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I'm sorry to hear about your situation @Spacescifi. I'm an ex trukkie and a car guy and I've lived in vehicles for a lot of my career. Firstly, check around your dealerships, often last years model is available under the same warranty conditions as current and usually at a significant discount. A longer wheelbase van is ideal for camping but the cargo section needs to be as long as you are for a good sleeping base, bed on one side, gear on the other. Online: for around $1,200 to $1,500 you should be able to get a 'house battery' (lead acid deep cycle) with an inverter, a cheap engine charger and mobile refrigerator. For an extra $200 you can get a mobile gas hot water system (also needs power) or you can find truck stops in your area. In Australia it's usually free It's a lot cheaper to set these systems up yourself and I have a lot of experience with 12V DC so if you need help please feel free to PM me.

Okay having visited all these moons in my tour of Neidon here's my review: First of all awesome and thank you making this! Got a good few hours of fun out of it and definitely made my trip to Neidon worth it The Neidon re-texture looks amazing I got many nice screenshots of it on my trip, I like the rings too they are suitably subtle for a Neptune equivalent My favorite moon has to be Hargalað, my first reaction to seeing it was "my god what is this thing" made sure I landed on a cliff with a nice view of Neidon and got some really good screenshots. Love the sharp cliffs and the crazy terrain My plan was to visit all the Neidon moons except for Thatmo, for the mission requirements here is my experience: Neidon being a gas giant means most of my dV is spent raising and lowering orbit, probably worth it to maximize Oberth effect here or possibly use gravity assists Plane change maneuvers are expensive especially near Neidon which is an interesting challenge for Nito and Tito since they have a very low gravity and are in low orbits. Getting encounters is closer to doing a rendezvous than on traditional bodies and either way you are paying if your inclination is off. Especially Hargalað and Tito were challenging because of their low gravity and because its difficult to transfer from Chymere to Hargalað or from Nito to Tito. I really enjoyed the challenge. For Chymere I spent roughly 200~250 dV on landing, and the same for return to orbit. Probably could be done for much cheaper but my lander was overbuilt The other 3 bodies have such low gravity landing dV is a non-factor, might even be better to just land on RCS pack I decided to start from high up in the Neidon system and work my way down Chymere --> Hargalað --> Nito --> Tito I'm only doing this because I'm visiting Nissee on my way out and want to refuel high in orbit before the plane change. Probably more optimal to come in low and work your way out / direct encounter Chymere from a lower periapsis in order to utilize huge Oberth effect of Neidon From about 19000km orbit and visiting all the moons in said order took about 2.5K dV out of my pusher stage (including encounters and circularizing), the vast majority was spent getting from Chymere / Hargalað to Tito/Nito that took me about 900~1000 dV. The second biggest drain was getting encounters with Tito and Nito, being more precise with my inclination, or doing my plane changes higher up could have saved some dV here. Hope this helps someone plan their mission Thank you again for making this!

Hi Kerbonauts, dont know where correctly drop my question, which is and dropped here: Is there any way to increase the range of 200 meters that grip at rendezvouing in orbit? Would like that large stations begin to spin to adjusted alignment much earlier. (Say 500 or 1.000 meters) Now i have to move into the 200 meter bubble, wait minuted till station align and then start docking. Docking at moving/spinning/rotating stations is a harrasment. Persistent Rotation dont help cause it work only at vessels, their reaction wheels/rcs can handl their weight. (And not at 800 or 1.500 tons stations...) Thanks for hints, tips or declaring. Alex.

The Final Aerabe Flight As reputation of the program grew and grew, so did people wanting to move on from the Aerabe design and construct an entirely new rocket. But first, the engineers had been asking if they could show off a new Aerabe rocket, one that was recoverable. This rocket would be a carbon copy of the Aerabe 2, with one difference, a decoupler and parachute attached to the nose cone payload. After the 1st and 2nd stages would burn their fuel away, the nosecone would be jettisoned by a decoupler attached between it and the 2nd stage tank. Once jettisoned, a parachute beneath the payload would deploy, slowing the craft down to a safe landing speed. The payload would then be recovered. The rocket would be called the Aerabe 4. Photograph of the Aerabe 4 on the launchpad at the Inland Complex. On Teprill 27th, 1947, at 00:35:00, Aerabe 4 lifted off from the Inland Complex. The 1st stage fired for 4 seconds, jettisoned, and then the 2nd stage fired. More fuel had been added to the 2nd stage, so the burn would be a lot longer. It was lit for 35 seconds, and then cut off. As soon as it cut off, the payload was jettisoned. It continued to soar higher and higher, only controlled by gravity and the laws of aerodynamics. It reached its apogee at around 43.4 km, and its parachute was deployed. It only slowed the craft down a little, because it hadn't been fully opened yet and the air was still very thin. It fell slowly back down to Kerbin. At an altitude of 200 meters, its parachute opened fully and the payload was instantly snagged back and slowed down rapidly. It landed about 15 minutes after takeoff, in a patch of trees near the Inland Complex. Photograph of the payload's landing site. The payload was recovered safely shortly after. The only damage done to it was a scratch from it hitting a tree branch above it. All experiments were collected and sent back to R&D for analysis. Reception of this mission was widely acclaimed for its new ventures in safe and recoverable craft. The mission was a success. But then, the directors decided that with this great success, it was time to discontinue the Aerabe And so on Kay 5th, the program announced the end of the Aerabe, and it was officially lost to history. With that, a new rocket program was needed. But what would it be? What do you all of think of this so far? just asking cuz I wanna know :^

