Superfluous J

Back in the dark days before I used KER, I frequently used less fuel than expected and realized on return to Kerbin that I'd be able to deorbit without the aid of sometimes an entire stage of rockets and fuel. Crashing that into the ocean seemed a huge waste to me. Back then, we didn't have the Claw so SOP for me was all stages that had any chance to ever reach orbit had a docking port on them somewhere, so I could fetch the fuel later. These days, with KER's help, I don't have that problem. But I could easily see others having it.

One more reason NASA et al dump the final stage and we don't (or shouldn't, whatever) is that NASA plans missions to a very high degree. When they're almost in orbit the insertion stage is actually out of gas, or nearly so. We (generally) just toss stuff together until it works.

Like so many here, I plan my missions to leave no debris in any stable orbit around a world. I will allow stable orbits around the Sun, though, as realisticaly speaking there is 0 reason to care about them.

ksp.log (in the same directory as ksp.exe) lists as things are loading and timestamps. Find where the biggest gap in timestamps is and remove that mod. If it's not a mod, then you're stuck with buying a new computer, because it's KSP and not a mod.

I was aware that there would be some diffraction due to atmosphere, but not any just around the objects. Well, I knew it was a thing but didn't realize it would actually help at all. While my cell phone works in a building, I don't expect it'd work under a mountain of any appreciable size. I lose my cell signal when traveling through a tunnel, for instance. Granted, cell signals are not intended to reach interplanetary distances, but still. I personally was running 1.0/0.90 in my game and thought it was realistic. If 0.93 or so is a more realistic value for vacuum worlds, I'll happily do it (easier AND more realistic? Thank you!). Any opinions on the 0.75 for atmospheric worlds? That just seems crazy low to me but I don't have any reference for it, either. Is 0.80 better? 0.85? What would be a more realistic value, if any?

It is when it allows you to toss some fuel away before launch. Which actually then raises your TWR even more. Of course you can (and I have in the past) add fuel launch to "overcome" the "problem" of a too-high TWR, but it's a bit more economical to solve your "I'm just too darn good at what I need to do" by removing things than adding them.

Not exactly what you're looking for but I'm a big fan of Automated Science Sampler. It does one more than what you want and just collects the science as you go.

You may want dig your hypeometer out of the trash. I distinctly recall in a devnote some time in the past few months them reporting they fixed the runway. I recall this because the people mad about terrain seams were mad that all it was was a fix to the runway and not the terrain seams.

Here are two old ones with mentions:

For my contract pack Parts Unlimited (Soon to be renamed ZYX PartsULTD, but that's another story) I require better descriptions for parts. "A vaguely wing shaped board" is great and all when you can see the part, but trying to decide which wing to unlock when you don't have a picture available can make it quite a chore, especially when the wings you have to choose from are named "Wing Connector Type A" and "Wing Connector Type B". Actually, I take that back. It's NEVER fine for that to happen So I took it upon myself, and for myself, to go through and describe all the parts one by one, to give them more descriptive descriptions. For example, the 3 wings that are "wing shaped boards" will now be described as: Type A: A stubby 4x2 wing segment, 4 meters in chord and 2 in span. Type B: A long 2x4 wing segment, 2 meters in chord and 4 in span. Type C: A 2x2 wing segment. Placing 2 of these is like using one Type-A or Type-B wing segment. Similarly, other wing segments are also more descriptively described. I also made similar changes to nose cones, intakes, elevons and the like, and then realized that wow, this was a lot of work. No wonder nobody at Squad has bothered to undertake it yet. So here is the config as it stands. It's got (what I am fairly sure is) a full list of parts but those I've not described are blank. I post it here for 2 reasons: It's useful as it is, even though it's not that complete. For me wings were the absolute worst offender and this basically fixes that. Maybe someone wants to help, and I'd love it if they did. Either making my descriptions better or adding their own. I don't know if this is the best way to present the file, but as it's a single file I'm just putting the config up on GitHub and letting people download it. I'd be interested in opinions on splitting the file into multiple configs vs one big one, mod support (I likely won't do it but I'm willing to support it if it doesn't get too hairy), and of course any pull requests with extra descriptions (after I vet them of course) are welcome. Download here: https://github.com/5thHorseman/DescriptiveDescriptions/blob/master/DescriptiveDescriptions.cfg Or visit the github page here: https://github.com/5thHorseman/DescriptiveDescriptions

The only altitude I would not put a station is 100km, because that's the in-game boundary between near the planet and far from it, at least at Kerbin. This doesn't matter much anymore but I'm an odd mix of sentimental and superstitious. There was a very light wonkiness somtimes as you crossed that 100km boundary. I personally prefer 80km because I like it low. I also sometimes do just over 100km, like 105 or so. One interesting thing is if you are going to be doing a lot of interplanetary returns and exits (like Hermes in The Martian was going to do) then you may want to look into the concept of the Gate Orbit. It helps a bit justifying the extra dV (and therefore fuel) required to get to a higher orbit.

