jamis

I think the confusion stems from the use of "ton". The "t" in KSP is actually a "tonne", or "metric ton", which equals 1,000 kg. Thus, 0.094t == 94kg, which Google handily translates to approximately 207lb. NASA tells us (here) that a human space suit weighs about 280lbs "on the ground", with no one in it. If we round things a bit and say a Kerbal (at about 1m tall) is more or less half the height of a human (because, you know, most of us are fully 2m tall), and supposing that mass scales 2x faster than height, we can say that a Kerbal space suit weighs 1/4 of what a human space suit weighs, or about 70 lbs (23.5kg). Subtracting the kerbal suit weight from the total weight (94kg - 23.5kg) we get 70.5kg as the mass of a bare kerbal, or about 155lbs. So, yeah. Whatever kerbals are, they're dense, but that would follow, given that the gravity of their tiny planet somehow manages to be 1g!

Have you ever wondered just how fast that kerbal was going? Or how high it was over the lunar landscape? Or tried--unsuccessfully--to judge when to fire your jetpack so as to slow your reckless ascent safely? Maybe it's just me. At any rate, I finally figured out how to scratch that itch, by adding (limited) MechJeb functionality to EVA'd kerbals. Try it yourself, and let me know what you think. It's a pretty trivial module (it just adds MechJebCore to kerbalEVA), but perhaps there's more it could be doing? Also, as I said, it is LIMITED: most MechJeb features will not work, but the info windows (at least) work great! Also, it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: this won't work at all unless you also have MechJeb installed. Download it here: http://jamisbuck.org/files/EVAMechJeb-20140220-0.zip And because pictures: (Note: I finally could see exactly what an EVA'd kerbal weighs, too: 0.094t!) (Source is included in the download. License is MIT: http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

Thanks, Phenom Anon X! This will be very helpful.

For my first KSP video, I've made a 25 minute voyage from launch to splashdown of the Apollo 4 mission, using the Real Solar System and a host of other realism mods. It should be noted that it's not intended to be an accurate recreation of Apollo 4 -- more of a mission inspired by that flight. I intend to do a series of others, with Apollo 5 next, all leading up to the inevitable manned landing on the Moon. Enjoy!

Gawin, So far, that happens because you don't have Java installed (or installed in a way that the bundler needs). My recommendation is to go to https://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp and download and install Java (even if you've already got it installed), and then see if that helps things at all. If it does not help, you'll need to open a command prompt, change to the folder where you installed the bundler, and run the batch file manually. If you need instructions for how to do that, let me know and I'll be happy to be more explicit. Sorry for the problems.

@sjgold, the simplest "solution" I've found for this is to just go and download/reinstall Java. I'm only vaguely familiar with Windows setups, but I suspect that the Java apps you've got installed aren't relying on the command-line, and so perhaps a Java install was done that didn't include command-line setups. (If anyone is more familiar with Windows+Java than me, please clarify this! Especially, I'd love to know if there's something I can do with the bundler that would eliminate this confusion.)

@sjgold, can you try the following: Open a command prompt change to the directory where you installed the bundler run the .bat file from that directory What error message is printed to the terminal when the batch file runs? Sorry for the wrinkles. Hopefully this one proves straightforward to iron out.

I added two alternate manifest files to the OP: one for the v6-pre1 release of "Real Solar System" (with the actual map of Earth, instead of Kerbin), and one for the beautiful Alternis Kerbol mod. I hesitate to get into the business of making lots of alternate manifest files, because there's no way I'll be able to maintain them, but maybe these get can others inspired to try their hand.

Re: B9, if someone who's actually set up B9 wouldn't mind helping out, I wouldn't mind adding it to the bundler. One of the benefits of having a bundler is being able to centralize and standardize the "fiddly bits", so it seems like it might be a pretty good fit. But since I've never so much as installed it myself, I might not be the best person to have a go at making it work in the bundler. Also, re: procedural wings, I'll see about adding those, too.

@tocooljim, oops! Thanks for catching that. I've got that fixed now, and also added the fuel balancer mod.

@tocooljim - done. The alternate RSS configs are now available to select, as is the Kerbal ISP Difficulty Scaler. (I'm going to have to start rethinking how I've got the mods categorized...it's starting to feel kind of arbitrary.) @MedievalNerd - thanks! I'd really appreciate that!