Hi guys, i have the problem that my game lose fps when i build rockets/ ships with more than 200 parts .. not in VAB but when i wanna launch my vessel it becomes unplayable for me i installed 133 mods .. yeah its a lot i know .. but i've played games with much better graphic and way more mods installed. my pc specs: intel core i5-3550 (4 cores with each 3,30 Ghz) 24 GB Ram Nvidia Geforce GTX 960 (Gigabyte 4 GB GDDR5) KSP just uses 30 -40% of my cpu, 6 - 12GB Ram and round about 15% of my gpu i already tryed to lower the grapics and the physics settings of the game. but still massive fps drop with a 300 part vessel -.- does someone can help me here please? thanks and have a nice day ppl EDIT: i have KSP 1.8.1 installed

At the risk of venturing too far into the realm of "suggesting solutions", which we were asked not to do: I would hope that IG recognize that this isn't a prudent path forward. The current pixelated interface is very far from being acceptable and will take a considerable amount of work to make it functional across the wide array of devices that they need to support. This is because that by committing to a pixelated style they are giving up a plethora of anti-aliasing techniques which make it possible to produce interfaces that scale easily and clearly to a wide array of display geometries and densities; afterall, most anti-aliasing techniques involve some amount of interpolation, something which you intentionally need to avoid to maintain a crisp pixelated look. This leads to very painful design trade-offs as one must either: compromise the style by trying to remain device agnostic and accepting that users with low-to-moderate pixel densities will see a muddy mess as they lack the resolution to crisply realize the clean lines you intended design graphical elements to target the lowest-common-denominator of pixel density and accept that a (hopefully-small) amount of anti-aliasing will be necessary on some display geometries. However, such an approach significantly limits the amount of screen real-estate and detail that you have at your disposal. Given that users with very low pixel counts (e.g. TVs and low-end monitors) are too common to ignore, this isn't something that users with more modern display devices would appreciate. painstakingly design graphical elements for an array of pixel densities. Naturally, this leads to very difficult decisions (e.g. "should the dot in this icon be two pixel or three pixels at 100 dpi? what about 200 dpi? oh, but this other dot elsewhere needs to be three pixels in its context and yet should have the same weight as a dot which we can only afford to give two pixels..."). There is a good reason why interfaces are no longer designed this way. Some hybrid of the three; this appears to be where we are today, with some features being faithful to the style ("sharp") while others are muddy; some features are needlessly large, while others suffer from awful visual inconsistencies (e.g. some have significantly more visual weight than others which should look similar) Add to this difficulty the fact that it is extremely common to consume the game in compressed form (e.g. via Twitch, YouTube, or Remote Play). High frequency features like those found in the current style are anathema to the psychovisual models on which most video compression schemes are based. It is nigh inevitable that even a well-implemented pixelated style will look like mush via such a channel. Finally, there is the fact that all code has a cost. This is especially true for systems like user interfaces, which are notoriously hard to test and very platform dependent (and made even more so by the pixelated style). Keeping two interfaces in the tree would be incredibly expensive and would split attention in an area of the project which badly needs focus. Ultimately, I can't speak to why IG thought that the pixelated look would be worth the effort given that they had a perfectly reasonably-looking interface concept years ago. It should be clear to someone with a graphics background that the pixelated design was going to be challenging at best, with the result inevitably looking mediocre to at least some targeted players; the best you can reasonably hope for is that it would look "okay" for "most" players. I hope that IG sees the writing on the wall and writes off the current design as an interesting, but ultimately doomed, experiment. This would allow a change of course before more effort is put towards the Sisyphean task that otherwise lays ahead of them. Yes, perhaps this will mean discarding some sunk cost but reverting to a smooth style will almost certainly be easier than the alternative, and will certainly produce a better, more predictable, and easier-to-evolve result.

Whilst adding joints doesn't scale the issue of worldsim, the mindless addition of extra joints will have an impact. That's as basic as saying a 100 part vessel is gonna perform better than a 200 part vessel. The worldsim problem compounds this. Sadly we can only wait and see how it works when we actually get interstellar ships under acceleration outside the physics bubble, along colonies and stuff. Improvements which remain to be seen and properly analyzed.

