Deathsoul097

'Twas no accident my friend, no, just the truth.

Looks cool, but why not make the SMA itself have a docking node? Then you wouldn't add on more parts by using the SR. ports, and it would look nicer, IMO.

Woo! Estimations and RSS, FTW! (I guess RSS is pretty accurate after all. Nice work, NK.)

Gravity is the real killer, and it eats most of your DV. As for drag, it's bad but not so bad as you would expect. Considering you need ~9 - 10 Km/s of DV to get to earth orbit, I would say that gravity losses and drag losses account for ~2-3Km/s of DV usage when getting to orbit. (It's been a long time since RSS) So really, yeah, getting to space is easy. Staying there, not so much. (Trust XKCD on this one, he worked at NASA and he plays KSP...)

Real engines have a LOT of thrust vectoring. (Though, the SSMEs had a lot, even for RL standards.) Something we are not so fortunate to have in-game. The engines on the Energia Core could gimbal about 8 degrees, IIRC, and being mounted inline with the rocket itself, it was not only more efficient, it had to gimbal less to keep stable, as more of the mass was inline with the engines. It also made the orbiter lighter when using it's OMS, which was also more inline with CoM, and thus more efficient and more easily manageable. While Buran in itself had a more than a handful flaws (Such as some Columbia-esque damage to the left wing on re-entry, which cause some warping) that needed to be worked out, it only flew one flight, so we cant really call it properly whether it was truly better or not. That said, I still think it was better and was, if not very close to, a space shuttle done right. I wholly disagree with your first point. Though a winged vehicle adds complexity, it also allows a very large range of possibilities, such as low G re-entry, which means that more fragile cargo and experiments can be transferred between on site in orbit and ground stations, and the ability to more easily control your point of return, in case anything goes wrong, to name two off of the top of my head. I find myself kind of agreeing with your second point though. Side mounted, while the most Badass and iconic things there is, is quite an inefficient way of doing things, never mind the complexity of implementing it, which as you said, creates a whole new line of failures that could occur. It does have some benefits (Such as the ability to abort reasonably safely, to an extent, but this is only really applicable for the Buran, as the Space Shuttle was completely screwed if anything went wrong, as it was carrying the engines.), though I don't think they outweigh the downfalls. TBH, I think the best way to do it would be closer to what SNC is doing with Dreamchaser, or how the USAF X-37B is deployed. (Stack launch, winged return, and in the case of the X-37B, AFAIK, hidden inside a fairing. (Not sure about SNC's Dreamchaser, I've got no real foreknowledge about it.))

Yeah, which is a problem that is solved by making the drone core part just a really short MK2 segment. PJ could literally just remap a MK2 fuselage model, and make it shorter, then re-export it and do the config. You wouldn't even need to do another texture, you would just have to reference it from another folder.

Actually, at first, I was on a fully stock installation (Excluding DMP, of course.) and it was happening, so as far as I can tell it is a DMP/Stock problem. It may be exacerbated by some mods, but I only have VOID installed along with DMP, and I have noticed no difference in the frequency of things deciding they should have an instantaneous 200g deceleration.

Actually, you can get to stuff that is hidden inside a craft. The camera can clip through parts. Personally I would rather a really short segment of a MK2 part for a drone core, it would reduce part count, and if you need a nosecone, just use one of the adaptors.

So, are there still issues with moving KSC? And can you see the new location of KSC at the space centre menu? Or does that view default to normal. Because I have a few ideas of some neat locations to launch from if this works like I hope it does.

Last I heard there was a floating Munolith a few kilometres up. Maybe that's what people are seeing? Distant Objects Enhancements would make it more visible too, so that may be one possible explanation.

I voted for my original suggestion, the Surveyor core. I think that it would make for a good base for mid-tree probes, as there isn't really anything that fits this role. The M-1 would essentially be a scaled up, and slightly different F-1. I think that something that allows for a good aesthetic, as well as a good base for smaller science parts would be much more valuable to a player than another Mainsail.

