Galane

Added a MK8 nose cone upscaled from the MK7 to fit the Kerbodyne tanks, a Clamp-O-Tron Grandpa size docking port and a Clamp-O-Tron Omni Grandpa quad docking port so you can dock any port size to the end of a Kerbodyne tank using only one part. Still has the issue of when two omni ports are docked together, the undock command must be given as many times as the lesser omni port has sections. Is there a way to fix it so a single undock command will cut them all loose? Here's the cfg for the Clamp-O-Tron and Jr. port. PART { name = OmniDockingPortSmaller module = Part author = NovaSilisko, KSP-forum MODEL { model=Squad/Parts/Utility/dockingPort2/model position = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 scale = 1.0, 1.0, 1.0 rotation = 0, 0, 0 } MODEL { model=Squad/Parts/Utility/dockingPort3/model position = 0.0, 0.145, 0.0 scale = 1.0, 1.0, 1.0 rotation = 0, 0, 0 } rescaleFactor = 1 node_stack_top0 = 0.0, 0.2828832, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1 node_stack_top1 = 0.0, 0.2828832, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1 node_stack_bottom = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1 node_attach = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0 TechRequired = metaMaterials entryCost = 12200 cost = 900 category = Utility subcategory = 0 title = Clamp-O-Tron Omni Docking Port S description = Invented after a less-than-peaceful protest against the lack of spacecraft attachment systems that could make buiding multi-purpose symmetrical bases possible, the Clamp-O-Tron Omni Docking Port S allows for the firm attachment of two separate vessels regardless of the other dock's type. After docking, vessels can be just as easily undocked. Supports regular and jr. ports. attachRules = 1,0,1,0,0 mass = 0.1 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.25 minimum_drag = 0.25 angularDrag = 0.5 crashTolerance = 15 maxTemp = 3400 MODULE { name = ModuleDockingNode referenceAttachNode = top0 nodeType = size0 } MODULE { name = ModuleDockingNode referenceAttachNode = top1 nodeType = size1 } }

Kerbal rocket backpack. Interesting but would likely not thrust straight. Can they be repaired if the panels are gone, like after a reentry with them left extended?

Never know when a 'security' update to Windows may cause problems for one or more programs. Here's a solution. http://www.preyerplanning.com/take-ownership-of-entire-hard-drive-in-windows-7.pdf (I used it on my boot drive and did not have to reinstall Windows 7, but you never know when drastic changes like this may make a big mess.) It can also be used on any folder and all the files and subfolders in it. Try it on your KSP folder in Program Files (x86). There are many other sites with *part* of that procedure but unless you go through ALL the steps it may not work, depending on how screwed up the permissions are. A quick way to tell if you have messed up permissions in a place you should have full access is to is right click then hover over New. If the only thing under New is New Folder, the permissions on that folder are screwed up, or you are logged in with a restricted account. Create a New Folder then open it and right click again. If you still get only New Folder in a folder you've created, then the permissions are really messed up.

Just flying something under the helipad, without hitting anything, would be a challenge in itself. Edit: Well, that's been done. And the two island hangars Perhaps allow pieces of the plane to be dropped and fly under everything in order of decreasing size?

An asteroid ship with a ring habitat around and attached to it.

@BARCLONE What is the starting altitude? I've found that landing accuracy (without parachutes*) on Kerbin diminishes below 100 KM starting altitude. It'll either land just short or long of the VAB or pad. I recently did some VAB landing attempts from 80KM and several times it set down on the west edge of the roof, just missing the helipad. From 70+ KM it usually lands just to the west of the VAB but sometimes set down just to the east, on the "track" to the pad. Targeting the pad it usually sets down on the track just west of it but often goes a bit long. Last time it managed a landing actually on the pad was from no lower than 100KM and luckily it didn't stick it dead center because I hadn't cleared off the launch clamps. Here's one from Oct. 1, 2013 where MJ set the transfer stage back from Mun almost dead center on the pad, after quite a miss with the lander. I've experienced generally higher accuracy on airless bodies. When targeting another craft on the surface it is best to manually edit the coordinates just a tad in case MJ goes for an ultra precise landing. *The Kerbal engineer/janitors who work for Alan Aerospace Recycling and Packaging call parachutes "flimsy pieces of cloth" and only very grudgingly allowed some (only 6) to be used on the manned Eve lander. The rovers get by without any.

Make it even harder. Include the gap at the end of the wind tunnel.

