G'th

Look into HabTech. That mods trusses are better than using NearFutures for an ISS-alike station. They're also seemingly less intense on your computer.

^ Generally the best solution, particularly when it comes to things emulating the Orbiter, isn't an engineering one so much as a procedural one. The real orbiter, during the glide into landing, took a very wide and gentle turn. This is because the COL is moving forward heavily with both actions, so you have to be very light on the stick and give yourself plenty of breathing room. Even the Cormorant orbiter still has a lot of glide time, so don't think you're in a tight spot in most places. In KSP is this actually pretty easy depending on the mission as most of the time you'll be re-entering from an equatorial orbit for landing at an equatorial site, meaning if you do it perfectly all you have to do is get on a good glide slope for landing after you reenter.

Huh. Seems strange but okeedoke. Does, however still introduce an issue with timewarping, as I can't warp from ~95km until I actually enter the atmosphere.

Having a strange issue with Earth's atmosphere (and presumably other planets atmospheres too). Atmosphere ends somewhere around 63km instead of the intended 100km. Not really sure where this is coming from as I shouldn't have any mods that would otherwise affect it and SSRSS should be the latest unless there was another ninja update since last night. Uploaded my log. I gave it a look through but I couldn't pinpoint anything thats doing anything wonky. https://www.dropbox.com/s/17ouifhp4o3a2b3/KSP.log?dl=0

The idea that SLS has to be innovative is kind of strange in of itself. NASA doesn't have the budget to be innovative.

B9 Aerospace. Cormorant might also work, but Idk if its compatible with RO.

^ I believe they're meant to be for soft docking, which essentially means that you come up to dock but before you actually "dock", you soft-dock via the bumpers which allows you to adjust your crafts rotation relative to its target (so you can line up solar panels, radiators, etc) without having to do so in route to dock, essentially saving you time and tedium.

Kuiper Belt? Oort Cloud? The other dwarf planets? Basically all that cool stuff even RSS doesn't do? Granted aside from the dwarf planets, there wouldn't be much else in terms of bodies you could do (other than constantly improving/tweaking the visuals that is). May be comets? (might be a bit beyond the mods scope there) Do asteroids generate around Jupiter? If not it'd be nice to see that simulated, what with Jupiter sucking in all the garbage that comes through the solar system. Neptune and Uranus both could certainly use some attention. Uranus for instance is missing all of its moons, which is a shame given how awesome Miranda is. Granted, I believe the reason they're missing is because they haven't been mapped 100% in real life, but I'd think some creative extrapolation based on the already identified features could be really cool. Neptune is also missing most of its moons, which is also a shame from a gameplay perspective given how crazy the Neptune system is in terms of relative orbits. Pro and retrograde orbits, insane eccentricity, etc. I'd also love a delta-V and synchronous orbit chart for all the planets and moons. If only because I'm too lazy to do the math myself

Have you considered branching off into a different version scheme? When I read "1.1.4" I about near had a heart attack thinking all my mods were broken again

No body? Granted I didn't really finish my post but I was hoping someone could shed some light on this. I know that one mod (atmospheric sound enhancement) did manage to affect via its .dll, but that mod is only somewhat working right now.

Lacks the wheels and wings, but is the best out atm. For wings use B9 procedural wings.

^ Install Kerbal Joint Reinforcement.

^ Not really sure what you're saying isn't true. And as for FAR, its very different from stock aero in that it simulates what stock aero is faking, while also introducing the things stock aero doesn't simulate. And I highly doubt it was installed correctly if it broke your game. Or you're attributing the issue to FAR when its something else.

Except a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.

Its mainly because aeronautics is more or less tacked on, only possible because it can rely on whats required to simulate the rockets during ascent. We lack a lot of the things that would make flying both more realistic and enjoyable, namely better controls and more details on the actual numbers behind the performance of the aircraft (which is something rockets also lack, but they're affected to a much lesser degree) But it can also be due to the fact that unlike real life planes, KSP planes unless designed extremely well (super tedious and potentially impossible in stock, still super tedious with FAR, mitigated with FAR combined with Dynamic Deflection) will fly weird.

