thereaverofdarkness

The part is in game, in my game. I have version 1.0.0. Not sure why you aren't seeing it, but you may just be missing it? It's not ordered next to the other wheels so you might have to go looking through the utility parts a bit. It is called Small Gear Bay -- it is the one in the picture and it is exactly the same as the old gear bay.

I believe the nerf to Isp across the board was to better represent the new aerodynamics system: launches to Kerbin orbit are easier, thus flying everywhere else is now harder. This makes sense because you can fly a slightly larger ship to orbit for about the same cost as before, and netting you about the same dV as before. You just have to change your rockets a bit; your space program (in general) has not been nerfed.

The simple solution would be to make engines check the size of the part below them instead of their own size when they create the fairing. It could then count some parts as not having a definitive size (odd-shaped parts, Mk. 2 sections, etc.) and in those cases use its own size instead.

I'd be happy if I was able to use the control surfaces to press the plane against the ground to get more traction for the brakes.

I don't have any idea how a Kerbal can fit into the Mk 1 pod. But the Mk. 2 Lander Can is overweight and oversize for its job. It might make some sense if it had a cargo section that you could open, but as it is it's pointless. Now, if it could hold 3 crew, it would be a lighter but crunchier alternative to the powerful Mk. 1-2 Command Pod. Another way to do it would be to make it a bit shorter, and reduce its mass significantly.

I think making it actually cost a significant amount and maybe making it larger are the only things that should be done to nerf it. High heat generation is fine, as long as a single can run fine at full thrust, and there are ways to mitigate heat overload. After that, what should happen is that there should be more engines added with higher Isp values. If there was a ~600 Isp engine with a TWR of about 5 or so, then that would often be a popular choice for those who are making a simpler rocket. If the LV-N were a 3.75m engine and there was a 600 Isp engine that was 2.5m, a lot of people would just use the 600 because it's a lot smaller and (should be) much cheaper.

Not sure if this is the right section, but I figured it's a challenge involving spaceflight... Difficulty level: solving this will probably require knowledge of basic physics, spaceflight physics, orbital mechanics, algebra, calculus So the story is this: you are in a cargo hauler in orbit around a small asteroid, and it has run out of fuel. All types of propellant on-board have been depleted, and it seems there is no way to push the ship anywhere. The air/oxygen reserves are not great enough to consider venting air as a viable option. So you have decided there is one option left: to throw the cargo overboard. You figure if you throw individual cargo containers overboard at the right part of your orbit and in the right direction, you just might be able to push the ship out of orbit of this asteroid. Now the asteroid is itself in high orbit of a planet with a moderately thick atmosphere, and the cargo ship is fully capable of withstanding a descent from orbit to surface with no power or fuel. So all you need to do is nudge your cargo ship a little bit further than out of orbit of the asteroid. We're also going to assume patched conics are real, so you can gradually throw cargo overboard over the course of several orbits and not have to worry about gradually falling out of orbit. Specifics of the asteroid orbit are not given, as the exercise is to find how much dV you can come up with, and we'll just assume it's enough to get the job done. The total mass of the cargo is 10 tons, and the mass of the ship minus the cargo (including you and your snacks) is 1 ton. The cargo can be launched out to space in units of any mass you choose. Your physical strength and mass, for purposes of this calculation, has not been given specific values. You may use your own strength/mass or any other standard you like. What is the ideal mass of each unit of cargo being thrown? How fast could you throw it? How much dV could you muster by throwing cargo overboard?

It's still true. You can get from low Minmus orbit to surface and back to orbit on one EVA pack. It's not even just a Scott Manley stunt, I've done it myself. (Then again I fly with almost as much skill as Scott Manley.) You should be able to get to Gilly orbit and back to surface several times on one EVA pack.

Can someone tell me the dV requirement to get from Gilly surface to LGO? And what is a good altitude for a low orbit, to miss the highest peaks? Thanks in advance!

Waiting for your ship to be tugged around a body by gravity is extremely important when orbiting a very massive body, as you'd need tremendous amounts of fuel to defy gravity the whole way everywhere. But when you're near a lightweight body, you just need to stop thinking with your orbital brain and start using your space docking brain. You want to get somewhere? Point your ship that way and run the engines for a few seconds. Then turn around and thrust the other way when you arrive. There's no reason to wait for Gilly's pathetic gravity to tug you around. I often use extra fuel for faster transits around Minmus, and I pretty much only use Gilly's gravity to tug my ship the last few meters on landing, just so that I don't bounce off again. Gilly is one of the few bodies in which I'll use RCS to make my ship come down faster so I can hurry up and land! ========== I do feel that max warp speeds need a look. I feel LKO right outside of Kerbin's atmosphere should allow 100x. Many bodies force you down to a very low time warp when you're pretty high above the surface. Those mid-level time warp values aren't really the issue, it's when you come screaming in at 10,000x time warp that you can miss the surface entirely.

I'd love to see folding wings like on fighters, which can be held outward for maximum lift, or swept backward to allow the plane to go fast.