@tocooljim, good suggestion. Now that the bundler is maturing, I'll see about getting those alternate configs working. The ISP difficulty scalar is a good one, too.

Whew! Another update. Sorry these are coming so fast, but I think we're approaching the level of polish I envisioned for this. You'll need to grab the latest in order to take advantage of the mods I added. Please let me know if you find anything broken!

Note that I don't use all the mods that the bundler supports (like FASA), so even when a patch is released, I may or may not even notice. Please don't be shy about bringing these things up, because there are a LOT of mods involved, and I'm bound to miss announcements.

Ooh, I'll think on that! I love what you've done so far with RftS. I'm learning a ton, even if it is an alternate history. Makes me want to dig more into what *really* happened!

Aw, shucks thanks! Of course, 99% of the credit goes to NathanKell and the authors of the other mods--I just wanted to make it easier for people to experiment with them. Selfishly, I'm hoping that if it gets easier to set up, more people will post mission reports and Youtube videos of RSS-based missions. I love reading/watching that stuff.

Hmm! Yeah, see, the "java is not recognized" error is usually because java isn't installed, or isn't installed correctly. Would you mind trying a (re)install of Java? You can download it here: https://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp.

Ah, I see. Make sure you're in the real-solar-system-20140211-2 folder itself when you run the batch file, otherwise (I suspect) it won't be able to find the jar files and other utilities it depends on. Let me know how it goes!

@Phenom, that's really odd. I had that happen once while testing on a Windows machine, and it was because java wasn't installed...but you've confirmed that's not the case for you. So! How familiar are you with the Windows command prompt? The best way to test this would be to open a command prompt, change to the directory where you installed the bundler, and then try to run the batch file from there. If something is broken, hopefully it'll show you an error message. My best guess, right now, is that for some reason Windows isn't able to find where java is installed. Also, you said you "removed the java command among other things" -- you might want to reinstall the bundler before doing anything else, to be safe. Notepad doesn't display the contents of the batch file very well, but I (and others) have tested it on Windows, and it does work, so removing things from that file will only make things worse (unless you know exactly what you're doing). I don't know what your comfort level is with the command prompt, but if you do need more explicit instructions, let me know and I'll do my best to provide them. Sorry this is such bumpy going!

Great list, usulrasolas. I've got Kethane in the queue already, but it's requiring a lot of config tweaks to make usable in RSS, and I haven't been able to find anyone that's already done it. I've almost got it mostly done, and then I'd also like to add Extraplanetary Launchpads (which isn't on the list yet for the same reason). The next version of the bundler will hide all non-default mods, by default, but you can easily change the filter to show all recommended mods, or all available mods. I'm hopeful this will keep the list from overwhelming newcomers to RSS, while still allowing power users to trick out their install however they want. I'll take a look at those mods you're using and see about adding them to the list. Thanks again!

Ah, thanks for the clarification. I'll get that cleaned up tomorrow--should be easy to tweak just by updating the manifest.

Those multiple ModuleManagers are intentional, but maybe my understanding is wrong. The ModuleManager.dll is named for its version, so that multiple different ModuleManager versions can coexist. Thus, if a module requires ModuleManager 1.5, and another requires 1.6, both get the API they need. If I'm mistaken, though, and the duplicates are actually undesirable, it's easy enough to tweak the manifest file to eliminate them. I'd be happy to do that, if necessary.

@Jwam, thanks! @usulrasolas, I'd love to see your full list of "essential" mods. It's pretty easy to update the master list, and as long as we can prevent the list from overwhelming new users, I'm all for adding useful utilities. (I'll probably start needing help keeping the list up-to-date, though!) And if you want to start building entirely different bundles (for the PlanetFactory worlds that are sprouting up everywhere, for instance), the README at https://github.com/jamis/KSP-RealSolarSystem-Bundler talks about how to make that work. I'd be happy to answer any questions about the process, too, if I got to hand-wavey in the README.

Huge thanks to usulrasolas for being my guinea pig as I worked to fix an issue with spaceport downloads on 64-bit windows. If you see "IOError" messages when using the bundler to download some mods (like FAR), please grab the latest version of the bundler and try again. Cheers!

Thanks for the suggestion, sjgold! The bundler actually just builds a zip file, which you can then unpack to whichever game folder you wish. Eventually, I might make it so the app will just build out to whatever directory you specify, but for now the zip makes it possible to toss the mods wherever.