xtoro

As much wood as a woodchuck would chuck wood if a woodchuck could chuck wood. But really, I don't know, that just popped in my head lol

Yup, Atomic Age which is a mod with just 3 nuclear engines. I hate the stock one for many purposes. These 3 have better uses.

Things from 1-2 years ago? That's not nostalgia, http://users.compaqnet.be/ShadowSoft/ <-- THAT is nostalgia. An old crappy page from 2001 that I lost access to and could no longer edit. It's from a 3D engine and game I was developing with a friend near the end of my college days. I was already an old programmer by then and getting into advanced 3D graphics and physics simulations. I tried finding my old GeoCities page from 1994 or 95 but it seems GeoCities no longer exists

Only things I look at is the join date and if the post count is over 20. Reps don't mean anything to me. Someone can post 4-5 nice looking ships in the spacecraft exchange and get 1000 reps. Someone else can post good mission logs and have 1000 reps, but suck at actually making ships. In other words, the reps don't mean anything in particular except for the fact that for some random reason, someone clicked on the little star icon...

Next challenge : Try playing KSP with a USB Guitar Hero guitar....

I've had similar happen to me in the air with landing gear retracted, just using airbrakes. One of my planes gets pulled upwards, another always gets pulled to the right, every time to the right, even though it's perfectly symmetrical... I have a feeling it's not only a landing gear braking problem, but braking in general.

I for one welcome our new aero and atmo overlords.

Perhaps I should clarify that this is to add a bit of fun and excitement to the game, not to add realism... Just random small custers of small asteroids is all I'm talking about... I guess I'm running out of fun things to do.

Yes but KSP isn't all about being completely realistic. Squad even said it's a game first, a simulator second. There's tons of things that aren't like they are in real life (planet mass vs gravity, atmospheric heights etc etc) but it makes the game playable and fun. The mod I'm requesting would just add more fun and challenge to missions. KSP isn't meant to be taken so seriously.

No, I think the turbojet should have more punch to it. To me it seems more like a game-balancing thing. Since the RAPIER has 2 modes and can work in space, why would you also make it faster than the turbojet? If it was, nobody would ever use the turbojet... Just like if the nuclear engine has the same thrust as a poodle, nobody would ever use a poodle... But that's just my 0.02 m/s....

OMG! I have a Logitec joystick that I used a few times but I was never a huge fan. I never even THOUGHT to use my 360 controller! I'm SO excited to try this!!! *runs into the basement to get his XB360 USB thingy*

Thanks! It was actually a joy to fly and glided down easily. The hardest part was probably trying to slow down because braking doesn't work to well Thank ya! I really wanted to come up with something reusable and easy to fly and use. The newest version of the Atlas is fantastic. I never thought I could get the SpacePlane to 85km apoapsis using only the Atlas, but it worked out great

I had a great flying mission with my plane. Didn't notice a huge difference except that braking is almost useless now. Took off from the Kerbin runway, flew to Duna, landed, planted flag, took off back into orbit, back to Kerbin, landed back on Kerbin. Highlights: My entire mission to Duna and back using 100% reusable parts can be found here

I think it's fine the way it is!

This may have been requested, but my search only came up with people requesting fixed asteroid belts added into the game. I think mine may be a twist on what happens. If you're as old as me, you may remember the old Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy and similar games where you walk around on the world map and have random encounters with enemies. This is kinda like that. I'd like a mod that can spawn asteroid fields randomly. But I don't mean a fixed belt. Here's how it would play out: You're flying your interplanetary mission to Duna, Laythe, Dres, wherever... You leave Kerbin SoI and start time warping towards the SoI of your destination. The asteroid field mod might randomly place an asteroid field somewhere along your path. As you timewarp close to the field, your timewarp goes down to 1x speed, and a warning message pops up that there's an asteroid field dead ahead, and you're about to plow right through it! The asteroids should be somewhat close together (maybe something that can be changed in settings, along with number of roids and sizes) and their paths are all in orbit around the same body as your ship (likely the sun) with near and direct intercepts with your orbital path. Once you make your way through the field and you're clear to start time warping again, the mod would remove all the asteroids from space to prevent KSP having to track more and more objects every time you encounter a field. This would radically change how you need to design your ships! No longer can you just have some hulk of an interplanetary stage that takes 2 minutes to rotate and has nothing but a super low TWR nuke. Your ship would need to be able to somewhat maneuver itself relatively fast in order to avoid the roids. Or alternatively, you can place engines facing sideways on the sides of the ship to do emergency lateral burns. Or, you can build up some structural shielding and make your ship be able to withstand hitting the smaller asteroids, hopefully without breaking! This would also stop the "timewarp to before SoI and go make a coffee" gameplay. And lastly, it would be the most exciting way to fly your ship manually in space! Like I said before, this isn't just a "please add an asteroid belt" request. This is a functional intelligent mod that adds some random gameplay and challenges to any interplanetary mission. You could visit several planets and never encounter an asteroid field. But that one time where you're low on Delta-V and trying to get home, BAM! You hit a field and have to do some maneuvers, using up some of your precious last drops of fuel, or try using only MonoPropellant to get through it alive. The key to my request is: RANDOMNESS

