corvustech

I think Minmus is probably the most responsible for my early-to-mid-game hilarious landing fails. Mun just pulverizes you, but Minmus goes all bounce-house-covered-in-oil.

Last night, I added a few parts mods. No godmoding, just a few aesthetics and realistic items. I also added Chatter (how did I live without it?) and one I'd forgotten about; TweakScale. TweakScale, I quickly discovered, now fixed a problem I was having where I had picked exactly the wrong tree options to continue to get enough science to operate comfortably within Kerbin's SOI. Scaling tanks up to fit a Rockmax adapter's big end and scaling the Swivel engine to fit, with a pod on top, managed to get into a suborbital-T enough to do a little testing. I'm going to take some gear out to the runway and figure up some factor-testing though; I'm concerned that the ability to scale engines may make scaled small engines more useful to me than unlocking larger ones if the output isn't competitive.

For me, it was probably my most horrifying KSP experience. Truly creepy. An asteroid of decent size was entering Kerbin's SOI and was traveling at a speed similar to Kerbin's relative to the sun. This meant it was only entering the SOI, but I would have significant margin for error on the intercept, as it'd be in town for a little while. Science had just been introduced, and I had a KLAW-equipped tri-engine vessel already at 200/200 around Kerbin. I couldn't ask for a better opportunity to capture my first asteroid than this. The crew in this case were three "hired" Kerbals. All white spacesuit types. The pros were on Minmus and couldn't be bothered. With KAS parts in the cans and plenty of fuel I started my approach. It wasn't long before the Trident vessel had a visual on the asteroid. I was excited. Thrilled, even. Then, there was darkness. I sat in darkness for a bit, unable to help the crew of this little ship. I wondered, as it was silent and all I could see was a navball that wasn't doing anything, what had occurred. Eventually I had to Alt-F4 to quit. I reloaded the game, and simply used Resume, but I did not end up where my manual quicksave had left me. Naturally, I went to mission control and found that the ship was quite close to the asteroid, and so I switched to it. Terror. Three little terrified faces with red lighting because of the suddenly depleted electricity, but rotating in light from the sun through the windows. Other than that, my view was black and I watched as the altitude descended from 999999999 to -1111111 and lower. At -7777777 I tried to Alt-F$ and reload the save again. The wiki said the Hell Kraken only struck EVA'ing Kerbals! How was this happening?!?!! When I reloaded, the asteroid was gone. So was the ship. And the crew. That Asteroid....was a Kraken Egg. Three brave Kerbals died so that the rest of Kerbin, apparently, could live.

Lately? Every single early game attempt to reach orbit that succeeds. The last of the fuel always goes while burning retrograde just enough for re-entry. A long while back, it was on Mun. I was running Kethane and Karbonite at the same time to see which was superior. Unfortunately, my Karbonite unit was consuming more power than it could store doing the fuel conversions, so I sent a satellite that wasn't much more than an OCTO with RCS glued on between an array of solar panels and a docking port on the top and bottom. I misjudged Mun's gravity and ended up floating it like a hovercraft, less than 100m from the ground, across a quarter of the Kerbinward face of Mun to reach the Karbonite unit. After what felt like hours of maneuvering with RCS trying to line up the final docking approach I ran out of monoprop...and landed on the top of the Karbonite mining drone just right to dock with it.

The graphics card (HD4000) is actually a component of the processor itself in this case. It does support Shader Model 3.0 which is the bare minimum. It's going to take a processor core and 512MB of your 3GB of RAM to function as a video card. That really means you'll have 2.5GB of usable RAM in the machine and the minimum spec is 3GB. Expect long load times and unplayable lag, especially since the next patch has some graphical improvements. If you can upgrade the RAM first, that could be a game changer for you in the literal sense.

Service Bays and Cargo Bays as ways to safely re-enter Kerbin with Kerbals that need rescue from orbit Space Elevators (Gilly doesn't count) Landing on Jool

Intel Core i5 3230M 2.6 GHz (3 MB Cache) 6 GB DDR3 1000 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive 15.6-Inch Screen Intel HD 4000 Graphics <------ Here's your big red flag. Windows 8, 5-hour battery life ATI or nVidia. Intel graphics = you french fried when you should have pizza'd, and you're gonna have a bad time. This is true of any 2.5D (i.e. not sprites) game.

