Thunder_86

dude they are so boss! I just tried them out, and they are absolutely incredible! This is now one of my favourite mods alongside MechJeb and Kerbal Alarm Clock!

I think I'd kiss you right now! Thank you so much man! Your mod and Mech Jeb are the best two mods ever for KSP! I simply cannot do without either of those! You are my hero!

wait, what? There is such a thing??? I've wanted that in the vanilla game forever! I don't assemble ships up there BECAUSE I couldn't do that! Attaching 2 big parts with only 1 docking port is too wobbly, and creating designs that attach using multiple docking ports between 2 parts id too fiddly to align them right in the VAB... I'm getting this mod tonight! Thanks for the tip!

actually, the mathematical explanation talked to me a lot more lol. But thanks for the second explanation anyway! I actually though it was linear, but I now see it's exponential, so burning at periapsis makes a ton of sense when you know this! Starhawk's explanation made me understand it, and the link you provided from you reply in another thread put actual numbers for me to easily see! Thanks a lot! At first, I though the most efficient way would have been to plan your encounter super high and circularize it way up there, as I figured I'd have to kill less speed. Now that I understand that the kinetic energy isn't linear, but rather exponential based on your speed, then it makes so much more sense to burn when you are going the fastest, to reduce your kinetic energy at a very, very fast rate! That completely opened my eyes! (I'm a very mathematical dude lol. I do lack some physics notions tho. Should have taken Physics in high school instead of Spanish XD)

although it doesn't answer your question directly, here is what I personally do to raise a Kerbal to level 4 very quickly. I use it with my scientists to make them more efficient in science labs. I create a big but simple rocket that has a drone (those large disks). I put a hitchiker module that holds 4 kerbals (you could put 2-3 if you need to, or even use more advanced, more efficient modules), and I send them to orbit the Mun, then, in the same trip, I go orbit Minmus. I then leave minmus and go orbit Eve. I then go to Gilly and land the rocket if the design permits it, if not I park in orbit an literally EVA all my kerbals to go plant flags on Gilly, and then bring them all back to the ship, again with EVA if needed. Once they are back on Kerbin, they are level 4. I know it requires sending them on a mission, I don'T know the details of what you are doing, but if it's just about taking as little time as possible, this is hard to beat I think... bringing 4-8 kerbals to level 4 in a single mission is pretty good If you REALLY can't make them go on a mission, then I don't know :(. But you can probably edit your savegame or something.

thanks for the tips people!

There is that. I don't know about the weight, but you do need to burn to raise the periapsis... but I think you'd save more DV by aero breaking than you'll need to raise your periapsis right? I could do itwithout the heat shield too I guess, maybe just not as aggressive... Anyway I'll have to experiment, but at least now I know what was my yesterday's blatent mistake. What I'm now wondering more than anything else is hot to plan a Gilly (or any other natural satellite) encounter directly from LKO... that is completely beyond me right now! It'd save a bunch of time and fuel I'm pretty sure! In-game time doesn't mean crap, but it'd save so much of MY time not having to first getting captured by a planet and then plan an encouter with one of it's moons... It would be especially useful with moons like Gilly... small moon, tiny SOI, and VERY eccentric orbit! Also, when I try to encounter Gilly and I don't have the same inclinaison and orbit shape, what I often do is to plan a route that goes exactly trough Gilly's orbit (not easy as you need to eyeball it in the map...) and then maneuver by making my orbit bigger or smaller exactly at that point so that when I come back at the same spot, Gilly is right there for me. it's fiddly, but then I don't even have to match planes with it. It sometimes need more DV to capture tho as you get in the SOI in a weirder angle, making me faster relative to Gilly... Is that the best way (once you are already in the planet's orbit)?

yeah those are new right? I'm yet to experiment with them. but sometimes the ship design doesn't really allow for it :S

Snark: yeah you're right. I am yet to understand the reasons behind the oberth effect. I understand a bunch of things about space, but the oberth effect ain't one XD. I don't fully get why burning at periapse is so more efficient. I know it but I don't understand it lol. in my mind, the slower you go (apoapse), the bigger the diffrence, percentage-wise a single m/s is. its kinda unintuitive to me to burn at a very low periapsis. but yeah I know that's what I should do. I just have a hard time to wrap my head around it. sorry if this message was unclear, it's 5:30 am, I'm typing this on my phone and English isn't my mother tongue XD