All I can say is, even with todays tech, it would take a probe a hell of a lot longer (and at much greater chance of failure if a time limit is imposed) to locate a Genesis rock than two throttle jockeys with a crash course on field geology would. You could say the indefinite amount of time the probe could spend on the surface negates that idea, but the fact that the probe would have to use that time to deliver comparable results still supports the idea of human exploration. Space exploration in general already suffers from results not being delivered in a timely manner despite the massive investment. Probes can go farther, last longer, and yes, over time, do more for less, but humans can bring results in a timeline that gets you a better budget. (this of course presuming that your ability to send humans isn't being hampered by poor management and improperly small budgets for stated goals, that is) Beyond that, you also have the issue that there are, in fact, things and places that probes simply cannot do and/or go, whereas humans can. You have the potential for rapid, in-situ sample processing, which combined with direct human collection will also result in much better results for the time and money spent. Places such as caves aren't something probes can explore with any sort of efficiency (without being dedicated, which in turn limits the returns for time and money spent). As has been said before, ideally speaking, probes should go where humans cannot and do what would be a waste for a human to manage. Let humans do the rest.

Title. In KSP, and particularly KSP + FAR, the aero effects leave a lot to be desired as rockets that are designed and flown in a realistic fashion basically don't generate any significant aero effects during ascent. Essentially, we miss out on that wonderful breaking of the sound barrier because of the window for the aero effects being so small, and because of realistically designed/flown rockets not generating enough of the effects. Now, granted, in real life the effect thats seen when you break the sound barrier only lasts a few seconds, but in KSP its hardly even there.

Is there ever gonna be a unique IVA for the Mk 5? Love using that particular cockpit/pod but the disconnect between the window sizes between the exterior and interior still bugs me.

A more intuitive, if potentially less accurate way of wrapping your head around it is to imagine it as a gravity issue. At that far out, the energy it takes to fight against the gravitational pull is less, so you don't have to expend as much energy to circularize as you would at lower orbit deeper in the gravity well. Its sort of an inverse of the Oberth effect, where the gains from burning at X location in the gravity well results in a circular trajectory rather than an elliptical one.

Indeed, but also kind of cheaty. Course, on the same token so is adding magic SAS to spacecraft that never had it but this all started over something that was essentially circumventing something that was supposed to be realistic so meh.

The only ones I ever added that functionality to was the Apollo pods. The Mercury and Gemini pods aren't near as difficult to control as the Apollo ones are without SAS. And yes, yes I am sure. But anyway the argument over this is and has been pointless anyway.

While I certainly do find merit in the idea of making whatever assets may exist available (in whatever state they're in) as a wonderful boon to the community, at the same time people need to just cool their jets and write the mod off as dead and buried if they aren't patient enough to wait for Alex to come around.

Theres no doubt its going to go the Moon at least twice. Unless NASA ends up being dissolved, it IS going to happen. The incoming administration isn't going to mothball a project like SLS/Orion before it flies. No amount of pessimism is going to change that. Constellation did, sure, but SLS/Orion has made more progress in a shorter amount of time (Partly by cannibalizing Constellation, but even so. If Constellation was run better and the money flowed more readily Orion would already be flying. Manned), so thats not really evidence of what may happen. As to where its going to go after that, thats up for debate. It'll likely fly to the ISS several times before its de-orbited. (A bit over the top to use Orion/SLS for ISS purposes, but it'd be great for ringing out any kinks without committing to deep space just yet) If the Journey to Mars finally gets going, it likely won't ever actually go to Mars unless the ERV ends up not being capable of rendezvous with Orion, as it would indeed be dead weight and ultimately would be better served as a pure taxi to the actual Mars ship. IIRC, Orion was designed to withstand a direct return from Mars so its not like it couldn't go to Mars. Beyond that it just depends. We've all been waiting for NASA to finally go to Mars, but what comes after that? Thats the ultimate question.

k. I'm not gonna go round and round with people being overtly antagonistic towards me for zero reason. Theres a fair bit of difference between what Nathan was responding to there and what I'm doing, and further, its not being released without permission from Nathan anyway (and in particular because of the overlapping goals). So, cool your jets.