Bishop149

I installed some part mods, and found they pushed me over the RAM limit in short order after I started playing so I promptly removed them again. Not THAT excited about the monetisation of KSP that will come with 0.24 but the 64-bit upgrade will be VERY welcome indeed.

Ok, so I quite like the sound of the "Science" gameplay mode and would probably like my existing games to stay in that mode and start off a fresh new career with all the new stuff. Any word on if that will be possible? What mode will existing career games get stuck into? Or will we get a choice? That would be nice.

I finally got a Magnetoplasmadynamic ship powered by microwaves (Interstellar) working. As long as it maintains line of sight to Kerbin it has up to 22GW of power available to it. The remaining DeltaV, TWR and Thrust figures post mun landing are all rather impressive, and 22GW might be a slight overkill Now I need to set the same up in the Jool system, the power generator weighs 190 tons . . . getting that there will be fun. . .

"Isn't that a little too radioactive?" And related: "RTGs on manned missions! You're crazy!!"

I Finally unlocked "Basic Fusion" on the Interstellar tech tree, 3000 science is a lot for one node. . . but hey it's high tech stuff. I need another 3000 for the next step . . Gonna put a Fusion plant in orbit but assembing my Fisson plant from lots of bits was a pain in ass and even strutted up it wobbles quite a bit, so I'm gonna go for orbit in a single launch this time. Which means I need a much bigger lifter. . . current best is ~60 tons, thus far my new one has shown it can do 175 tons, aiming for 200 tons which the current design might make.

Today upon arriving at Eve I realised that by dual purpose Lander / Impactor science probe lacks a control module on the "Lander" Section. It will therefore have to become a: "Impactor that desperately tries to run airborne experiments and transmit all the results off before its smashes hard into the landscape. . . . "

I'm still getting to grips with Interstellar and started playing around with microwave power transmission. I set up 3 relays round Kerbin and I must admit I'm quite proud of how they turned out. . . not quite a perfect 120 degree angle between them (all in the region of 120-122) but damn close. First time I've tried such precision placement of multiple co-orbiting satellites and it worked out well!

Thanks! V.Helpful. For asthestic reasons I'll stick with my footballs for the relays in Kerbin SOI but will cut down the weight for those I send further afield!

I've just started to play about with beaming power around using microwave transceivers. Does it matter what direction the array part is pointing when its sending / receiving / relaying power? I suspect not and that its only the angle of the transmitting craft to the receiving craft that matters. None the less I am currently designing relays that look a bit like giant footballs that have an array pointing almost every possible direction just in case, I might keep with these because they are pretty but it would be nice to know if its actually necessary!

Yeah I'd like to know which mod those clouds the rocket goes up through are from? I got the point in my interstellar career game where I can start collecting Anti-Matter. . . . I won't have anything to DO with it for quite some time however.

Quick question. I had a go at the following as suggested in the wiki: I was trying with a 1.25m "Sethlans" Fission Reactor and the Direct Conversion generator is producing no power. I suspect this might be because I have no unlocked "Basic Nuclear Fusion" yet and thus my reactors are not upgraded to "Dusty Plasma" as yet. Do the Sethlans series produce no charged particles at all prior to this upgrade? The wiki implies the upgrade merely increases the proportion.

After having installed Interstellar I started a new career game. . . seemed like the thing to do. I forgot how irritating the lack of batteries / solar panels is early on. . . when I finally manged to get Z100's I strapped 9 of them onto a ship for a mere mun flyby. . . it wasn't enough. I now have Ox-STAT's. . . thank god. Edit: I also miss the hell out of the small cubic octagonal strut . . . that thing is the single most useful part EVER and is WAAAAAAAY up the tech tree for some reason.

Today I installed interstellar. . . I am collecting antimatter rather terrified its all gonna blow up. . .

Ok I think its not in the bloody save file at all, the is a separate .cfg file called tree.cfg I have copied this from the new game to the old one (which didn't have one of these files at all). . . loading now to see if it works. Hmmm it appears to have worked fine. . . Methinks the Wiki instructions my be out of date, perhaps someone should get on that.

Trying to start with KSPI and am trying to follow the advice from the wiki about how to get the tech tree to work right in an exsiting career game Done that and can't work out which one the " One of the first lines in the file" is actually the one I need. Its certainly not obvious, no variable labelled "techtree" or anything . . . a LITTLE more detail in the instructions might be good! Gonna have a play . . . if I find out then I'll post up the solution.

