KerikBalm

If it is, I'm even more disappointed in their divergence from scientific realism. Pod to me sounds like it could be planety... but does it sound any better than Pol? or Bop?

Pol makes no sense for an atmo. Could it be "pot" or "pod"?

I would also like this

Use a Vector if you need the thrust, or a Cheetah if you need the dV, or a Wolfhound if you need the thrust and vacuum Isp. A bobcat if you need thrust and atmo Isp (although I don't think it is well suited to being a booster/atmospheric engine). The Skiff was awesome... but what engine can take a 60% mass penalty, (37.5 TWR penalty, the old engine had a 60% higher TWR) and not have its usefulness suffer? I think they over nerfed it, and it should have more thrust and mass, and be more like a skipper (about 2/3 the mass, 21:1 vac TWR)

Tested a new Duna dropship for when Kopernicus updates and I scale the system to 3x, which will require about 1.75x as much dV. My custom config will increase the difficulty even more (25% higher gravity, slightly thinner atmosphere). I decided to discardideas using rotor blades for landing, and instead used hinged wings as giant airbrakes. Its got drogue chutes, but those are backups, as I want it to be able to operate with no crew to repack the chutes. Landing is done vertically: (note, this is an earlier version that can't successfully transition to laying down (it sets down too hard and comes apart) Then it tilts over and uses 2 thuds to slow its fall (will need to increase this) Wings then fold back for takeoff configuration: At the moment, it needs to fire the thuds and the mammoth to get up again: Its a bit awkward to get going at first: but it goes All done with a 40+ ton payload: I also tried switching prop blades for ducted fan blades, and I got my quad tilt rotor craft carrying 40+tons of payload to go much faster than it went with the old prop blades: It exceeds 220 m/s on Eve, but fails to lift off at all on Duna. I went with a compound rotor on Duna, because the tilt rotors failed to transition to forward fligth with 40 tons of payload, and it needs a lot of rotor area. Its also much slower: I tested its flight capabilities at over 8km, and I had to empty the payload tanks to 50% full (so only about 23 tons of payload). I don't know if I'll bother with such a slow and low capacity VTOL on Duna.

Well, one thing about stock only is that it is a common reference, for sharing designs with the community. I often see some craft or missions done with modded parts, and I really don't know how to judge what I'm seeing because I don't know the stats of the parts in use, and I don't know how to apply it to my game. Often, Kopernicus and its dependent mods are the only mods I use (other than scatterer), so my stock craft are used on modded worlds.

The SLS would have been cool long ago. As it is now, it is obsolete before it even flies. Musk has made the entire SLS program redundant.

Yea, but the Skiff's poor thrust to cross section ratio means that it can't lift a tall stack, and is poorly suited to be used as a booster. Its also got a bad TWR now, so why would you use it in an atmospheric launch?

The Skiff used to be awesome, 30:1 TWR with a very respectable 330 Isp, best TWR in a vacuum with better than average Isp (compare to a mammoth at 315 Isp). Then they hit it with the nerf-bat and increased its mass 60%!!! I know it needed a nerf, but a 60% mass increase is too much. Thats a nearly 40% decrease in its TWR! If they though it needed such a big nerf, they clearly weren't thinking straight when giving it its initial stats... who is to say they are now? IMO it needs more thrust for its size, its thrust to cross section ratio is quite poor (an often ignored stat that is important for determining how tall of a stack of a given diameter it can lift). With its poor thrust to cross section, its ill suited for lifting stacks, rendering it mainly a vacuum engine (otherwise the rocket is to short and fat). Its hard to think of distinct roles for the Skiff and Skipper, without them being just slight variations. The skipper was intermediate between the Mainsail and the poodle, but now I guess it could be more like mainsail>skipper>skiff>poodle. But I actually find the poodle to also compete with it. 250kn vs 300 (pood vs skiff), 1.75 vs 1.6 tons (PvS), and 350 vs 330 (PvS). Generally if you need the thrust of a Skiff, the craft is massive enough that the poodle, despite being a little heavier, will give you more dV, and the TWR will be similar. I used to think of it like a mini-KR-2L, good TWR and good Isp (emphasizing the TWR more than Isp), but after the nerf, I think its junk. The KR-2l was also nerfed from its early versions, but to a more appropriate amount. I seem to remember when it first came out it was 6.5 tons (wiki's version history only lists a change from 8.5 to 9), if that was the case, the mass would have only increased 38.5% The skiff's 60% increase... insane...

