rodion

Sidvis Kerman is always in my mind a squat and green Sid Vicious, though the similarity probably wasn't intentional.

This whole design and attempt is fantastic...great job.

I'm very happy with the belated IVA view for the can, no complaints about its appearance or function. This screenshot alone has everything I like about KSP: the foreboding surface of the Mun up close, a Kerbal rather concerned about something out of view and unknown, and an "aerodynamic" nose cap that's very, very inappropriate in its environment.

I just finished assembling my second design for one of these kinds of ships, this time with quite large (23 ton wet, I think) lander instead of a mere observation module (cupola) like the first one had. Lessons were also learned about where to place solar arrays so that they don't get in the way of docked payloads, how much of X resource was enough/not enough, and so on. Most importantly the new ship has another docking port on the tank/engine end, so it can theoretically be extended with as many extra snap-on fuel tanks/NERVA engines as I feel like, hence unlimited range in the Kerbol system. Theoretically. The old one could be refueled but no more large parts like extra tanks could be placed on it. Here's the whole thing as of last night, the docked ship jutting out was refilling the small amount (300 units) of fuel I used in the assembly process, not too bad for a ship with a 6,000 unit capacity. On the docked end of that is a tiny Kerbin return ship - the conception for the mission was a "sample return" type where I could land a crew on the Mun, mess around, then re-dock with the ship in Munar orbit, then send a crew member back with precious cargo without having to take the whole 90 ton ship back to Kerbin orbit at the same time. So, a Mun crew Kerbal was bundled into the tiny ship and shot back to land on Kerbin, carrying a cargo of imaginary Mun rocks: Mun was just a proof of concept test, now I'm quite confident that the ship will stand up to a round-trip to any body, in the right configuration. The lander could be altered on the ground, launched and switched out in orbit with an atmospheric parachute-bearing one for Duna. Probes could be attached with abandon.

None!!! Ha ha ha! Scorching parts in the atmosphere totally makes them work better. Speaking slightly outside my own range of experience though, several mods provide parts that give you just the kind of enclosing fairings you want for your ship - probably the most recommended new mod for such a thing is the Procedural Fairings mod that automatically figures out just the right size of fairing your payload needs and creates it in the VAB, no matter what shape it is. The two things I don't know about it are 1. whether it actually works in .21, and 2. the spaceport/forum link for the mod because I didn't look it up while I was writing. Sorry. EDIT: someone posted the PF link just above, thanks.

That's correct. The periapsis of an orbit, as well as being the point where the orbiting object is closest to the parent body's surface, is also the point where the object's velocity relative to the parent body is highest, and for apoapsis the inverse is true, it's the slowest point in the orbit. You can try this out by time warping any ship in a non-circular orbit and watching the velocity indicator change as it goes from peri- to apo-.

This is a fun challenge, I just spent a few minutes on it now. Early days: As you can see I'm going with the "less is more" philosophy here, specifically less mass is more acceleration... Screenshot sucks because the moment I'm passing the tower at the closest point I'm trying mostly to not kill Jeb, so I'm always a bit early or late on hitting the button. This doesn't qualify as an attempt yet since flying and landing such a craft is hellish at best, and while I can at least make the wheels touch the runway, I can't yet get every part to land intact, all attached and at the same time... So I'll tweak more and post the attempt that doesn't crash later.

Went back and made a structure analogous to yours using the rotation method I described...seems to be okay?

All of the fake (stock) heat shields I've seen so far have been either simply relatively flat structural parts like the Rockomax adapter "02" for small payloads, or for large ones they are often made from the M-1x1 or M-2x2 structural panels, eg. here's Brotoro's shield for a rover he landed on Laythe, made from a combo of parts I just mentioned (from this thread):

Tried this in VAB, at first I had the same issue you described but then by just rotating the piece to line up the "correct" connector (why it has to be a certain one is beyond my powers of explanation) I connected in the proper way and after that there were no issues. See here: So that's your fix as far as I can tell, just rotate and find the one special connector the game agrees with.

Making the NERVA generate a certain amount of electrical energy is a nice suggestion, but in terms of game balance it seems to overpower an already extremely good part a bit too much for me to be comfortable with. When a 2.25 ton engine alone, as well as providing extremely efficient thrust, can make RTGs and solar arrays virtually useless on the same ship, it's kind of crazy. The oxidizer suggestion I've heard before...maybe that will happen, the devs are aware and it is in their hands. The Laythe atmosphere problem doesn't really strike me as an issue though seeing as the temperature modeling in KSP currently is extremely crude and doesn't account for almost any real life conditions that affect temperature. I also saw someone post the elegant idea that a possible reason that Laythe's water oceans manage to persist in liquid form below 0C is because they are highly saline. In all, I'm pretty convinced that Laythe's has water/has oxygen status will persist through every version of the game since that's what makes it interesting and different from the other non-Kerbin bodies. The craft legs idea seems good, no objections, except that landing on extreme slopes and crater rims becomes less hair-raising.

Everyone's eyes seem to have a different tolerance for what constitutes an acceptable framerate, so in the end you might just have to tweak manually until you find the best balance between performance and framerate for you personally. Nobody can tell you exactly how well KSP will be running on your notebook without sitting in front of it and checking for themselves...

No need to get an intersect anywhere near that precise, as long as the orbits are halfway similar it's possible to eyeball the approach just by thrusting to align the ship/target vectors from 30-50 kilometers distance. 10km or less is easiest, though.

