lumpman2

I'm excited for doing rocket engineering again in a fresh new game!

Realistic aerodynamics don't really allow for much building outward. If you add more and more radial tanks, the total surface area of the rocket that's exposed to air (basically all of the nose cones and the capsule) increases, whereas if you build upward, only the capsule and maybe a few other things are exposed to the air, greatly reducing drag. You might want to try Procedural Fairings, which creates a disposable shell around the top of your rocket to protect it from drag. Also, with FAR, flat surfaces are terrible and will almost never work in atmosphere. I'm not sure if you're doing the gravity turn right; you should do a veeeery gradual turn, following the prograde marker otherwise your rocket will flip out from the drag.

Imagine that you are trying to stack the biggest tower possible (of any material you like). If you start with a larger tower, adding the same amount of material causes the tower to be higher than if you started with a shorter one. For example, if you were adding 4 ft of material to the tower, it's better to start with 5 ft rather than 1 ft because then you have a larger tower in the end. When you are orbiting closer to the planet, you move faster. (You have to assume that you are in an elliptical orbit, otherwise the difference in velocity in negligible or nonexistant.) When you're farther away, you orbit slower. So, let's say that you're going 2000 m/s at periapsis, and 200m/s at apoapsis. Now you want to reach 3000 m/s. The amount of delta-v that you need to burn at your Pe is only 1000 m/s, but at your Ap it's now 2800 m/s. Therefore, you save more delta-v when you orbit closer to the planet while you burn because you have a higher velocity then. Of course, you could also be in a higher/lower circular orbit and have different velocities in those two orbits - the Oberth effect also manifests itself here. So it's usually better to be orbiting at 70-100 km where you're going about 2.3 km/s instead of 2 Mm where you're going about 1 km/s.

I'm not really sure, but I think that rotating the RCS ports around with Q and E. Try playing around with that until Shift/Control go up and down respectively. Personally, I think docking mode is useless because you can't rotate at all - IJKLHN work fine for translation, while at the same time you can still rotate whenever necessary.

IIRC, only the instruments (thermometer and such), EVA reports, and crew reports are biome specific. I do know however that the goo and lab are non biome-specific.

Actually, I'm pretty sure he was using Java 6 when it worked. Then, it suddenly stopped working and didn't open after he said he updated to Java 7. As I don't know a lot about Java, I'm not sure if it has anything to do with that, but he tried running it with both v6 and 7 and it still didn't work. Is it possible that it could be his Java version? It seems like it should work if it's a later version, or even trying to run it with the version he was using when it worked.

For some reason, it randomly stopped working while he was using v3.2. No MPPM.txt, nothing. It just refused to start. I had him try 3.3 today, but same exact thing - didn't start and literally did nothing at all like before. I'm starting to think it's something on his end that's causing problems, but I have no idea what it could be.

I was thinking it might be that, but I really had no idea. Thanks for the help!

When I start up the game, everything works fine and all my mods are there (is there supposed to be a Kethane map on the title screen?), but then when I open up my save file that I just created, it crashes whenever I try to go into the VAB (and I'd assume the SPH as well). Mods: B9 Aerospace FAR KW Rocketry Interstellar Kerbal Engineer Kethane Remote Tech 2 Kerbal Joint Reinforcement Procedural Fairings Here's the most recent error log: http://pastebin.com/SN9fR99L Couldn't get the output_log because none of the websites I used would let me paste 755 kb

The program doesn't work - my friend is trying to run in on a Linux but he says it doesn't open at all when he tries to run it. It was working fine before and he reportedly updated Java recently, but now it doesn't do anything when he tries to open it.

When you're playing games like Minecraft and while you're waiting for something to finish, you instinctively reach for the period key.