So I'm not playing career just yet, I prefer Science or Sandbox. However, I'm coming up with ship designs and ideas to get to places for free. Mods I use are MechJeb, which I prefer over KER for my own reasons, and FMRS which lets you recover the jettisoned Atlas by controlling it until it lands, and then go back to the separation time and continue using the main ship. It basically lets you do more than one thing at once, but one thing at a time. I also use Quantum Struts to allow the Space Plane to get re-strutted every time it docks with the Roamer. And finally I'm using Atomic Age for the nuclear engines. The stock one didn't cut it, I needed a smaller one and a bigger one, and Atomic Age delivered I first had to come up with refueling logistics in space using Minmus as a mining resource. I have a tanker in orbit around Minmus which I've filled using this VTOL/rover/miner/refinery: It's effective and only takes a few trips to fill it (More info and pics of it here) Here's the Roamer being launched. Because of the offset aerodynamic shape and CoM, I had to offset the engine on the coupler and reinforce it with struts. It works! Also note that the Roamer fuel tanks are mostly empty which brings its weight down to under 60t. The launcher that gets the Roamer in space is the only thing that's lost. Since the Roamer will remain in space for all future missions, this is a one-time loss. Using slightly angled fins on stages makes them naturally pull away from the center stack without needing Sepratrons. As you can see in the image above and below, I had to install a brace on the center docking port that reinforces the weaker MK2 tanks. Winglets on a nosecone that are attached to the Roamer's front docking port made a difference in control during launch. With the aero overlay enabled, you can see them pulling their weight. The last stage has Sepratrons because of the high speed at this point. I had first tried angling the fins more but this caused drag and instability, and broken fins. Separating nosecone, ditching launch vehicle and moving on to Minmus to top up the tanks. Docked with the fueling station parked in a 100km orbit. Now it's time to get the Space Plane here. This is the first real flight of the Atlas JetPack after several dozen failed test flights. The Atlas is the top part with the wings at the rear. It carries with it the Space Plane "Happy Rooster 2", which is a non-atmospheric version of Happy Rooster, named so after its vertical canard on top of the cockpit (Removed in version 2, but placed on the Atlas). Seen in the pic below is the Atlas' recovery method. Lots of chutes. This lets the Atlas slowly fall back down into the ocean for recovery as the Rooster goes into orbit. Just barely past the KSC islands and already burning up! 42KM's up and already flying at over 2000m/s with an Apoapsis of 85KM's, the Atlas says goodbye. From here it's a quick switchover to the Atlas to deploy the chutes and land in the ocean for recovery. After which, I use FMRS to go back to the moment of separation and continue flying the Rooster (Sorry, didn't take screenshots, but it was boring anyways lol). Coasting.... 100x100ish orbit, still over 2000 dV leftover. Off to Minmus Disconnected the brace from the bottom of the Roamer, which I should have done much earlier. Coming in to dock up under the Roamer, very, very, very slowly... Sloooooowwwwwllllly now..... And done! Refuel all the tanks, And off we go! Fell back down to Kerbin and ended up with a (near) perfect escape trajectory using lots of speed I picked up on the way down. To Duna! Circularizing! Disconnect from the Roamer, and down we go! Already have a couple of scanning probes in orbit, and a probe test lander which found some decent plane landing ground. After much braking a coasting, the target lander is in sight. There was no burning into the atmosphere at all. Overshot the target, but no matter, brake and glide.... Need to slow just above ground till I basically fall down onto the wheels. Still rolling, brakes suck, unlevel ground making it hard! Thankfully I put little landing gear on the wings, so nothing gets destroyed, I just roll on the wings Finally came to a stop! The ladder isn't long enough, so I retract the landing gear to get a Kerbal out and plant a flag. Success! Taking off was easy. Just a bit of Aerospike to get up to speed and then nukes for the rest. Still TONS of dV left, but dangerously low on MonoPropellant! Managed to dock with I think just over 3 units of MonoProp left! Time to go home. Coming in hot, but lots of dV left, so a long burn isn't a problem. Tadaa! Transferred some MonoProp from the Roamer to the Rooster for landing. Barus and Rodbur get to go home. The rest of the crew have to stay and man the Roamer in orbit until the next mission. 10KM peri outta do it! Lots of braking and level flying kept the heat down. Couldn't glide the whole way, needed a bit of boost to make it to shore. Nice and smooth, nice and slow... And the Rooster has landed! Now with the Roamer still in orbit, it's just a matter of sending up another Rooster with an Atlas JetPack, recover the Atlas when it lands, dock Rooster to Roamer, refuel at Minmus, and go on the next trip! From now on it's 100% reusable Cheers!

