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

And struts. lots and lots of struts.

Short answer: if you want to try and salvage what you've already got, right click on your mainsail and set the thrust limiter to something low (between 10% and 20% maybe?). Or you can just use less throttle but be advised mechjeb will always whack the throttle up to full so don't use the autopilot until you switch to the nuke (very little thrust there you should be fine) or set the thrust limiter. Next time you might want to use a bigger docking node. Jrs just don't have the strength to hold under heavy acceleration.

Perhaps it would help if we knew how many drills (say whether they're large or small, they have different power requirements) you are trying to run, how many panels (again, say whether they are the fixed type, 6x movable type or the XL gigantors) you are using to power them, your approximate distance from the sun (just say what body you are on) and if you are using any RTGs to supplement the panels. Or a picture if you don't know some of that stuff. Kethane drills are incredibly power hungry. Realistically you're going to want gigantor XL panels if you want to run large drills and even small ones need plenty of panels.

I knew I would overlook something. Still nice to get confirmation though

I only have A-level physics qualification so if someone of Manley levels of knowledge could check my working I'd appreciate it but as best I understand the maths. I'm using real world numbers since I don't have KSP open at the moment. I'm assuming a normal scale earth with no atmosphere. I used an online physics calculator (http://www.calctool.org/CALC/phys/astronomy/earth_orbit) to get the figures for orbital velocity. Impact: if you just want to hit the surface vertically that's easy. All you need to do is counter your horizontal velocity which is lower in a higher orbit. You'll hit the surface faster than if you'd droped from a lower orbit but you'd still hit vertically and if all you want is an impact then higher is cheaper (in delta-V). No complicated maths needed, it's just whichever orbital velocity is lower. For a 1000km orbit the speed it 7.35km/s. For a 10000km orbit it's 4.93km/s. The 10000km (higher) orbit needs less delta-V Landing: This is slightly more difficult. For a suicide burn landing we need to counter orbital velocity and then counter velocity built up from falling under gravity. I'm going to use the SUVAT equations. Specifically: V^2 = U^2+2as Where V is final vertical velocity, U is initial vertical velocity, a is acceleration due to gravity (9.81m/s/s) and s is distance (orbital height). From a stable orbit we can assume U to be 0m/s and so can be safely removed and the formula rearranged to give: 2as = V^2 For 1000km, we can calculate: 2*9.81*1000000m = V^2 = 19620000m/s. Rooting that and converting to km/s gives 4.43km/s. Add that to the horizontal orbital velocity above and total delta-V to land from 1000km is 11.78km/s. However for 10000km, we get: 2*9.81*10000000m = V^2 = 196200000m/s. Rooting that and converting to km/s gives 14.0km/s. Add that to the horizontal orbital velocity above and total delta-V to land from 10000km is 18.93km/s. If anyone want to call out my maths as wrong I'll defer to them but at the moment according to my working it takes less delta-V to impact from the higher orbit and less delta-V to land from the the lower one. Exact figures may vary depnding on body and height but the trend should stay the same.

As soon as any part of your ship touches the ground then the parachutes cut automatically and can only be deployed again after being repacked in EVA. People can correct me if I'm wrong but if I remember correctly, they are already considered 'staged' so can only be redeployed by right clicking and selecting 'deploy' or binding them to an action group. Also, if your craft touches down on a steep slope then the moment a landing leg hits the groud the parachutes cut even if the other legs are still off the ground. This can send you rolling down the hill. Otherwise you're correct. If you get close to the surface but don't actually touch down then the parachutes are going to screw with your ascent pretty badly. edit: Ninja'd by four people. That's embarassing...

And now to present the argument for oversized booster sections: This rocket had to take a couple of returnable science probes to minmus. Total payload of less than 10t. As you can see it has a stupid amount of delta-V for the job. It has about 7500m/s just to get it to minmus orbit. I'd taken this exact rocket there before and frankly I hadn't even needed the orbital stage. There was sufficient delta-V in the ascent stages to take me there in one go. This was the third run with this exact rocket so I thought I had the technique down. Launch was fine but then the fail started; 1) At about 15km I screwed up my gravity turn and FAR pulled the whole rocket over backwards into a tumble. After way too long a few bursts of the engines were able to right me but I'd lost a lot of speed. 2) When it came time to drop the boosters the rocket had tilted over so one booster was above and one was below. I'd planned for the boosters to be on the side so they'd clear the rocket but the tumble had turned me a bit and I forgot to rotate back. The top booster clipped the engine and knocked it off so that stage and the 3000m/s of delta-V was unusable. 3) Normally I only need to drop those boosters when I'm 60km+ so the fairings are next to the boosters in the staging list before the orbital stage. In my panic to get the orbital section active I forgot to move the fairings and blew them off while still deep in atmosphere. doh! The result was: It had taken me 6500m/s just to make 100km orbit. I think I have enough to finish the mission but I really screwed that launch. And the kicker? Immediately before I went to the launchpad I spent half a minute deciding whether to remove the orbital section entirely. That same section that is normally wasted and has now potentially saved the mission. The orbital stage stays!

