the Kerbal Space Program thread

I tried out some mods and they are awesome:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/39512-0-23-5-Procedural-Fairings-3-02-resize-able-bases-multi-adapter-%28May-22%29

That one gives you fairings to put over landers and stuff that you launch, like how they really do it. I'm not sure it's anything other than visual, but it sure looks nice. It also adds a few extra parts so it can hurt power a bit/add weight. I'm not sure how the aerodynamics are effected as this game has pretty bad modeling for that, but the look is good enough for me.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/54954-0-23-Deadly-Reentry-Continued-v4-5-3-10-14

That one adds heat effects. Careful when you reenter, because things burn up. It also adds heat shields.

I also tried out the engineer thing and it's very helpful.

I started messing with those new gigantic rockets you get withe the asteroid update, too. People on the kerbalspaceprogram forum were complaining that they are overpowered and they make the mainsail rocket obsolete, but I disagree. Now I don't have to use asparagus staging to get anything gigantic and heavy into orbit. I can actually make a rocket that looks and works like a real-life rocket now. I haven't gotten any glitches from those 3 mods, either.

Here's the engineer mod: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/18230-0-23-5-Kerbal-Engineer-Redux-v0-6-2-4

Just unzip them, and put the folder into the Gamedata file. No problems. It's even easier to modify than minecraft, and minecraft is pretty easy.

Try this one, too:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/20451-0-23-Ferram-Aerospace-Research-v0-13x1-experimental-out-3-15-14

It's supposed to make aerodynamics more realistic. It makes everything easier, and harder. It's kinda weird. The atmosphere doens't have as much drag, so your space planes go faster, but they can also stall and put you into a flat spin of death. Also, if you're going too fast and you try to make a turn, it'll rip the wings off. Likewise, re-entry doesn't slow you down as fast, so parts get a lot hotter with the deadly reentry mod. I haven't had a single reentry without something burning off, it's made me redesign everything with reentry in mind.

I've been busy during my insomnia periods lately. Did some work with space planes:

this is using the aerodynamics mod above. It makes space planes harder in my opinion, but in a good way. I kept having planes that would flat spin, or parts would tear off if I wasn't careful, but this design went really fast (over mach 5 in that photo). It also has the benefit of being very nose heavy, which I found to be helpful for stability. I added a rocket to it, too, and it made it into space:

another design made it to a high orbiting space station:

No RCS and no docking port just means it's a flyby missions followed by a return to the planet. Kinda lost interest after this because I came up with a very useful launcher using rockets instead of planes.

First new launcher proved useful to launch a lander to other planets:

The lander actually went to the moon. I'm trying to do only missions where I can get the guy back at the end. It also worked with 2 landers:

Those side rockets are part of the launch stage. It usually reached orbit with so much extra fuel that those rockets could be used to get started heading toward the target planet.

One lander for the moon, one for the planet:

I made a big design error on the duna lander- the atmospheric science thingies are on the rockets. The rockets I jettison when docking back with the big part. D'oh.

They dock on either side, and return. The landers fall back to kerbin. Much science. Huzzah. Next mission was to jool and all of the moons, but I used a new interplanetary ship.

again, side rockets are ejected. This one has less than 100 parts, more docking ports, no ion engines.

First payload shipment:

5 landers in 3 designs meant for the 5 moons of jool. The fairings covered the landers during take off, looked almost official. It turned out to be a lot larger than expected:

2 of the landers turned out not to fit, but just barely:

they became 're-entry testers'. One hit the atmosphere the wrong way and immediately burned up. The other hit heat shields first and nobody died. 2nd payload:

2 redesigned landers at the front, and a stack of ion boosters on the back. Check this out:

The stack had an RCS tug on it. The back end of the ship has 4 docking ports. One ion booster stuck on the end, disconnect, move over, connect the next, and so on. They have extra solar panels for the ion engines, but it turned out to not be quite enough.

Done! and off to jool...

Spoiler alert: I already completed this whole mission, but things did not go too well...

Awesome! I might try putting a plane on a rocket and letting it go over a thin atmosphere planet to see how fast I can make it go and compare that to its top speed on Kerbal. Two questions for you related to this for you if you have some input:

1.) Have you flown a plane on another atmospheric planet?

2.) When using the Rapier engine, how do I ensure that I have oxidizer onboard for that engine to utilize when approaching the upper atmosphere and beyond? Do I have to use a rocket body?

