MarkyJ279

Combination of what Yasmy said and the fact you heavy a fairly heavy payload at the front, a very powerful engine at the back and that single decoupler in the middle transfering the force between the two. The centre cannot hold. In the future, add extra struts to help reduce the stress on that decoupler. To salvage what you've got, set your thrust limiter to something low. I noticed even on low thrust you were reaching over 2G. Set a low thrust limiter and keep your acceleration low (0.5G maybe?) and your burns will be longer but your rocket won't stretch or wobble as much.

Excellent job guys. The pack looks and plays incedibly. My only suggestion is that as Taverious has manged to incorporate different parts into one via part switching, would it reduce some of the argument over wheel strength vs grip if you made switchable versions of the wheels with different sidewaysstiffness values? Or would you rather find a complete fix for all cases rather than different parts for different preferrences? To continue your own analogy, I see it more as; B9 with FAR is like a steak with an excellent peppercorn sauce garnish. Maybe not your favourite but for some people improves the taste. B9 with NEAR is like a steak with no sauce. The basic package that should still be perfectly fine and suits nearly everyone. B9 with stock model is like a steak with mystery sauce...that's actually congealed fatty gunk the chef found oozing out from under the fryers and slapped on your steak because he didn't have time to sort anything better. One or two people might like it but it's generally considered to be horrid. Credit where credit is due, KSP is an excellent game for such a small team, but it's obvious the programmers at squad aren't professional aerospace engineers because they really phoned the stock aerodynamics model in. The B9 team could balance around it but they'd make so many compromises that it would be simpler to throw it and leave it to the players whether they want to try stock.

Simply mechanics calculation. Torque is essentially a moment so if you just want a snapshot we can use the moment formula which is simple. Moment/torque = Force x Perpendicular distance RCS has a strength of 1KN. Assuming you have a simple setup and mount 4 radially on a 1.25m diamter part and make it spin in a circle. Take the distance from centre (radius so that's 0.625m here) x Force of 1KN x 4 (because there are 4 thrusters). You would end up with 2.5 KNm of torque if you tried to roll. Reaction wheels are easier. It lists torque in the description and assuming your craft doesn't bend like a banana you can directly compare your RCS torque with the value for reaction wheels regardless of placement. The cheapest reaction wheel for example has 8KNm of torque so for your 1.25m part the reaction wheel would be stronger. Note that reaction wheels don't scale with size or placement. If we bump the core part up to 2.5m then reaction wheels stay the same but RCS gives (1KN x 1.25m x 4) 5KNm but RCS is very similar that cheap reaction wheel on the 3.75m parts (1KN x 1.875m x 4 = 7.5KNm). Stick your RCS on arms out from the main body and roll-torque goes through the roof. Have sets of thrusters at each end of a long craft and you'll flip end over end much quicker with RCS than reaction wheels (same formula applies but now you're measuring length of craft between thrusters and CoM) for. On the flip side reaction wheels are simpler both in placement and logistics of operation.

Targa, this is awesome. Nice fix

If we're shrinking an alcubierre drive to the point it can be deployed on a fighter then I can think of another use for it. Take the drive, attach a flight computer and a small explosive (or nuclear if you can) warhead to it and chuck it out into space, no weapons or pilots or engines or anything else. Then activate drive and fly it straight into the target fighter. Essentially you have a warp missile. I couldn't find any definitive studies on what would happen we when the warp bubble encounters significant mass because no one has generated a warp bubble to experiment with but some popular theories are: A) Warp bubble maintains integrity and flies though fighter unimpeded until onboard computers shut the drive down halfway through. Target fighter is permanently fused with missile Warp bubble maintains integrity and hits with the fighter while interacting with normal space. Target fighter is shredded/vaporised C) Warp bubble dissipates and converts the exotic matter used to create it into energy and hawkins radiation. Target fighter is vaporised D) Warp bubble dissipates and releases small particles accumulating in the warp field as a kind of extreme high energy bow-wave. Target fighter is vaporised E) Warp bubble collapses with no destructive effects and generating ship inherits it's energy. Target fighter is smashed to pieces by 99.9999999999%C velocity bomb F) Warp bubble collapses with no destructive effects and generating ship retains it's sub-warp velocity until warhead detonates. Target fighter is damaged/smashed/vaporised (depends on warhead size) Same weapon could even be used against larget ships and stations. If we can play god then maybe it's time to put down the toy fighters and get on with some real armageddon!

