ABZB

I once crashed an ion-powered light plane because of an eclipse (in v .23, at least) - the panels said that they were 'blocked by the Mun'

Oops, my bad. I guess it doesn't really matter though - I would not want to launch a black hole from planetary surface anyway :0 I would imagine launching components to contain/construct it - and utilize mass from asteroids or KBOs to actually form it.

Cool experience: I was chatting to this elderly gentleman I met on Saturday night, at the [delayed] fireworks - we ended up having a whole discussion about this game, and KSPI in particular - and on the whole black hole drive thing we were talking about a few pages back - it turns out he used to do projectile launcher programming and building for NASA and other US military purposes - he is a member of this org, too: http://planetary.org/. It was a very fun and fortuitous encounter

My Concern is for the ship in question - with antimatter, the ship is likely doomed. The black hole has a chance for the crew to survive - also, even if the black hole has a trajectory that can result in such a crossing, a diversion mission is very possible, given the timescales involved (especially if use is restricted to outer system, (including initial creation of the BH -I would certainly not manufacture one anywhere near an inhabited planet. Antimatter is arguably better/safer for in-system maneuvers - a colony ship, for example, would leave its BH drive section in a safe orbit far beyond pluto's.

That's a good point... Admittedly that was a verbatim quote from the linked article... That should teach me to not do the math! I think that the general point is relatively sound - that a containment failure of a charged black hole has at least the possibility of avoiding complete disaster, while a containment failure of antimatter results in an near-instant catastrophic explosion. Especially, consider that the antimatter is essentially a cloud of anti-protons [all negative]- if the containment fails, they repel each other and accelerate each-other in all directions. The black hole, as a single point [ok, so no quantum gravity yet, so maybe not exactly a point] with charge will not do so. If the ship can be stopped accelerating instantly upon failure (and given that failure implies general power failure you likely will be (unless you are going with the parabolic mirror thing)) then the block hole will [hopefully] not be moving relative to the ship itself, giving at least some time to conduct repairs (that actually sounds like the start of a decent Hollywood plot - someone should link to Speilberg). One could presumably also have some permanent magnet fixture as a failsafe- as the black hole's charge and mass are going to be held more or less constant, and the feed will be [at least mainly] neutral material, such a set-up is presumably plausible. For safety, perhaps the black hole drive should be left in outer-system trajectories only (at no point should the instantaneous trajectory pass inside a [n important] plaentary orbit) so that it if there is a failure there is a great deal of time to deal with it (even if it ends up pointing too sunward, there are plausibly years to divert it (Hollywood plot #2)). Furthermore, with regard to subdivision, it is hard to see where that matters - except for an extremely large ship with multiple small containment sites, or for a spaceplane. For the latter, the drive is obviously only intended for interstellar flight, and is in any case far too heavy to be useful for that. The safety measures I mentioned should be adequate. It is also worth mentioning that the whole point of the black hole is to convert matter to 100% energy (minus regular efficiency losses) - the antimatter is a storage medium unto itself. In deep space, there is not going to be a source for it. The black hole allows any matter one wishes to be converted into energy - space dust, stray asteroids, plutoids, etc. For the former - The main safety gain I see now is as I just thought of above - that a collection of anti-protons tends to expand itself, while the black hole does not.

The Viable mass referenced is 606000 Metric tons (so a KSP mass of 606). This would not pose a launch issue - it could be formed once already launched. In terms of danger, although smashing it into a planet would be bad, the comparative danger is arguably less than the antimatter source - a black hole in the final stages of Hawking decay exploding 1 AU from earth would have no appreciable effect. A disabled ship's antimatter containment failing could be far worse (varying on amoun, of course) the main point is that antimatter is potentially deadly in a wider range of cases, while the black hole device is deadly exactly if it hits the planet (and lacks sufficient velocity to smash through it and exit the other side (think neutronium) (giving opportunity to re-capture it before return). With regard to containment - it trivial, given antimatter containment tech. Simply give the black hole a charge (feed it lots of electrons or lots of protons (maybe consume that chargedparticle resource directly to do so)). Once created the black hole has to be fed (any, neutrally charged to preserve charge) matter to maintain its mass (and energy release rate). This is the biggest advantage of the black hole drive - once created, one can harvest any resource planetside for this. This can also harvest interstellar dust and gas (once we have actual multiple star systems this will be much more important. For extreme long-distance travel (the real world one seems to be able to make the one-way alpha centauri run in 3.5 years (from reference frame of traveler, assuming accel to .1c then decelerate [ie fastest trip]) one could even send a fleet of asteroid-mounted probes alongside kerbals, each with its own black hole, and consume first the asteroids, and then combine the black holes [although that might be horribly messy, might be better to have them go to trajectories where they won't hit anything before they evaporate] themselves if the interstellar media is insufficiently dense.

