ZaPPPa

Quick note: The standard mass of a RealFuels (\ProceduralParts\Parts\ZOtherMods\RFTank.cfg) tank is 1.0. This is, unfortunately, the value KSP uses to calculate the mass for the Launchpad maximum tonnage. A ship that is calculated as ~14t by MechJeb is calculated as 22.1t by the launchpad preventing me from launching it (non-upgraded launchpad has max allowed of 18t). I like using rounded conical tanks to make my rockets look pretty, so each middle tank with a rounded top and bottom will weight 3.0t according to KSP. The 1.0 does not change when the procedural part is stretched, so I understand that an average number has to be chosen until someone figures out how to make KSP calculate the launch mass properly. I'd suggest making the base mass 0.5 or so, which makes tanks of 2m and smaller more accurately weighed by the launchpad.

He's right. I have also noticed that if you use the little '>' and '>>' icons, everything scales up properly (most of the time), but with some components using the actual slider to tweak the scale blows up values like ejection force to massive numbers.

Glad we can help. Yours and RedAV8R's mods are essential for me. After some more testing I noticed a similar thing is happening to engines and perhaps the two are related. In the following tests I tweak the scale of engines and test the thrust levels. - First I create a very basic ship with a MK1 pod, a T400 fuel tank and I attach a Signifer to it (I use your RftSv2 engine pack). - Before I rescale the Signifer, I fill the fuel tank with the default fuel for the Signifer - I then scale down the Signifer to 1.25m - The SLT on MechJeb reads 0.44 meaning that the ship should not be able to lift off. I go to launch the vessel and on the launchpad Mechjeb reads as follows: The vessel lifts off with ease, with a SLT of 1.71 (the default value of a default scale Signifer) I have tested the same with a small engine that is being up-scaled. All engines always go to their default thrust levels on launch.

I tried Real Fuels (the very latest) on a fresh install because I had a lot of trouble getting it to run right with TweakScale. I noticed that it only scaled the fuel levels properly if I did the following: - Add a fresh new fuel tank - Fill it up with fuel at its default scale (by attaching an engine and clicking the fuel button) - THEN scale it up/down If I scale it when empty and then fill it up, the rescaled version will hold the amount of fuel of the default scale. This allows me to fill a 5m S3-7200 tank with 20M of fuel if I fill the tank at its smallest scale and then scale all the way up . If this is intended or inevitable, then so be it, but I did not see anything about this in the first couple of posts and wanted to make sure this is not a bug.

I have come up with a launch strategy that works quite well for me and is able to turn into a low orbit (120km) if need be. This method requires FAR to be installed. Also, this uses the RftS engine config, which does not have vector thrust for most engines, therefore it is harder to control the rocket without lots of SAS and RCS. I create my rocket out of balance on purpose, shifting weight and drag ever so slightly towards the turn I want to make. I normally do this by attaching a radial chute to the main stage. Then I attach some small steerable fins and tweak them to 5 degrees max. Finally I install enough RCS up top and at the bottom to combat the tip-over. At launch I enable RCS and SAS to keep the rocket straight. It does not have enough vertical speed yet for the tail fins to keep it stable with the off-balance weight and drag, so RCS takes care of it. Once I reach 100m/s I disable RCS and let the rocket slowly make its turn by itself. After hitting 400m/s the SAS will start to wobble the rocket, so I turn it off and launch completely unguided. Every now and then, when the speed vector shifts a couple of degrees, I nudge the the rocket towards it so the attitude and speed vector are identical. At around 30-40km I enable RCS. At around 50km it gets tricky. I try to match the attitude angle to the altitude (50 degrees at 50km), but have to be careful not to tip the rocket. I tend to overdo it on RCS now, because I have learned that a smooth launch is worth the extra weight. Also, lots of RCS on the first stage has little effect on total DeltaV. I generally lose the main stage between 70km and 100km and am generally at between 70 and 80 degrees attitude. I then work with the second stage to tweak the final launch angle and target altitude. I like to stay between 60 and 30 seconds in front of Apoapsis for the duration of the launch.

