khyron42

I tend to go "all or nothing" on SRBs. My normal designs don't use them, but I'll sometimes make experimental SRB-only attempts (or SRB-only lower stages.) For small suborbital tests of landers eventually intended for the moons I'll sometimes use solids as the boost stage. Modern Rocketry got a big help from Robert Goddard, but he improved solid/powder rockets at the same time as he invented liquid ones. de Laval nozzles were needed to make either work well. Liquids have three main design advantages that I know of: - ease of shutdown. - burn control by proper fuel mix measurements is adjustable, rather than having to ensure the solid fuel is uniform enough to give the correct burn. - the fuel tank being separate from the combustion chamber, allowing the tank to be lighter. It only has to withstand fuel pressure, not combustion pressure. This is somewhat offset by the need for fuel pressurization, pumping, and other support equipment. On the other hand, they are much harder to design well, because they tend to rely on 10 different things all working perfectly, instead of 2 or 3. Rocketry history has been made time and time again with both types. Many unmanned launchers today use solids at some point in their stages, the shuttle and some proposed manned future launchers use them as first-stage additional boost, and the SpaceShip One & Two designs by Scaled Composites use a hybrid liquid oxidizer/solid fuel rocket for their manned launches. I'd say both can have a place in your KSP program even if you're trying to fly missions in a very non-Kerbal way! Along the same lines, if you're really serious about launch safety, keep track of your total number of launches and fatal ones. If you can manage fewer than 1 fatal accident per 70 launches, you're doing better than the shuttle did (2 out of 135.)

EDIT: Here's the merged save file, updating the OP in a few minutes to add everyone's new bases and new flights! ----- EDIT again: I had to delete it for now, needs more work. Zekes, you used the Altair lander from Industrial Flame and Explosions? The guy who made that mod has taken it down and told people they cannot redistribute it, so there's nothing we can do to save your ship. ----- Edit #3: We're back in business! see the OP for the merged & fixed persistence file. TheCardinal is up for launch!

Understood, and I hope it gets better soon! Zekes' turn!

Zekes, sorry if it wasn't clear. Those who already have NovaPunch installed can keep flying with it. Every time someone posts a save file, I'll check to see if any ships have gone missing (I do this anyway). If they have, I'll copy out the new ships that were added, and merge them into a save file that still had the missing ships intact. Then I'll upload that merged file as the OP persistent save and as a comment. The next guy can then fly from that save, with NovaPunch parts installed if he has them, without if he doesn't. That way, every ship that includes NovaPunch will still be there and people who have it installed already can keep adding ships with those parts. It's just to allow people who don't have it to fly turns too, for now.

For now, let's keep things moving with Option 2 - Radzaarty's up! Just ignore the error messages for NP parts; you'll lose a lot of the other ships, but it's still about a dozen ships out there. I tried it out and the error messages are annoying, I had to exit the tracking station and go back in because it got confused with so many missing craft, but you can always just launch.

On the NovaPunch issues, I'm thinking of three options - One, suspend flights for now. The licensing should be sorted out very soon. Two, continue flights without it. All ships that used the parts will vanish, but once the licensing is sorted out, I'll edit them back in. Three, a bit of roleplayish mayhem: Due to licensing issues, NovaPunch Industries executives panicked and activated the hidden self-destruct mechanisms in all parts they had shipped. The company apologizes for the damages, and will ensure that the self-destruct mechanisms are removed when the resume shipping parts after regaining the manufacturing rights." What do you think?

Sorry about the issues, TheCardinal! Earthpulse, I don't know if it was a mod or something else going strange. I'm just glad you weren't crashed into the other ships when I merged them in. I'm requesting another turn myself, too. Wildkittyv1 is cleared for launch!