Sorry, my mistake Edit: It appears my memory has completely failed me. Rest of post removed

Zarakon is correct. Far reduces atmospheric density at sea level.

It's a bit difficult to see but I think I can spot one problem. About 1/3 of the way up just past the top of your liquid boosters the rocket thins to the point it looks like the entire orbital section is connected to your launch stage by one 1.25m fuel tank. This is almost certainly not strong enough for the load and your craft is probably bending over at that point. Once the top part starts sagging over it's going to drag the rest of your rocket over with it. If you haven't already then you might try putting struts accross that gap to distribute the load a bit better. Maybe strut the liquid boosters to the small tanks or rockomax tank directly above? If it's already strutted to hell and back then I don't know.

Probably because it's the only propulsion device (other than RCS that has its own tab) that doesn't use liquidfuel. And if they stick the engine in utility they might as well put the tanks there as well. Just a guess but that's the only explanation I could think of.

...I have no words for this. Wait, I lied. Holy freakin' moley! A return cannon!? That is the best thing I've seen this week and now my boss is giving me weird looks from across the office because of the lols. Well played!

I remember seeing an article on the BBC news website recently of some experts who were asked to plan a theoretical mission to mars with an interesting solution to the problem. They seperated the (equal mass) lander module and the command module with a long tether and then used RCS to spin the ship end over end like a bolas. With a long tether they could get decent gravity even at slow rotation speeds and they wouldn't have to faff around with rings or bearings. On topic though, if you spun your centrifuge clockwise it would exert an equal force in the form of torque on the main section that would cause it to spin anti-clockwise. A second centrifuge of equal mass and speed going in the other direction would result in some interesting stresses between the bases of the two rings but would otherwise balance the forces involved

That's because the KSPI reactors work differently to stock parts and even most mods so the stock KSP wiki can't really be used for them. The plugin changes their functionality from the normal operation. There is a wiki for KSPI parts: https://github.com/FractalUK/KSPInterstellar/wiki It includes the reactors and I think it also mentions refueling them. You can also read up on a lot of other parts/features such as the waste heat mechanics.

I can think of three options off the top of my head: 1. Put long/thin fuel tanks alont the bottom corners of your fuselage (start them empty or with just oxidiser) and then pump fuel into them as balast while in flight. You might even be able to rig up fuel lines so this happens automatically. However, this might need a substantial redesign of your landing gear . 2. Additional engines on the top of the wings, the further up the better. The tiny rockmax engine weighs very little, produces a decent amount of thrust and can be surface mounted. Stick some on the upper tip of your tail fin pointing back and it'll shift your centre of thrust a bit higher to compensate for the CoM moving up. If you're worried about it throwing you flight off at launch then put it in an action group and only turn it on when you notice yourself losing control 3. Or the brute force method of a boatload of SAS and RCS to try and force the craft to fly straight. Crude but effective and makes attitude changes in orbit much quicker

Short answer; what artforz said. Long answer. There's a bit of debate about the use of that particular reactor going on right now. Mostly centered around the availability of He3 (and it being a pain in the proverbial to extract). Currently the only place to get He3 is from Jools atmosphere but it is difficult and for the ammount of energy expended, usually not worth it. Pheonix_ca posted a MM config file on page 937 which adds He3 to the Mun and Tristavius described a Jool He3 mining operation on page 925 so if you want to extract He3 I'd try one of those. If you're already extracting He3 then if I remember correctly the reactor pulls antimatter from anywhere stack mounted and He3 from everywhere on the ship so you don't need to connect either of them directly to the reactor, although you should make sure you antimatter is in the same stack as the reactor at least. A small fission plant is still useful to power the antimatter storage units however and its an alternative to solar panels for power if you don't wan't the AIR to run constantly.

I had a similar problem the other day with a MKII lander can but I found a suitably kerbal solution. Torpedoes away! I sent up a ship with a re-entry module (basically a boatload of RCS and parachutes with a claw) and a couple of detachable liquid fuel boosters with probe bodies and RCS. Stood off about 1km from the tapped can and after a few tests (science is fun! and explosive...) I was able to launch both torpedoes into the target ship on either side of the can, snag the can and the few remaining parts still attached to it from the debris field, deorbit the whole thing and land with the parachutes. I regret losing the mothership but the rescue mission was worth it