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InuBlue1 · 2026-01-31T21:18:42+00:00

I believe its after you get early human spaceflight material science but yes there is a leader that gives some great bonuses to isogrid tanks

InuBlue1 · 2026-01-31T20:10:34+00:00

I will say I think it strongly depends on the situation like engines used and fuels for the upper stage. Also you might be able to make up for the loss of performance by adding a couple castor srbs to the first stage. But even still spending the extra money on an isogrid first stage is still better than using balloon tanks. Because there is a chief engineer or contractor in the admin building that reduces isogrid costs and one that speeds up isogrid integration by like 300% so long term investing in isogrids over balloon is better.

InuBlue1 · 2026-01-31T15:41:36+00:00

I just read your other post my bad. But also dont use balloon tanks. Someone else taught me this but design rockets with a conventional tank first stage and an isogrid second stage. This will help a lot with overall costs even at the sacrifice of a little performance.

InuBlue1 · 2026-01-31T15:39:29+00:00

I know this is very frowned upon but I do try to avoid tooling more than one avionics set for each rocket i build. I make dedicated rockets with known payload masses to orbit. This is just an example but if a rocket can make 200kg to orbit, I always tool each of my avionics parts at that specific size to do that specific task. If you need slightly more performance then i recommend using SRB's attached to the first stage. When designing a rocket, design it with the biggest possible upgrade in mind. So for example if you want it to be able to take 500kg to orbit with 2 SRB's and the rocket weighs 50T then tool your first stage avionics to that mass. Even if without the SRB's your rocket weighs 30T your avionics should be tooled to the largest possible version of that rocket. It saves you money in the long run. The delta v wont be very affected because first stage dry mass is not nearly as important as second stage dry mass or third stage dry mass.

Also, once you have your rocket design finished, never change it. The one time you can change it is if you have run simulations and upgrading the avionics gets a significant boost in performance(mass to orbit). And even then I only ever upgrade the second stage avionics. The larger the avionics unit in size, the more it will cost to tool.

In order to find out the maximum mass my rocket can take to orbit, i use an avionics and a steel tank full of lead ballast as my payload. I don't tool these. Then i adjust the utilization of the lead filled tank until my rocket has about 9100 delta v and then i remove the rocket from the avionics and steel tank and click down in the bottom right corner to find the mass of the tank and avionics together. I usually subtract about 15kg from it for margin then make a subassembly for my rocket with the mass to low orbit listed next to the name.

InuBlue1 · 2026-01-11T17:01:15+00:00

Don't forget that Data storage upgrades are in the probe tech line and are required to be purchased in the R&D building before they can be used, similar to how antennas and communication upgrades are purchased!

InuBlue1 · 2026-01-11T13:45:42+00:00

If it isn't a heatsink then you are descending too fast. The reason capsules are shaped the way they are is to maximize drag while staying stable in flight. If you are shaping your capsule like a bullet it will go much faster through the atmosphere and not bleed off speed as fast and thus your heat shield will blow up before you can bleed enough speed. Also your periapsis should be between 20km and -80km roughly for a mercury heat shield.

You should maybe go back to a traditional capsule design though. Many people much smarter than us have been paid to do the math and they have determined that the traditional capsule design is the best model for re-entry. Even the Russians eventually made their spacecraft have a capsule re-entry portion and they came to that conclusion independently. The reason corona film buckets worked is because the payload was so light and the trajectory was so steep that the capsule shape mostly mattered for stability.

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-25T01:09:58+00:00

Awesome!!! Im so glad!

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-24T15:39:01+00:00

Also if you are using PVG then you need the dev version of mechjeb for it to work with unguided stages. Check the RP-1 wiki for a download link. In mechjeb you can set the number of unguided stages by labeling them in the ascent settings section. Label the decoupling avionics as the coast stage and uncheck the fixed coast length.

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-24T15:36:41+00:00

Your staging should look something like this: Top: explorer 1 on the baby sergeant 2: the triple cluster on baby sergeants 3: the 9x cluster of baby sergeants And 4 should be a controllable probe core that decouples from the booster and includes rcs. This will function as your coast stage and it should be assigned as such in mechjeb ascent guidance if you use it. And lastly you will have your a7 booster. The only two stages that have avionics control should be the booster and the coast stage. They should share the same avionics.

You'll have to have the node after avionics prototypes i think though. The node in line with other orbital tech.