I'm working all night tonight, but it'll be slow work. I'll install KSP and the latest save on a PC at work, fly my flight, and post it in the morning! ----- The OSIRIS (Octagonally Symmetrical The Rest Isn't An Acronym Just Sounded Cool) has joined Credge base. The launch configuration: TMI Burn: I parked in munar orbit and wait until Credge base was in sunlight, then dropped into a landing trajectory. Braking burn as I approach the site: Hovering near landing, using the RCS translate to fine-tune the landing location: While the rest of the crew finishes post-flight checklists, Nedson greets the new neighbors: Full gallery - 15 images Updated zipped persistence file Nutt007, it's your turn! Sign me up for another turn, to the second Minmus base. (DArkB0mb3rz22, I swear I'm not stalking you - just like the same places.)

Andrezado, the F1 key takes a screenshot from within the game rather than having to do the OS-level screenshot like you're doing currently. It will get saved to a "screenshots" folder inside your KSP folder. If you want to also hide the GUI within the game, F2 hides all GUI elements, F2 again will put them back.

I am really loving this - the ability to mine, refine, and resupply is something I was looking forward to! One oddity I've noticed (I apologize if this has already been discussed) is that the scanning map is kinda... upside-down. I have only tested scanning on Minmus so far, so this may be limited to there. Points scanned with negative latitudes show up in the upper half of the displayed map rather than the "southern" half. Also, there was a potential enhancement I was wondering about - could the kethane converter also refill MMI batteries or Zoxygene batteries with "energy" and "power" fuel types?

Since his flight was accidentally deleted, he's actually making a new request and can do the new base?

See, having played since 0.9, I'm more excited about the Kethane mod than anything else I've seen in a long time. Suggestions, and I apologize if they don't appeal or if you've already done these: - try for difficult landings. Put a powered lander down directly on a Kerbin mountain top or precisely targetted into a pre-selected steep valley, complete with hovering and translating to select exact landing spot, without using any mods/mechjeb. Try a grand tour three-stage lander (launch from kerbin, land on Mun; leave behind a lander stage there and launch the upper half, land on Minmus. leave behind a lander stage there and return to Kerbin.) - design craft with stock parts that can go to, say, a 10 million km orbit around Kerbol, circularize there, and then return to Kerbin afterwards. That last step is the hardest without using Mechjeb, but it can be eyeballed - I've done it back before orbit transition predictions were even added to the game!

My mistake, if so. I thought I'd seen some people refer to the munolith being in Silisko Crater, but it must have been "near Silisko Crater" instead. Instead, let me propose "Clarke Crater" - same origin, but a bit more back to the original, let us say!

Nice, deadly! I'd previously given the northern island of that chain the name South Island, good to see someone name the big island at last! I think both will need to go to polls eventually, but it's a good start.

There are several places on the forums where that's been called Silisko Crater. I like that name, since at the time Nova was a major part of the community (not a dev) and was the first to find the munolith there. I propose Silisko Crater as a second option for Kubrick Crater.

The save file in the OP has been fixed - somehow Dogon's and TheCardinal's stations and all of zekes' ships got deleted from the save file Earthpulse uploaded. They've been merged back in. All of the image links in the OP have been changed to clickable links, to limit image issues. TheCardinal, it's your turn!

I just finished a flight from Denver, bear with me - I'll do my flight and update the OP tonight. --- Mod added: ExPI, now that it's updated to include 0.16 EVA hatches on the airlock pod. Due to my design, I had to fly everything backwards; the ExPI airlock pod had to be upside down to work. Up was down, prograde was retrograde, madness reigned! The first two launch attempts flipped themselves over and plowed into the ground insisting that they were going straight up before I figured that out. Successful Launch: Immediately after Trans-Minmus Insertion burn: During landing approach, one of the many fixed cameras on board caught this view of the entire Kerbin/Mun/Minmus system. Stationary and hovering just before landing - the landing location was chosen to be as close to the hills as possible without losing line-of-sight to Kerbin. One of the crew poses for the fixed camera: I also circularized the orbit for MOSH - it's now in a 401.8 x 400.8 km orbit. Someone requested that when I launched it and this is the first turn I've had since then. Persistence file I'm still working on updating the OP, and it looks like I'm also going to have to do a persistence merge - somewhere along the way the Distant Observatory got deleted from the save file, and maybe other ships too. I'll have a fixed copy ready in a few hours.

