SBaL

I think it has to be the wierd bug where some part of my spaceplane will "crash" into the runway, or the launch pad for that matter, during the last phase of landing, even though there's no contact what so ever. Even had it happen once in orbit as I was passing over the KSC at 75km. I've been really close to fly off the handle because of this before, like when there were a long series of poofs and bangs as I'm still 10m above the runway, and once I could see my craft, it had lost more than half of it's wings. This also bugs me a whole lot, but it can be mitigated with action groups. Remembering to set them before you leave is a completely different matter though.

Tried to make an A-10 Warthog while messing around between missions. Isn't really too agile in flight, but at least it looks cool.

Got to try out my first ever space plane which is capable of actually bringing something useful into orbit. A satellite destined for Duna.

0.11.1 is when I got KSP. Think I actually bought it some time during 0.12 (before you actually had to pay for it) 0.12 is when I landed on the Mün, with no landing legs.

Landed my first ever base on the Mün. I know it isn't much, but with the "new" symmetry options in the VAB, I at least got around to make one, and land it. Also messed around a bit with my VTOL jet, practising manoeuvring it in hover mode. It's also in many ways one of my best planes to fly, though that might be because I made it so that the centre of lift is just a tiny distance behind the centre of mass. It's also able to pull off 8-9 G turns in the lower parts of the atmosphere, is able reach just under 1000m/s at 10-11km and can get up to about 13-14km before it starts to flame out (though that's in no way a record for me). Only downside of it is that it's kinda thirsty in the regular flying mode, and the range isn't much better than to let me play around the mountains, KSC and the abandoned airfield on that island.

Today I finally got around to finish my manned Duna mission. Forum thread with pictures and stuffs Then I continued testing a shuttle I've made, though I don't think it's able to bring too much into orbit, so it's not really that useful. Sure is purdy though. Flew by Pol with my Jool tour probe. Was a little too close for comfort though. Also got the probe in an orbit set to encounter Bop, the only Joolian moon I have left to fly past. This is also probably the last time I'm going to use the ion engine... Any manoeuvre takes for ever with its low thrust, and a small design flaw has rendered it even worse on the Explorer IX. I kinda misread the energy production rate bits on the radioisotope thingies, so I've had to limit the thrust to 23,5%, and even then, the thing will run out of power in 5 minutes...