I smacked one retrograde into the Mun. . . I think the final impact velocity was over 1000m/s . . Not a lot left

Exactly, this is pretty much what I've started to do already, I have interplanetary sages dock with large transfer stations to refuel and then send up new modules / crew to attach / populate them often via SSTO launch systems.

I'm Kerbal death adverse . . . I have lost a total of two kerbs (not including Kraken attacks) in my career game. I test the hell out of everything before I stick a Kerb in it. Anyway the two I lost: 1) Rolling down the runway having landed an SSTO at KSP following a successful mission in orbit. . . .I applied the brakes, this cause the nose to pitch down by the tiniest of tiny fractions. . . which the SAS (which as still on) MASSIVELY overcompensated for and for some reason decide to introduce a small roll too. Wing tip hit ground and there followed a chain reactions of bits falling off and exploding killing poor Doodmund Kerman! Lesson learned: SAS OFF before brakes ON. 2) Something random (I can't remember what) happened which really pissed me off, I uncharacteristically rage-aborted the mission. . . complete with Kerb.

As far as I'm concerned the two mods you have installed are doing little more than adding functionality to the game that should be there by default. When / If KSP ever sees a "final release" version I'd be VERY surprised if Squad didn't just nick these two and make them part of the game proper. If you want to stick with merely "add things that should be there anyway" type mods I'd recommend Universe Replacer. . . it pretties everything up no end and just makes KSP a more pleasant place to be. If you want to delve deeper I like KAS. . . . mainly for the fact that you can do the following three things all of which are VERY useful. - As long as there is a Kerb. around you can quickly and easily transfer fuel on the ground without faffing around with trying to align docking ports . . . . God the time I spent trying to design rovers / bases / planes etc all with docking ports EXACTLY the same height off the ground. Not sad to see the end of that. - You can build struts on EVA. . . . finally no more horrendously wobbly docking port connections! - You have become hugely unlucky and random shadows from your ship have blocked all your solar panels and you now have no electric charge left! Abort mission? Wait and hope the shadow might shift if you leave it long enough? Nope as long as there's a Kerb. around you can pop on EVA and move the bloody solar panel into the light..

My main uses of SSTO's are also focused around Laythe, for the simple reason that I want to be able to get to and from Low Laythe Orbit by adding (as little as possible) fuel alone . . . rocket launch systems than ditch most of their mass along the way are fine for messing around in Kerbins SOI. . . for long term use anywhere else they are totally impractical. Due to the relative lack of solid land based Kethane deposits on Laythe I am currently designing as system to ship it from Pol if needed, plan involves: - Reusable rocket / miner for the actual mining and shuttling between Pol and Laythe orbit. - Large capacity storage / transfer / refinery station in Laythe Orbit. - SSTO that can launch to the station fill up with 8000 units of Kethane and land it safely on Laythe's surface . . . all whilst using as little fuel as possible, exercise would be pointless if the SSTO required more Kethane to refuel than it could ship down from Laythe orbit.

Meh, try getting one into orbit around something not in Kerbins SOI?

I have an absolute ton of stuff arriving in the Jool system over the last Kerbin year or so. Below are some highlights. Shift change at Pol Base, the chaps currently manning it have been there years and years: They aren't going home however, they have been reassigned to the burgeoning Laythe Base site, a rover was sent to pick them up. Managed to get their craft down almost intact, only the bit thats upright was actually designed to land. . . the remaining fuel in the the shuttle might come in handy when siphoned off. The moon Laythe, now has its own moon . . . kinda, little class B roid I have pushed there to act as the core of the Laythe orbital transfer station. And my single stage to Laythe spaceplane has arrived . . . its running on fumes by now though. Very small cross section of the stuff arriving there. . . I'll post up a full picture of the Laythe colony when I've landed everything.