Look into adding ground stations to RemoteTech 2. When you create them, put the altitude of the ground station at 10K or so to account for the fact that real radio signals do not require a perfect line of sight (they can go around objects or bounce through the atmosphere at the expense of a loss of a couple of db). I put up four groundstations at 90 degree intervals around the equator and they cover the entire approach right up to when the chutes deploy.

Manned lander on Mun Mass: 1000t Payload: 13t Parts: 227 deltaV: 17K Mission: Mun landing & return 1 Kiloton craft are mighty tough to launch with Ferram enabled!.. Take a lot of enabling/disabling SAS and thrust vectoring to make it go. Could not make a turn until I reached 45K or it would topple. Once stage 3 is reached, everything calms down. Unfortunately KSP decided to completely choke on the physics when I redocked with the return module. Something was wrong with the docking rings. I could have simply EVA'd from the Lander to the return module, but by then the craft was corrupted in the save and it became unusable.. A shame because I really wanted to complete this mission and I knew I had more than enough fuel and oxygen for the return trip. Lemme say that putting a Kerbal on the Mun and returning him in RSS+RO+ferram career mode is not easy.. It took me hours to get the craft to the right deltaV and properly balanced.

Craft5: Parts: 167 Mass: 353t Payload: 3.5t deltaV: 14.5K Mission: Manned (high) orbit of Mun Relatively stable craft, but must disable SAS in stage 3 or it will wobble itself to death. Fortunately it does not require SAS to maintain course. It actually auto-turns to 45 degrees if nudged at around 5K altitude. Stage 1: 12x RT-10 SRB 6x Aerospike Stage 2: 6x Aerospike Stage 3: 1x SLS-250 Bearcat Stage 4: 4x KW Vesta VR-1 1x KW Maverick-1D Stage 5: 1x RMA 3 Stage 6: 1x KW Vesta VR-1

Not sure how I missed this thread: Realistic-Solar-System-Launchers-MEGATHREAD Moved my thread into that. Mods, please close this one.

Mods used in the following examples: Real Solar System Ferram Aerospace Research Modular Fuel System (Real Fuels) Deadly Re-entry ECLSS Life Support Ackander Vertical Tree Real Chutes RemoteTech2 Craft 1: Mass: 160t Payload: 1t deltaV: 16K Mission: Science probe in Mun orbit Craft2: Mass: 170t Payload: .5t deltaV: 18K Mission: Probe Mun landing Note: All boosters outfitted with chutes for recovery Craft3: Mass: 140t Payload: .5t deltaV: 17K Mission: Probe Mun landing Note: All fuel LOX + LH2 Craft4: Mass: 261t Payload: 6t deltaV: 12.4K Mission: Heavy lifter to LKO

Taking the additional challenge of launching craft in a 'Real Solar System & Ferram (FAR)' Kerbin world forces a whole different approach to building spacecraft. Go too high or too wide and your craft will inevitably topple and crash. Show off your stable and efficient craft here. Mods used in the following examples: Real Solar System Ferram Aerospace Research Modular Fuel System (Real Fuels) Deadly Re-entry ECLSS Life Support Ackander Vertical Tree Real Chutes RemoteTech2 Craft 1: Mass: 160t Payload: 1t deltaV: 16K Mission: Science probe in Mun orbit Craft2: Mass: 170t Payload: .5t deltaV: 18K Mission: Probe Mun landing Note: All boosters outfitted with chutes for recovery Craft3: Mass: 140t Payload: .5t deltaV: 17K Mission: Probe Mun landing Note: All fuel LOX + LH2 Craft4: Mass: 261t Payload: 6t deltaV: 12.4K Mission: Heavy lifter to LKO

First three phases of my space station are complete. Life support module and two science modules. Have not yet researched the giant solar panels, so small ones have to do. Mass: 17t Orbit: 300K Orbital speed: 7800 dV needed to reach: 10.4K My KSP is running Real Solar System, Realism Overhaul, Real Fuels and Ferram, so getting 10+ tons into orbit in one go is a huge struggle. After lots of trial and error it turns out this kind of vessel is stable enough to put this kind of station in orbit (at engines level 4). It's not the ISP or thrust that's the issue, it's the stability issues of having so much mass on top. Taller vessels will wobble to death or easily tip over. Short n' stubby works best .