Space doesn't carry heat, but it allows heat-generating radiation to pass through it. The Sun throws tons of this stuff at us, and the Earth's atmosphere deflects a lot of it away. The surface of the Moon is very hot during the day, so hot in fact that we could see it glow red if it weren't for the bright sunlight. Space has zero conduction, but it does not resist radiation. You can check the conduction, convection, and radiation of your parts if you open the debug menu (shift+F11), go to the physics section, thermal subsection, and check the box labeled "Display Thermal Data in Action Menus". After you turn that on, just right click the part and you'll see these values. Your Rad Flux value will tell you how fast you are gaining or losing heat due to radiation. If you're gaining, it just means the sun is shining on that part and it's not hot enough yet to balance out. If you really don't want that part heating up, turn it away from the sun.

You just have to add more fuel tanks to make up for only using liquid fuel, and also make sure you remove your oxidizer because that adds weight. Doing this, I lost only 20% dV over the old LV-N, not 50%. You make a good point about the LF tanks, though. Some of them have capacities way too low for their volume, like the Mk1 Fuelselage. The Mk3 fuelselages have more liquid fuel than the same length of Kerbodyne tank, but only a bit more, and all of them have a higher dry mass to fuel ratio than the LF+Ox tanks do.

I think you're talking about the LV-N, and it's powered by liquid fuel for convenience. Would be cool if we needed to mine special fuel just to use LV-Ns though.

Ships seem to heat up gradually. Even when you come screaming in at 3000m/s at 40km and gradually slow down to 1000m/s, by the time you get under 1000m/s you're still increasing in heat, not decreasing. Apparently you didn't get hot enough in that time to lose heat. I had the re-entry effects completely disappear and several seconds later a part exploded due to overheating. This seems to make a quick re-entry pretty easy to perform without a heat shield if you just have a parachute, while flying an air-breathing plane to space is virtually impossible because it must spend so much more time in the air. Even at a much lower velocity, it still heats up a lot hotter.

That J58 is actually a lot closer to the basic jet engine. The 1.45x5.44 meter engine has a mass of 2.7 tons and yet it produces a mere 150kN of thrust. In KSP terms, that's pretty pathetic. KSP engines are tremendously overpowered and yet the aerodynamics system forces us to use higher-end engines to get performance similar to the SR-71. The basic jet engine will get you around much better than most real aircraft can, but it won't fly you into the upper atmosphere very easily.

Yes, I used the spoiler function merely to hide the text. It's not intended to be secretive.

Howabout if a contract sent you to rescue a craft on a 50km circular orbit? It can give you a short completion time limit to make up for the craft not decaying while you set up your rendezvous mission, and once you get there, it'll be tough to get them out of the craft safely before re-entry effects become too intense.

You don't want to just turn. To change your heading, you roll the plane sideways and pull up, like I did in the tutorial. Press Q or E to roll, and then press W to pull up. If it's not working, make sure you have elevons and canards on like I put them on, and make sure you're not too high in the air. You should be able to turn easily under 10km altitude.

I felt it was already too thick at the top. It should actually dissipate rather than just suddenly drop off.

This would be so great! I also want to be able to stick a docking port on things like in the KAS mod. And some of those pods should have docking ports on them I think.

I have been loving it for rocket flight and re-entry, but it seems too easy to make planes go to deadly speeds. SSTO aerojets are going to be a lot tougher now. I haven't upgraded to the later versions of 1.0 yet, but I've been hearing drag was greatly increased. I do take issue with parachutes. It's great that their partially deployed state has had its drag increased dramatically, but it was increased a bit too dramatically and now it slows the craft almost as much as a fully deployed drogue. Drogues are about worthless now because when they fully deploy, it barely makes a difference. I just use a single small parachute instead, as that seems to function much like a drogue should when used on a larger vessel. Now when you're screaming in at over 2000 m/s above 30km and your parachutes suddenly partial-deploy, they can save your ship from re-entry heating but also cause tremendous g-forces that ought to severely injure or incapacitate the crew. I've watched ships slow from 2500m/s to under 500m/s in under 5 seconds, which means they may be experiencing over 50 Gees of deceleration at some points. My suggestion for parachutes is cut their partial deployment drag to 1/10th of its current value--I'm not sure how that'll work because I don't know how the calculation is done, but I think if they have about 1/10th of the slowing power it'd be great. Then drogue chutes would be useful, too. P.S.: A bit off-topic here but I've always been bothered that I can't set my parachutes to deploy at any altitude below 300m unless I set it to 50m. It won't hit the values between because it sticks to the bottom until I slide it all the way to 300m. 50m is too low to have time to slow the ship, but I almost always want 100m or 150m, so I don't have to spend 30+ seconds waiting on 4x time warp for the craft to reach the ground.

Howabout leave the suits the same color primarily, but add colored stripes to denote profession?

I'd like a large steerable landing gear but the folding ones don't necessarily need to have the feature. I support either way.

There is a stock 3.75m heat shield now.