/////////////////////MISSION UPDATE\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ (Right) The newly certified Crew Rotation Vehicle (CRV) next to its predecessor (Left) Foreword: I have spend a lot of time on this one. Tweeking, fiddling, adding methalox, removing methane. Then removing methalox adding methane and always just being short of the goal. When I got it working, it Flew perfect to orbit, rendezvoused with K.G.01 - only for it not to be able to pitch more than ÷45° and plummet into a fiery death. All in an endeavour to make the design more sleek looking. I also found out another docking port on K.G.01 is bugged and broken. To fix that I need a new center tower... and I am contemplating to just leave it broken and figure a work around. Hoping a future bug fix will resolve the issue. All that and more bellow. Mission Tasks: A. Update the Crew SSTO spaceplane with v.0.1.3 parts. B. Find a reproducible procedure to rendezvous with K.G.01 Lessons Learned; Lessons Identified: A. First prototype docked at K.G.01 First thing I did was ditch the 4th engine to revert back to the original 3 engine concept i start with. It just looks aesthetic more pleasing i think. I then replaced the micro docking part with the inline docking port and removed the MK.2 monopropellant tank, as the inline MK.2 clamp-o-tron part + the command module has plenty of monopropellant on its own. The plane flew well. The first pleasant surprise was that it could break past the 350 m/s mark - which pre v.0.1.3. was only just possible with 4 engines because of the drag issues. The slightly updated SSTO rendezvoused with K.G.01 with no issues, except for a bugged out docking port. I lined the SSTO up perfect for a dock on the top port on the crew compartment for K.G.01. The placement of the docking port on the center of mass meant that I had superb control of orientation and approach to the port. I actually had the two docking port gently kiss each other at 0.01 m/s - So believe me that I was disappointed to not the docking notification, and learning that K.G.01 was still broken - even though I have worked hard to rectify that.. The prototype - not docked to K.G.01 Above is a Image of what could have been... but is not going to be as of now. I am contemplating weather I'll fly up a new tower.. in case its an irreversible bug.. I think that is a future sulution. Short term I could try find a way to fix two emergency gliders on one side, and leave the other for docking crew vehicles - future tinkering is possible there. In any case I docked at one of the side mounts instead. Besides that there was no major issues, except the SSTO was all but dry for Δv when it arrived. Only had a measly 44 Δv left. No Issue - K.G.01 is a fuels station after all - So I just topped up the vehicle with enough fuel to deorbit. This is where I re-discovered a lesson i thought I had learned previously - Namely that it seems the game calculates the available Δv from the amount of methane is in the tanks, regardless of if it has enough oxidizer to burn the fuel. As such I missed KCS with a whole continent... That being said, It was able to deorbit relatively well. It felt very nose heavy though. At peak drag I wasn't able to get a higher AoA than the 20 or so ° It glided well though, a bit too well tbh - it took for ever to get it to around the 60 m/s mark were it would land without bouncing around. So - after the tests there were a few things I would like to change and address: Namely getting 100-200 Δv more out of the airframe and make it less nose heavy - so it would re-enter better. Also I tried to ditch the front control surfaces for a more sleek look. The result from experimenting was this: By reducing the amount of Methalox and adding 1t more methane to the plane I got the 100-200 more Δv and looked sleeker. How ever - trying to remove the front canards It got even worse re-entry characteristics to the point were it would not pitch up... but just fall to its death. I reduced the length further, added fuel to the wing engines, but now could not get it to have the right mix of methane and methalox. Also it started to have trouble breaking the 350 m/s mark I flew to orbit only to have to little methane. I would then add methane and then when went into closed cycle I would have the same ammount of methane I added to much - which makes no sense to me... I made the wings thicker to get more lift, I added control surfaces on the outside of the outer engines, instead of wings, to get more pitch control.. But it helped nothing. I simply could not get it to K.G.01 with enough fuel to get back to KSC again... and landings were notorious difficult. This is when I added the canards again.. and gentlemen this difference: This tiny difference - is 400 more Δv, 1t less methane to get to the mesosphere. It's reaching 1000 m/s at the end of the troposphere instead of at the beginning of the mesospheres - and it has gentle landings. (the the air brake was redundant in the end) It is odd that two tiny "wings" should have such an effect - I suspect there is something more to it that is hidden in the physics model. Even though I had 1t methane less, I still had 210 kg of methane in surplus when all the oxidizer was burned. And before the canards were added it was perfectly balanced to spend all the methane before going into closed cycle. I guess we will learn what's up in the future. In the end I got a really sleek small craft capable of ferrying crew to and from K.G.01. - The plane is smaller, lighter and although the former spaceplane is more capable now, this smaller sleeker version is just right for the job. The difference in size between old model (red) and new (white/black) And here are the stats between the two versions. It is interesting, because the new version feels a lot shorter than just ~3m B. CRV enroute to K.G.01 what's most important is that the plane has consistent performance that is easy to achieve - which means its predictable. If you follow these steps with the vehicle you will rendezvous with a spacecraft in a 100km orbit above Kerbin, and return back to KSC again. Once airborn angle to 15° using flaps until around 150 m/s - allow the plane to coast: It should hit the 20° mark once it reaches the mesospheres. As soon as it hits closed cycle (I still manually kick the engines into closed cycle) Pitch to 30° and coast - should be at 40° mark once AP of 100km has been reached. Burn until AP is at 100km and cut the engines. Once at AP burn again for an AP at 150km and a PE on 100km Rendezvous, transfer crew and de-orbit. Land - Vehicle has sufficient performance to glide without fuel left. But you may have extra Δv for a powered flight back. That's it for now - All the v.0.1.3 issues has been resolved, and I can continue with building K.G.02 I am going to organize my vehicle files for the service vehicles, drones, and K.G.01 and upload them for others to get. See you soon.

I just finished examining this phenomena, and yes, It's completely the Steam Awards. Around 162 of the 209 new reviews are nonsensical, presenting unrelated text, memes, thumbs up, or even the bare minimum to qualify: a single character. Others included in this category straight up attack other reviewers, or tell you to buy the game now and wait because it is not good. 104 reviews come from "suspicious" accounts: They haven't reviewed other games, don't own other games, or are extremely new accounts that haven't even changed the default PFP. Finally, 89 of those 209 reviews haven't gone above the set 5 hour threshold. Most people reviewing the game already owned it, they're not new purchasers and have in fact almost not even played the game in the 9 months it's been out. The thing is with so little players it really takes just 200 reviews to completely flip the score.