The nice thing about the real GPS system is that the orbit time is close to 12h. In my line of work this is useful because we can do tests on two different days and get approximately the same GPS constellation at the same time of day. For our very high speed, high accuracy requirements, this means we can do better comparisons of data and have 24h of time between tests to tweak and develop. Warning: Be aware that 10x Kerbin has a default Kerbal rotation of 6 hours, which means that the GEO orbit will be very low. When I tinkered with 10x Kerbin I changed the rotational period to 18 hours, which made the game a bit harder (takes more deltaV to reach the same altitude because your initial orbital velocity is lower due to slower rotation). Real GPS orbit is about 20K Km. At 10x Kerbin with 18h rotation GEO became about 27.5K Km, so I'd put them at 13K-ish. To get guaranteed coverage of at least four visible satellites, you'll probably need four planes with four satellites each. Then you can space them our at 90 degrees in the orbital plane and space the planes out by 45 degrees each (6 hour launch increments on a 24h day if you put them in 1/2 GEO = MEO orbit)

Awesome.. I was not aware of that.. I tried it and it works. Ackander, consider my problem solved. By the way, It looks like the latest procedural fairings release has a couple of large size fairings that your tree does not yet support. The KzProcFairingBase3,4,6,7,8 and the Interstage fairing adapter 2 and shroud. I'd also suggest putting the conic side fairings into the 'basic stability and aerodynamics; node as it makes sense and it has the fastest/cheapest route to the first procedural fairing adapter.

Quick question as this is a little confusing: From you engineconfig RealismOverhaul downloads, do I only need to copy the engine config file(s) to the realfuels folder and if so, what are the names of the files I'll need to copy. Also, if I have the entire RealismOverhaul mod already, aren't the files there already used or do I need to copy them anyways?

It's a line-of-sight issue. The curvature of Kerbin breaks the line-of-sight when visiting far away biomes with an unmanned probe. Like I said, it is really an issue that should be solved in RemoteTech2. A civilization that can send rockets into space should have global short-range connectivity. The reason why I do not send manned pods to biomes is because in the progress of rocketry, you do not start with sending manned pods in sub-orbital trajectories; you start with sending unmanned rockets at a target (in real life that target was London :/ )

After a couple of hours of trying I finally managed to get a monstrosity of a satellite into space to form the beginning of a comms network. The second satellite will be easier because I can wait for the first one to be over the space center before launching it to allow for better connectivity. The issue with remotetech could actually be solved quite easily if any object below, say 200K altitude automatically has connectivity. This assuming that Kerbal has a radio network much like earth has. The biggest science issue is that doing science runs on remote biomes on Kerbin cannot be done with probes because you need connectivity to be able to execute the experiments. Another solution you can try is to make an item available early that allows for "local command" on a probe, like the FASA MIRV core. This will let probes work without needing RemoteTech connectivity (though it could be used as a way to circumvent the need for RemoteTech altogether)

I tried it and definitely see the potential. It creates a good sense of progress and makes it easier for new players to learn KSP. Also, most, if not all, the major mods are included which puts this tree above many others. A couple of notes: I play with Real Solar System and Remote Tech and it becomes a bit of a grind to get to the point that you can send probes to orbit. The manned pods are too heavy to send very far and the probes need connectivity. Normally I'd set up three or more satellites in GSO to take care of that, but it takes a ton of fuel and strong engines to get a probe into orbit with RSS. I ended up grinding for science on Kerbin itself by sending manned pods in sub-orbital science runs to various biomes. I'm going to need approximately 13.6K dV to get into GSO and even getting 9.4K to get into low orbit is very difficult (probes lose connectivity before being able to complete their ascent.). Not sure what the solution is, but something to think about. Also, it looks like the procedural fairing adapters for 0.625 and 1.0 are available before the actual fairings are. This makes them useful as a decoupler only.

Hmm.. A Canadian with knowledge of GNSS and IMU's... You work for Novatel by any chance?

Planetwide surprise could be biomes for Duna and/or Eve

Are you doing an unmanned probe? If so, make sure you have an antenna on the probe so you can send and receive commands.