-1 'Ant', LV-1R 'Spider', and of course the RV-105 4-way RCS thruster like you said. At least that's what they've announced. They may sneak some surprises in with the release; who knows?

Reminds me of a stereo box. Interesting way of mounting a rover into the lander side bay though.

Still dabbling back and forth between build projects in Sandbox and my Career missions. One thing that has been on the back-burner for a while, like over a year, was a better way to explore Kerbin instead of suborbital rocket hops or ultra-long-range airplanes. And by "better" I also mean "more fun". The idea was originally outlined HERE (my God, October 2017?! ), but I've since determined that some elements of the concept aren't quite feasible, especially the large aircraft shelters. I wonder if I was drunk when I typed that. Setting up refueling sites across Kerbin is still a goal, but with a bit more of a modest and practical set of parameters. In some situations, you may need to access locations a certain distance away from the staging areas. It's possible that a river may present a boundary, such as on the continent north of the Dessert airfield; or conversely a river may be the only route to your destination due to restrictive terrain. Exploring Kerbin will still be predominantly by air, but since there are some really hard to reach places on the ground, overland travel or sea travel may become necessary. Keep in mind this is just an example of something that I'm fiddling with. No clue if this will turn out to be practical or not. But it's such a departure from anything I've built before I wanted to post a screenshot because I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Another technique, proposed in real-life for the ion-powered Deep-Space Transport to Mars, is use a spiraling trajectory to gradually raise your altitude to a much higher orbit before committing to an interplanetary transfer "burn". The real-life equivalent wouldn't be quite like this since real ion thrusters are less powerful and KSP only uses patched conics vs N-body, but you get the idea. Starting orbit in this example was 150x150km orbit, each altitude raising burn is about 3 mins long to minimize cosine losses, and by the time it's you perform the interplanetary ejection, the burn for that final maneuver node will be much shorter than a single (or dual) long ones, as well as having no chance of going behind Kerbin before it's completed. For capturing into a stable low orbit, around Duna or Eve for example, you set your encounter trajectory at a much higher altitude for a longer insertion burn, and then gradually spiral back down, keeping the alternating altitude-lowering nodes on each side of the planet's terminator. The only downside is you can't use the Oberth effect, but with the huge Isp of 'Dawn' engines this shouldn't be an issue.

Weeeeeeeelll, I mean you could use it for large interplanetary craft. At least for the inner planets...probably be well into the law of diminishing returns by the time you get to Dres, though.

Yes. It already has low TWR and you think more thrust should be taken away? If you want to hover over the launchpad, then sure. Real-world comparison takes a backseat if the craft can't function. To emphasize the only reason I was even able to replace two of the Reliants as it is: But when it comes down to it, if you are curious about how modifications will affect the design, I would encourage you to simply try it out yourself. You'll probably get your answer quicker and with more clarification seeing it with your own eyes.

Single craft update today. The 'Olympus 1' launcher (Saturn 1B analogue) has been sort of broken for quite some time and it was never a priority to fix it. But, I believe I got it working better now than before. I lightened up the first stage a little and replaced two of the LV-T30's with LV-T45's for some gimbal steering. The rocket still needs the winglets for assistance in attitude control, but at least it has control now right off the pad. The rocket still has poor TWR compared to most of my lifters, but it's still more than capable of putting an EV-2A in LKO; you just need to pay attention to your ascent profile more than other rocket configurations. ______________________________________________ In other news, I'm considering doing a revision of my SVR-20 'Ranger' (Shuttle analogue). The main deficiency is the fact that I designed the darned thing as a "station builder", but with a payload "window" of 10 to 30 tons, with 20 being the ideal payload mass for balance. In other words, due to the asymmetric nature of the shuttle design, anything less than 10 would suffer moderate to severe control problems during ascent. Add to that it really didn't glide very well with very much payload in the bay on the way back down. I took a closer look at all my SM station subassemblies. The heaviest module was 5 tons, with the average being 3 to 4 tons. Of course, there are some modules that you could bring several up on one launch, but rarely would you ever need more than 10 tons at one time. For a comparison, a 'Thunder 4 Heavy' can launch 45 tons to orbit easier and for the same price as the expendable portions of the SVR-20 launch stack; but again, rarely would you ever need that much mass to LKO in such a small fairing. So I figure let the 'Thunder 4 Heavy' and 'Titan' rockets do the heavy-lifting so to speak, and re-optimize the SVR-20 for what it's really supposed to be doing: building stations in low Kerbin orbit. This will require a rework of the entire stack to ensure proper CoM/CoT balance within acceptable margins throughout all phases of ascent, not to mention making some tweaks to the airframe itself. Even the OMS alignment will require adjustment. So, since I'll be making a huge invasive revision into the design (which will take some time), I'm going to set some additional goals for myself while I'm at it. When you tear apart a shuttle design, the last thing you want to do is do it again any time soon. 1) Primary Goal: Reduce payload window for ascent down to 0-10 tons, possibly 0-15 tons if I can manage acceptable control margins. 2) Primary Goal: Increase stability and control for less player workload maintaining ascent path, or making launch path adjustments mid-ascent for inclination trimming. 3) Secondary Goal: Reduce on-orbit part count. Currently stands at 99 (and that's just the orbiter itself), would like to drive it down as much as possible to delay the "yellow clock". 4) Secondary Goal: Reduce overall launch costs if possible. 5) Tertiary Goal: Adjust glide performance to permit returning payloads from orbit with better control during final approach and landing. No timeline on any of this, this will be my spare time project when I'm not playing KSP career; and I'm not exactly in a huge rush to crack the hood open on the SVR-20 anyway.

