merendel

only thing I could do without is the runway blowing up when I send a heavy plane out to launch on it. If they tweekd runway and launchpad to be a tad more durable so normal use didnt break them I'd be perfectly content with the patch. As it is I'm mostly content.

I'd actualy expect impossible would be a more apropreate term. Asumeing eve scaled up just like kerbin I'd expect its dV to orbit to rise as well. Eve ascents are already walking a razer edge between dV and TWR and are frequently huge constructions. If the dV and required thrust both go up I'm not sure you could get a ship out of there. Anything sufficently powerful to escape eve would probably be too massive to launch effectively from kerbin unless you could SSTO without stageing and then refuel in orbit before sending off to eve.

Genius!!! why choose when you can have both

On the other hand I find it highly doubt that nasa would design a special rocket to deliver an undercarage out to the ocean just to test how it reacts to salt water. that sounds more like something theyd subcontract the delivery to the test site if nothing else. Droptests happen all the time for things like testing a pod splashdown but they dont strap it to a rocket, they build the test rig and then contract a helicopter or something to go take it out over the ocean and drop it. I also somehow doubt any of the shuttle SRB's were ever tested on the edge of space. Theres "testing outside of margins" and then theres "We cant even see the margins anymore from our test site on pluto"

I voted too weak but with the caviat that its only too weak for the launchpad/runway. Anything else and ya if I crash something big into it I expect it to explode. On the otherhand I'd expect a launchpad designed to launch rockets to... you know actually survive launching rockets. If it cant why arnt we using an indestructible patch of dirt instead?

On the other hand that same 747 would have been heavy enough to explode 100m or so of runway into firey rubble just by being driven out onto it. Theres been talk of it not being designed for our 400t monsters yet several 747 models have a max takeoff weight in that range according to Wikipedia.

*checks inside pants* Ya a bit but then agian I dont have anything motivating me at the moment now if were talking about rockets in KSP I havent noticed any problems. The same designs that worked before work now, well asside from the spaceplanes that had parts removed, had to redesign those.

That ones not that hard actualy. tweek it to empty fuel. The BACC, while still deadweight isnt that heavy when empty and isnt that hard to put it into orbit if you really wanted to. The contract comes back valid even if the engien never actualy fired off because you didnt give it any fuel. You could even do it with a spaceplane. Just build the plane around the empty BACC and turbojet up to haveing an AP high enough and not even leave atmo.

I agree that a pure solid SSTO isnt possible. No mater how you slice it you'd never be able to achieve orbit as you'd burn out before you could get high enough so you'd reenter atmo. The big booster with just a stayputnik technicly has the dV to reach orbit you just cant make it achieve a stable one. It might work with carrying a couple smaller SRB's for use at AP to try and achieve and orbit but even if it works it isnt what I'd call a funtional payload. Even scaleing wouldnt help much as mass fraction is already about as good as its possible to get. I have done a nearly pure solid to orbit but I used 2 stages on it. a cluster of the big SRB's in the central core and a bunch of my quadpacks straped on as initial stages. Could get orange tanks to orbit with only a 909 attached to finish the circularization, didnt take much fuel out of the payload at all.

Think it was .21 for me, picked the game up from the steam summer sale that year.

theres a few glitched patches here or there. you'll find a spot thats only a few tens or hundreds of meters accross where you'll sudenly be in poles biome at the equator. Incidently you can find these weird spots on kerbin as well. Of note theres a bit of tundra a few KM northwestish from KSC. Normaly you never notice them from orbit unless you've got a mod like science alert that will bleep for a second leting you know of a new biome but you fly past it faster than you can take a reading.

Thats how you create a mass relay for kerbals 2 opposing mainsails (or these days the even bigger SSL ones) put kerbal right infront of one and pulse both on for an instant and your brave travler just went interplanetary without a ship.