Thunder Storm! Nice! We're pretty much on the same page huh? lol Here's some rep!

That's a .... plane! Yeah I kinda went a different route with Atlas and Roamer. The Atlas Jetpack gets ditched and falls back down to the surface with chutes to be recovered. The Roamer is what brings you from planet to planet and never has to come back down to Kerbin. I'll be posting up an album soon of my first Duna mission with my spaceplane, the Happy Rooster EDIT: Here's my mission to Duna using the Atlas and Roamer, worked out great! With my latest tweaks, I manage to get the plane at a 42KM altitude doing over 2000m/s with an 85KM apoapsis by the time the Atlas runs out of fuel and decouples. At this point, the Space Plane is still full of fuel because it feeds off of the Atlas during launch.

I also noticed that closed intakes don't really make a difference and stopped closing them long ago.

I see there were some downloads but no comments here about it. Can someone that tries it out let me know what they think?

What you can do is install MechJeb if you're still having problems, and just watch how it does it a few times. That might help you out, then you can remove it.

Thanks all! I updated the craft so that you can now land the JetPack. I also found a mod that lets you land the JetPack, and then return and fly the spaceplane out of atmo (see above). OP updated with new info and craft download link. Actually this Atlas evolved from my first piggyback design, the Roamer: It's exactly what you said, an interplanetary engine to get the space plane to other planets. It uses the Atomic Age mod's Lightbulb nuclear engine and has over 5500 dV while towing the space plane. So I'll use the Atlas Jetpack to get into orbit, then dock with the Roamer and head to Duna or Laythe...

I like SATO Unless the parts can be recovered it's only good for sandbox or science mode. Going to bed, I'll upload the craft tomorrow.

So I don't know what this is or how I came up with it, or what to call it, but it works. TSTO maybe? (Two Stage To Orbit? But it's not 2 stages so...?) This is an evolution of my Roamer piggyback interplanetary transport system. Except with this, it can be launched from the runway on Kerbin. This allows me to send my spaceplane which doesn't have any jets into orbit from the Kerbin runway. Entire album: Once the jets run out of air, hit [9] to switch to ClosedCycle RAPIERs. Once the Jetpack is out of fuel, hit [0] to jettison the pack, which looks like so: Then the spaceplane is already at 60km apoapsis and 1300m/s, so all that's needed is to circularize using Aerospikes or Nervas. You do unfortunately lose the Jetpack's parts, but I think there's a mod out there that lets you recover stages, so you could attach chutes to it or something. Couple more tweaks and I'll post the upload in the next hour or so if anyone's interested. EDIT: I've reconfigured the Jetpack so that it can now land on its own: Because I added the MK2 probe core, landing gear and extra fuel, it takes a bit more coaxing to get out of the atmosphere due to the extra weight. However, now using this craft along with the Flight Manager for Reusable Stages mod, you can decouple the Jetpack, switch to it, land it, and then use FMRS to switch back to the spaceplane and get it into orbit. Ascent profile has changed due to the extra weight and I haven't figured it out yet. Launching tips: First disable crossfeed on the docking port! Hit the spacebar to start the jets and pull up (S on the keyboard) the entire way down the runway to keep you from drifting like crazy. While in flight, use the [2] action group to toggle the Aerospikes and get a bit of extra speed when you need it. After Jetpack separation, right-click the tanks on the spaceplane and turn on the o2 flow again. It's disabled so that the RAPIERs don't burn up the spaceplane's o2. Action Groups: [1] Toggle LANTERN nuclear engine on space plane [2] Toggle Aerospikes on space plane [9] Switch mode on RAPIERs [0] Decouple JetPack from SpacePlane. DOWNLOAD link from Mediafire Required mod : Atomic Age (For the nuclear engines on the space plane) Mod-less version will be uploaded soon, however, Atomic Age is the one mod everyone should have (only adds 3 nuclear engines).

Thanks! I like including some kind of living space for two reasons; realism, and having the ability to swap out crew members between different planets.