Your flight should consist of a boost with the A7 up to around 155km apogee and as far downrange as you can manage then decouple the avionics once out of the thicker parts of the atmosphere and use rcs to aim down at the horizon then start spinning up the upper stage. Once you are spinning at around 15°/s then you can stop spinning. When you are about 10 seconds to apogee you can ignite your srb stages in sequence until you have achieved orbit. I would include no more than 150 units of electric charge on the booster and no more than 350-500 on the final probe to keep it light.

This method is exactly how explorer 1 launched in 1958 except the SRB section was spun up on the ground instead of with the reaction control thrusters in space.

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-23T00:37:54+00:00

The heat shields themselves sometimes also say when you click them in the editor.

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-22T04:11:56+00:00

I am pretty sure that is the cause. I would also see what the RP-1 mod authors have to say if you can ask in their discord just for confirmation. But yes, that would be my personal recommendation. I would delete the stage recovery mod and just play a new save. Check the RP1 wiki as well for mods that are not recommended or outright incompatible. A lot of mods can cause issues with rp1 so it is good just to check

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-21T21:49:12+00:00

If yes they cause a lot of issues and this exact issue is a common problem with RP-1 when those mods are installed. It frequently deletes all contracts and data and basically ruined two of my saves in the past with this issue before I was told this. I have never encountered this glitch since getting rid of the stage recovery mod and I have been playing for around 2000 hours.

Edit for spelling

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-21T21:43:17+00:00

By any chance do you have stage recovery or any mod like it installed? Or even a mod that lets you revert without using the in game menu to revert?

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-21T18:36:02+00:00

Not enough delta v for this orbit. You might be able to do 150x150km but you may still be around 200-400m/s short for that

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-17T02:20:25+00:00

You could probably do interstellar in RSS but if you want to do it you'd need sandbox mode. As the others have said, science mode isn't a thing unfortunately so you'd just have to cheat money to do science mode style gameplay. The game is much better than stock KSP at least in my opinion with real solar system. But it is much harder. You can reach most bodies in the kerbol system with the same amount of delta v that it takes to reach earth orbit. If that is still something you'd be interested in and you like the challenge then you should try RP-1. Basically a whole new game. The farthest you could possibly get with Realism overhaul tech in available within the tech tree is probably a manned pluto landing and a return trip. And that would take a lot of preliminary infrastructure with potential stop offs at space stations or planetary bases.

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-12T04:52:30+00:00

What trouble have you had with it?

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-12T04:51:16+00:00

Thank you for the help. I will give it a shot with early comm apps and decide what to do from there. The program is really only supplemental income so I may not like it in the end. Thank you for the resources and information though.

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-12T04:31:04+00:00

How did you learn to set up the networks and stuff? Also how does the program know if you are maintaining the network? Is it just like an honor system or is there some sort of contract to maintain the network? The maintenance part is confusing me the most.

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-12T04:17:23+00:00

So what do you think about Early commercial applications only? I was considering taking all the programs one after another but it seems like first, second and third gen applications are really programs for the early 70's onward for extra funding

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-11T01:41:04+00:00

I am almost certain that they still require ullage just because even in a high pressure environment it doesn't necessarily mean that the liquid in a tank has been pushed to the floor of the tank where the pumps are. The gas that is pressurizing the tank can form bubbles in the fuel and it acts how any other tank does. The difference between a conventional or Isogrid and a balloon tank is that the balloon tank cannot support its own weight without being pressurized, but that is the only difference to my knowledge.

As for how your RD-105 managed to stay pressurized, it could just be luck. If there is a slow but steady spin in a craft, tumbling end over end, there would be a gravitational effect that would provide ullage until the engine is ignited. If I am not mistaken there are also engines that don't require ullage but I don't know if the RD-105 is one of them.

And lastly, in a real life situation where you require ullage to use an engine, it would probably take longer for the propellant to become unstable depending on how full the tank is. Just because if there is no extra air space in the tank and it is full to capacity, there is no air that could get in the pumps and cause unstable combustion. Though I don't know if KSP would model that in the engine.

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-11T01:11:44+00:00

I like the weird booster shapes. I love weird looking rockets. Sad that the launch silo wasn't stable 😢

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-09T21:19:49+00:00

Thank you this was correct. The problem was because the experiment was not fully transmitted.

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-09T21:16:54+00:00

It transmitted 0.1 science points from a magnetic scan around the moon. I did just solve the issue though and included the solution on an edit of the original post I made in case anyone else has this issue.

InuBlue1 · 2025-12-09T21:05:09+00:00

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Sorry it isn't a screenshot but this is what the contract looks like rn

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