Every time I try to launch a rocket with KWR tanks (I know it's the tanks because I used batteries from KW for a ground comms probe), it says "Can't start flight - Vessel has prohibited parts. Sorry!" My two other friends who go on the server were able to launch a rocket fine with the parts. I'm not entirely sure which parts are giving me trouble, because I was able to control a vessel with a Griffon engine on it, and launch a probe with the huge battery packs, but the only other parts I've used were the fuel tanks - and I couldn't launch the rocket that had them. Looking a few pages back, someone said to delete the parts list file in the KerbalMultiPlayer folder, but it's not there. Am I missing something? I'm using the exact same version of KW Rocketry as the server has, but it still doesn't work.

Thanks, I think I got it. Might need to practice a bit more, but I was able to get into orbit with about a fifth of the second stage's fuel left.

I've tried to do a gravity turn a few times already, but I can't seem to get down exactly what I should be doing. I always try to keep a low angle of attack, but my apoapsis is already at about 60km when I've only turned over about 10-20 degrees. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, because no matter how hard I turn sideways (the air doesn't really let me get an AoA of more than 5 degrees), the prograde marker doesn't want to move any more than it always does.

Good thing you're getting that close to your station. Saves me a bunch of work. When you get closer to your target, the velocity reading should automatically switch to "Target" mode. The prograde and retrograde markers will change spots, because they are now pointing to where you're moving relative to your target. So even if you appear to be moving in the retrograde direction of your orbit, you're still orbiting the same way but moving retrograde relative to the target (in this case your space station). So you need to slow your relative velocity (shown under "Target" in the velocity reading) so that you're not really moving away from the station. If you have a lower TWR, it might help to do your burn to reduce your relative speed to 0 earlier because when your rel. speed is at 0 you won't appear to be moving away or toward the station. Once you have your relative speed at around 0-3 m/s (try to get it as low as you can), point towards your station and either use RCS or little engine burns to inch towards the station. When you get there, try to keep your velocity under 2 m/s while you line yourself up for docking. At this point you should only use RCS. Slowly push in towards the port and the magnets should kick in and you're docked!

I don't think you can look at a mission log from one that you already ended/recovered, but while in-flight you can always check the updated log by pressing alt+F3.(right shift on linux, don't know for mac)

I have changed the texture settings in the config, but that didn't do a lot for me. But I just realized that Tuesday is the 17th and I'll try recording then, since that was the first day I was going to start. The only problem is that I don't know if I should use a new career mode file, sandbox, or import my old one into the new version. Also, I've filled up on RAM and I don't think there's any more room down there (my computer is 5 years old, but I have no idea if there are more than 4 slots in there; please correct me if I'm wrong.)

I'm trying to get ready for recording, but I don't know anything that I can do to improve my framerate while looking at water (i.e. at the launchpad). I have KW, B9, Kerbal Alarm, Kerbal Engineer installed. 4GB RAM 2.7 GHz dual-core processor 1 GB AMD Radeon 5450 graphics card but even with my terrain quality on low I still get below 10 fps any time I'm remotely close to water (still happens when I'm looking at normal terrain, but water is the biggest offender.) Any tips on what I should do to at least make it reasonable for recording?

Thanks all of you for the advice on what I should do and I feel like I know what I should be looking for when I'm testing rockets.

Ok, I'll try using aerospikes for most of the engines except for the last - but I don't have time to test right now since KSP wouldn't really agree with uploading a video at the same time AND skype.

I wouldn't think of using something with an Isp of 220 So engines like the tiny orange ones or LV909s? Or should I use a few aerospikes as well?

So should I use smaller tanks instead of going big and just use a lot of asparagus? I'm not Scott Manley so I'm not exactly the best at precise ascents.

Is something wonky going on with that orbit? I don't think the Duna trajectory should look like it's going halfway across the solar system...

I've stated that I already realize I'll need boatloads of dV to get up there, but I really don't know how to make a rocket like that.

As shown in my sig, I will be attempting to land and return from Eve - something I've never done before. I know, crazy idea. But I haven't started yet, so I have some time to prepare. All I need are some general rules of thumb when attempting to make an Eve return-capable rocket. I know that I'll need about 11+ km/s of delta-v and I will of course be docking in orbit, but I'll ned some advice as to how to create a not-horribly-huge rocket while still getting the most dV possible.