I'm not good enough to calculate an Gilly encounter straight from LKO :S I'd have no clue how to calculate this to get there with the correct inclinaison. and correct timing (you want to get there at precisely the right time or you might pass on the correct trajectory... but with Gilly at the other end of it's orbit lol. You are absolutely right about burning at a periapsis of 100km tho... I feel a tad stupid right now... I didn't think it would make such a HUGE difference. I knew burning at periapsis is the best way to go, but I didn't think it's nooed 10 times as much... I burnt like an idiot, trying to get in orbit from way way too high I guess, and not even burning at periapsis. I have no clue at what height I was at... but it was around Gilly's orbit. And not at it's periapsis to eve XD. must have been what... 15? 20 000 000m? mabe even higher XD As for getting there at eve's periapsis to the sun, just like aiming straight for Gilly from LKO, I'm not sure how to plan that... you already need to wait for a transfer window... I doubt I'd be able to aim for a time frame for that :S Thanks for the reply, I'll try again tomorrow and get a 100km fly by instead of a 15 000 one and burn at Periapsis this time XD. That is definately something I'm easily able to do. We'll see what happens. Might try to use a bit of aerobraking as well (even tho my craft is really not designed for that lol). In the meantime, if you have tips to get direct encouters with natural satellites from LKO, it would be very much appreciated! Thanks!

I was doing a mission that required me to land a station on Gilly. I've see this image: It says you need 90 m/s of Delta V to get from an eccentric orbit to the edge of Kerbin's SOI to get to a Eve Fly-By. That was pretty much spot on (of course, I burned in one shot from LKO to an Eve encounter, but I looked at the maneuver's Delta V, and when my orbit reached the edge of Kerbin's SOI, i had pretty much exactly 90 m/s left to burn). It then says you need 80 m/s of Delta V to get from a flyby to an eccentric orbit around eve. Took me over 800... What am I doing wrong here? I've been playing KSP for a while now (returning after a 6-months to 1 year break), but never really got into trying to minimize fuel requirements, I usually pack way... way... WAY more fuel than I need, to the point where I sometimes drop almost full stages before a landing or a circularization. But I'm trying to go smarter now, with the bare minimum that I need. For my first try, my plan was all prepared, I was gonna get there with a maximum of like 100 m/s of Delta V left. Let's just say that these 700 m/s missing ruined the day of a couple kerbals... Jeb was sooooo angry!! I tried to apologize, but I think he's ignoring me Is that Delta V map wrong, or is it me who's doing something wrong here? Thanks!

but its way more than just "decent" :P With all the options, possibility to add an overlay, or webcam capture, or basically anything for that matter... Its really awesome! Not saying that there arent any paid softwares that are even better (I don't even know if there are, but I can't say there is none!), but for a free software, its actually quite amazing! I'm pretty sure if OBS wasn't from twitch it wouldn't be free either... The reason why its free, in my mind, is that its the perfect tool for streamers to stream, which in turn is profitable to twitch. If it wasn't for the streaming ability, I'm sure that OBS would be at least 20-30 bucks! (its weird to say that REMOVING a functionality would make a freeware a paid application, but I'm pretty sure it would!)

yeah audacity is awesome for a freeware! But as you said thats only for audio... If you have to record yourself speaking, if you are looking for sound quality, I agree you should record that sepperately with a decent microphone. But if all sound that needs to be recorded is the sound coming from the computer, OBS will do the job so nicely with that, no need to record the sound externally [COLOR="silver"][SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE][/COLOR] looks like its pretty unanimous about OBS! :P

I third the last 2 posters! Go for OBS. You can do everything, layer a webcam over the gameplay if you want, setup the screen as you wish, then you can either record, broadcast(stream) live on twitch, or both at the same time (streaming is really fun too). Its no video editor tho, and videos are super big when they come out of OBS, but its gonna be the same with pretty much any recorder. You'll need an actual video editor to compress it correctly. I'd recommend adobe premiere, but that really expensive. I don't know of any good free video editors... But I'm pretty sure no EDITING software will be as good as OBS for capturing the video, since OBS is so easy to use and works so well! AND OBS is free! :P If you don't care about the size of the videos, then OBS is all you need!

[quote name='justidutch']Winnipeg, Canada. There's been snow covering the ground here for four days now. What is fun though, is that the company I do work for has recently hired a person from Bangladesh and one from Brazil, both immigrated in the last four months. They are aghast, and have absolutely no idea what is in store for them! I read, albeit a couple decades ago, that this city of mine has the greatest temperature variance during the year. In the summer it can get to +34 degrees celsius, and in the winter -36 (not including windchill factors). Some call us tough, but most call us stupid![/QUOTE] I feel you man... Here in Quebec its pretty much the same... I used to love it when I was a teen, I used to go snowboarding every single week. Then, when I gol older, I stopped snowboarding, but I got a Subaru WRX. Soooooo much fun drifting everywhere in the snow! But then life (read: my ex gf.) happened, ruined me completely, I now drive an old Honda Civic... and I haven't started snowboarding again. So I now properly hate winter! XD