1) I have never tried flying a plane on another planet, but you've given me an idea for another missions

2) I've used rocket fuel tanks for that. You'll need more rocket fuel than jet fuel it would seem. In my experience it makes the shift on it's own, but if you have more than on engine, they will never seem to make the shift to rocket fuel at exactly the same time, so be careful with that or you'll end up with a plane that is heavier on one side.

Continuing on the Jool missions, I used rockets and ion engines to break orbit, and then mainly ion engines at first to get headed to jool. Then, the ion boosters and their solar panels were ejected for a little reduced weight and parts count (the 4 boosters total 170 parts). Rocket engines used the rest of the way:

I didn't do any screen caps for the ion boosters. My bad. Anyway, I put the 2 small boosters opposite 1 larger one in the hopes of keeping this thing straight and balanced, but that didn't work. I had to 'trim' it by limiting thrust on certain engines on the back. It worked with a lot of fiddling, but it worked. In jool system:

Orbital science and then aerobraking to achieve a highly elliptical orbit:

In hindsight doing this with a bunch of docked landers and the deadly reentry mod installed was probably a really stupid thing to do. Nothing burned up but it did get really hot.

Laythe was tricky:

It turned out my lander wanted to roll top down, which would burn up my parachutes, while the little landing gear I gave it would burn up because I forgot to protect them, so I had a small window of aerobraking to slow down carefully enough to hit land, while not burning up my landing gear. That took a lot of tries. A water landing was impossible because the thing would tip over (i tried this a lot. It worked out in the end. Tylo didn't:

after 1 failed attempt I realized instantly that I didn't have enough deltaV to make it safely to landing, AND back into orbit. Scratch that plan. I reloaded the quicksave from just before detaching that lander, transferred all fuel back into the mothership, and then just let it go. There is a perfectly good, yet emtpy lander in orbit around jool.

Forgot which moon this was:

The other moons were easy. Land, science, back into orbit. All the landers had enough fuel to make it to an orbit 75,000km from jool, then they rendezvoused back with the big ship. I found that hard. Around Kerbin, my orbits are usually off a couple hundred meters. Here that was a couple hundred kilometers, so getting close enough to even think about docking became problematic. A couple of the landers got back with 15 m/s of DeltaV left. If any fuel is left, it was transferred to the big ship and rockets jettisoned:

The good news is the middle of the landers are all identical, and now i only have 4 of them since the whole tylo thing turned out to be a failure. Now it's balanced, and it has exactly enough deltaV to make it back to kerbin, acheive elliptical orbit, release the landers into the atmosphere, and that's it. Landers landed, 10k+ science, and the big ship ran out of fuel before getting to the space station. It ran out of ALL fuel. No rocket fuel left, no RCS left, nothing. I also now realize I took only boring screenshots, very few cool ones. Also, the docking ports I used for the ion boosters should've been the big ones in case I wanted to put more big tanks and rockets. I'm about done with ion engines.

I meant to build a space plane after work yesterday, attach it to a ship, and blast it on over to Laythe. I have some Kerbals sitting on Laythe just admiring the view of Jool over the horizon. They're getting bored. It would be neat if I could fly to them, retrieve them, and then get them home to Kerbal. It would be neater if I could do it with a jet. I'd also be interested to see if the "air breathing" engines really require air. Would a regular jet fly on a planet that has an atmosphere that isn't O2? It shouldn't, but I want to test that.

Unfortunately, when I got home, I forgot what I was trying to do and instead tried to continue with my "Interstellar Starship" (building something like you did with multiple landers and other fun things) and was sidetracked. I was tired, so I kept launching and realizing I was way off on my timing (the first section JUST launched... I needed to wait). Crap. Just blow that one up. Then I accidentally separated the second stage of a three-stager too early. I ended up sending a lot of ships back into Kerbal's atmosphere (with no reentry vehicle) just so I didn't have to deal with the immense failure.

I built a ship early on that was just a bunch of solar panels, a Stayputnik capsule, some Xenon fuel tanks, and one ion engine. I didn't find it to be very powerful. Did stacking tons of those engines on your ship provide any benefit?

I learned something today (from your write-up): apparently, you can just reload the game from save points... I've been doing all of my missions as if I needed to get it right the first time. Is there a way to control auto-save to make sure it doesn't save the game right after you make a mistake? Or can you go back and pick from a couple of different auto-saves? I like the urgency that pushes me to plan things very carefully, but it would have been nice to get the first two landing attempts on Laythe right without having to deal with ocean landings which leave me NOWHERE near land.