Are you sure you're on the newest version of Waypoint Manager? I see talk above about a problem that sounds just like yours, and a new release that addressed it, at least in non-career games.

It doesn't work like that. Electrons are NOT moving really fast in orbits around the nucleus, so that that we just can't see them clearly. They're actually impossible to pin down due laws of nature that affect them differently than they affect planets or stars. We're all (or at least most of us are. I was) taught atoms in that way because reality is so crazy and most people don't need to know it, and making it familiar doesn't hurt anybody who doesn't try to make the logical leap you're trying to make here.

Oooh good point. But really it's not that big a deal, as anybody putting satellites in solar orbit will likely have a controllable ship SOMEWHERE.

Note: You can find this out yourself if you happen to have any ship in space anywhere. Which is a fairly sure bet usually Even a spent stage of orbiting trash will work. You can create maneuver nodes that you never plan to execute. Create one on any ship to leave Kerbin prograde, and then focus on the sun and make sure your maneuver node's apoapsis is about where the apoapsis of the contract orbit is (in distance, not necessarily radially correct. Remember this is just to run numbers so it doesn't matter if you're spot on). create a new maneuver node at that apoapsis to rotate your orbit 90 degrees, and see what the dV requirement of it is. Note also that rotating an orbit 90 degress is expensive the closer you are to the body. You may want to consider leaving Kerbin so your sun Apoapsis is out past Jool, where doing a 90 degree rotation will be much cheaper. You're trading time to save fuel, though, and that may not be in your best interest either. It's all about choices

I guarantee you, no amount of mental gymnastics now would keep me from going emotional were I to wake up tomorrow and find out I'm just a goat.

I voted to not ban them but don't necessarily want them. I don't want a very large number of mods, but I'd not want them banned.

Whenever someone asks "should we ban X?" my first gut instinct is "no, because that would also inadvertently ban Y and Z." So I voted "Allow repacks." However, I understand the arguments to ban them, and agree with those arguments. If there was better support in-game for mods (which is crazy to say because modding support is pretty good) then this would not be an issue. A "mod pack" would be nothing more than a list of mods, and the game would make sure they were updated.

BACK UP YOUR PERSISTENT FILE FIRST Near the top of your persistent file, find a SCENARIO named ProgressTracking. Find Eve in there, and find anything that says "Crew" in it. I'd try first just removing that "Crew" section, and if that fails I'd remove the entire entry for the ship. If THAT fails, remove the planet. If THAT fails... I got nothing.

As far as I know (i.e., as far as has been stated publicly) Squad has not laid anybody off. In fact, they've hired people. The people who left did so of their own volition and (at least for the most part) seem to have done so on good terms. There seems to be a feature being worked on or in internal QA right now, but they've been quiet about it. But KSP is pretty much done and I'm not really expecting anything revolutionary about any further updates. From here on out I just expect tweaking and bugfixes. Which is fine, as the game is in a pretty good state.

Look in the waypoint manager directory for a dll. I don't know the name offhand but I bet waypointmanager.dll is likely. Then search your entire gamedata folder for that dll. I'd bet you a snack to a fund that youv'e got another one in there somewhere.

Urectum!

I hate to ask an obvious question but do you know about throttle? The default throttle is 50% (though you can change it and I suggest either 0% or 100%). The stock ships were made to work at 100% throttle for the most part. Try hitting "Z" before launching and see what happens. Z is max throttle, X is 0 throttle, and shift/ctrl throttle up and down gradually. Don't ask me why they made ships that don't work with their default throttle. The better question is why that's the default when nobody should ever want it at launch.

I know you said to ignore air drag, but it does actually exist and keeping side tanks - even aerodynamic ones - will introduce drag that will slow you down. You're better off designing your craft to be able to drop them when empty.

"Okay Google, tell me the 47th planet"