How does an orange tank to orbit strike your fancy(36t)? just loaded this up in a normal mode save with science/funds cheated in for the test. Solid booster cost 77,008 Recovery at 1.7km 97.9% 40,755 Cost to deliver orange tank to orbit 36253 Liquid booster SSTO cost 156,956 Recovery at 1.8km 97.9% 116,549 cost to deliver orange tank to orbit 40,407 Still a 10% or so saveings for a 36 ton payload. I probably could have goten to orbit with a tad more fuel on the solid if I'd tweekd the clusters down 5-10% thrust. Solids were max thrust and mainsail was max thrust once it fired stage 2 and was going a bit faster than I liked at solid burnout. Liquid SSTO was full throttle all the way, peaked at about 102% atmospheric efficiency. Incidently solid variant was going 8m/s once the chutes deployed, only needed a tiny thrust to softland. Liquid variant on the same amount of chutes was going 15m/s and needed a fair bit more babying to land safely. Liquid variant is 1mainsail core with trilateral symmetry on the side tanks, mainsails on them as well.

Its not that hard to ensure no colisions. Separatrons are rather afordable at 50 funds a pop. For the largest solid boosters you need 2 separatrons per booster cluster at or just above the centerpoint and it will ensure they never impact the core rocket they are attached too. I have sub assemblies setup for my solid booster needs. one is just a single booster premounted on a decoupler with a pair of separatrons prepositioned and the other is my quadpack arrangement. Quadpack is the same booster on decoupler but has 3 additional boosters straped too it, left right and directly oppisit the decoupler with the separatrons mounted on the outside pair. A pair of struts top and botom compleats the package to ensure things dont wobble in flight. I've never had a booster impact the next stage in this arrangement that wasn't caused by an extreme control input at the moment of separation. If the ship has alot of rotational control authority and I'm in the middle of a hard turn as I drop the boosters I can slam the falling boosters with the rocket and break something. Any other time the boosters drop safely even if I'm flying horizontal fairly low in the atmosphere with one booster directly above the core. The separatrons have enough kick to lift it up long enough for the main rocket to get out of the way before gravity pulls it back down. With proper positioning you can safely drop solids even without seperatrons as long as your still near vertical or in thin atmosphere when separation happens, the separatrons just make it a sure thing. My own experience has been that its significantly cheeper to get any significant payload to orbit useing a disposable solid first stage with a recoverable core that gets the rest of the way to orbit and then returns. To make a pure liquid SSTO ends up with a significantly more massive vessle to return and a smaller mass fraction to orbit. While you technicly recover more of the craft with a SSTO its a much more expensive craft and more sensitive to landing errors. you need more engiens to lift the extra fuel and potentialy more parachutes (asumeing not useing a powered landing) adding cost that is subject to the % return loss. If you can nail the runway/launchpad every time then this does not apply but if you miss by 100-50km that extra cost can add up and you still have extra fuel costs. The solids on the other hand are dirt cheep, most of the cost is the fuel and actualy recovering them is a negligable return. The separator is normally more valuable than the depleted booster. And on the subject of ineffiency due to not being able to precisely follow terminal velocity and lower ISP rockets, I'd argue that its not a huge deal. Yes most pure solid stages end up going faster than terminal velocity and loose some effiency to drag. However if you loose out on 10-15% effective DV due to drag you gain it back by the fact that the solid was significantly cheeper than the liquid alternitive for the same impulse. You come out ahead on ISP for the same reason, the cost per dV on the solids is just that much lower than for the equivelent in liquid fuel you just come out ahead even with drag losses added in.

From my experience EVA orients the kerbal's up/down orientation to the plane of the camera mode's centerpoint. For example in orbital mode he naturaly orients with his head pointing at the normal vector of the orbit makeing him appear standing up in relation to the prograde/retrograde vector. You can forcably rotate him but any movement input will just cause him to realign to where he wants to be. You can cycle through camera modes (V) and try to get a more favorable view but its not always possible to get exactly what you want. You'll need to get used to useing the up/down controls (shift/ctl) to help you reach your target in additon to the standard forward/back/left/right as in most sitiations you cant get a good angle to just thrust strait at your target and get there. just go slow and accept that your controls are in relation to a fixed plane. Is the spacecraft above where your kerbal is looking? thrust up a bit so it drifts parralel to his direction of travle. Dont go too fast because you'll have to thrust down later to counter the movement and you'll overshoot if you go too fast.

kinda between 3 and 4 closer to 4. I dont nessicaraly tune later stages to exact dV requirements, I like haveing a 10-20% margin when I can get away with it. However I tend to cut costs on the launch as much as possible. I strap quite a few of the huge solid boosters, sometimes enough that stage 1 is just solids. the remainder of the launchstage is often recoverable and only carrys enough fuel to get the payload to orbit and return back to atmo. I do try to land near KSC whenever possible but I'm not OCD about it. If I miss by 100km I call it good enough. well good enough for the non spaceplane returns, those go to the runway unless I'm outa gas and cant glide that far. Its amazing how cheeply you can get to orbit on solid boosters. theres no reason to recover them as they are nearly worthless once empty and its cheeper than liquid fueld launch stages of similar peformance.

