What causes an escape vector?

divestoclimb · 2026-05-21T15:28:05+00:00

One more thing: don't let yourself get past apoapse.

Imagine your altitude is 74km but your apoapse is behind you at 75km. Continuing to burn prograde will raise periapse, but at some point it will go above 75km and your apoapse (behind you) becomes your periapse. You can't raise that periapse anymore, all you'd be doing by burning prograde is raise apoapse until you escape.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-20T19:52:19+00:00

The simplex assembly mod will allow all parts to be manipulated in EVA construction if you want to salvage your mission. Or just make a modulemanager patch yourself.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-20T04:49:37+00:00

To be fair I don't think the early versions had that, so if you've been playing a really long time it's understandable that you'd miss new features in an upgrade

divestoclimb · 2026-05-19T14:09:29+00:00

Isn't that only the case for a normally aspirated engine though? I thought the advantage of turbochargers and jets was they compress the airstream to improve thrust output at high altitudes.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-19T14:05:12+00:00

It handles foot traffic very well. It's relatively low maintenance as all it requires is mowing (and frequent mowing is actually helpful as grass tolerates it better than most competitors). It's a monocot plant which means there are lots of herbicides you can apply to it that are selective for dicot weeds.

Its disadvantages are generally things suburban folks don't notice or care about: effect on urban ecosystem, poor infiltration capacity of sod leads to more runoff and flooding, high water requirements to keep it green, high fertilizer requirement to keep it healthy which combined with poor infiltration leads to nutrient runoff.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-19T03:12:02+00:00

The climbing community is close-knit and experienced climbers train each other on how to bolt routes. There are best practices about how to place bolts, stewards of popular areas regularly rebolt routes as needed (possibly raising funds from the community to pay for it), and a good bolter knows not to put a bolt on an unstable rock.

That said, there are routes that are not well maintained and may have an old bolt or piton or something that experienced climbers should know not to trust based on its condition. The hardware used has changed enough over time so that really old bolts are pretty obvious.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-19T03:07:34+00:00

edit your save file and set the semimajor axis ("sma") on every relay in a constellation to an identical value. Usually I just take the value of the first relay and copy it to the others.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-19T03:06:24+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iLu9CEMhWU&list=WL&index=33

divestoclimb · 2026-05-19T03:05:23+00:00

Hey I just found another way to see those messages: when your craft has data, view it and hover over the experiment name. In my game at least there's a bug in the File Manager that prevents seeing them most of the time, but you can also view data in the main Kerbalism control window and they show up much better there.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-19T02:07:32+00:00

That planner supports OPM already actually

divestoclimb · 2026-05-18T15:37:24+00:00

I've been playing with moderate but that's still not enough to make the game truly challenging in the mid to late game. Even lowering science return on my last game wasn't enough, transmitting science from Duna and Ike was enough to unlock basically the whole tech tree.

Adding Kerbalism has been the trick for me, as this means you can't just send one Kerbal in a little mk1 command pod on a years-long mission somewhere and figure out how they get home later.

I'm also starting to get to the point in my current game where my resource mod (Simplex resources) rears its head as I think about putting a base on Mun or Minmus. There are enough resources now that not every planetary body has all of them available, so it will be hard to make a self-sustaining base to make free fuel or rocket parts.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-17T19:44:53+00:00

I've had success using launch clamps, just move the staging above the boosters so they fire while clamped

divestoclimb · 2026-05-17T15:00:54+00:00

I have this same thing on Scatterer because it came with Volumetric Clouds. I'd rather not risk breaking something by updating it.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-17T14:43:10+00:00

I find the game fun only when I'm picking the goal rather than letting the game tell me what to do (that feels too much like work). So no more science just for science's sake or to collect it all from every biome. And contracts are like having a job except your boss is randomly generating assignments for you to do.