Well, to be fair, the stock dV functionality itself is also inaccurate under a number of conditions. Engine plates from the DLC pack for example don't play nice with it. The way my current EV-4's are built, I get 0 m/s dV with a fully-fueled NTR stage burning away. Even so, the EV-4's have always suffered from this consideration during the initial burns away from Kerbin. Having to drain the drop tanks to the in-line/NTR tanks so that they could be jettisoned away first to dump mass.

Unfortunately, no. Whenever I'm doing a long burn with the 'Windjammers' I have the EV-2L's fuel tank open and pinned, and systematically transfer propellant to it. Thanks. Truth be told, making a new video is on my list of things to do. That vid was made a few months before 1.4 dropped, and it makes me cringe seeing some of those older designs. That skycrane for example looks night and day better. Totally off topic, but i couldn´t stop laughing for minutes... such epic sentences are only possible here and they totally make sense. Thank you Well, it's just a matter of automatic vs manual crossfeed. KSP allows a player to manually transfer fuel across it (provided you don't have it restricted in the settings), just doesn't do it automatically.

I moved my Most Recent Updates & Future Plans Section to the second post in the thread, to make it easier to edit the info there without having to load the entire OP. The next thing you should expect is a few small tidbits here and there, but no timeline on it. The main thing is I'm playing more of my Career save, to catch up my official play save to how far my published designs have gotten in Sandbox. For example, I have the EV-7 for Dres and Jool exploration when I've only done a few Career Duna landings and just started low orbital research around Eve. There are some obvious things I need to do, but those aren't necessarily needed at the moment. I assume you mean SSTO spaceplanes beyond the SR-21's? Personally, I'm not a fan of them. Having said that, SSTO spaceplanes (or other SSTO design) make sense for Laythe. With a relatively thick atmo with oxygen, it would be very wise to mature my build techniques in this area. But I'm not up against heavy Jool exploration at the moment so it's not a pressing need.

So....thanks to @Jester Darrak , I found a deficiency with my 'Titan' series of launchers. I long ago determined that having Rigid Attachment set to On was not good when making heavy rockets, or rockets that handle heavy payloads. Yet for some reason I had the parts of every core 'Titan' first stage with Rigid Attachment set in such a manner. I thought I had long ago removed that setting from my launchers, but I must have accidentally reverted to an older subassembly during a recent rocket revision. In any case, all existing subassemblies I used to build my standardized rocket lifters have been purged to be sure, and all affected craft files on KerbalX have received the fix (56 in total ). That's the downside to using a standardized rocket family. When a problem is found, it affects any craft file that uses it.

I did some, early in my career. But I just landed a single plane with sensors at each site. But by that time my contract generation started to shift away from aerial survey contracts as I did more Munar exploration. Making a better method of exploring Kerbin is on my list of things to do, to include a smaller cargo plane as a little brother to the 'Atlas' to facilitate this.

Hmm, weird, I haven't had any issues. And you said Kerbal Joint Reinforcement isn't installed correct? Could by any chance send me the craft file? You can PM me if you need an email address or something. Yeah, that's standard behavior any time you have fairings that serve as an interstage fairing or any sort of "open" fairing that closes around another part.

I imagine that anyone that feels compelled to lose their minds over the updated EULA (again), have never read the EULA's/Terms and Conditions of their Windows operating system, their smart phone, or any of their social media accounts. If they did, and reacted equally as perturbed, they would probably be living off the grid somewhere using nothing more than an abacus. Don't get me wrong, everyone has a right to their opinion, but I'm just shaking my head over all this unnecessary alarm-ism.

Not to get into a political debate, but a few key points you need to remember: 1) The budget proposal was just that, a proposal. The U.S. Congress is still the determining factor in where the money is allocated, at least on paper. 2) The budget request itself doesn't cancel the SLS, but rather cuts the funding for the next fiscal year for development of the Exploration Upper Stage (ICPS), and directs NASA/Boeing to focus on finalizing the development of the Interim Crygenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) configuration with SLS. So the EUS is on indefinite hold. 3) NASA already caused the EUS to be further delayed last year when they asked Boeing to further develop it for increased performance. For years NASA has been going through the government agency development spiral called "feature creep", and inevitably shot themselves in the foot (and not the first time) with SLS. I'm honestly surprised SLS hadn't received budget cuts sooner. Now having said all that, I want to clearly state that I support any spaceflight program that increases scientific knowledge and human exploration; and I want everyone to succeed, whether it be NASA's return to the Moon, SpaceX's BFR, Blue Origin's New Glenn, ULA's CisLunar-1000, Russia's Federatsiya, or China's planned space station. I have my personal doubts on whether all of these programs will in fact succeed, but I'm still rooting them all on regardless. That's not accurate at all. If it were, the majority of my craft catalog wouldn't even exist.

Nope, not at all. Cool, let me know.

Try keeping the acceleration below 2 G's, I've only ever experienced this when accelerating too quickly. @Jester Darrak What specific craft file are you using? So I can run some more tests.