I'd respond to the topic with "Very Very Carefully" I prety much fly all mine with the keyboard, the joystick I have is too twitchy on its deadzone to be useful for fine controll (have to make DZ really big for it to not start sending spaz inputs) I generaly have to be very careful to get the COL/COM right to avoid flipouts. My more stable craft can fly with SAS on but most of the time I do SAS off and use trim (mod+direction) to adjust how it flys. SAS overrides trim and zero's it out so you cant use them togeather. For example on windows if you have a plane that likes to nose down slightly hold alt and tap D till it holds itself level. Alt X resets the trim if you mess something up badly such as seting roll trim causeing you to barrel roll.

I look at it more as career is looking to cater to a specific subset of the player base. Some people enjoy and to an extent need those constraints and guidance to really enjoy the game. Without it they get lost for what to do and loose interest. It still needs work but this is obviously an iterative process and just needs time to be finished. Other people, as this thread so clearly illustrates, don't really care about the bits that career adds. Thats perfectly fine and valid. If you like the science but dont want to muck with contracts or funds there is science sandbox. Dont like science either? Sandbox is waiting for you to go nuts. Even this patch that was mostly focused on building up the career game mode added spaceplane parts to the sandbox game mode. I have no doubt that once they polish career up to an acceptable degree they will be back to adding more stuff thats useful for all game modes. Theres only so much dev time to go around.

On the left side panel of your user profile (same area as the forum activity ticker) you should see an option labled "Find latest posts" That should show you significantly further back in your post history.

I'd say stick to the probes. Decoupling the cockpit wont work for the wobble wobble wipeout on the runway crashes. Chances are in that situation the kerbal is dead before you could even try to hit abort and even if your quick enough you might still get smacked into the ground too hard by the eject.

A hackjob redesign to add more dV was part of what i was discribing. Basicly step 1 refuel the ship so your back in the situation you were in before. Step 2 have a spare tank, a FL-t400 or 800 that is also full left docked to the ship when you takeoff. Add some landing gear to that tank so you can take off without draging it on the ground. This will throw off your COL/COM a bit makeing the plane a bit more unstable to fly but hopefuly not enough to make it uncontrolable (test on kerbin first) If you fly up on turbojet mode like before and then drain and drop that spare tank first when you swap over to internal fuel the extra fewhundred units of fuel might be just enough to get you into orbit where it faild before.

I recomend sending out a craft with some spare fuel tanks that you can drop into the atmo. Make part of it a rover so it can join up to that docking port on the back of the plane. If you set it up so the part of the rover that actual attaches to the plane is a 1.5m tank with landing gear thats detachable from the refueling tanks you can use that small tank as a droptank during accent and should hopefuly be able to eek out the extra dV you need. You might also make sure your RCS tanks are toped off as they can sometimes be enough if your just short of circularizing. you could also send along a spare crew pod incase jetpacking to orbit is required.

the sale right now for AC:BF already is half price from launch. AC:BF will be $19.99 as its baseline non sale price on steam by this time next year and regularly going on sale for $4.99, just like AC3 is now. KSP's price slowly creeps up over time as it gets more feature complete. While I agree that AC anything will outsell KSP its also a very popular franchise from a big developer in a totaly different genere. KSP is an indi game. AC games also blow their load in the first year and ends up a bargin bin game after that as the sheeple move on to the next greatest retread forking over another $60. They always do resort to cuting the price by significantly more than half to keep sales trickeling in after their next cash cow hits the market.

Hmm that rep bar looks like the result of 10 full hitchhiker containers with 5 SRB's straped on and lit off (4 with symetry and a 5th tacked one to tip it over)

if you've got patience and do it right you only need a couple hundred dV to do flybys of all those moons. Gravity slingshots are really powerful tools. Even a conventional engine can pull that off easy. Ions do allow you to be alot more agressive on the burns though.