Greetings. Figured I'd share my first ever manned interplanetary mission with a lander, and the ability to return to Kerbin. This mission took six brave kerbals to the surface of Duna, and back again to Kerbin. Design and mission planning During the design phase, I experimented a bit with trying to calculate the fuel requirements beforehand, and at the end of the mission, I got my crew in a orbit around Kerbin with only 943 m/s of delta V, or 1.548/1.892 fuel/oxidizer left, which isn't too bad considering how over engineered some of my earlier constructions have been. Given the formula delta V = Isp*g*ln(ms/mf) where g = 9,80665 m/s, ms is the initial mass and mf the final mass, I figured that the delta V of a vessel in KSP could be calculated more easily by subtracting the initial mass with the mass of the fuel and oxidizer used in said burn with delta V = Isp*g*(ln(ms) - ln(ms - (100*f/9))) where f is the amount of fuel as shown by the interface of KSP. Then, by looking at the specs of the various engines and fuel tanks on the wiki and rearranging the formula, I got f = (648*(mc+me)*exp(delta V/(Isp*g)) - 1) / (7201 - exp(delta V/(Isp*g)) where mc is the mass of the craft I want to move and me is the mass of the engine I want to use. This formula would give me a decent enough number on the required amount of fuel (dry mass of tanks included) needed to get the required delta V for my mission. (This one is based on the SPS tanks though. All the other tanks had a slightly different dry mass to full mass ratio.) The initial plan for this mission was to have just one landing on Duna, but in order to balance out the rather heavy and bulky lander, I had to add a set of fuel tanks on the other side, and quickly decided to have the tanks refuel the lander for more landing missions. As it turned out, the amount of fuel needed to get the CoM aligned was enough for a little over two more landings, so I decided to bring along enough fuel to have four landing missions. In addition to the Duna landing, the plan was to have six crew members along for the ride. Three pilots, one engineer and two scientists. This is how the space craft itself (no engine & tanks) turned out. Construction Upon the completion of the design, six of KSA's finest astronauts were chosen for this mission. Ludmin - Commander Lovan - Mothership pilot Errim - Duna lander pilot Gusgard - Navigator Neilfrid - Flight engineer Corvan - Science specialist All of them were veterans from the Artemis program, which brought kerbals on to the surface of the Mün and Minmus. As the launch window started to close in, the construction in orbit started, and it proved to be a heavy toll on the finances of KSA. I didn't have any launch vehicle capable of lifting the entire thing into orbit, so it took seven launches to get all the pieces assembled, another two to fill it up with fuel and a final one to get the crew up. The construction itself was rather uneventful though, and on T-17 days, the crew arrived. Initially, I intended to use a space plane to ship the crew up there, but some construction issues came up, and the plan was scrapped for a cheapish vessel. Kerbin departure On T-9 days, the final preparations were made. The Prometheus fired its main engine and placed the craft in a highly eccentric orbit, ready for the final burn for Duna. The reason for this manoeuvre was to use up the fuel in the two external fuel tanks on the rocket stage and ditch them before actually doing the final burn to escape Kerbins SOI. Not really sure if I saved a lot of fuel on that though. Then, 9 days later Prometheus I left Kerbin, heading for interplanetary space. And the crew settled in for the long trip towards their destination. Duna orbit and landings 361 days, and one mid course correction later, the ship encountered Duna, and placed itself into orbit. After a stable orbit was achieved, I checked how my fuel usage had been, compared to what I had estimated that I would need. It turned out that I had 5.442/6.652 LF/O to spare, which meant that a rather drastic orbit inclination change could be performed at a later stage. I did of course add about 500m/s more than what the delta V map said I would need, so that I could mess up a bit on the way to Duna without loosing the entire mission. After a day in orbit a landing site was chosen, and the first landing party undocked, starting their descent to the surface of Duna. As the descent went on, I actually started to become nervous, which I really haven't been in KSP for a good while. A lot were at stake, and if something were to happen, three kerbals would be lost. The landing however was successful, and Errim, Neilfrid and Corvan took the first steps on a foreign planet. (Errim being the first one) After one Dunian day, the crew departed and returned to Prometheus with some fuel to spare. The second landing mission, bringing Errim, Neilfrid and Ludmin to a different landing site, went along just as planned around 50 days later. On MET 1y:8d (50 days later again), the third landing party undocked. This time, Errim and Neilfrid brought Lovan along. For the first time, the landing party encountered some problems during the descent. They were overshooting their landing site, and would now land on a rather steep slope. Since the lander wouldn't be able to stay upright in the slope, Errim had to cut the chutes and "hop" towards a more suited place to land, using more fuel than what had been intended for the landing phase. As I started to ascend from the surface, I kept a close watch on the fuel levels, since a fair amount had been spent during the landing. The lander still managed to get back with some fumes left in the tanks. After another 50 days, an inclination change was made in order to get the final landing on the north pole of Duna. The last landing party to set foot on Duna was Errim, Neilfrid and Gusgard. By now, I had gotten used to landing the Duna lander, so I wasn't really nervous about not getting the crew back from the surface. This time, the crew stayed for two Dunian days before departing. After docking with the Prometheus and getting both the crew and science samples over, the lander and refuel tanks were ditched, and another inclination change was made to get the ship back in an equatorial orbit, ready for departure from Duna, and towards Kerbin. Duna departure and Kerbin capture At MET 2y:11d, Prometheus left Duna, even though they had to wait for one day, as Ike was right in the way for the ideal burn. This is the burn I ended up doing, and it went well enough since I didn't have to do any mid course correction burns to get a Kerbin encounter. 316 days after leaving Duna, the crew was able to see Kerbin again, nearly 3 years after they left. Some corrections were made to get the ship in a more equatorial orbit, and bring the periapsis at an appropriate altitude. Solar panels and dishes retracted in preparation for the Kerbin aero brake. After placing the ship into a proper orbit, the first return pod undocks, and takes Lovan, Errim and Neilfrid back to Kerbin, along with 41 science samples from Duna. As the first return party reports a successful reentry and splashdown, Ludmin, Gusgard, Corvan and 43 samples departs from Prometheus as well. The second landing wasn't as good, since it was a hard terrestrial landing, but it still went well. So as the last crew members are recovered, the Prometheus I mission comes to an end. Oh dear. This turned out to be a bit more than I had expected. Also, you'll have to excuse any grammatical errors and such.

Saw some random video on youtube with someone launching and crashing a rocket. Neither the title or description gave said what the game was called, so I ran to the googles to find out what it was. This must have been somewhere around late october / early november 2011, when the full game still was free and a license to future versions costed something like 7$.

Finally! I've landed three brave astronauts on the surface of Duna, and there's another three in orbit, awaiting to have their turn in the lander. This is the first time I've landed a crewed vessel on Duna, and the first time I've ever had a landing party on another planet with the ability to go home once it's all done. The plan now is to do three more landings on Duna with the lander I brought along before it's time to head home. The whole thing might be kinda over engineered, but I've also experimented a lot with trying to calculate the required amount of fuel to get a given mass to Duna and back again, and used that as a basis for how much fuel I needed to bring along for the ride.Not really sure how accurate my calculations were, but they seem to be decent enough. Next thing I'll do might be a manned mission to Moho and back. Or maybe a tour of the Jool moons. Shedding some weight after the first burn around Kerbin. This burn put me in a highly eccentric orbit, ready for departure a few days later. Also, the rather ugly cluster of fuel tanks on the bottom part is there to balance out the lander, since I didn't want to bring two landers with me. But, it's also the fuel for the next three Duna landings. Bye bye Kerbin Hello Duna First landing "I did it mom!"