There's an idea. A KSP "wind tunnel" to test planes and rockets with FAR - or some way to provide MechJeb with a model of how a specific assembly of parts flies at an expected range of orientations. Build a rocket then pre-calculate how the launch assembly will behave during launch then how the parts that will be coming back to Kerbin, or landing on another planet or moon will act in that atmosphere. Then it wouldn't need realtime data from FAR, it could fly the craft based on the pre-modeled/recorded data. If the craft's orientation gets outside the bounds of what was precalculated, then stuff it, it's crashing or coming apart.

Calculate the landing path with the assumption that the rocket will be in retrograde position all the way down, like a real life tailsitter rocket that can land vertically would be. If for some reason it goes sideways, forget it, the rocket is going to come apart or at best miss the landing target. A feature I'd like to see is being able to choose the local time of day to land at the chosen target, even if the choices are only sunrise, mid-day or sunset. Then auto warp time to deorbit burn to land at the chosen time.

90 should get you a polar orbit, launching north from KSC. 0 launches East, 180 launches West. However, the last time I tried 270 to get a polar orbit launched to the South, it went North same as 90.

Reminds me a bit of this vehicle. Or more like this one.

Just click the thing to disable/override the safe distance in docking autopilot and it'll work. The safe distance thing is to have "activate and forget" docking so it will maneuver around and dock without first having to manually fly to within line of sight of the port or aim them at one another with TGT+. When the safe distance function works, it's quite nice because you don't have to manually fly the ship to get line of sight on the port or have to rotate a huge station or ship.

If you've seen those old nuclear bomb test films with the buildings and vehicles getting blown apart and tossed around, that was a FIVE PSI overpressure - applied really quickly. Air is tricky stuff. Common window screen acts almost like a solid plate in a 40 MPH wind. It would likely make a good parachute in a real atmosphere as dense as Eve's.

There's Quantum Struts Continued. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/71030-Quantum-Struts-Continued-(2014-02-27)-Tweakables-KAS-grab-attach-tech-tree

Isogrid, as used on Skylab and other space things. http://femci.gsfc.nasa.gov/Isogrid/NASA-CR-124075_Isogrid_Design.pdf The exact dimensions of the Skylab grid are on the 42nd page from the start of that PDF.

Someone should do a Credible Sport plane with this mod. :-)

I built a rover with a docking port at the end of a DROMOMAN arm and used several quantum struts to brace its various parts so it could be used folded up for orbital docking. I built it to be set down on Mun then jettison the engines and fuel tanks, on which the struts were mounted. For your shuttle, mounting the struts permanently then assigning them to an action group would make a way to fix the arm in position during launch. The docking struts should also work, without the blue glow.

After various tests using all stock parts and with the 9 engine mount - the problem is definitely the 9 engine mount in both the ThunderMax and ThunderMaximus sizes. Somehow it causes the Kerbodyne inline decouplers to not function correctly and when mounted upside down so they can stay with top stacked tanks that get dumped, they act like stack separators, coming loose from both sides but putting a lot of force downward from their normally top side. For one test I put the tank drop stage as the first stage (so it wouldn't launch) and when triggered only one of the four Kerbodyne decouplers triggered, coming loose from the tank above it, but not activating the separatrons. So I hit the spacebar again and the separatrons on *just that tank* activated and flew the tank away. Three more hits on the spacebar triggered each of the other three Kerbodyne decouplers in turn *and* activated the separatrons attached to each tank. So, what the heck is with the cfg file in the first post that is causing this sequential triggering of four decouplers in a single stage, which ought to all go at the same time?

Latest MechJeb build = no issue (in one test flight) with ships lifted directly from the pad to orbit with HyperEdit. Popped one to a 71KM Kerbin orbit and MechJeb's maneuver planner executed a perfect 2 degree inclination change, which I could not get it to complete with the previous build. Also, with an all stock parts rocket, it correctly triggered two upside down Kerbodyne inline decouplers to dump tanks off the top of two Kerbodyne stacks mounted to the sides of a center Kerbodyne stack, on the same ship that wouldn't work with the previous build. What I have figured out is there seems to be a bug with the node symmetry on the bottom of the original stock quad coupler, one that gets worse when that part is scaled up. Or it may have something to do with the adding of five more nodes on the bottom. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/83448-I-have-a-stack-symmetry-issue-with-this-part I'll have to build some test rockets with the stock quad coupler, similar in design to my very large one that fails to stage correctly.

