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[nogoodnames]

I tried to send a probe to the Moon, and now I have a better sense of just how large Real Solar System rockets need to be. The limited size of the VAB is a real issue, and building each rocket like it's a Tower of Hanoi puzzle gets old fast.

I seem to recall a mod that expanded the VAB. Does anyone know what it was called, and if there's a version compatible with 0.25?

[Dutchling]

You really shouldn't be needing a bigger VAB if you only want to go to the moon 0.0

[LoSboccacc]

You really shouldn't be needing a bigger VAB if you only want to go to the moon 0.0

he said real solar system, maybe he's playing without the fuel mod.

[puke]

yeah, if you bring in the real solar system mod, you need to change the fuels also.  The stock fuel is scaled for the tiny radius of Kerbin.  Earth has both larger size and deeper atmosphere.

The stock fuel is scaled to let you build rockets that look about proportionally sized to real rockets for similar jobs, such as payload to kerbin orbit, or kerbin to mun.  But if you deepen the atmosphere and increase the diameter of the planet, suddenly the fuel that was balanced for kerbin forces you to build huge rockets to do the same job.

tl;dr: mod your fuel.

edit:  check out this guy's recreation of a real life moon mission:  http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1piaqi/in_realsized_earth_and_moon_mod_fullscale/

[nogoodnames]

Yeah, I didn't want to have to learn realfuels along with all the other new mods I'm using. I don't suppose there's an easy fix for stock fuels, is there?

[puke]

Probably.  I've never delved into modding the game, but I think you basically just increase their density by 4x (fact check needed) and you'll be in the right ballpark.

This won't change your thrust / weight ratios much (a little maybe, since less tankage is needed for the same weight of fuel) but will allow your rockets to be more compact.

[Graknorke]

So, KSP is apparently soon to be feature-complete.
That's something.

[puke]

Here, check this out.  Dude breaks it down:  http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25804-A-discussion-on-fuel-types

If you wanted to keep it simple, just take his numbers for existing fuels and tweak the existing engines to use his suggested ratios of liquid fuel.

And unrelated, they are playing pretty loose with the phrase "feature complete".   Apparently they mean "all the features they originally thought were important and also have not decided to cut, plus everything they decided to add afterwards, but they'll keep adding major and minor features as long as major code changes are not required or until we decide otherwise."

[Sinistar]

I like it how every time I play KSP it still feels like it's the first time (not true) and I have no clue what I'm doing (more or less true).


Today I built a very simple rocket consisting entirely out of basic, small solid boosters. If I'd use decoupler there would be three stages, 3-3-1.

All i wanted is to escape gravity pull, preferably make an orbit around Kerbin.

When my final booster went out, I had about 3000 m/s and around 17 days to reach apoapsis which peaked at 80,000,000 or something.

What have I done.

[nogoodnames]

Upping the fuel density seems to work to an acceptable degree. Honestly I'm not that concerned with the realism of conventional fuels for this mission. They'll only really factor in when I'm sending everything into orbit and for the Mars escape system. The real meat of it is going to be based around Near Future Propulsion. Maybe I'll try out the full realism overhaul sometime in the future, but for now there are too many incompatibilities with my mod list.

Just waiting for firespitter to update, then we can get this show on the road. Until then I might try to use the Moon as a testing grounds for building MKS bases.

[Octobomb]

After putting my mothership into orbit I found out NFT reactors are annoying. I had them partially fueled to keep weight down but they refused to refuel to full, just to the level in the tweakables. Stupid plugin. Also, you have to get within 5cm of the reactor (not an exaggeration) to refuel it. Combined with bounc kerbals and breakable radiators and you get !!FUN!!! SUCH FUN! I'm considering raising these issues with nearta.

[BigD145]

After putting my mothership into orbit I found out NFT reactors are annoying. I had them partially fueled to keep weight down but they refused to refuel to full, just to the level in the tweakables. Stupid plugin. Also, you have to get within 5cm of the reactor (not an exaggeration) to refuel it. Combined with bounc kerbals and breakable radiators and you get !!FUN!!! SUCH FUN! I'm considering raising these issues with nearta.

You can edit the interaction distance yourself.

[Putnam]

Strategies are OP as shit. I went 30% in on the "get science for funds" strategy and now I'm on my fourth mission with all but 2 of the fourth layer of the tech tree finished and a mission to test the mainsail in orbit that will get me--I shit you not--3,480 science, only counting the science from funds. I got 712 science for taking the mission. Those guys they're outsourcing R&D to must be really frigging intense.

[PTTG??]

Yeah, strategies seem to be designed on the assumption that there's a one-to-one relation between the currencies.

[Chiefwaffles]

I just made a horrible mistake.

When I realized my simple orbiter would not be able to get back down, and that it would run out of oxygen and the like soon, I decided to get Jeb to gather all the experiments and jetpack back to Kerbin. Soomehow, I forgot to factory in the whole "hitting-the-ground-at-high-speed-is-not-good" idea, and flaming Jeb hit the ground and went poof, along with all my science.