Surefoot

Whoa that ramjet is a beast. Put 2 of them on my test plane, went up to mach 7.3 and put the plane in orbit by just pitching up (went up to 177km). Good thing the orbit periapsis was still in atmo otherwise that was a lost plane and crew... That baby is powerful isnt it. Played a bit with the afterburner one too, was fun buzzing the tower at mach 1+. Probably shattered whatever was made of glass. (disclaimer: i use FAR)

I confirm these observations, it's like being on a bumpy road, the plane flies straight and all of sudden it's as if someone kicked it. What i see is a roll twitch but i suspect there's more to it (pitch too i guess, didnt see yaw but my design is very stable there). At transonic speeds, at 2.5 to 2.8° AoA, nothing special happens. Starts to be noticeable at mach 2+ and becomes prevalent over mach 4 (went to mach 6, i confirm the effect is amplified with higher speeds). Also compared to previous versions i lose a lot of pitch authority on my designs, to the point i cannot take off anymore without using the ski jump at the end of the runway.

That's a correct answer, there's not much more to say about it. Russian aerospace engineering use metric excusively. Actually russian planes have all metric instruments. European stuff is a mixed bag: older planes use imperial, space going stuff uses metric, newer planes seem to use metric (and again, not all of them). When playing a russian plane sim it's disturbing at first if you're used to flying with regular US/EU instruments as the numbers seem very low (esp. altimeter)... bad habits die hard. As for US engineering outside of aerospace: NASA uses metric (which has caused problems with sub contractors in the past), and as far as i know electrical engineering use metric as well. Not sure about construction - i'd have to contact one of my colleagues.

There are also strong psychological requirements. Being middle aged means people are more mature, more likely to get along with other people in a confined space for a long time, and not lose their temper in a critical situation. Not saying that younger people can fullfill those, but you have to add up the professional experience, scientific knowledge, intense training... Very unlikely that a 20-something could do it, unless he's a pure genius that has both top mind and physical condition. Thus, unlikely.

For Eve you can do it in one stage but without FAR and realism mods. With FAR, it becomes incredibly hard to do it in one shot (and doing it with 2 parts is already quite insane). I did it at Eve sea level, using Kethjets. I dont think we can do it with regular rocket engines (and nukes have too low thrust for the crazy gravity there). I guess i could launch my Eve mission ship in one piece, but that would be ridiculous. Much more convenient to do it in 2 stages.

Reminds me of that story where they said you can still read and understand stuff if the vowels are entirely missing.. the brain plugs the gaps. Never noticed it either and i check the topic regularly

Yes exactly, that was what i was referring to when saying "POV switch". They become totally unbalanced. Yes, precisely.

Some mods such as B9 already provide some solutions, and i suppose B9 will become stock someday.. There is also the aviation lights mod.

This. It's not about performance, but about loading more stuff in memory. Bigger textures (more detailed), more mods, more parts, more planets... At the moment with 32 bit we have to use texutre reducers to be able to use big mods alone like B9 or KW, not mentioning using them together...

FAR is part of the game for me, same as above it's the very first mod i install.

Indeed the landing itself is nothing special, Moho is easy. If you want hard, try Tylo. If you want insane, try Eve (i made it though, i should make a post about that maybe). There is a trap though, that is the orbit insertion. As it's fast moving on a very tilted orbit, approaches are quite expensive, my orbital plane correction cost me over 1300m/s: Then got my Grand Tour explorer in a very tilted orbit, because the insertion did not happen when Moho was near the ecliptic plane. When you plan such a mission, dont forget to add up delta V for orbital corrections which are needed if you want to get back.. There, nicely in orbit Then landing was easy, nothing special: After refuelling thanks to Kethane, took off to meet with the explorer module: And then went off to Eve (actually Gilly first, to refuel) - that is another story.

@taniwha: i'd bring you some coffee but it would be cold by the time i get there. In the meantime: i think there's a common bug with RealFuels where engine thrust becomes erratic (and gets worse upon POV switch), i posted quickly a report in the RF thread but actually i'm using MFT with stock fuels - have got the same issue. Maybe it's thrust, maybe it's something else, i get really weird behaviours there with my ships spinning madly whereas they are perfectly balanced, and mechjeb's SmartASS not seeing any spin..