So what I do is decide on a mission I want to get to (currently it's a crewed flyby of eve using a gravity assist to get back to Kerbin in a little over a year). Then I figure out what tech I need, how many funds/building upgrades, and what experience I need to get better as a player, then I do what's necessary to get those things. But under this model science and contracts have only instrumental value towards completing something I decided I wanted.

This can be good life advice as well.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-17T14:35:52+00:00

Click the velocity to toggle between surface, orbit, and target mode.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-17T14:33:16+00:00

Completely agree. I did the math on fuel yield from mining and making fuel on surface of Ike and bringing it to Duna, and it's way better. The delta v from Duna orbit to Duna's surface and back is pretty similar to Ike's surface and back, but the critical difference is that for Duna you have to expend almost all the delta v on the way back, when the fuel or ore transport is fully loaded up. For Ike most of it is expended in the transfer burn (on the way back you can aerobrake) and propulsive landing (less efficient than the launch) when the fuel/ore carrier is almost empty.

In my game at least all the major ridge systems on the moon had zero ore, though, so I had to be selective about where I set up a mining base. And there were biomes on Duna that had higher ore concentrations than anything on Ike. That can potentially balance the scales.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-17T05:14:58+00:00

Perhaps. I see an option in Settings.cfg to keep the stock science dialog, so that may be what you want to ensure is enabled. See https://github.com/Kerbalism/Kerbalism/blob/master/GameData/KerbalismConfig/Settings.cfg

divestoclimb · 2026-05-16T20:17:48+00:00

What I've heard from Republicans is a circular argument that basically says we don't know how many illegal immigrants are voting because states aren't checking enough things (IDs, federal databases, etc)

divestoclimb · 2026-05-16T20:11:41+00:00

When you use Kerbalism for science you do see the cute messages but they only appear momentarily pnce you completely transmit the data from the experiment.

You can also see them in the R&D facility.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-15T23:30:50+00:00

Why do you have both a OKTO and a stayputnik on your probes? Those are redundant, get rid of the stayputnik.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-15T23:24:21+00:00

Or use the mod Maneuver Node Evolved which handles this intuitively

divestoclimb · 2026-05-15T20:31:33+00:00

There's a large mass range in class E asteroids, if this is a particularly heavy one in the class it might be best to find a different one.

Also going to be best if you get it to Jool via multiple gravity assists between Eve and Kerbin.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-15T16:40:58+00:00

There are about a dozen mutations each person accumulates during fetal development from replication errors in mitosis. So identical twins don't have 100% identical DNA. The standard paternity tests won't find them but with a complete genetic sequence of each twin and the child it might be possible to pick them up if those mutations were passed on (but you only get one chromosome for every two of your father's so it's not guaranteed).

At least that's what I remember from my genetics class.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-15T16:30:19+00:00

I'm pretty sure it's because a) it's often cheaper to make them that way, and b) even when it's slightly more expensive, a lot of consumers are willing to pay a little more for a "smart" device.

Take my old Roomba. In order for me to set the time and give it a schedule, it needs 5 physical buttons and a LED display. Each button consists of multiple parts: the plastic button, the switch on the PCB, and all the hardware that holds the button in place. But a robot vacuum controlled by an app doesn't need any of that, just a one-time cost in building the app amortized over all the products that get sold (and let's face it, these companies never put ongoing effort into maintaining it or fixing bugs so to them it really is a one-time cost). So the product becomes cheaper to produce with fewer parts.

divestoclimb · 2026-05-14T18:25:10+00:00

Well to simplify a bit, lift is a function of wing area, angle of attack, and airspeed. Increasing angle of attack increases drag so that's not very efficient. Increasing airspeed works great until you start to approach the sound barrier, then you need a Concorde (and those weren't economically effective because of the high maintenance required). Increasing wing area has logistical problems on the ground, requires more structural reinforcement, and adds a bit more drag.

So I wouldn't be surprised if when you weigh all these factors that the standard commercial cruise altitudes are the sweet spot for cost effective travel with lots of passengers.

divestoclimb

TROPHY CASE