My question is, when you screw up, can they still be counted as debris? I remember having creepy little uncontrollable dead-but-not-dead Kerbals on Mun after a fall off of a rover....

Select the crew from Kerbals whose last mission ended horribly, but they surivived. Crew of three that crashed on Mun and wrecked all the science modules, then needed rescue? Eve Prison Planet for you, failures! Glory to the Kerbin Empire!

Thanks everyone. I haven't gone into the visuals mods yet, but I've got the USI suite and KAS/KIS and SCANsat all back to life. I've discovered flying aircraft is actually *easier* than it used to be, but rocketeering takes a good bit more work. "Moar Boosters" isn't always functional anymore, either. I had one design which kept burning up in the atmosphere trying to leave, going beyond the temp threshold for the Mk1 pod. I ended up fixing this by adding weight, using two adapters and one of the mid-size gray fuel tanks in place of the smaller tanks you get in the early game. Easily the first time I found it easier to get a ship up to orbit because I added weight, much less that weight being fuel.

I'm not sure if you did it, but back when Ion Engines were first brought out, I successfully made a TIE out of stock parts that actually used twin ion engines. It got up to a decent clip in deep space, but was the definition of "short range fighter". It was also a case study in how the series is total nonsense when it comes to trying to land on those wings.... Today, I got my first 1.0.x aircraft to take off, fly to the abandoned airfield, and land without turning the pilot into soylent green (it's made of Kerbals). This is a particularly big accomplishment, as it's also the first aircraft I've ever gotten to land on that airfield without parachutes. Or violence. I also perfected my early-game three-stage Kerbin Tourism Board-approved orbital shuttle. Granted, absolutely no snacks on board, but those little 1%'ers that want to go into orbit don't need more than a few minutes up there anyway. I can get them there and back reliably for under the price of the respective contracts, so I shamelessly saved myself from bankruptcy by going Space-X. My next goal is setting up Karbonite and other material mining and refining within KAS-fuelpipe range of the launchpad, to see if I can eliminate my dependency on OPEK (Organization of Petroleum Exchanging Kerbals) and their inflated prices. .

The other day I suddenly missed my days as a kerbonaut in beta. I decided it was time to return to Kerbin and see what had changed since things went live. Naturally, I did my usual. I installed all the USI mods and KAS and KAC and scansat and kicked off a new career. For fun, I didn't ready any patch notes. Since like, 0.8. First I noticed karbonite and KAS parts not where I thought they'd be. Maybe they unlock later. Wait...Val? There is a woman as crazy and suicidal as Jeb? Nice! Taking a screen shot using F12 I discovered simultaneously that aerodynamics now matter and that they can be tracked. This explained quickly why my usual early game orbiter barely broke atmosphere. I thought this was fine until Jeb discovered that those pretty re entry flames actually have meaning now. I checked tutorials after this. I used to be to Mun in a couple of launches and now I'm several flights in and still not orbiting. The tutorials I found seem out of date or insufficient. Any recommendations on mods and all of these physics surprises?

Today I learned that if you put a Station Science Cyclotron on top of a stack style rocket, you will not go to space.

Personally, I use them for mission hubs. A good station makes it easy to send a lander to and from a moon or planet, especially near low grav locations like Minumus. A space station is basically a starship without high-thrust propulsion (though RCS is nearly required due to docking spin). It's much less expensive to send a ship with fuel to use a lander that you've already got docked in space, than send a lander (and therefore need to use more fuel) with each flight. They also function as science stations; use up your science Jrs and goo cans, then fly to the station, get them refined and transmitted from the lab, then reset the experiments and go get more science. Finally, a ship or station permanently in orbit makes it much easier to complete Kerbal rescue missions. That's all just stock. If you use resources, Interstellar Lite, or Station Science mods then colonization of space has a purpose.

I think you just uncovered the origin of the Kraken(s). "Your rocket exists because we allow it, and it will end because we demand it."