Last night, the release of this game made me want to watch The Right Stuff again, lol. Holy crap, it's like a 3 hour movie, and a lot cheesier than I remember. Still, I enjoyed it. Watching that made me want to build my third aircraft, this time to go to space for the first time. I decided it'd be a cool challenge to try to do so in an NF-104 inspired aircraft (the plane Chuck Yeager crashes in both the film, and in real life). The NF-104 was the predecessor to the X-15. It was a standard F-104 Starfighter, that had been modified with wing tanks removed, a hydrazine rocket in the tail just above the engine exhaust, and the radome replaced with an RCS system (monopropellant tanks and a few thrusters for maneuvering in the rarified air). My build is not quite a 1:1 replica, instead it's just inspired by the real deal. I wanted to use my ejection cockpit from the jump jet build, whereas the inline cockpit would look better for an F-104 replica, so I decided not to adhere to an exact replica. The major difference (besides the cockpit) is relocation of the RCS thrusters to the wingtips and just behind the cockpit, instead of trying to place them in the tiny nose this cockpit affords. Some of the proportions are also a little off, mostly because I built it from memory. I didn't get any screenshots of the ascent unfortunately. I didn't know this was going to be a successful flight, so I didn't document that part. I'd already had a couple unsuccessful flights that usually peaked around 60,000 meters. BTW, I tested the ejection cockpit again at 1,200 m/s at 13,000 meters on one of these flights, and it still worked great, came well away from the plane (I thought I'd have to add more separatrons for those speeds). Most of the plane's fuselage is precoolers, because they're fairly low drag intakes that work well at high speeds and altitudes. They also fit with the plane's aesthetic. I also didn't want to use fuel tanks in the main fuselage, as I knew I'd have to keep weight down. I spammed 4 precoolers and 2 of the small intakes to try and keep the whiplash running into the highest altitudes possible. I had already exchanged some mono-propellant for more methalox tanks, but it was still failing to get to space. I decided the only way to get that last 10k meters without changing the aesthetic of the plane was to go light on fuel, so I reduced my methane fuel load to 1/2 of what it was before... This plane was light on fuel already, so this is a sketchy decision. Long story short, it was a 15 degree climb on the Whiplash up to about 18,000 meters, then a shallow 10 degree dive to 12,000 meters to get up to 1,200 m/s as fast as possible. Then a full pitch up into an 80 degree climb. Another reason for the dive is to maximize the amount of time the Whiplash keeps running during that 80 degree climb. Diving back into thicker air also improves authority over the elevator, so you're not taking forever to pitch into the 80 degree climb. Any lower than 12,000 meters though, and you start to bleed too much speed. Then, upon your pro-grade reaching 80 degrees, I fire the Thud rocket. I don't wait for the Whiplash to quit, firing the Thud a little early improves airspeed for more ram air, feeding the Whiplash a little bit longer. Once the Whiplash gets weaker, I use a hotkey to close all the intakes (it makes a huge difference on drag). The Whiplash uses whatever intake air is left in the closed intakes, and chokes out around where it would fail anyway. This flight, it JUST barely made it to 71,000 meters, just enough time for a 60 second space walk. Reentry was pretty sketchy, about 900 m/s at about 70 degrees below the horizon for prograde. The fully moving elevator helps arrest the descent around mach 1, and around 12,000 meters. Then begins a LONG turn for home, since the wings arent very effective at that altitude. But I dared not go lower, for a very important reason. Now the hard part. I left with only 2 tons of methane to begin with. I reentered with just over 1 ton left, and by the time I finished my turn, was down to 900 kilos. That's all I had to get back, and for such a normally thirsty engine, I wasn't sure if I could get back. If these engines have a regime in which they could be called "efficient", it is at 12,000-18,000 meters, at their maximum speed. At these altitudes, it doesn't burn quite as much fuel because there's not quite as much air to mix it with. And, it doesn't matter too much if it drinks it quickly, because you're covering over a kilometer of ground per second. On a mileage basis, it's actually a pretty efficient way to travel. This is why I did my turn for home at 12,000 meters, any lower, and it would have been a struggle to get back to that altitude without burning off the rest of my fuel. I left it in a shallow climb, until it was running at around only 30 KN of thrust, sipping gas, and cruising at 1,200 m/s. This put me in a parabolic arc up to 24,000 meters. At that altitude, I could literally cut the engine entirely (not that it would run well anyway), and just.. Coast. I turned off the intakes again, and again, let the engine quit on air starvation. This is actually proving to be a pretty useful trick, I gained a decent amount of altitude and speed during that time waiting for it to starve, because the engine still runs on stored intake air, but you don't suffer the drag penalties of open intakes. It actually had a decent amount of legs flying it this way, it probably could have flown much further on that 900 kilos. I left the SAS at about 10-15 degrees above prograde. Although this caused drag, it extended my flight time in that high altitude air where drag is minimal. Although it slowed me down, with the engine off, from 1,200 m/s down to 500 m/s, I had only gone from 24,000 meters down to 22,000 meters. This equates to far less drag loss overall, then allowing it to maintain speed, but descend. And by that time, I was almost straight over the KSC, and had to descend anyway. I spiralled down, bleeding off speed and altitude as much as possible. I still had about 610 kilos of fuel left, which is enough to ensure I made the runway, or even do a go around (which, as you'll see, I should have). I almost botched the landing. I was surprised by how fast the runway was coming up to meet me despite my low airspeed, and 4-5 FPS made the plane almost uncontrollable... It was weird, normally I get 10-15 at the worst around the KSC. ... Yeah, lol, maybe you can spot the problem with this picture... I had turned up the timewarp to descend faster, and had forgotten to go back to 1x for final approach and landing. With how narrow the wheel base is, and how bouncy those landing gear are, not to mention the tiny wings and a plane that flies like a brick, this wasn't going to be an easy landing to begin with... And I'd made it way harder than even that out of inattentiveness. Because of the timewarp, it bled speed too fast for me to react well whenever I cut power. I'd allowed it to stall out way too high, and it clunked down onto the main landing gear VERY hard from probably 50 meters up. The one thing that saved me was the decision to use the bigger landing gear for the main wheels. Then, because of the tall suspension and narrow wheel base, it swerved side to side down the runway, striking both wing tips. Again, a decision I'd made in building saved the plane. I'd insisted on using the LARGE wings, even though this was about the smallest wings you could possibly make with them (they have minimum chord/tip lengths and thicknesses). I like using these wings, even on small planes, if I can, because they have a very high crash tolerance. This kept them from getting destroyed during the wingtip strikes. I didnt realize my mistake till I had tried to EVA for a photo op. The game wont let you EVA at timewarp. I was like "Well hell, now I'm surprised I landed that at all". I decided to recover the plane instead of revert to VAB, for posterity, since it survived the flight. The recovery screen confirmed that I indeed broke the lower roll RCS ports on the wing tips during the wing strikes, and interestingly, I apparently broke the main landing gear... I think maybe KSP 2 is going for a more complicated damage model than KSP 1 because, although this records the landing gear as having been broken in a hard landing... They didn't explode or anything, the wheels were still actually attached to the aircraft. It makes me wonder if landing too hard makes the suspension give out or act weird (kinda like how in KSP 1, you can physically break wheels without completely destroying them). If this is the case, I think it's a cool feature.