You fail to completely understand the mindset of the reusability fanatics...they don't do it because it is practical, or because reusability is naturally well-supported by KSP, or because it's convenient or simple, they do it because they can and because EVERY part will come back safely...NO MATTER WHAT.

Are you aware that by clicking the relative velocity indicator (the one that usually displays surface/orbit velocity), you can change modes, including one that tells you your velocity relative to your target? That makes it easy to understand how you are moving compared to the thing you're aiming at, and additionally places the vectors on the navball so they tell you what direction you're going relative to the target too (your green pro/retrograde markers for your ship orbit, and pink markers for direction of the target). When the target velocity indicator reads 0.0m/s, you are in exactly the same orbit as the target. Also, to close distance with an object you are attempting to dock to, you orbit should never be identical to the target's, because your relative positions will therefore stay the same forever - instead, if you need to catch up on the object, you need to drop your periapsis to a slightly lower altitude than the targets', so that for part of your orbit you are traveling faster than that target. For situations where the target is "following" you, just do the opposite, making your apoapsis slightly higher up so the target gains on you. I hope this helps a bit.

A suggestion parallel or related to the rover design question: methods of deploying rovers on different bodies (effective skycranes, decoupler mounting etc.) would be good since virtually everyone puzzles at how to get the damned things down on the ground in one piece, especially with a lander and crew at the same time.

In my mind Jeb would never lower himself to merely driving. Instead, he gets into the 750,000kg orbital fuel tanker launcher, creeps the throttle up, hovers gracefully over the space center buildings, then soft-lands on the Mainsail nozzles at the place he wants to be.

This doesn't seem all that realistic to me, due to the large differences in tank design for different propellant; for example tanks that are designed to hold cryogenic rocket propellants such as LH2/LOX are engineered and shaped so that the contraction their containers experience when being cooled to very low temperatures during filling doesn't affect the functionality of the tank, which isn't a problem for propellants that aren't stored at low temperature. Also, the relative internal tank sizes for one fuel/oxidizer mix (or just fuel, for planes) will often be very different to another. Of course, all of this stuff happens "inside" the part and outside the established game variables of KSP where you can't see it and don't really think about it, but to my mind it seems a bit silly. You usually can't swap out fuels in a tank without having to re-engineer the whole thing from scratch.

The way I see the "micromangement" issue in my mind is not that it forces players to constantly launch servicing missions to all of their craft, but does something else which should probably be in any good space program sim - makes them set realistic lifespans and schedules for their craft and missions, so that after a certain number of years in the field one can finally declare "mission over" and allow the obsolete hardware to make its exit, instead of magically being able to keep everything available in fresh usable condition permanently. Due to the relatively long and minor timescale of the decay, there would be no rush to make sure absolutely everything was okay. Even warping a barge x100k to Jool shouldn't cause catastrophe, just distortion in the orbit unless the object was really placed unreasonably low. Sadly I also considered people thinking this way myself. I mostly placed faith in the fact that our dedicated KSP players' community helps everyone understand reasonable parameters and ideas for the game, so this kind of thing should easily be integrated into people's minds so that not everything has to pointlessly be in, say, a 700km orbit. There would be no reason to change the values of recommended parking orbits or anything else important because they would be unaffected by the change for those purposes.

All of these points are sound and intelligent, except that the terms "SAS" and "ASAS" are so tattooed into my brain by now that no amount of merely renaming the parts will ever get the ink out.

An issue I find with Laythe is that due to its magnetic attraction to all KSP mission planners, it is saturated with bases and explorers on other save games, many better and more dedicated than I'm prepared to do myself - Brotoro alone has explored, mapped and generally experienced Laythe so excellently already that I feel I could barely learn or enjoy much more about it if I took the time to do it all myself. Minmus seems a little bit more mysterious and virgin by comparison, but due to its small, rocky and airless nature with few sightseeing points it seems like any long-term mission would get old fast, past the initial excitement of landing all of your components and Kerbals. Plus, practical exploration of its surface might also be annoying seeing as rovers and Kerbals mostly seem to launch themselves at near-escape velocity whenever they hit a bump or need to navigate a slope.

In some places the crazy swooping crater rims and valleys remind me of those styrofoam sets from B-movies of the '50s and '60s, where our ray-gun toting hero is seduced by green-skinned alien space vixens (thankfully not Kerbals). (note: these two screenshots are from different Mun sites about 20km away at least, due to problems).

550. When career mode is implemented, the initial and tutorial mission should be the deployment and management of an operation consisting of looting rocket parts, technicians and facilities from the ruins of a recently defeated Nazi Kermany. You get more upgrade points and other bonuses based on how much stuff you manage to bring back with you to your chosen starting nation.

I enjoy both the more realistic parts of KSP as well as the bits that are modeled and simplified to make the game more accessible and playable, but when I can launch a probe or craft into, say, a very low 72 km circular orbit around Kerbin, then time-warp years or decades ahead (on say, some other long interplanetary mission), then come back and find my original vehicle's orbit hasn't changed a wink, it strains my suspension of disbelief. Would it be reasonable or possible to ever add an extension to the current atmosphere models where its drag on spacecraft becomes low enough at high altitudes that one can still complete dozens of orbits on medium- or medium-long- timescale maneuvers, like rendezvous, without any detectable change in orbit, but on the timescale of months or years or more it does begin to cause decay?

This goes for virtually all stated velocities for me...my spatial intuition has become so sensitive to the understanding of objects moving at velocities of about 0.1-8000 m/s that having to do snap-conversion whenever I seek to understand this value or another is just irritating to me now.