Maxwell Fern

Hi there, first of all, I'd like to say I love this update, especially the performance boost. But I'm a little surprised by how it made unmanned missions so inferior to manned ones: Still no crew or EVA report, no surface samples, and no counterpart. And of course you need electricity or you lose control of your ship (nothing new here). If you plan to come back, a Kerbal can transfer experiment results to the pod so you don't need to bring all the science equipment along. If you plan a one way trip, 2 kerbals can operate the Science lab and maximize the science yield. Am I missing something or is there basically no upside to launch an unmanned mission, except for the little gain in weight ?

That's genius. It's like internet, cell phones and Coca Cola: you didn't know you needed it until you had it. Although I don't understand why you made the doors EVA accessible only, it's gonna be a pain to access the inside parts on unmanned probes.

Thanks for your answer, which makes perfect sense regarding temperature. However, unless I misunderstand how ablative works, I find it illogical that my ship first heats to the point of overheating, THEN, when it starts to cool back down, my ablative shield only starts to deplete. Isn't ablative shield supposed to ablate proportionnaly to heat ?

Here is a picture that sums up the problems I have. It's been taken when reentry visual effects just started. I'm using DREC and FAR. -It's overheating, but is actually cooling down -The ablative shield just started to deplete. -There were landing gears on that ship, and they burned up way before reentry effects started -I have SWE set to 1.08, and am using stock size Kerbin. I really do love this mod, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. Can someone please tell me how to tweak it so I can have a realistic behavior with FAR ?

I cant answer you for the recommended settings since I have problems myself (though I'd say out of the box should be fine), but yes, it's normal that once you're out of the 'burn zone' your ship quickly cools down. In a nutshell, it's not fast enough anymore to fuse air mollecules into a plasma, and you're in the upper atmosphere where it's very cold.

Yes, I'm using FAR and yes, I've tried several setting and found out 1.08 is a good value for a 20k periapsis from a 500k apoapsis. Anyway I might keep tweaking with values since right now I do not have much to fear from a reentry. I will always burn up before having G problems...

I should insist that I'm experiencing these issue after tweaking shockwaveExponent to 1.17 as recommended on the first post. With it set to 1 (its default value), nothing burns nor even overheats. My heatshield burned up with its ablative barely dented (maybe 240 remaining over 250), and right after that the pod was exposed to the heat and overheated almost instantanuously. And as a side note, I wanted to send a probe in orbit around minmus on a slightly overpowered 2 stage-lancher: pieces starting burning up and exploding during launch. And there wasn't even renetry effects... I guess I'll have so set down shockwaveExponent back to 1. I just don't understand...

Yes, and most of pods have abuilt-in ablasive shield. It's in their descsription. All right, I did some testing with shockwaveExponent=1.17, trying to bring back a simple Mk1 pod with the standard 0.6m ablasive shield added under it. It was in a 500km orbit: - Periapsis: 50km The pod enters, slightly starts to overheat, bounces off the atmosphere. At the 60k mark, it starts falling down again, overheats, everything explodes at around 45km. G forces never exceeded 0.7G - Periapsis: 20km The pods enters the atmosphere, steadily overheats, everything explodes at around 40k. G forces barely make it to 1G - Pariapsis: -400km In what is basically a free fall, everything quickly overheats and explodes at 28k. G-meter (on the navball) almost reaches 3G when the pods explodes. In these 3 cases, mission log shows that everything "exploded due to overheating" or "burned up on reentry". So far, with shockwaveExponent=1.17 and FAR, I don't see any way to get back on Kerbin from any orbit, unpowered, without burning up. Is this an error on the first post, or am I doing something wrong ?