Gun Legs! That is so cute, somehow... Sounds like an anime series waiting to happen In post-apocalyptic Kraken-filled Texas there is only one machine left that can save mankind - Leggun the Probe!

use module manager: I use this to add module manager to radiators. I don't use a generic search for all parts with the FNRadiator module, as some parts have it, like B9 cargo bays, that would not make sense to be storable: @PART[RadialRadiatorzzz*] //adds to the small non-folding radials (Radial Radiator and Small Radial Radiator) { MODULE { name = KASModuleGrab evaPartPos = (0.0, 0.0, -0.18) evaPartDir = (0,0,-1) addPartMass = true storable = true storedSize = 15 attachOnPart = true } } @PART[radiator0] //adds to the smallest folding radiator { MODULE { name = KASModuleGrab evaPartPos = (0.0, 0.0, -0.18) evaPartDir = (0,0,-1) addPartMass = true storable = true storedSize = 15 attachOnPart = true } } Obviously, one can add it to more if one wants

I'll try that then - maybe my clicks are not registering then

I have no idea either - I am [hopefully educated] guessing at what the cause is - I only have the EVA parachutes thing installed myself - the gui on an eva'd kerbal has the deploy dialogues, but they don't do anything when I click on them. Maybe make a new test career save, edit that save file for a bunch of science, and complete the tech tree. See if it works then - maybe a node is implicit in the dll or something and is moved to late in the tech tree in interstellar? I had it working - it stopped working when I installed RSS, then never started again, even when I removed it.

the download link has https://dl.dropboxuserco ntent.com/u/27031094/Alphas/Vouager%20-%20v0.4.zip (doesn't work) instead of https://dl.dropboxuserco ntent.com/u/27031094/Alphas/Voyager%20-%20v0.4.zip (works)

are you using treeloader? I started a career with one of the custom trees, and I have ben having the ame issue. It eorks with the default interstellar tree... Maybe there is a needed node that ends up mapped to the far end in some?

No problem - always glad to help also - I was looking through the configs - some of the parts are missing the 'PART{' at the beginning or the final '}'

I think that a fleet of medium ships moving together would give the best of both - this way any of the myriad catastrophes that might seriously damage a single ship and end all can be avoided by multiple redundancy, while maintaining diversity. Also, having multiple distinct communities can help encourage cultural diversity - and allow for psychological health in that one who has a public falling-out can move to a different ship and be somewhat insulated from bad communal feelings. - - - Updated - - - Crowdsourcing an Mutliply Redundant Earth Escape System

your link has a random 'http://' at the end. with that removed, the link works.

Oooh yes - I love those - I still use some from that, whose .cfgs I updated. I can't wait to see what you will make. If I may suggest - I would love an inflatable/retractable heatshield that I could deploy around inline engines, then retract - for example, this could be used for landing and then taking off from eve - otherwise the not-as-good radial engines, as well asside mounts for inline engines are simpler in that I can protect them with, say, the regular inflatable heatshield (that goes from 3.75 stowed to 6.25 expanded) - and guarantee that I have something to take off with. I am picturing some kind of retractable cone that extends and snaps shut (kind of a reverse fairing).

... I just pasted that into my gamedata folder. Oh Great One: What fixed it for you? (before I start KSP )

just place this folder inside your gamedata folder in (go to the ksp folder, double click on the gamedata folder, then paste)

I've been having the same issue -I even tried installing dev builds. No luck. EDIT: I think I found the issue - under attitude adjustment, I had 'Use Stock SAS' checked. After unchecking it, I seem to be functional

Ah, Ok. Thanks. Jeb has safely reboarded

Stupid question: Kerbals who go on eva from the ship are unable to reenter - the 'F -Board' text never floats before them. What am I missing?

No, this is a mechjeb problem - even on vehicles that only have reaction wheels from launch, they function fine on manual, and on SAS, but mechjeb's SMART SAS goes crazy, and swings the ship all over the place; instead of, for example: holding to prograde. As this was occurring before I installed this plugin, I believe that it is a bug in the current mechjeb release, and not relevant here at all.

That also started happening to me randomly with mechjeb - but it happened before I installed this mod, and even when only having reaction wheels

The WarpPluginSettings.cfg in the GameData/WarpPlugin. That has this: WARP_PLUGIN_SETTINGS { name = WarpPluginSettings HydrogenResourceName = LiquidFuel OxygenResourceName = Oxidizer AluminiumResourceName = Aluminium MethaneResourceName = LqdMethane ArgonResourceName = Argon WaterResourceName = LqdWater HydrogenPeroxideResourceName = H2Peroxide AmmoniaResourceName = Ammonia ThermalMechanicsDisabled = False } I think that this changes the target resources from the refinery (ISRU) module, so change OxygenResourceName = Oxidizer to OxygenResourceName = Oxygen, for example. Then you would have to edit the 4 cfg files in the same directory that define the propellants for the reactor-based engines (only 3 really, 1 is just for that vacuum thruster) In the parts/utilities folder, you would have to edit the refinery cfgs. in any extraction module whose (raw) resource has a different real-fuels name, you would edit the line: resourceName = X as needed, as well as edit the resource nodes that hold small amounts of the raw mined and the products, as needed.

I noticed that rcs parts in the download have: rescaleValue = 1 I assume that this should be: rescaleFactor =1 given that ksp.log states that this is a non-existent property?