So I dummied up the following, Kometeer, without knowing exactly which parts you can use. The main feature is the staggering of the panels. You can point directly at or away from the sun and they will all receive 100% without shadowing each other. When the panel axis needs to be pointed at the sun, you simply rotate the craft 180 degrees longitudinally and you are back in business. That longitudinal rotation will give you 100% solar exposure at any[tm] attitude. At Kerbin's altitude, out in deep space, the panels will run the Dawn continuously. (This is why I, in general, like RTGs or fuel cells: they will work at Eeloo and during the night.) Looks like this has 17+ km/s dV. And you can launch it within a fairing. You may need an antenna for science and some way to get the kerb back to Kerba Firma. Part List: lawn chair (kerbal lying on its back) facing prograde Z-200 battery 5x PB-X150 6x OX-4L small RW Dawn ion engine

Eh it sounds hokey to me. It's not a 30% difference, its 22.7%. Let's say for fun we believe Elon and Starship can deliver 150t to orbit for 1m dollars. Thats just $6.6k/t, so you could conservatively put 10kw of generation into orbit for 6k. In low orbit you're only generating half the day so that's about 43kwh/yr. That's not bad, about 4 US households worth for 6k! So you can get the power generation up there, but trying to transmit that energy over 2000km to the ground I don't think you're going to be able to beat 22.7% in losses especially considering battery, radiator, and structural mass. But that's not even the real problem. The problem is throughput. Say you were to move computation up there. Data centers currently use about 200 twh per year, about 1% of total global energy consumption. Let's say we could move 1% of that--.01% of the total--into space, or 2twh worth. Heat dissipation is a factor but its way less transmission loss because you're dumping directly into the processors. That would require 4.6 million starship launches just for the solar panels. Thats about 1% of 1% every 6,300 years. I think we can see why that's not realistic or feasible even before considering battery, processor, structural and radiator mass. You can try beating the energy density math by putting nuclear plants up there but the reality is rockets fail. I know no one wants to deal with this, no one wants to think about Chernobyl or Fukushima but my brothers in science those risks are real. What does China care if industrial standards aren't up to snuff and a reactor leaks into the groundwater or melts down in Uganda? They don't. Thats why it's cheap there, because no one actually cares what happens to anyone who lives there. But toss out the non-zero chance that a low-orbit nuclear reactor could land in the US or Europe? You might run into a few more regulatory hurdles. These solutions are, Im sorry to say, at best nft-esque marketing gimmicks for extracting money from unwise investors, and at worst fantasmograms designed to paint technocratic authoritarianism as salvation. It makes a lot of sense if you don’t think about it too much. Surely a society that could force a community with no democratic recourse to accept a half-baked nuclear reactor developed and build by a limited liability start-up could also force that same community to accept the consequences for their children and grandchildren if and when that ill-designed and half-maintained reactor were to fail, with zero accountability to the original investors. Real solutions tend to be much less dramatic, often utterly mundane, sadly, and don’t imagine wild-eyed investor returns. It's basic stuff like housing density and zoning reform, heat pumps, grid updates, and better transportation management. But who’s going to become a pog-faced overnight billionaire on that? Keep dumping your money into the Techy-tech scratch-off billionaire doohicky of the hour! This is a free market and you're freely encouraged to hand over everything you've made to people who know better than you do how stupid this all is.

I set out to make a MD, LG, and XL lifter, but plans sorta... changed. I'm sure you see where things went. To make a long story short, I decided to see if I could make a controllable, recoverable booster. I never used grid fins before so I slapped those on. A few failed landings later I added the AIRBREAKS. I Tried the LG legs but they kept coming off. As you can see here: I promise the only things damaged on impact were the control surfaces, engine, and remote control. The start of our first successful launch. Launch! Booster separation. My payload is an empty, lone SM crew module. I don't know how successful this lifter will be with a real payload, but it should be able to push it to 70km, I boost the payload out to 150 or 200 - enough time to screw up the booster landing. At any rate, shortly after separation the damn thing flipped. I decided to stick with it though. Luckily I got it back towards prograde and on a suborbital trajectory. Crew module shot into space with some separatrons. Fear not, it's empty. I think. I let out a maniacal laugh directly into the phone, and therefore my girlfriend's ear, as it thrust away from me. It's the little things in life. At this point I had burned on a trajectory back towards KSC. It wasn't pretty, but I knew I had a ton of dV in hand after my initial set of failures and learning about the power of grid fins and AIRBREAKS. I found myself nicely set up for a good approach. No panic burns, no overcorrections, just pro piloting: And witness my greatness. I emitted a series of unintelligible grunts as the booster settled nicely on the ground. While I know this will become that much harder when I've put a real payload on it that needs to make it into orbit, this is one of the more conceptually difficult missions I've tackled, but in practice it was rather straightforward. I don't see myself being dV efficient to where I'm down to <50m/s or something at touch down, but I continue to prove to myself that I've got the skill to tackle things more complex than a Mun landing. So I leave my trophy in far view of the VAB. I might even stick this on the fridge.