A mix. Most of my probes are given names of real world programs, like Explorer, Pioneer, Surveyor and such with roman numerals at the end. While my manned crafts are given names after Roman, Greek or Norse gods such as Thor, Artemis and Prometheus (for interplanetary ships). My planes are usually called F-{some number} for regular planes, D-{some number} for high altitude planes, and P-{some number} for space planes. The F doesn't mean anything, but the D is for Daedalus, Icarus' father, and the P is for Phoenix.

Made my second ever (unmanned) flyby of Moho. First one was when Moho first appeared. Had nowhere enough fuel to park myself into orbit though. I think the whole time from SOI change to SOI change took less than one hour, and that was with a periapsis of 15.000m. Didn't even manage to get a decent screenshot of the closest parts of the encounter because I had to do all the sciences first. Not really a big accomplishment I guess, but I still find it a bit exiting when I finally arrive at one of the other planets. Hopefully, I'll get to finish the unmanned Jool system tour before the upcoming update pwns my career, even though that encounter isn't for another 2 in game years.

No no. He's actually fo reelz

It wouldn't really surprise me if they were mocking us with the scratchpad updates at this point Maybe to keep the hype alive while they fix/do stuffs in the background.

It's hilarious actually

http://youtu.be/0iteQE7KEyU While we're going through the wormholes

I'm not really sure if there are many others out there who would want this, but I would love it if this thing also had the option to use RPN, or postfix notation.

I've never really gotten to play properly and invest enough time in career mode until about half a month before the ARM update. I've started up many career saves since its introduction, but I just haven't been able to go through with it after the first few missions. I am now though. Playing sandbox, with all the stuffs right there, just doesn't cut it for me any more, and I've had a fairly long KSP hiatus because of this. When a couple of manned mission (in said career mode) ran of fuel, I raged for a while, and then cheated some fuel back into the craft so I could get the crew back home right away. As I'm writing this, I do see the error in my ways and the fact that I've missed out on a couple of potentially great rescue missions, but all the times this has happened, I've been like 50-70 units of fuel short of getting back to Kerbin. However, I'm now just about to attempt to go outside of the Kerbin SOI with manned vessels, and I'm just not going to allow myself to do that again. Guess I should ship over some re-fuel crafts to said target planets in advance. Just in case.

Both my account, and most of my posts survived. Though the latter is mostly because of my lack of activity. I tend to lurk more than I post though. I usually drop by the forums at least once a day.

Afaik, it's only a way for us mere mortals to have a peek into the updates of the experimentals and when and how often they are updated. Can't really say that I'm reading too much into the level of activity on there and so on though. In the end, there's only a trusted few who truly know what's really going on behind the scenes.

That was the scratchpad thingy. Don't think that's much more than a internal test version for the devs only or something like that.

I bet they are laughing their @$$€$ off with all of this hype and tension that's brewing in the forums and such right now.

To answer the first question there, yes I believe it's as simple as just turning off the tracking of the selected asteroid, and it'll disappear shortly after.

http://youtu.be/7ha78yWRDlE Had to show this to a fellow student as I'm trying to convince him that RPN, or post-fix, truly is the superior mathematical notation, and as a result that HP calculators are better than Casios or TIs.

I doubt it's the lack of torque alone, since flying any of my rockets manually gives me no problems what so ever when it comes to steering them. Also, the only crafts kOS seems to be able to steer with any degree of success are small, single stage crafts. Even a simple two stage 1.25m suborbital rocket is too much for it, and it will take too long to steer in any direction. To put my coding "pfails" short: <Stuffs> lock Y to (((((apoapsis+altitude)/2)/60000)^(4/3)) * (-90)). <Many many codes> when altitude > 5000 OR apoapsis > 6500 then { lock steering to UP + R(0,Y,180). sas off. }. when apoapsis > 60000 then { <Do lots of things> lock Y to (-90). }. <Even more codes and loops> There's a loop later on to autostage when ever it's needed, and to keep the script running through the entire ascent. I've done some changes like removing redundant loops and such throughout the script, and use more "when _ then" statements since they seem to work just as well for my purpose. This change has however of course not changed the steering behaviour. Or, not in any significant way at least. When I'm looking at the steering control gauge thingies in KSP, it seems like kOS is mostly spazzing (like the old asas did) the controls around their respective centres, and it hardly outputs steering commands of more than 1/3 to 1/2 of what it can in any direction. I'd figured that it was mostly an issue with this "spazzing" of controls. But I can't say I've come up with any good way to mitigate this. I've tried to just lock Y to -90 much earlier, but it doesn't really speed things along. Oh, and thanks for all your help so far.