Hi everyone, I'm coming here for I have an issue. I'm starting a new carreer game with FAR et DRE. On the first tries, everything went a little too easy. Coming back from Mun with a strong aerobraking just did a little skip on the atmosphere, not event getting completely out of it, before plumetting back down in a trail of flammes. Not event half of the ablative shield was consummed. So I went to this thread and change shockwaveExponent to 1.17 as suggested, for more realistic effects. Same mission, first try: instantanuously explodes around the 30/40k mark. I tried higher and higher Kerbin periapsis for my aerobraking to the point where I needed over 5 orbits to get low enough to reenter. I ended up with a 60x60ish decaying orbit, but even then at the 34k mark, everything burned up in a matter of seconds. It's just a Mk1 pod with a heatshield. So when I set shockwaveExponent back to 1 and realized everything went back to easy, I thought I was doing something wrong, or that this was not to be done with FAR. After a few reads of that thread, it appears that DRE is intended to work with FAR, and that there is such a thing as a "too shallow" reentry. Is that correct ? What periapsis would you recommand for a safe aerobraking returning from Mun (with shockwaveExponent=1.17) ? tldr; with shockwaveExponent=1.17, how can I reenter Kerbin coming back from Mun without exploding ?

As a programer, I HATE to read this. Quantity has nothing to do with quality. Actually, it's often the other way around. Would you prefer them to add a blank 1GB file in the update to make it feel more important to you ? And yes, as it has been said before, people deserve a break once in a while and 580 parts for a ship is over-engineering.

I edited the first post since I don't think you people read it. I'm not complaining that we don't have n-body physics, I'm saying this is a good thing because it would make the game frustrating, boring and overly difficult. I DON'T WANT N-BODY PHYSICS.

I knew mentionning Orbiter would make some forks and torches rise, but come on it was just to point out that technically, this is perfectly doable. I'm not saying KSP is not as good as Orbiter or whatever, I'm just saying we don't have n-body physics because it wouldn't be fun. Not because we can't handle it.

I have to disagree with that. N-body calculations could stop as soon as you enter an atmosphere, since it becomes totally irrelevant. And these calculations don't have to be for every single part of your ship, only for its global position. I'm fairly convinced this is not a performance issue. It's a gameplay choice.

Hi there, although I don't mind at all how KSP works with bodies and their spheres of influence, it's bugging me to read the exact same answer everytime someone asks about lagrange points or any n-body related problems. Let's just get it out: n-body physics can be calculated by all modern PCs. Even old ones. Orbiter does it, Universe Sandbox does it, heck, even this flash animation does it, in smooth 3D. Load the solar system, change Earth's mass and watch everything go bananas. And as far as I know, my computer is not on fire. So what's the deal ? What is the real reason why n-body physics aren't implemented in KSP ? I personnaly think it's much easier and less frustrating this way: orbits will never change unless you do something to them. Otherwise, all your probes, orbiters, network relays, space station would have to be regularly checked and their orbits corrected. People would complain their first Mun space station crashed into the sun because thousands of pass-bys of minmus dislodged it from its orbit while they were warping for that transfer to Eelo. Actually everytime you would wrap at 10000x, you'd come back to your nicely setup orbits and discover everything has gone crazy. You'd have to chose between long travels and local orbits, or go through the pain of correcting everything every now and then during a long transfer. Maintenance is boring. So I'm fine with SoIs and single body physics. It's close enough to reality, it's easy to comprehend, and it keeps the game fun. But please, stop saying computers can't handle n-body physics. tl;dr: KSP could have n-body physics, but it would ruin gameplay and make everything a pain in the ass.

I was wondering the same thing. Why bother bringing canned oxidizer along with you when you can scoop it directly in the lower atmosphere ?

There. /thread

I can't believe people are still doubting this... And yes, the title and question are so confusing results won't mean anything.

Kerbal Engineer lets you know everything you need to know about your rocket.

Is this an efficient way to land ? Fuel wise ?

If it can't fly, it doesn't belong there.

The Oberth effect stop being relevant when you refuel your ships before leaving. An ejection burn to Duna takes 1061m/s from a 70km LKO, 606m/s from a 12 000km orbit (Mun's orbit around Kerbin). So take your ship on a (very) high Mun orbit, refuel it with the help of and Kethane ground base, leave Mun's SOI.

Could you roughly translate, at least the titles ?

I doubt that technology progresses enough to let us one day ignore the effect of a 1kg piece of metal hitting, hum, anything at several km/s...

I've already encountered most of the glitches shown in this video, and some not shown.

There is so much debris in orbit that you risk to hit one, thus creating more debris, which are likely to hit other things, creating even more debris. This is a chain reaction that eventually ends up with the impossibility to go to space for several centuries. This is very similar to a fission bomb, where it's all stable and fun until you reach the critical mass, the chain reaction kicks in and boom, everything explodes.