Machinery and equipment can last for decades, sometimes a century+ (something is working since XIX). So, the flight time should not exceed 100..200 years. Relevant stars (alpha Cen , epsilon Eri, Sirius, etc,) are at 4...11 ly from here. So, the minimum delta-V to get there before the ship gets out of order = 4..11 / 100..200 = 0.05 c. The engine characteristic power, W ~= thrust, N * exhaust speed (i.e. ISP * g), m/s. Its energy conversion efficiency is (much) less than 1, so comparable power is produced as waste heat. The waste heat is produced as energy of electrons, heavy particles, and photons, so in any case mostly as electromagnetic radiation (primary or secondary). It weakens proportionally to 1/r2, while the established equilibrium temperature is proportional to 1/sqrt(r). This means that the combustion chamber size is limited from below by heat, and from above by mass. This means that realistic size of the chamber/nozzle is ~tens to hundreds meters, and the power (i.e. F*ISP) is very limited from above. You can have either high thrust but inefficient low ISP, or high ISP but weak thrust and slow acceleration (which in turn leads to flight duration beyond the equipment stability). Two ways can increase the limit of power. Both are based on the idea that you drop the energy of photons, and use the energy of plasma. Lattice-like magnetic nozzles, made of ribs, flat in cross-section, oriented with edges to the hot spot. Most of photons pass between the ribs and fly away. Those ones who hit the ribs, heat them, but as the ribs are wide in radial direction and thus massive, it allows to cool them with active cooling system down to appropriate temperature. The plasma inside is held and pushed back by magnetic field, produced by the rib lattice. The appropriate size is greater than for solid chamber/nozzle, but still very limited. Another way is to place the hot spot far behind the ship, focus the plasma beam towards the ship, and let photons (and neutrons) just fly away without any structure around. It's the Orion way. In this case you can place the reaction zone at several kilometers to tens kilometers behind away from the ship. All waste heat stays behind. So, you virtually have an immaterial chamber of many kilometer size, and just have to reflect the plasma beam with a magnetic trap. This type engine combines exhaust speed of 1 000 up to 10 000 km/s (ISP 100 000 ... 1 000 000 s), normal acceleration, limited ship size, and limited requirements for the cooling system. At the same time the developed magnetic trap, equipped with expandable structure, can serve as a magnetic chute to slow down from interstellar speed to interplanetary without spending of fuel (catching the protons of solar wind of the destination star, using them to generate electricity in the trap, produce magnetic field, and reflect other protons of that solar wind to produce deceleration thrust), and then as electric chute to slow down from interplanetary speed to planetary, using the planetary magnetosphere. Also, the magnetic nozzle can be used as a front shield, reflecting incoming protons and clouds of ionized dust, produced by X-ray beams, destroying meteoroids on the way. As currently the fusion Orion design is the only known such design, with high thrust, high ISP, and listed advantages, it could be said that at the current state of physics, 1 000 ... 10 000 km/s is the top limit of available exhaust speed. Mass ratio = exp(0.05 * 300 000 / 10 000) = 4.5 If ISP*g = 1 000 km/s, ln(4.5) * 1000 / 300 000 ~= 0.005 c. This means that 0.05 c is the minimum what can let the ship reach the closest stars, staying intact; and at the same time it's the maximum of what can be achieved without unknown future-tech technologies (like hyperjumps, teleportation of hydrogen from Jupiter or energy from Sun to the ship, a pocket universe for the combustion chamber, etc.).

The log is not usable for me. I only ever get about 200 lines displayed and then nothing more. However, it should be possible to upload the log in one piece. How big is the log?

The US launching the first satellite into space might have had major effects on world history. Historically, the launch of Sputnik caused a crisis within the US defence establishment, causing a rise in defence spending due to the “missile gap” scare. If the US launched the first satellite, there would probably be no missile gap crisis. This would result in reduced funding for the Atlas and Titan ICBM programs. In addition, there would probably be no Space Race, which was largely only feasible because of the fear Sputnik inspired in the West. Eisenhower grudgingly supported Project Mercury due to public pressure for a response to supposed Soviet success. However, that’s not say a man might never fly into space. The USAF and Army were exploring a sort of proto-Mercury program called Project Man Very High, and it might have gotten funding. But a major consequence of there being no missile gap scare is that the Cold War nuclear arms race might come to a conclusion much earlier than in our timeline. Historically the Sputnik scare caused the USAF to propose a force of 2,500 Minuteman ICBMs, while Congress demanded a force of 1,000. This in turn forced the USSR to undertaken its own massive missile buildup. Without Sputnik being first, this probably wouldn’t happen. Thus both the US and Soviet ICBM arsenals would remain frozen at about 200-300 missiles, which is what each side was contemplating prior to the Sputnik crisis. Another dire consequence of the US winning the satellite race would be that with no missile gap issue to help propel him to the Presidency, John F. Kennedy might barely lose the election to Nixon in 1960. A combination of no Kennedy and no race to put the first man in space which the Soviets win would likely mean there would never be a project Apollo. The notion that the US- or anybody for that matter- was not going to fly to the Moon until the late 20th century (1980s or 1990s) or even after 2000 might remain the prevailing view. I haven’t refreshed my knowledge of the early Soviet space programs recently, but I am pretty sure that no propaganda victory with the launch of the first satellite would mean Khrushchev would not fund further satellites or spacecraft after Sputnik 1. The military was very reluctant to allow Korolev to do that in the first place, and if it didn’t have propaganda value he wouldn’t have gotten more funding. At best, reconnaissance satellites might be built, but there would probably not be any extra money for a man in space like Vostok given Khrushchev’s desire to cut costs. On a much wider note, given that the nuclear arms race of the 60s is part of what doomed the USSR, that might change the entire history of the Cold War. Same with Nixon being president during the pivotal years of 1960-1965 too.