The search for a reusable version is not going well. The spin horizontal with radial rockets idea doesn't really work. . . craft is so bottom heavy (as it has to be to sink) as soon as you cut the rockets it just falls vertical again. Sometimes they float but it isn't reliable. I have also tried Geschosskopf's idea of thrusting a buoyant craft down and latching onto the bottom with grapples but is doesn't seem to work. The craft has to be only JUST buoyant or the jet won't be strong enough to push it down, I reckon that once the Kethane tank is full it will just lose this little remaining buoyancy Also I found you can't fire grapples underwater . . . they just shoot upward as soon as you fire them, even when weighed down with 4 anchors! You don't NEED to fire a grapple in order for it to grab but it does need to hit the ground pretty fast. . . faster than I can dive my probe apparently. So, fall down and thrust up? This did work as I noted in the post above, however directing ascent towards the surface rig is pretty much impossible. . . a ton of SAS modules, control surfaces (I even tried RCS) does nothing to give you any significant control over your heading upon ascent and its very unlikely you'll come up directly under the surface rig to grapple it. Remaining ideas: - Thrust up and fire grapples in all directions upon breaking the surface, hope full at least one will hit the nearby surface rig and latch. (probably best remaining idea) - Empty tanks seem more buoyant than full ones. . . perhaps my "weight" can be ditched by burning fuel. . . . although if it costs more in fuel than I can make from the kethane it won't really be worth it! In other news I have made a 16,000 unit Kethane version of the original non-reusable probes which should work, and designed a rig to use if I want to cheat and just extend the length of winch cables!

Ok so my probes aren't reusable My first idea was to make a jet powered sub to sink but able to thrust horizontally through the water and tilt up and down. Although jet engines work perfectly well even with all the relevant bits submerged (I'll just pretend its some kind of water turbine instead!) this didn't work. I was lowering the prototype sub into the water with its tank horizontal. . . . and the damn thing would not sink no matter how many anchors I put on it. Just to test an idea I lowered exactly the same sub into the water with the tank vertical. . . . sank fine. So clearly attitude of the parts (cross sectional area?) has something to do with sinkingness. Also once sinking vertically I couldn't seem to significantly change direction at all. . . even under thrust. So my next idea is kind of the opposite of yours, make something that sinks (but only just) and then try and thrust it with jets back to the surface. I was also going to try and grapple the floating platform to hold it on the surface This does work. . . well all except the last bit. I tried to come up directly under the floating platform to shoot the grapples straight up into it but never managed it, always came up a bit off from the platform (due to the ascent having a very slight tilt and having bounced a bit sideways on the bottom) and I had almost no control over the direct of ascent. I might see if control surfaces will help with this but I doubt it SAS modules don't help so it would seem that when moving up and down in the water column there is little you can do to gain directional control. Just before I left KSP this morning I had an idea . . . I can perhaps exploit the apparent difference between vertical and horizontal sinkyness. I did one quick test where I sank a bit, thrusted up with a jet and then upon breaking the surface fired a single radially mounted rocket to try and tip it horizontal. This was very promising. . . .whilst I didn't manage to tip it fullyhorizontal the thing that sank did actually float once the rocket was out of oxidizer! But it wasn't SUPER convincing! As you can in the background see the unbalanced thruster on one side of the diver was pretty disastrous for the rig, it fell over, but still managed to deploy! To fix this and perhaps improve the result I will add another upside down radial thruster on the other side, to both balance it and increase the rotation force! I have high hopes this might work . . . . . once I get it floating horizontally I can use the rig to winch it back vertical and drop it again.

So . . underwater bases. Firstly. . will a Kerbal sink if carrying a one ton anchor to him? Well of course he will! I then made a very very simple base out of a MkII lander can + some legs, a ladder, a few RTG's for power, some lights and enough anchors to make it sink. Here it is being deployed and sitting on the bottom. Here is the IVA view, turns out you can't see the water. My plan was to EVA a Kerb, and immediately have him grab an anchor off a holder so he could wander round the bottom. This didn't work, turns out that the Kerbs buoyancy rips him from the ladder and sends him surfacewards the second he EVA's, so no chance to grab the anchor. I got the shot below by dropping the Kerb and the base separately. Once on the sea bed he can walk around, take samples, plant flags etc. . . he can also climb the ladder and board the base, although his anchor falls to the ground when you do. I took a "surface sample" from the water. . . dunno if this is the only way to get this or if standing in the shallows would do the same. I hadn't got this sample before anyway So putting a base on the sea bed and descending and ascending Kerbs to it is not a problem. . . although once they board the base they ain't going anywhere but back up again afterwards!