Ok, with the new fuel bugs found, I'm not even sure how to update the results. I also wonder if this bug was a small factor in some of the earlier designs, but I doubt it since most of them were feeding inwards from two tanks towards 1 engine, instead of the other way around. Caroliano, the challenge accepts both 10 LF-T400 results, and "4000 fuel" results. 10 tank is preferred, but if there's a 4000 fuel result that's better than the current best 10 tank result for any category, I'll list it separately in parentheses.

I'll toss a "Wow!" and a "how does that even fly?" at both mathmavin's and Nao's designs. Nice outside-the-box thinking. I love the fact that both are also best in all three categories at the time they were posted.

No worries, wildkitty. Real life always is more important (said from 2000 miles away from my home PC, hoping my turn doesn't come around until I get back to it.) As wildkittyv1 says, It's Zekes' turn!

Thanks Pelf! I'd been waiting to have some options other than crewtank for 30-kerbal space stations and was sad to see those limits, glad it's being changed around!

Welcome to the forums Major-Major! To add to what Kosmo-not said on question 2, you may need to turn off or on rotation snap (C key) as well.

I think ElJugador is referring to crew ingress/egress limitations still in the mod. Several of the ExPI parts are now pods. There is no visible airlock, no right-clickable area for eva, and no crew pictures on the 2x2 habitat "pod". There's no crew allowed on the non-pod variants of the parts, even the airlocks. I'd love to have the non-pod airlock parts at least turned into crewable parts.

OP has been updated with separate category for the non-10-tank results from simplymunrockets flight, making my earlier 10-tank 1037 km (15:55 burnout) still stand as the 10 tank record. kerbtrek, It's fine to provide feedback but ideally, do so by flying an improvement of their design and showing them how it can be better, not arguing. If thier design can't be made better, suggest (and show) alternate designs that try to accomplish similar things. Give people something to go "wow, that really is better!" Here's the latest attempt by me to do something different - 10 tanks, no ASAS, no aerospikes, just hand flying with the pod's SAS, boost to orbit and then use the high-efficiency LV-909 to boost directly pro-grade. Burnout speed ~4847.5 m/s Burnout altitude ~651 km Specific orbital energy 8.92 MJ/kg Not an improvement in any category, but it might be something people can improve on further. Just putting aerospikes on the first stage might do it, but I'm tired; I'll try it tomorrow if no one else does. ---- I stayed up a little later than I should, and swapped out the first stage engines for aerospikes. 5.0795 km/s 858.5 km 10.48 MJ/kg <--- new record!

Kerbtrek and Optical 9090 - sorry to do this, but when I revised the rules to allow different tank configurations, I also updated them to say no jet engines (or jet tanks; any rocket tank is fine as long as the craft totals 4000 fuel at launch.) I made that edit shortly after Ziff asked me to clarify the initial post. And - simplemunrockets, can you repeat that performance? The burnout time has been called into question, and I'm re-flying the flight pattern myself to see if it's right. If people prefer, I can change it to really require only 10 of the 400-fuel tank, but I was surprised and pleased to see a better option get found, and wanted to leave it noted. What I'll do for now is separately note "10 tank results" vs. "4000 fuel results". ----- Something absolutely bizarre must be going on. Using the exact design simplemunrockets and kerbtrek flew and got 14:56 and 15:12 burnout times with, I did an almost straight-upward launch and burned out at 16:51 - immediate staging after stage 1 and about a 2-second dead time between the aerospike and LV-909 stages. I'm doing this on a low-performance laptop right now, and I wonder if something in the new specific impulse system causes higher fuel efficiencies on laggy machines. It's also possible that it's just because the straight-up aerospike burn let me light my LV-909 at 68 km instead of lower the atmosphere, resulting in better specific impulse for the early part of the LV-909 burn - but it shouldn't be that huge of a difference!