I've been taking a break from KSP playing/modding this past year also. I really love Skyhawk Science System, it's the best TechTree IMHO. Totally get how complex it is. I think I made some posts about some issues I found. I tried both Kerbalism based and non-Kerbalism based SSS together with KSRSS Reborn (and 200+ other mods). I ended up preferring non-Kerbalism mode, it has for various reasons not really SSS related, less issues with all the mods I use, even though I love the science collection aspect. Totally understand not having the time or inclination right now to contribute, I'm in the same position, but I'd definitely recommend @JonnyOThan's suggestion - personally I made him a Contributor on Reviva so he could fix things while I was distracted by paid work. That seemed to make him very happy, and he does good work with various things like FreeIVA and adopting other IVA mods.

Hello everyone! I have a quick question about scaling. KSP by default maxes out at 200% Scaling size, which is not enough for what I am doing. My Laptop (Dell XPS 15in 2-in-1) has a 3840x2160 resolution, which I have to say is CRISP as all get out, but no matter how crisp it is, I can hardly read anything on KSP While I had previously changed my Resolution to the next lowest with the same aspect ratio, I use a second monitor that is 1440x900. If I switch to my second monitor to look something up without going out to the Main Menu of KSP, it seemingly automatically switches me back to the Built-in res. Any help would be great!!

it's not difficult, actually. what helps you is that changing inclination is very cheap when you are in a high, slow orbit. so, you arrive in the wrong direction. I assume, using your picture as a reference, that you would like to arrive from above or below, so you'd get captured with the right inclination, and instead you'll arrive from the right or left. it's ok, the important thing is that periapsis will be roughly where it should be in the target orbit. so, get captured around eve, in a high elliptic orbit, with periapsis roughly in the right place. this should give you a planar node in the high part of the orbit. use that for the plane change, and it will be cheap. less than 200 m/s over an ideal capture. alterntively, if you can't get captured with a periapsis close to the target one, still no despair. get captured into a elliptic orbit, then at periapsis make a burn to reach your target orbit. how do you make that burn? pretty simple; just point in the direction of apoapsis on the target orbit. use radial and normal components liberally, by trial and error. the idea is that the ship is going slowly, so you can cheaply enough override its orbital speed and send it to cross your target orbit. you will then need then another similar burn once you intercept the target orbit, and this will be a lot more expensive. probably 200 to 400 m/s for the first burn, and 1000 or so for the second. it would add 1500 m/s to your fuel budget, not ideal but not tragic. i would like to post some screenshots of similar maneuvers I made, but I am using a limited connection right now; still, i can point out some of my mission reports linked in my signature. in the dream big mission, as well as the bolt mission, there are some maneuvers posted on how to reach gilly for a low cost despite large differences in inclination. reaching gilly is basically the same as reaching apoapsis on your target orbit. in one of those reports i even left the maneuver node open so one could see the radial, normal and prograde/retrograde. both times in the early chapter, as eve was the first interplanetary destination in those grand tours. perhaps most helpful to you, in the a'twin mission I had basically your same problem when coming back to the moons of Uranus from Neptune; should be around the end of chapter 15, the subchapter about returning to Uranus. there I discuss and explain with some detail how I got there, despite having an unfavorable approach and being unable to put periapsis on the right side. I still ended up spending quite a substantial amount of deltaV, but maneuvers in the real solar system are much more expensive.

As mentioned in my last comment, the space program is a little low on funds. Normally having over a million VF in the kitty would be pretty good, but this is an MKS playthrough. Nothing comes cheap when you're building a self-sufficient colony. So I launched a Paladin SSTO with a Rare Metals/Exotic Minerals cargo container in the payload bay and sent it all the way to Wyvern Base. The mission: Milk Run 1. Before arriving at Wyvern Base, the Paladin had 3,000 m/s of delta-V remaining. After filling up the 3.75m container, it had less than 800. Nowhere near enough to return to Kerbin unless I was willing to faff about with a tedious series of aerobrakes. So instead, I sent it up to Centaur for refuelling... where I discovered it had no RCS ports for moving forwards or backwards. No worries, I just filled the Manticore with LF and docked that to the Paladin instead. In an alternate universe, the Paladin made its descent after two aerobraking maneuvers, having used up much of its remaining fuel in an inclination burn as it left Minmus at a bad time. It overshot KSC, flying across the ocean with the goal of making a landing on the other side, a common landing area for reusable boosters that couldn't return directly to the launch site. Unfortunately, it was too nose heavy to flare and hit the ground with its horizontal and vertical speed far above safe limits. It was destroyed with the loss of all cargo. Happily, that never happened to us! Here, it left Minmus about a week later, when the moon was above Kerbin's equator. This gave it an extra 200 m/s for its braking burn, which it ended up needing, having just 80 m/s remaining after entering LKO. Knowing the Paladin would be too heavy to safely land with the payload on board, I designed the Warlock SSTO to meet it halfway. Its large wing area and 2.5m cargo container would give it much greater tolerances, though multiple trips would be needed to carry the cargo down. The pair of Project Eeloo nuclear engines performed well, had less mass than the lightbulb/Valkyrie combo, whilst being significantly cheaper than the Paladin's Nuclear Lightbulbs. Their only drawback being the lower ISP, which is no issue so long as the vessel doesn't have to leave the Kerbin system. Just don't let anyone leave the KSC until the boys with the lead pyjamas are done hosing everything down. Despite making a successful landing, it was still pretty hairy. Nose heavy and with a tendency to swerve, bringing the fully loaded Warlock down onto the runway was an effort of will, and it only stopped where it did when the rear brakes were increased to full. It slid sideways until coming to a stop... but it was intact. All it needs is a few adjustments in the SPH and it ought to perform better next time. That one flight netted me two million VF! And that's only a third or so of what the Paladin brought back! This is gonna finance the colonisation of the Kerbol System. Can't wait!