What I've figured out is that something in the cfg is not allowing decouplers hung off the bottom to correctly all trigger at once. It's an upsize of the same part in PolecatEZ's original ReStock pack. This one is for mounting 4 Kerbodyne, 1 Rockomax and 4 LV engines to the bottom of my upsized ThunderMaximus tanks. What happens is if four Kerbodyne engines are on the bottom of this, then four Kerbodyne inline decouplers are on the bottom of those and all put in the same stage they will not all trigger together. They go one at a time and things get messy and explody. Even worse is if more Kerbodyne tanks and engines are asparagus mounted to the sides of the tanks below the engines on the bottom of this adapter, they inherit the not going all together problem. I noticed a similar "round robin" effect in August 2013 with a stock quad coupler (these jumbo ones are just upsized massively from it) and used it as a feature for staging my KETM kinetic kill vehicles. To get the desired sequential staging I had to adjust the individual staging of the KETM decouplers to match whatever the numbering scheme is. The problem now is I *do not want* any such effect. There should not be such an effect when all the decouplers in a stage below this part are all put in the same stage - but it is acting as if each decoupler is in its own separate stage. Hmmm. Now that I think on it, I have had issues doing quad stack stages off the underside of this part in its stock form and in the Rockomax upsized version in original ReStock. Very explosive because only one decoupler triggers, the next stage's engines quickly destroy the other three decouplers and blow the lower tanks etc away. But on no other rockets has this trickled down to other decouplers on stacks mounted to the sides of stacks directly below the quad coupler. That's only shown up with the heavy Kerbodyne parts and the stock quad coupler upsized to work with them. Looks like a stock KSP bug that gets worse with larger and larger parts. Now how to fix it? Edit: Another thought is that it might have something to do with the additional five nodes on the bottom. I'll have to build a test rocket using the original quad coupler and see if it exhibits the same one at a time release of four decouplers in the same stage. PART { name = thunderBiQuatro-2 module = Part author = Squad, PolecatEZ, Galane MODEL { model = Squad/Parts/Structural/adapterLargeSmallQuad/model position = 0, 0, 0 scale = 3.25, 3.2, 3.25 rotation = 0, 0, 0 // parent = anotherModelTransform <---------Not necessary unless Second or subsequent part. // texture = model000 , Squad/Parts/Command/probeCoreOcto/model000 // texture = model001 , Squad/Parts/FuelTank/fuelTank2-2/model001 } scale = 1.72 rescaleFactor = 1.0 // --- node definitions --- // definition format is Position X, Position Y, Position Z, Up X, Up Y, Up Z node_stack_top = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 3 node_stack_bottom01 = 1.25, -1.4, 1.25, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 3 node_stack_bottom02 = 1.25, -1.4, -1.25, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 3 node_stack_bottom03 = -1.25, -1.4, 1.25, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 3 node_stack_bottom04 = -1.25, -1.4, -1.25, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 3 node_stack_bottom05 = 0, -1.4, 0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 2 node_stack_bottom11 = 0, -1.15, 2, 0.0, 1.0, 0, 2 node_stack_bottom12 = 0, -1.15, -2, 0.0, 1.0, 0, 2 node_stack_bottom13 = 2, -1.15, 0, 0.0, 1.0, 0, 2 node_stack_bottom14 = -2, -1.15, 0, 0.0, 1.0, 0, 2 stackSymmetry = 3 TechRequired = veryHeavyRocketry entryCost = 8800 cost = 26600 category = Propulsion subcategory = 0 title = ThunderMaximus-Rocko 4x4 Adapter manufacturer = AeroKerbin Thunder Division description = Ideally, designed for 4 Kerbodybe-sized engines and 4 smaller gimballing engines plus one Rockomax size engine in the middle in close quarters. Includes built-in torque support at a lot of extra weight. The engineers (and janitors) at every other aerospace firm on Kerbin had the same thing to say about this component, but what they said is mostly un-mentionable in polite company. attachRules = 1,0,1,1,0 mass = 7.5 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.2 minimum_drag = 0.3 angularDrag = 2 crashTolerance = 600 maxTemp = 2900 fuelCrossFeed = True breakingForce = 1e37 breakingTorque = 1e37 MODULE { name = ModuleReactionWheel PitchTorque = 38 YawTorque = 38 RollTorque = 38 RESOURCE { name = ElectricCharge rate = 0.6 } } }

IR .16 already has that with the Tweak Scale system. Quite nice how it drastically reduces inventory size. Sirkut is still working on it. IR .15 already broke both in flight and saved ships. The persistent and quicksave files can be edited to fix any ship *you have not flown* but saved ships won't load or will cause strange things to happen if you try to load them with IR parts from an older version. I had to open in notepad the one craft file I had with IR parts then delete all the IR parts' sections and the parts attached to them. Then I was able to load it into VAB and attach the new .16 (pre release) parts and save it. For many crafts it would be easier to setup KSP .23 with all your mods to load and remove the old IR parts - but I only had the one ship so I didn't want to go to all that effort which would have included downloading KSP .23 again.