I don't know exactly how the autosave works, I just know it saves occasionally. If you screw up and forgot to quicksave, just shutting down the program (closing window without 'quitting' the program) you can re-load and it'll load up the last autosave. That saved me a few times.

The ion engines were sortof helpful. I don't know how the kerbal engineer mod calculates DeltaV but it went from 10k to 25k when I added the ion engine stacks. I would assume that means I had an extra 15k deltaV, but it would accelerate 1m/s and loose 10m/s deltaV. It would seem to be wrong. OTOH, I used rocket and ion engines to break free from kerbin, then ion engines got my orbit almost to Jool without burning more rocket fuel. Seems to have worked at least somewhat.

Got any pics of your ship?

You can probably test the flight idea without going all the way to Laythe, there is always Duna and Eve. Of course if it's a rescue mission, that's a different story. So far on the save file with that jool mission, i haven't left anyone on a planet/moon.

I found I lose interest when I unlock everything, so I changed one of the game files to make science a lot harder to get and started a new save. I haven't killed Jeb, though the only other planet I've landed on is Duna. Lots of probes, though, to try to get more science. I'm sure the game will be a bit more challenging when they implement the money thing. Unlimited free money almost makes career mode into sandbox mode.

I have pictures. I will add them when I get off work (I work long days). I think there are some on page 1 of this thread. I will take shots of what I accomplish after work today if I accomplish anything.

I came up with an improved rover:

And by 'came up with' i mean stole many cool features from a youtuber 'kurtjmac'. By that I mean the basic shape, 8 wheel design, and red brake lights. He doesn't have one of my features, though.

Lets say you blow some tires going over some sweet jumps:

No problem, just lower the gear like a jack:

repair the tires without risk of the rapid inflation flipping the thing over in low mun gravity, lower it, and drive off. Speaking of driving, i love the view out of the cockpit:

I ran into some pretty heavy glitching which eventually caused the rover to fall through the surface of the moon and explode, so the mission kindof ended prematurely...

I unlocked the better wheels and made a different rover for minmus:

The main feature besides the increased traction needed on minmus is the extra RCS thrusters and fuel needed to slow descents without using the brakes, which would cause a flip over instantly. The thrusters can also lift the rover off the ground so i can get 'just above minmus' science data. Also, much glitching, so the mission ended prematurely. D'oh.

got a whole bunch more mods, and after a little messing around with files, got them to play well (enough) with each other:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/54774-0-23-Station-Science-%28fourth-alpha-low-tech-docking-port-experiment-pod-models%29 that one makes space stations into science centers, not just refueling depots. It also means you have a reason to make multiple, repeated trips up to the station (to deliver/retrieve experiments)

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/40667-0-23-WIP-TAC-Life-Support-0-8-22Dec That one adds life support requirements. Your guys need oxygen, power, food, and water. You have to deliver resources to keep them alive, after it runs out you have a little time before they die. They can live for longer without food than water, longer without water than air, etc... It also has carbon scrubbers, water filters, air filters (for getting oxygen out of non-breathable atmospheres) and a few other things. It makes going to even minmus and back more complicated, but also more realistic.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/61040-0-23-6S-Service-Compartment-Tubes-Design-smooth! Gives you something to hide stuff in so your rocket doesn't look like a tube with small random crap stuck to the outside.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/64972-0-23-5-DMagic-Orbital-Science-New-Science-Parts-V0-7-5-%284-1-14%29 gives you more cool science stuff to do. this makes landers a bit more relevant, plus you can do the stuff to asteroids, making those more relevant.

At this point I think i'm pushing the memory limits of this 32-bit program, so i'm going to stop there... except for the real parachute mod and the enhanced nav ball mod I also got. Still no mechjeb (an autopilot mod) because I still like doing everything hands on.

The science mods play very well with my reduced science settings. The station science experiments still give tons of science, but setting up a station in orbit with life support and sufficient man power and returning the experiments to kerbin (with the deadly re-entry mod) makes the science fairly difficult to get. The experiments work and return different results/amounts of science around other bodies, also landed on other bodies (just not kerbin), so bases become more relevant. Pretty cool stuff, when it isn't glitching.

Do you know how to switch control from one craft to another while you're in the atmosphere? I want to continue work on my aircraft-lifted rocket (think Spaceship 1 and Spaceship 2), but when I launch the rocket I can't get control of it because the game complains that I am within the atmosphere.

Perhaps the best thing to do would be to switch overall command of the ship to the rocket and when it drops off, the plane just does its own thing, but I can't figure out how to do that either.