The Vis-viva equation https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vis-viva_equation&ved=2ahUKEwjNga-h4NeCAxV0VUEAHWH3B_oQmhN6BAgXEAI&usg=AOvVaw3liegRUJSyyy2Os4MBYXOf will get you almost everything you might want. E.g. to calculate the DV to go from a 100km orbit to a 200 km orbit you would use the equation to calculate your velocity for the 100km orbit, again to calculate the velocity for the 100x200 when the craft is at 100 orbit. The difference is the DV for the first burn. Repeat for the 200km orbit for the second burn.

KK-Prize signature badge here The KK-Prize challenge takes upon inspiration from the K-Prize challenge, and takes it up a notch. Your job is to make a spaceplane that can get to orbit, land, then achieve orbit again, and then land again. Basically, the K-Prize times 2. Please provide some kind of proof, preferably images or a video. All who succeed will be listed below, and extra kudos if you manage to complete one of the extra awards. Rules 1. No stages can be lost or detached, all parts must remain intact from the launch to the second landing. 2. All parts must be stock. This helps keep it simple. 3. May only use the fuel aboard the craft at launch, ie, no refueling via docking or ISRU. 4. Craft must come to a complete wheel stop before attempting second orbit. Extra Awards 1. Land on KSC grounds (picture required). Rangefinder Award 2. Land on the KSC runway (picture required). Sniper Award 3. Fastest time (before time and landed time required, MET). Speedster Award 4. Lightest craft (weight info required, weight must be craft fully loaded with fuel). Feather Award 5. Heaviest craft (weight info required, weight must be craft fully loaded with fuel). Brick Award 6. Half tanks (fuel capacity info required). Half Award 7. Cheapest craft (cost fully loaded with fuel). Cheapskate Award 8. Doesn't use NERVAs or RAPIERs (picture required). Purist Award 9. Exits Kerbin SOI at least once (picture required). Stargazer Award 10. Completes at least 7 other extra awards in one entry. Perfectionist Award Honor Roll @sevenperforce - first entry, kudos! Feather Award, Brick Award @ralanboyle - Feather Award, Sniper Award, Rangefinder Award @Pro100kerbonaut - Feather Award, Sniper Award, Rangefinder Award, Cheapskate Award Rangefinder Award @ralanboyle @Pro100kerbonaut Sniper Award @ralanboyle @Pro100kerbonaut Speedster Award @Pro100kerbonaut 1:18:01 @ralanboyle 1:18:47 Feather Award @Pro100kerbonaut 11.869 tonnes @ralanboyle 27.2 tonnes @sevenperforce 68.78 tonnes Brick Award @sevenperforce 68.78 tonnes Half Award Nobody yet Cheapskate Award @Pro100kerbonaut 17,970 funds @ralanboyle 46,290 funds Purist Award Nobody yet Stargazer Award Nobody yet Perfectionist Award Nobody yet Gatecrashers Dodged the Bouncers @Dman Revolution didn't read the title correctly.

...I just want to mention from RL work with high pressure (1000+ bar liquids) machinery and containments that the raptor engines chamber combustion pressure surpasses 270 bar with all the known issues of backpressure waves through the turbopump assembly. The turbopump rotors used to pump and pressurize the fuel and oxygen reach speeds of several hundred m/s (above the speed of sound at sea level) at their circumference and have a quite sturdy (and heavy) shaft attached to HD precision bearings and fittings. From my (frozen) lawnchair i would guess that flipping SH at that momentum literally shredds some of the spinning pump assemblys on the edge of their intended specifications due to inertia of their own weight and absolute unwillingness to change their orientation in space while going around with multitons of side- and topload on their bearings and pumphousings all together. (I cannot imagine that they stop the pumps and respin them again seconds later...) The sovjets reached with the RD-180 a chamber pressure of slightly above 200 260 bar without flipping any pumps mid flight... I bet that SpaceX will review their flipping maneuver, because this is physically just madness to the machinery. Or they scrap the idea of 33 single engines in favor of a few bigger ones or shared pump assemblys to save on complexity alltogether.

Need advice in buying CPU So, I'm planning on getting an upgrade for my old setup to play the For Science! update and needed some advice. Currently the most sensible option based on benchmarks and price here in Brazil seems to be a Ryzen 5 5600. However, there is also the possibility to get a Ryzen 5700x (for a huge increase in price considering I'd also have to buy a CPU cooler) or even to try an Intel alternative (Intel is overpriced here in Brazil for some reason). I'm thinking about longevity in this upgrade, so here are my doubts: 1. Is a 6/12 processor enough for KSP 2 and would it make a huge difference to migrate to a 8/16 with the 5700x considering a heavy modded install in the future? (I know more threads are advised for CPU intensive games with tons of mods and parts, but how much of a difference is expected?) 2. Is this game more Intel or AMD optimized currently? How much of a difference? Paying the extra cash to get an Intel alternative or a Ryzen 5700x is a possibility considering my budget, but I don't like unnecessary spending for minuscule performance gains. So what are your thoughts on this? Any advice would be much appreciated! Obs: For context, currently the Ryzen 5600 cost about R$ 800,00 and the Ryzen 5700x costs R$ 1200,00 + CPU cooler price (about R$ 200,00). The minimum wage here is R$ 1.320.

Today I overtook SWDennis, who had the land speed record for more than 7 Months (1528 m/s), but today I overtook him by more than 200 m/s (1759 m/s). Rules: No cheating!, No taking off the ground and just diving into the sea! Try to overtake me, good luck!