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[Sirus]

Huh. I've fooled around with the fuel ducts before, but damn! I didn't know they could be so helpful.

[tryrar]

Mission Complete! We have Splashdown!



Heh, I had panicked for a moment when RCS Autopilot glitched out, but I was able to dock my Mun Lander and Command vehicle completely manually without any assistance whatsoever. I feel like a Boss!

[PanH]

Well, seems like something like that isn't possible :

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Girlinhat]

Have we not yet gone over how incredible JATO can be?  You can get a rocket up to 15,000m without using any fuel.  Just put one solid fuel tank (no oxi), one turbojet, and 1 ramming air intake.  This makes a small package that can lift unreasonable weights.  Strap 4-8 of them to your rocket, put the launch struts on the jet engines.  Cycle up the engines and let them burn, they need to 'spin up' and consume ~5-10 fuel before reaching their maximum speed on the launch pad.  Then flick the landing struts off, and watch your rocket soar.

The trick, is avoiding flameout.  When they run out of oxygen, the rocket tends to suddenly flip around wildly.  If you put the decouplers to trigger, the jet engines to deactivate, and the main engine to activate, all to one custom keybinding (ie, the number keys), then you can get up to ~15,000m before detaching.

In preliminary tests, I've gotten a nuclear engine with 1 small fuel tank into orbit with ease, using 4 JATO and one standard engine, leaving the nuke with 3/4 fuel in 200km orbit.  Small tests, but it's very obviously something useful.

[alexandertnt]

How big should a rover be?

Spoiler: Perhaps a tad too big? (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Nah (click to show/hide)

(For the recond it twised itself apart at about 20km up)

[jocan2003]

The way I understand it: Ket is less than 1/10th the weight of fuel/oxi.

In other words, when you convert Kethane to Fuel/Oxidizer, you actually generate more mass.  If you carry X amount of fuel, then carrying X Equivalent Kethane would actually be a lighter load.

The mod use masses and not volume for convertion so nah it doesnt create more mass out of now-where, i have proof from the mod dev about it and after multiple test. Sadly if it where like you said it would make sense to ferry the kethane and not the fuel but as it use the mass and not the volume to make the converstion, serve no purpose to ferry the kethane.

[ank]

The way I understand it: Ket is less than 1/10th the weight of fuel/oxi.

In other words, when you convert Kethane to Fuel/Oxidizer, you actually generate more mass.  If you carry X amount of fuel, then carrying X Equivalent Kethane would actually be a lighter load.

The mod use masses and not volume for convertion so nah it doesnt create more mass out of now-where, i have proof from the mod dev about it and after multiple test. Sadly if it where like you said it would make sense to ferry the kethane and not the fuel but as it use the mass and not the volume to make the converstion, serve no purpose to ferry the kethane.

Other than flexibility I suppose.
Raw methane is potentially fuel, oxidiser and RCS, while a ground based refinery has to convert the precise amounts needed later.

[Twi]

The way I understand it: Ket is less than 1/10th the weight of fuel/oxi.

In other words, when you convert Kethane to Fuel/Oxidizer, you actually generate more mass.  If you carry X amount of fuel, then carrying X Equivalent Kethane would actually be a lighter load.

The mod use masses and not volume for convertion so nah it doesnt create more mass out of now-where, i have proof from the mod dev about it and after multiple test. Sadly if it where like you said it would make sense to ferry the kethane and not the fuel but as it use the mass and not the volume to make the converstion, serve no purpose to ferry the kethane.

Other than flexibility I suppose.
Raw methane is potentially fuel, oxidiser and RCS, while a ground based refinery has to convert the precise amounts needed later.

On the other hand, are you going to be using RCS on an interplanetary trip?

[Girlinhat]

If you plan on doing big missions involving docking in orbit of another planet, then yes.  And let's be honest, we all want to.

[tryrar]

Mrgh, which mod allows planetary mining? Can't find it

[Dutchling]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/23979-Kethane-Pack-0-4-3-Current-location-marker-infinite-conversion-fix

[Girlinhat]

Is anyone aware of scripts or mods that would let me fine-control a rocket?  For instance, my current lifter is... quirky.  Stage 1 is to be clamped to the launch pad and warm up its turbojet engines.  It then launches (mostly, it hovers for a few seconds) and agonizingly slowly lifts into the atmosphere (for reference, the max thrust of the turbojets on-pad is 112.4, and at 100.0 the ship hovers in place, so this thing BARELY moves at launch, and takes 5+ minutes to reach 15km).  I've got a keybinding that will shut off the turbojets and decouple them in one move, and then it stages into asparagus boosters for the bulk of the ascent.  However, some deep flaw results in these boosters draining fuel at uneven rates, so when they run out, one runs out first and the rocket does a flip and totally wigs out until SAS kicks in.  It does this 3 times.  The alternative is to decouple the boosters early, which usually leaves the full one to crash into the ship and take out solar panels, or worse.  To compensate, I've got another keybinding that toggles the engines.  So when the one fuel tank is about to deplete, I toggle the engines off, separate stage, and toggle them back on.

The problem is, this is a bit tedious and exacting.  If anyone's aware of a setup that scripts the game "detach this stage at 15,000m" or "detach this stage when this fuel tank has run empty" then that would be glorious.

[Dutchling]

Mechjeb has something that looks like a command line. That's all I know

[Girlinhat]

I saw, but that's mainly for controlling mechjeb itself.  You can tell it "Mechjeb, take me to orbit, then transfer orbit to the Mun, then circularize orbit, then attempts a landing." because these are all mechjeb-specific commands.  But you can't seem to tell it "alright now trigger this stage" because that's a KSP event, not Mechjeb control.

[Fikes]

Is anyone aware of scripts or mods that would let me fine-control a rocket?  For instance, my current lifter is... quirky.  Stage 1 is to be clamped to the launch pad and warm up its turbojet engines.  It then launches (mostly, it hovers for a few seconds) and agonizingly slowly lifts into the atmosphere (for reference, the max thrust of the turbojets on-pad is 112.4, and at 100.0 the ship hovers in place, so this thing BARELY moves at launch, and takes 5+ minutes to reach 15km).  I've got a keybinding that will shut off the turbojets and decouple them in one move, and then it stages into asparagus boosters for the bulk of the ascent.  However, some deep flaw results in these boosters draining fuel at uneven rates, so when they run out, one runs out first and the rocket does a flip and totally wigs out until SAS kicks in.  It does this 3 times.  The alternative is to decouple the boosters early, which usually leaves the full one to crash into the ship and take out solar panels, or worse.  To compensate, I've got another keybinding that toggles the engines.  So when the one fuel tank is about to deplete, I toggle the engines off, separate stage, and toggle them back on.

The bolded parts made me laugh.

When I want to automate simple key commands, I use Auto-hotkey. It is extremely simple to throw together a set of commands in that scripting application and run them with a single hot key. At the most basic form it will just function as if you are pressing keys in the active window, so it will work fine with KSP.

It seems like there are enough flaws to warrant a re-design though. As awesome as random failures are, it is too frustrating when you spend 10 minutes staring at your rocket rising at 5 FPS.