Any ideas?

Which part do you build first, rocket or plane? Maybe if you build the rocket part first, you'll keep control of that when they separate?

In reply to Rufledt:

So apparently, in the scenario I had discussed with you last week, I had built the plane first, then the rocket second. After two days of toying with the plane again, I remembered that I had actually built a much better plane a little while after I built the one I referenced last week. I completely forgot about it--no idea how. Anyway, I built that one as a rocket first with a plane holding it. It works much better lol. It still requires refinement, but I will get it there. I have been more focused on career mode lately.

Speaking of which, I finally made it to the Mun and BACK TO KERBAL for the first time ever. It was kind of funny how it happened, but I ended up landing on the Mun with the largest of the small brand fuel tanks. I have no idea at all how people land with smaller tanks and have enough fuel to get home. I accidentally forgot to save my screen shot, but I ended up JUST getting into orbit with my Science JR module and my tiny capsule (no RCS to make life easy or anything). I ran out of fuel 42 m/sec shy of a return trajectory. So I did the only thing you can do in situations like this. I blew the last stage, leaving me just the capsule and the Science JR module (with all the Munar goodness).

And I got out an pushed.

15 EVAs later, I was on a pretty steep aero-braking maneuver back to Kerbal. Apparently, and thankfully, your Kerbalnaut automatically refills his thruster pack when he goes back into the ship. It took a lot of time and effort, but he made it!

Now... how am I going to go rescue Jeb from his unending orbit above Kerbal...

Lol I never though about pushing the ship with a guys suit thrusters!

I'm often surprised by how little fuel some people can use to get places. I saw a video by a guy named Scott Manley on YouTube where he got a guy to Duna, landed, then flew to Ike, landed, then back to kerbin and landed with only a single orange tank . The contraption looked goofy and he didn't get any science equipment there but still it was crazy.

I also found out the [ and ] keys change ships in the atmosphere. At least, they should. I could use that to change to different pieces of rubble as my rockets exploded, so I'm guessing different ships should be switchable.

I watch all of Scott Manley's videos! His Interstellar series is really neat. I'm on episode 3 of that. Plus, I've gotten some really good ideas from him. But yeah, I saw the video you were talking about. I think he landed on Minnimus and returned to Kerbin with 12 parts total. He just sort of nosed into Minnimus and let the ship bump into it.

I'll give the [ and ] keys a try. I think it would be kind of dumb if I couldn't switch to a different vehicle in the atmosphere. The problem with building my rocket first and then lifter second is that the lifter breaks in half after I drop the rocket because it's held together, when built symmetrically, by the rocket's separators. I would like to be able to build the lifter and switch to the rocket after I launch it.

I wonder if you were switching the control of the ship to different (still existing) components of your craft? You know how you can click on an object and click "control from here", right? I wonder if that's what was happening?

I shall still remain optimistic that I can get this to work after I get off of work. Only five more hours!

I don't think I was just switching control, since the parts were clearly broken off and flying away. I have seen where I decouple something and it still thinks they are one piece, though. As the part floats away, the camera stays between the 2 and I slowly lose sight of the ship until it goes over a km away and the decoupled part despawns or whatever.

I haven't seen all scott Manley vids but I have seen the interstellar series a bit. I downloaded some similar mods but I haven't tried that one yet. I've been watching kurtjmac videos (also called far lands or bust) since he has minecraft, kerbal space program, and a bunch of driving games and I like all of those.

He's not as well planned as Scott Manley, but failures are always funny to watch.

The [ and ] buttons work for me to switch in the atmosphere.

Also I started watching Scott Manley's interstellar vids from the beginning, it's pretty awesome. It inspired me to bravely try more mods that might crash my game. So far, it still works. I doubt I could remember them all, but I had to also add a texture managing mod to keep it under 4gb or ramm usage or the thing crashes. I guess there's a way on the forums that someone figured out to convert KSP to 64 bit using a pre-release version of Unity 64, but it's really buggy and a quarter of people say it won't work at all.

So many extra parts makes everything take 5 times as long to build, though, since I have to search through pages of parts. Also, 2 mods that I have (near future propulsion/electonics and interstellar) use nuclear reactors to do stuff. Interstellar reactors and heat radiators don't work with interstellar stuff, and vice-versa. they are organized differently, so it's not a huge problem. They both have their own tech trees, so that can also cause some conflicts, but they seem to play well together with the interstellar tree. I'm surprised how many of the mods ARE designed to work together, though. It's almost like there's a basic stock game, and a generally favored mod configuration.