I just tested. The ducted fan blades do not work in water. However, the conventional aero surfaces do, thus you don't need jets, and can operate submarines on Eve. You aren't stuck with underwater jet engines

Are you sure? I tried this when rotors first came out, but before props (and thus before ducted fan blades) came out, and that worked. Did you try long enough? I should really get around to testing if the prop/helo/fan blades work, but I know rotors and small normal aero surfaces work

A submarine in Europa

Ok, so then what he was saying probably wasn't just speculation then I look forward to seeing my planet Rald with the new shaders and Duna textures. On another note, I've tried modding surface features from BG before (like duplicating Laythe's geysers and making them show up on Kerbin and Badlands geysers), but it didn't work with planets made by Kopernicus. Will Kopernicus 1.8 support surface features on custom planets?

Have I missed something, are you on the team maintaining Kopernicus? The first page only mentions Sigma and Thomas.

It would still sublimate under direct sunlight. There is a reason we don't find Ice on the surface of the moon IRL except in areas of permenant shadow at the moons poles (ie deep polar crater basins). At 0 pressure, you can only have water ice at basically absolute 0 But note the log scale: It doesn't take much to raise the sublimation point. Even Europa for example has an atmosphere that registers on a log scale. Practically speaking -Our solar system has a "snow line", where beyond that distance from the sun, water ice can exist on the surface of a body with practically no atmosphere/in a vacuum. That distance is around the outer edge if the asteroid belt. Its why the asteroids are rocky and not icy like comets, why comets have a tail when they come in the inner solar system, and why the gas giants can have icy moons with no atmosphere significant by standards of suitability for aerobraking, flight, parachutes, etc

@AHHans Well, reaction wheels + really wide base + low center of mass+ not using them on low gravity bodies. If you really want, you can make very stable rovers for AFKing. I don't do it except for fun experimentation One thing that you can do with BG is use hinges and extending pistons to make wide wheelbases for stable rovers that are still fairly compact and easy too launch (make a rover that you can afk without using BG parts, and it will be difficult to launch it because of drag and potentially destabalizing the launch vehicle.

They wouldn't be well suited to carrying large loads, you wouldn't want to have your hands covered in such soft and delicate structures if you were swinging from tree branches or climbing on rough rocks for instance.

Makes me wish they had a "hold level" SAS function. As for the just go afk scenario, you can do that with a really stable rover too.

Toot toot eh? I haven't really invested much thought in BG rotors for reusable orbital systems on eve, because for some time now I have been playing around with my custom 3x system, which rendered the idea of reusable systems to orbit on eve just not worth considering. I had a save that I've invested a lot of time in, and as soon as kopernicus updates, my toying around with reusable eve ascent vehicles will end. While SSTOs on kerbin are feasible in my system, I already switched to a reusable carrier plane and separating orbiter for time and efficiency reasons... Similar to what one must do on stock eve. Instead I have focused more on rotor powered VTOLs for building/moving surfaces bases, fuel, gathering science, etc. Initially I was thinking I wanted a cruise speed of 200m/s to beat a "sturdy" rover that can go over the surface at 50m/s at 4x time warp... Since rotors don't really work at even 2x time warp... But if you can climb high at around 100-150 m/s, feather the props, then stop rotors and glide for a while at 4x time warp, you can use BG to cover a lot more ground on eve or duna than even the most stable and speedy rovers (for the same amount of playing time) Also, Eve submarines are a thing now, and you can edit the game to make surface features that only show up under the water, to give a reason to go out there and take a plunge.

Ah, I guess I assumed your solar powered plane with rockets that gets "back" to orbit wouldn't stage, but I suppose what you said is compatible with a plane that stages to get back to orbit.

Salt wouldn't stop ice from sublimating, just FYI.

You can do it, there's no downside to doing it. It can be a good idea to do it, to make sure you know what you need to bring, and how the deployment system works... although its not that complicated, and you can probably just read about it and get it right the first time. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I have yet to see an Eve SSTO using the rotors. What I have seen and done are proof of concept ideas for a rotor based booster that will climb over 10km on rotors, then fire rockets to get an Ap up to space, where an orbiter detaches and gets to orbit fast enough to switch back to the booster and land it. Then you need to land the orbiter close to the booster, somehow reattach it (using robotic hinges, servos and pistons perhaps?), refuel it, and then its ready to go again.

Well, you'd need a cyclic for that... its generally too complex to bother with. Also there are issues with asymmetric lift once you leave a hover, unless you've got contra rotating rotors. What I'm doing now is using 4 rotors, and Kal controllers, to control pitch, roll, and yaw by varying rotor speed as in a quad copter drone.

I spend most of my time on figuring out how to get things to and from orbit of various bodies, and the bodies I spend the most time on tend to have atmospheres, so I do planes a lot. Rockets are simple matters of fuel fractions and TWR once in space. I'm excluding winged rockets from the rocket category, and placing them in the plane category, fyi

If minmus is explicitly stated to be icy, its a scientific mistake, as ice would sublimate and be lost (even out to ceres IRL). But I don't think it ever actually says that, so minmus' composition remains unknown, and there is no reason to say it is water Ice. Ksp2 devs called it icy, which concerns me.