mellojoe

KSP community is the best I've found, bar none. Not the PC building community, not the car building community, not even in the banking community. The patience and support that is shown on a daily basis to pure strangers should be commended, continually. From 10-year-olds to seniors, I have not found a random sampling of people more mature and helpful than I have found here.

I like them. A few of my rockets were stacking two of the old SRBs on top of each other, burning in series. This new one simply takes the place of that double-stack. It isn't as violent of a ride, but so far I'm really liking them.

Soooooo .... launch escape tower as booster seperatrons? I approve! :)

I agree with the sentiment that asparagus isn't going away. Take the same payload-to-oribt, and now you can do it with much less parts, much less lag, and many fewer stages. Using the same number of stages, the same amount of parts, just swapping to the larger sized parts & engines will simply mean larger payloads to orbit in a single shot. I have found that my 100-Ton-to-Orbit craft is so much simpler using the larger parts. My previous Heavy-Lifter had a capability of about 140-Tons-to-Orbit as a maximum, and it was nearly a dozen stages, with orange tanks as drop danks, 8-way asparagus staged, needing tons of struts and winglets to keep it straight and steady, etc etc. So much simpler now. Even with zero planning, I was able to boot-strap a lifter stage using much fewer parts, much less headache and hassle.

challenge ....... Accepted

First attempt here: B-class, now in orbit around Kerbin just inside the Mun orbit. I have PLENTY of fuel left in my mover-craft to push this wherever I want. Currently, I decided to stop where I am, just inside the Mun's orbit, although it is nearly a polar orbit. This was an unmanned vessel in order to capture and divert the asteroid. Uses docking ports fore and aft in order to be able to flip upsidedown and switch from push to pull very quickly. My concern was with heavier C, D, and even E class asteroids, getting them to rotate would be part of the challenge. Being able to easily flip my craft around (I think) should make maneuvering the bigger ones easier.

Don't track that many. If you don't track them, they won't exist. They continually populate, so if you try to track every one, you'll eventually crash your game. Pick about 10 that look interesting and stick to that. And until you get good at rendezvousing with asteroids (a slightly different prospect than other types of encounters), I would stick with only 2 or 3 at a time.

First asteroid captured! B-class, now in orbit around Kerbin just inside the Mun orbit. I have PLENTY of fuel left in my mover-craft to push this wherever I want. Currently, I decided to stop where I am, just inside the Mun's orbit, although it is nearly a polar orbit. This was an unmanned vessel in order to capture and divert the asteroid.

My small 3-man SSTO. Has a tick over 1,200 delta-v once in orbit.

First asteroid captured! B-class, now in orbit around Kerbin just inside the Mun orbit. I have PLENTY of fuel left in my mover-craft to push this wherever I want. Currently, I decided to stop where I am, just inside the Mun's orbit, although it is nearly a polar orbit. This was an unmanned vessel in order to capture and divert the asteroid. And good news! Was within my current, existing save game. :)

Since asteroids spawn in old saves, i will NOT be starting a new save. I have been doing long term missions to put flags and mine kethane on every single celestial body. I've already done most of the hard ones: Eve, Eeloo, Moho. All I have left of the really hard ones is Tylo, which is next up. These have been going so well, I hated to think about starting all over. Now I don't have to! I'll continue my Kethane missions, but I'm going to be doing asteroid wrangling inbetween. Can't WAIT

I will test when I get home tonight (I have a scheduled volunteer thing after work, so it will be late before I do), but the rumor is that asteroids WILL SPAWN even in existing save games. HURRAH! *fingers crossed*

Is this true? Anyone verify it yet? I HOPE it is, I truly do. But I can manage either way.

Well, it looks like we get to find out NOW. As long as this isn't an April Fool's joke, we should be downloading the update any moment. Which means, I get to play with giant floating SPACE ROCKS

Put the rear landing gear on the wings. Turn OFF angle snap, as that makes weird interaction between gear and wings. I find that this keeps the front gear longer but allows you to put the rear gear straight and still get that wide base. Give it a shot. GOOD LUCK

Set up a rescue craft around Kerbin with enough delta-V to reach anywhere, and with enough empty seats to pick up stranded kerbalnauts. Think magic space bus (Mrs Frizzle has been mentioned once before), but sitting in orbit ready to go ... just in case. I think my mission will be to set one up that can orbit any body in the 'Verse and return home safely. I'm thinking it should have a minimum of 4 empty seats, hitchhiker can, but maybe more. At mimumum it should be able to get to orbits around Duna and Eve (seperately), collect anyone stranded, return to Kerbin, then find a way to get them down to ground safely. Individual escape pods? Land the whole bus in one shot? I don't know. Thats up to you.

PULL the prograde marker. REPEL the retrograde marker. I find repeating this mantra helps me remember.

What I have gathered: 0.23.5 NASA pack will not BREAK existing saves. However, asteroids will not spawn in existing saves. In order to have asteroids spawn, you need to start a new save. Current missions will be unaffected, both for the positive (nothing lost) but also for the negative (nothing gained).

I'm in a waiting pattern. Since the asteroid pack will require a new save, I don't want to jump into another huge project if I'm going to have to start over anyway. I'm just building space-planes and playing with rovers and silly mods. What else can I do? Anyone have any suggestions?

Looking at the image you posted here: Another tip: The position of your rear wheels controls more than you think about your takeoff profile. Your rear wheels are far behind your center of mass. Think of a lever or a see-saw. Your CoM is your fulcrum, the tipping point. Your rear wheels are positioned where a child's feet would be on a see-saw blocking your rotation. Your craft can't tip upward because the wheels are acting like a FULL-STOP to your see-saw / lever. Moving them forward (if possible) reduces their impact, thus making your plane rotate easier, thus making it easier to lift off. Obviously, you can't stick your rear landing gear so far foward that your plane falls over backward and crashes its arse into the runway, but if you can cheat them forward a bit it could help. Second tip: Put the rear wheels in a position higher than the front wheel so that the whole craft on the runway is angled up for lift-off. This means that you won't have to actually rotate the craft upward, it is already there from the beginning. This can be acomplished by putting your rear landing gear on the SIDE of the fuel tanks and then angle them back straight up and down. Or put them on the wings instead of the fuel tanks. This gives you an angle of attack while on the runway. You might even find the plane will take off without you even having to touch the controls.

ALT + F12 This brings up the debug menu. You can select the option: Allow part clipping in editor.

Did you know: You can right-click on fuel tanks in the VAB/SPH and empty them of fuel? This way, you can see what your CoM/CoT/CoL look like with partial or completely empty fuel tanks. Since learning this, I have drastically changed how I design my planes. I build OUT a lot more than I build LONG. It helps keep the CoM stable as the fuel tanks drain. GOOD LUCK!

For me specifically, I don't want to re-do the kethane mapping. I simply want the current deposits to be refilled. I'm sure other people would like to re-map, and finding that piece of text-code would be helpful to them. This! Thanks! I'll give it a go tonight. I couldn't figure out where in the save-file it was. But I'll look in the persistent file for this. Thanks again.

Yes, I too learned the hard way that kethane is not limitless. My refuelling base on Minmus completely drained the node it was on. Shame, too, I liked where it was. Is there an easy way to refill the kethane deposits of an ongoing game?

Won't descend! I made a very basic craft using the helicopter blades trying to learn all the parts. This one won't stop going upward, the engine won't stop spinning, even with all the power cut. What did I do wrong? Help? This is after sitting on zero throttle for over 2 minutes. I've still got a vertical speed of 10m/s, going upward. You can even see thrust at 0.0. What is going on here?