All I have played with is the Demo. I had it from way back on an old PC when you could download all the extras to it, but I havent purchased the game yet need too

I keep making large ships 458 parts so it is tough to get onto the mun. and the lag is horrendous.

Yes, you do need to buy it! I like to think of games by number of dollars per hours of gameplay enjoyment, and KSP is probably #2 on the list. The demo is extremely limited in many ways compared to the purchase version, it's well worth the money. Cant do this with the demo:

To be fair, you need a few mods to do that in the purchase version, but at least it's still all free.

You know how some people relapse from addiction and just go crazy, followed by an overdose? I went like that but with KSP mods. i have a version running the following mods, mostly playing well with each other:

Ferram Aerospace Research (more realistic aerodynamics)
Deadly Reentry (makes stuff burn up)
TAC life support (self explanatory)
VOID (heads up display kind of thing)
Kerbal Engineer (gives data about stuff, in flight similar to VOID)
AIES Aerospace (bunch of more rockets and stuff)
DMagic Orbital Science (science stuff for probes and landers)
Engine Ignitor (more realistic rocket stuff, limited number of starts, some more stuff)
Enhanced NavBall (self explanitory)
FireSpitter (not sure, it was required for other mods to work)
Kethane (mining resources on planets)
KSPX (more parts again)
KW Rocketry (more parts)
Infernal Robotics (Moving parts like hinges)
Kerbal Attachment System (guys can build some stuff in space, carry parts)
Docking port alignment indicator (don't use this much, haven't figured out what stuff means)
Near Future everythihng (multiple mods, adds stuff after the end of the tech tree, more tech)
Final Frontier (adds medals and awards to kerbals who do stuff)
NovaPunch (Parts)
Procedural Fairings (adds fairings)
RealChute (realistic parachutes)
RLA everything (3 mods, adds parts) Station Science (adds science stuff for space stations, makes them more than just fuel stations)
Interstellar (adds lots of futuristic parts at end of tech tree like "Near Future")
Kerbal Alarm Clock (makes keeping track of multiple missions easier, haven't messed with it much yet)
Active Texture Management (reduces memory usage, allowing KSP to not implode)

There are some other mods required that come with the ones above. There are a few mods that are more complicated, though, like:

Real Fuels w/ stockalike engine pack. Instead of "liquid fuel" and "Oxidizer", it uses lots of different kinds of fuels used by real rockets. Some engines have different fuel configs, too, each fueld with it's own characteristics. The mod even supports other mod engines, so AIES rockets will work with this mod. What it doesn't support are new kinds of fuels added by other mods, like the Argon gas required for certain rockets with the Near Future pack. Argon tanks come with the Near Future stuff, so it isn't actually a problem in game.

It also adjusts weight, since most stock parts are WAY too heavy compared to real life. This is because Kerbin is tiny compared to earth, and it makes things more challenging. You can set it to give you normal heavier parts, though, if you want.

The realistic weight parts work best with the "Real Solar System" mod, which as you might expect replaces the solar system with real sized/spaced planets. That makes everything wicked hard. Like, you need double the DeltaV to get into orbit, which is hard with stock rockets. Real Fuels makes this easier with the realistic weight parts, plus there are other mods to scale things up (like Realism Overhaul) but I couldnt' get those to work without massive glitches.

Also some of the mods needed a few file 'tweaks' to get them to work.

The new parts surprisingly don't make the game crazy easy, most are well balanced and you don't get the awesome stuff until after the original tech tree, so they can take thousands of science points to unlock. The insanely high efficiency engines usually also need crazy amounts of electricity, which means nuclear reactors, which are heavy and generate lots of heat, etc... It doesn't get easier, just awesome-r. The aerodynamics one, the engine ignitor, life support, and reentry one make it a LOT harder, actually.

They announced some more features of the upcoming 0.24 update in a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5UiTqBCNQk#t=14

Cliffnotes- Now you get contracts, which means funds matter, reputation matters (don't fail, you won't get good contracts if you suck), recovering more parts helps you recover some funds, some new UI stuff, and FINALLY 64 bit. Sandbox mode is still just sandbox mode, no money or any of that like usual.

Hopefully they release it soon.

0.24.2 is out- contracts are pretty cool. 64 bit support for windows, also, but it's a bit buggy(er than the normal 32 bit version) and a lot of the mods are having problems with it. The main problems are in unity, not KSP or the mods, so it's a bit tough to fix I guess. Some people are reporting less lag with 64 bit