Agreed, with the superstretchies the fixed widths become somewhat redundant. We need a way to get the common widths quickly though, maybe another hotkey (to increase / decrease by 0.5m increments maybe) ?

True but you'd have to manage inter dependencies manually, provided there are any. I'd rather have a simple UI with some kind of hierarchy (a treeview, with checkboxes for example) so that when i disable a root part all dependant parts are disabled too, that would be the point. Otherwise modders would have to conform to a strict folder structure..

Got that funky behaviour too with a 8-symmetric NERVA booster: when used alone it's working as expected (put in orbit with hyperedit for example). But whenever i add a stage (for launch) or if i even dock something on it, then firing up the engines makes it rotate like crazy, as if it was totally unbalanced or a group of engines on one side was not properly working. I guess it's the same root cause, one side effect i noticed is Mechjeb's SmartASS fails to kill the rotation, for MJ it's as if there was no rotation to start with (with KILL ROT). Picking a fixed point like prograde works though and MJ will try and fight the rotation. Also had this happen on my "Grand Tour" lander, 12 engines in pods of 3 in a 4x symmetry (these are the small 1.25m "orbital manoeuver" engines from Novapunch). Again, perfectly balanced, behaves nicely until i switch the view back and forth to it, then i cannot fire the engines or it will go in deadly rotation... All of this, in orbit / vacuum. (edit) using the latest MFS of course, and latest stretchytanks but without realfuels. (edit2) screencap of both ships docked together (which produces the unintended behaviour): (edit3) there seems to be a very slight unbalance to start with, even on first load, as mechjeb node execution will end up with the target moving out quickly with around 2-3m/s remaining (which means a little unbalanced thrust) - even with a perfectly balanced craft. Reloading / swapping POV seems to make things worse, but the situation exists from the start (or it's a MJ 2.1.1 glitch)

I'm a software engineer: i suppose i know what it takes, that's why i am asking on this forum, as it seems some people have a lot more free time than i do, given the rich and awesome mods we already have here.

I usually turn off SAS when flying in atmo, it cannot handle properly whatever is happening with FAR. I think it still does with 12.4, i'll have to try again later.

Hi Tiberion, True that and i appreciate the wide choice, just i dont need everything as i have duplicates of various parts that just clutter the VAB as of now (and take up RAM, which for the moment leads to various problems). I dont use your mod alone but also B9, various other mods and lately i have been trying KW which has a lot of duplicate parts (tanks mostly). I am certainly not talking about an OS installer, but something in game, maybe at load screen, to pick whatever we really want to load or not. Just throwing ideas, someone who reads this topic and has the skills can take it up from there (as i said the idea was not targeted specifically to you Tiberion - it's a general problem in KSP). Yes that would be neat. Also for KSP in general we need a better integrated mod management maybe, or an UI ingame that helps us select only the parts we want to load and use in VAB/SPH (and unload the rest from memory). I now have too many parts and i use maybe 20% of them all and that's a lot already. Sorry for the slight off topic, if others feel this is not entirely stupid we might create a thread in the appropriate forum (just posted this in NP as it's one of the most popular part mods, and the one i use the most)

Speaking of which, it would be nice to be able to pick which parts we want at install time with some kind of UI. Maybe being able to choose part categories such as tanks, fairings, fuselages, engines.. ? That's a general suggestion (not just for NP) but since NP is one of the biggest part mods.. That would apply to B9 and KW too. For instance i use procedural fairings and tanks, so i dont need those parts from the mod packs.

Just restart the game ?

Neat. I was looking for a hybrid ramjet, seems you delivered along with nice afterburner effects, well done. This is now part of my collection of plugins

any ETA on a small patch / hotfix for the scan and grid disappearing due to other plugins being not "compatible" with 0.23 ? Or do i have to wait until every other plugin is updated ? (currently doing a kethane-powered Grand Tour, the upgrade to 0.23 put a hold on it since i cannot refuel anymore, due to that bug..)

@ferram: you can use a very long proc fairing, i mean VERY long.. They will wiggle like crazy upon ship load while in orbit then stabilize.

That would be very neat. Think of IVA views too... Also the game engine has to be ready for this kind of device, that means doing it in alpha, later it might become impossible.

Since you cant do a search here it is for you: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/35777-Can-t-Undock-Bug-How-To-Fix You are welcome.