Starwaster

This will be a parts pack allowing the construction of spacecraft like the Copernicus Mars Transfer Vehicle. (MTV) Copernicus was part of a proposal that involved the launch of multiple components into LEO where they would be assembled into complete vehicles. First would be four launches to assemble two vehicles (1 propulsion unit / 1 aeroshell re-entry vehicle) which would fly to Mars in advance of the manned mission. One would land on arrival where it would begin producing fuel from Martian resources (in situ). The other would be a habitat lander which would remain in martian orbit awaiting the arrival of the crewed mission later. The pack will contain the necessary parts to build a similar rocket using either stock components or parts from other mods. (no inflatable habitat is currently planned; there are several that will work with this). In addition to stock compatible parts, Real Solar System sized parts will be available (i.e. 10 meter diameter saddle truss). Other useful mods (required for RSS compatible vehicles) will be Stretchy Tanks and Modular Fuel Tanks. (list not complete) The Copernicus will require three launches. A propulsion stage using three 111.2kN nuclear thermal rockets (NTR), a saddle truss containing a liquid hydrogen drop tank and an inflatable habitat section. Depicted below is the saddle truss, which is open at the bottom to allow the jettisoning of spent components (such as the drop tank or empty crew consumables module) Attached to the ends of the saddle truss are the docking rings. The propulsion unit and habitat units will be equipped with similar rings allowing them to be docked together. The model is not as yet properly textured. Currently there are three parts. The saddle truss, a truss adapter ring and the docking rings. The adapter rings will contain control modules to allow adapter equipped stages to be oriented for docking. Another adapter is planned for inflatable module attachment. (basically another ring module with a small adapter in the middle for 2.5m parts) LINKS REMOVED License for the developmental version of the parts is no distribution or derivative works. This is only until official release at which time a CC sharealike will be applied. Exceptions: Drop tank licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ The NodeResizer plugin is released under a Creative Commons Sharealike Attribution license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Contents: 2.5m, 3.75m, 5m, 10m each of: Half sized saddletruss full sized saddle truss with mounting point for drop tank drop tank Truss adapter ring male docking ring female docking ring Hab adapter Truss and adapter ring sizes are inner diameter so a 3.75m adapter ring will snuggly fit over a 3.75m tank. Copernicus shots. Depicted both with and without the drop tank to show how the saddle truss is used. Saddle truss with drop tank experiments. That thing on the bottom is a tug that I threw together to move the tank around. I'm experimenting with being able to dock the tank to the truss directly with no other parts in between.

Obviously there's nothing you can do to control the game's stock behavior concerning parachutes. on the other hand, if an elevation change from flight path is enough to force course corrections then that is something you can change. Once de-orbit burn has happened and re-entry is in progress, the AP should be reluctant to take further corrective action. Take samples over time. Average them. If the results are WAY off from the pre deorbit calculation by a TBD threshold then dont take action, wait and take samples again later in the flight path

Definitely a male creature of some type.

Your problem can actually be summed up as not having used Starwaster's breakingForce / breakingTorque fix. Copy this into a cfg file. Uses ModuleManager (1.5.0 - 1.5.5 preferred; I know the syntax is still valid there) breakingForce_fix.cfg @PART[*]:HAS[~breakingForce[]] { breakingForce = 200 } @PART[*]:HAS[~breakingTorque[]] { breakingTorque = 200 } USE it. Tell everyone else to use it. It will fix a world of hurt a lot of people don't realize they have. (I think 200 is a median value, probably. Engines probably should actually be at 1000 or higher but this is still 10 times better than what they have, which is the default value when their PART node is missing breakingForce or breakingTorque) Edit: If your engine ever falls off in solar orbit (just sitting there minding your own business as usual, not thrusting, not spinning, other than from phantom forces) then you definitely want this. Note that this does NOT affect every part, just parts that have missing values for the properties mentioned. By default, I'm told they have a value of 22 but that's either just way too low for buggy physics. Probably some parts should be considered to be that weak, but both Squad and the part modding community in general tend to neglect setting the property to higher values when needed resulting in parts mysteriously breaking that should have held together.

Yeah, you'll be sitting there, minding your own business, relaxing to the soothing space music of KSP when suddenly an ear piercing blood curdling screeching klaxon will start blaring in your ears (cause you're using a headset right?) and you'll jerk upright banging your knee into the desk as your pulse quickens and the klaxon is going EHHHHHH! EHHHHHH! EHHHHHH! EHHHHHH! and you know another rocket is about to meet its maker. (or maybe your maker.... someone's maker) Ok, sue me, I don't do sound effects so well.

I'd certainly be interested, if it could be done. Stably.

That's what I routinely do when I download a new version.

Stupid chris is right, 'the chair' isn't a good name for 0.20 .... (pause...) .... Let's name it ... Eastwood update...

Adjust your radials...? Are you using RealChutes? Does MJ take into account that they jave custom opening altitudes? Also, to throw something else into this discussion, I routinely land things on Duna semi curiosity style. But with FAR & RSS. By curiosity style I mean it pops its chute about 11km up to slow it then after decelleration jettison the chute. MJ seems to have no problems with me doing that and if landing were so horribly broken, you would think that would surely cause problems, confusing it horribly

SCIENCE! needs to be in italics. and have two exclamation marks. SCIENCE!! see?