With a center tank and others around it, where the engines and/or tanks are different, run a line OUT from the center tank to each of the side tanks, and a line IN to the center tank from each of the side tanks. All the fuel and oxidizer drains evenly from all those tanks and runs out at the same time. Quite useful when the rocket can't have all the same engines - each attached to exactly the same fuel volume - in a stage. That log is from a flight with all the inline decouplers right side up. The pastebinned craft file has some Kerbodyne ones upside down. (Later I'll make an all stock parts craft in similar fashion to fly in unmodded KSP to see if MechJeb still won't trigger them.) For the upside down decouplers, that's for dropping tanks off the tops of the side mounted tanks to shed weight. Same concept as just having a tank without an engine mounted to a radial decoupler. (Except for fuel lines being unable to cross inline decouplers so either the line has to go diagonally to another tank or a small hardpoint stuck to the decoupler and two fuel lines to feed around the decoupler.) That's always worked with any inline decoupler, with mechjeb or manual triggering, until the Kerbodyne one. They're heavy parts and it'd help a bunch to tip them off with the upper fuel tanks. I also have used upside down decouplers to drop docking ports that were used for in orbit assembly, but those get manually triggered with space bar or by right clicking the part. Here's one of my early uses of inline couplers upside down. The upermost orange tanks feed into the rat's nest below then when they're empty they are dropped along with the decouplers. Much safer for the rest of the rocket than having free roaming stack separators flying about and possibly getting stuck. depot-on-pad by g_alan_e, on Flickr

I set the log to be off with Launcher and in settings.cfg it has VERBOSE_DEBUG_LOG = False so why is it still chugging out a huge output log all the time? It really slows the game down when I'm flying a huge collection of parts.

Here's an odd problem. Third stage (of a lot of stages, mostly in the lander) doesn't all decouple at once. Log file https://anonfiles.com/file/35cdd4a00d9b0779b2c482856b06f11e I have four tanks go first, then four side mounted boosters, then five inline. That stage uses four of the Kerbodyne decouplers and one Rockomax. They all eventually trigger but it's a pretty hairy time until all five go and the next five engines activate. During this flight, one shed the cowling then sat there for a while before it came loose and activated the upper engine. Prior to this flight, I had the four Kerbodyne decouplers for dropping the tanks upside down so they'd go with the tanks. Works great with other inlines but on this rocket they wouldn't trigger, nor would the seperatrons with them - but once the tanks were empty the decouplers would destruct one by one and the tanks would just drop and sit on top of the lower tanks. So last night I flipped them right side up and MechJeb still wouldn't trigger them but in this flight they worked properly. I was hoping the same for the other problem stage but nope, still has the problem. I have fuel pipes looped out and back* from the smaller center tank (with a mainsail) to the outer four Kerbodyne tanks and engines. Never had a problem with such arrangements to make a parallel stage of disparate tanks and engines all run out of fuel together so they can all be dropped together. Anyway, there's the log, started from empty, for interested persons to study. *Not around a full circle. I did that not long after I first started with KSP and the result was the fuel and oxidizer did not drain evenly. I could modify the rocket, remove the lander, so it'd only need the last release of Stretchy SRB/Tanks and ReStock Reloaded. Then hopefully the glitch stays so others can see if it does it. OK, here we go. Flipped the outermost Kerbodyne decouplers upside down and sho'nuff, MechJeb will not trigger them. Also, the third stage doesn't go right either. http://pastebin.com/m7h4CUsN The test flight was quite entertaining. The destructing decouplers took out two of the side boosters, which reduced the thrust to the point where when the surviving pair dropped, they destroyed two of the inner engines, which left it with even less thrust. So now the rocket is flying sideways. The next stage's exploding failure took out two engines on one side so I got a nice Catharine Wheel fireworks display all the way down to the ocean. Mods required, just ReStock Reloaded, Stretchy SRB and MechJeb with a Module Manager patch or put the AR202 or eye pod on.

That engine pivot would also be useful for swinging engines from aft facing to forward facing for retro thrust