Am I the only one who noticed this is almost exactly the "Mars Direct" mission architecture that was produced a while back?

Lol, that first pic: A random ISS appeared over Luna!

No worries, I've since abandoned it anyway. No motivation to do something that has been done before, and better.

Very nice, and good to see you getting back to this. It's really good.

Funilly enough, you'll never guess one of the plans I have for part sets... Also, I posted pictures. Check earlier, in the same post as the logos.

I think everyone is misunderstanding me. They look like they are 3.75m wide, not 5m wide. And yeah, if it is 5m wide, that's a bit large to me. Frankly, even the measurements of your heatshield in the preview video lists it as being 3.75m undeployed, and it looks to be equal in width to the module it is protecting at that point. I was simply confused, because everything I have seen made it appear to be 3.75m wide, but then that one section I quoted said 5m. Or am I just reading these replies wrong?

Aaaaand it happened again. My 85 Tonne Orbital Refuelling station just fell out of orbit over the space centre, just as I was about to dock to it. This is beginning to seem like a really serious problem. This time it only lost it's surface velocity. It was still on a decent arc whilst dropping.

Hmm. The Aussie sandbox server got cleaned out by someone, and now there is significantly less lag, in map view, and I haven't had anything drop from orbit yet. Just thought I'd let you know.

Hmm. Do you think anything can be done about it? It seems to happen very often, at least to me. (Not trying to rush you. Genuine question, I'm interested to see how you will or try to solve it.) It will probably require more testing, but I have found that it usually happens at the same time or just after staging (That's how I lost the SecondStage of my second attempt at the Science Module) or switching vessels. (Which is how everything else got destroyed.) Also, JSYK, it also happened to the station multiple times on it's way down when I was trying to save it. It also only seems to occur when you switch away from something. It doesn't always happen immediately after switching though, and its sporadic. It doesn't always affect things, in this way or at all. As far as I can tell the losses of momentum are perfectly synchronized with the pause/reset thing you mentioned. Basically, what I think I'm observing is a total loss of orbital momentum on uncontrolled vessels within render/physics range (Only the things I was trying to work with and save were affected, which makes me believe this is only affecting things within render/phys range. Quite possibly because everything outside that range is already on rails.) at the time of Syncing the planet clock. I will have a look at getting on tomorrow to test some more, but for now, I need sleep.

Well, Ive had a bit of trouble with my Kiangong station on your sandbox server. Namely, the science module, "Kiangong - 2" dropped from orbit (Literally, all orbital velocity lost) when I switched to the station to open a docking port. There is now a flag on the surface called "In Memory Of..." marking the exact location of the drop. This was induced by a switch using the [ and ] keys. Maybe a one off, but possibly something to look into. Also, can I install a mod like Void, one that is only a plugin and adds no parts, without repercussions? (Completely unrelated, asking because "Me wants DV readouts!") EDIT: Well then! The server really doesn't like my space station. First the science module drops out of orbit, then the upper stage taking the second one to orbit, then the station itself, including the MPCV (Which I saved, with about half of the stations crew) and SSTO I had docked to it. (Not so lucky. Deleted in atmo during my attempts to save the rest of the crew.) And every single time that happened there was a jump in the game, as if there was some kind of lag or syncing going on, and yet, I was the only person online.

Hmm. This is pretty nice. Hope this doesn't mean ALCOR has been abandoned though. Just a quick question, do the service modules have built in engines for landing? Or nodes to place them? If not, that might be something to consider as part of the service module, or possibly a separate part, as I can only believe that landing these will be a huge pain in the *** without dedicated parts, or at least just really ugly and unrealistic. Umm, just saying, those look to be much closer to 3.75m, to me at least. Either that or you got some giant kerbals.

Cool. So, just use Anmation Generic, not Landing Leg modules, and add it to AGs manually? Got it.

The Servers are in the first post. You make your own list.

Especially using that Wet Workshop aspect. Very efficient, and very handy.