My take on the transmission/return debate: -Crew reports and EVAs have 100% return and 100% transmit science results. Whatever you do with them you will get all the science with one result set. I personally tend to transmit so I can start using the science before the craft returns and so it doesn't clutter my stored results. -The best way to handle repeatable experiments (thermometer, gravioli, seismic, barometer, atmosphere and surface sample) if you have the time and the electric charge is to keep repeating the experiment and transmitting (boosting it with the science lab if you have one) and then once you hit the transmission cap, return the last set of data. -Materials bay and mystery goo are single use by default. If you have a science lab to reset them then treat them like the repeatable experiments. If you don't then try and return them as you only get one shot per module with these results. You can transmit if you have no reasonable way of returning the data but you will not be able to reset without a lab so you'll only get a fraction of the science. If you don't return experiments the science isn't lost exactly but you'll hit a cap where you need to start returning experiments to get the rest of the science. Random tip: If you have a manned mission you don't need to return the science parts to get the data back. Kerbals on EVA can collect the data from science instruments (be warned this will render materials and goo unusable until they can be fixed with the lab) and store it in the pod. You can't store multiple copies of the same type in the same biome but you could record a set of readings from one biome and then collect a complete set from another. Do this and you only have to return the pod. Not essential but useful if your delta-V margins are very tight and you want to ditch as much mass as possible before your return. Just remember to move the data to the pod before jettisoning the parts, not after!

I've read those posts; Kerbart in your lander thread was being sarcastic (and it does not matter which way your goo canisters face) and Sirine in the unbalanced ship thread was exagerating by an order of magnitude at least. Just a heads up, your engines will produce electricity when they are running. In the very early game, you only need enough energy storage to last between using your main engine. You can track how much energy you have left with the resources tab in the top right of the screen. The biggest users of electricity are command-pod/reaction-wheel torque and transmitting data. You can turn SAS off when you are on the ground or not turning so that just leaves the transmitter. If you are using all the energy stores: You must be transmitting contantly! Get those Oxstat solar panels asap.That'll allow you to remove most of those batteries and generate eletricity when your engines are deactivated. Make sure you angle your panels/craft so they catch as much sun as possible. If you are not using all that energy: Take off the spare batteries based on how much excess energy you have stored when you stop consuming it. Batteries don't weigh much compared to other parts but with that many the weight will start to add up quickly, especially when you don't have access to the ludicrously powerful rockomax engines or the efficient nuclear engine. The solar panels are still a good idea for weight efficiency, particularly for probes which will constantly consume energy and spend a long time with the engines off. Weight saving is a good habit to get into early. It all depends on how much of your resources you're actually using which you will have to workout based on your own flying style. Anyway, back to topic; If it has an atmosphere (see the first few posts in this thread), you can use parachutes on it. Only 2 things to watch out for: 1) Heavier craft will need to spread the load with multiple parachutes at different points around the structure and potentially drogue chutes if you have them. Fortunately, you can unlock more parachutes later for this if you do want to go super-size. You'll have to experiment and see just how much shock your craft can take when the parachutes open and potentially slow down before then with engines if it is too much. It all depends on how you build your landers. 2) Duna has a thin atmosphere so parachutes will fully-deploy while you're going very low and very fast. You can still use parachutes but aerobrake and use your engines to slow yourself down if you're landing with the lander pictured above or anything larger (particularly since it looks like the legs are a little too high. You're sitting on your engine). Now, to the Mun! Or wherever, you know? It's your space program!

After landing a manned science lander on Minmus, I realized I hadn't attached attached a probe core to my orbiter section I needed to get back to Kerbin. This meant it was difficult to see and I couldn't use the target function to make the rendezvous and docking easier. I had to cross my fingers and rely on gut instinct, manual controls and MK1 Eyeball. To my credit, my intercept was on course. It was, in fact, so on course that I actually ended up colliding with it while trying to raise my periapsis and match orbits. A relatively slow speed collision but enough to tear an engine, landing gear and science jr off my lander and take a few solar panels off the orbiter. I had enough rcs reserves to dock with that so I made it back safely and immediately stuck a stayputnik on the orbiter!