I don't think it does support that, or it didn't last time I checked. I made a blanket Ioncross patch once that added life support to pods for up to six kerbals and I had to do six individual checks for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 crew respectively.

You can easily add electrical drain to a capsule with a generator that provides negative ElectricCharge

Yes, duplicate cfg files. Or a single config file with duplicate entries.

No they do not dock with stock parts. There is a way to force them to by editing the cfg file but it would not look pretty. At all.

Ok, that's what I was afraid of. I don't see a way to definitely determine shield size, unless it's part of the name and there's no guarantee of catching all cases. So what would a good overall value be? (assuming the key of 800 is correct... not sure where I got 1260 for the value)

This is from a 1.25m shield MODULE { name = ModuleHeatShield direction = 0, -1, 0 // bottom of pod reflective = 0.05 // 5% of heat is ignored at correct angle ablative = AblativeShielding loss { // loss is based on the shockwave temperature (also based on density) key = 650 0 // start ablating at 650 degrees C key = 1000 64 // peak ablation at 1000 degrees C key = 3000 80 // max ablation at 3000 degrees C } dissipation { // dissipation is based on the part's current temperature key = 300 0 // begin ablating at 300 degrees C key = 500 360 // maximum dissipation at 500 degrees C } } RESOURCE { name = AblativeShielding amount = 250 maxAmount = 250 } Larger shields should have more (amount/maxAmount) of the resource. I seem to recall that the value of the second key goes down for larger shields? Look in the mod's parts folder and look at some of the part.cfg files to see what they do. If you use Real Solar System then the second key should be 800 instead of 500! (see the other code sample at the very end of my reply to Velocity, that will make shields RSS compatible across the board with the caveat that I'm a bit worried that it's overpowered since I'm not 100% sure how dissipation works Don't come in exactly retrograde. Note how it's pitched up. You can pitch up even more, such that the side of the capsule is even with the wake. That will also help with g-forces especially. When used with FAR you can also generate lift that way so if you're coming in too hot and fast you can skip out of the atmosphere, or at least back up into the upper atmosphere. The benefit of that is that you're spreading out your braking in stages instead of all at once. If using FAR though it's kind of tough to pitch if you don't have either RCS, some weight to offset your center of mass or an airbrake. (I like to put a B9 airbrake on the top edge of my capsule, right between the cockpit viewports) Also note what I said above about Real SOlar System. If you're using that then you need your shield beefed up a bit as described. This bit of code will do that for all shields you have installed @PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleHeatShield]] { @MODULE[ModuleHeatShield] { !dissipation dissipation { key = 300 0 key = 800 1260 } } } Put that in a file named RSS_HeatShields.cfg (name doesn't matter, only that extension is .cfg). Note though that the value for the second key.... I'm not sure that is correct. It will work for RSS but I'm not sure it's balanced properly. I've noticed recently that some shield examples have varying values for the second key by shield size and I'm not clear on what the reason is. If Nathan were to chime in right now that would be great.

Just some FYI, to date, IRL, nobody uses any sort of CO2 -> O2 regenerator / recycler. The best we've actually done so far is regenerative CO2 scrubbers that can rid themselves of CO2 by a combination of heat and vacuum exposure. More than one is required because regenerating one requires another to take its place while it's offline.

Bad rocket scientist! Bad! Now go hang the RCS Thruster of Shame around your neck for the day.

Multiply by 5. (RFRM tank volume units were 1/200th of a kiloliter. Now we're at 1/1000th, or 1 liter. We are now at DEFCON 1. Gentlemen, we have metric) (so be sure that at least one aspect of your space program is using imperial units so you can totally screw up the conversion, have a huge committee meeting to discuss why your space probe is off course, agree to do a course correction, then not perform the course correction and finally wonder why your space probe is lost forever)

If you create a new rocket from scratch (no using existing flights - no using existing craft files) can you still repro the problem? I really think that needs to be established.

I have to concur, that really sounds like you're using FAR, and if you're going too fast when you try turning (or MJ tries turning) then flipping is the usual result. A gravity turn should start when you're still going slow (Ferram said 100m/s I think?) Since you're using MJ, I'd see how high you are when you reach that speed and set your gravity turn to start at that altitude. You also want your rocket to have a starting TWR of about 1.2. If you're not using FAR and the above isn't applicable, try setting an acceleration throttle limit of 21 m/s (just FYI, flipping isn't something a real rocket would do.... if it turned that violently at supersonic speeds it would likely disintegrate....)

What I do for my high TWR stages is set an acceleration throttle limit of 11-21 m/s. (11.784 would approximate a TWR of 1.2 on Kerbin....) And... I'm watching my calico splashing around in the water bowl.... she looks like she's fishing for something... or maybe just doing it to drink the water off her paw. Now she's looking up at me as though she knows I'm talking about her.... such a strange little creature. (she came from a shelter that considered her unadoptable because she was fearful or unfriendly or something and she was in danger of being put down.... )

Unless your TWR is like 4 or something, then throttling back starts to look attractive.... (I can't help it! I overbuild my first stage )

Need more info! What do you consider to be low orbit? Anything 69km or lower and you're getting drag from the atmosphere. And what do you mean 'magically i go to space center and hit fly'. How exactly did you get to what you consider a stable orbit? No you know what? Screenshots. And list of any and all mods.

Oh oh.... it occurs to me that I might not have properly checked out my science stuff for 0.23 as well as I thought.... *sigh*