J4CKAL2014

Completed my first manned mission to Jool yesterday after 2 day working in it. Lasted almost 23 years but all Kerbals returned safely don't have the heart to de-orbit the spacecraft that took them there, though

If it was, I would demand the same fuel efficiency

Well that's true, I normally try and take more fuel than I'm gonna need. And as for the overweighred orbiters, fair point. I was kinda frustrated that I haven't been able to make a serial-stage-only Mun/Minmus vehicle, but considering the amount of weight they have to get up there I suppose it isn't all that surprising. Guaranteed that people have managed it though, I probably just lack the engineering skill

Yeah that is true. That said, the XX is comprised of 4 engines, so the S-I has a lot more power per engine AND more of them

Now THAT is KSP dedication. Good job sir!

I think that, if the Kerbal system was scaled to the same size as our solar system, the stock rockets and fuel tank sizes wouldn't be sufficient for anything other than the simplest of orbital tasks. Even rocket engines like the Griffon XX - the biggest and most powerful rocket engine in the KW Rocketry mod has a thrust of 4,900 kN - has a thrust which is over 6 times less than that of the Saturn V's first stage, so you'd have to make gigantic rockets just to get stuff into orbit. Kerbin's universe seems to be well balanced when compared to the tech you have available. If the rockets available were more powerful (i.e. as powerful as stuff we have IRL) then sure, the Kerbin System would be ridiculously small.

Burrowing through the top of Jool's mid-lower atmosphere (the lowest I got was around 118,000m) doing almost 9,500m/s in a 65-tonne spacecraft with 5 Kerbals on board and the Deadly Reentry Continued mod installed, praying that I would lose enough delta V to slow myself into a Jool orbit and that Odyssey III would survive the areaobrake. Words cannot express how relieved I felt that I'd added a 6.25m inflatable heat shield to the nose of the craft "just in case" even so, was possibly the hairiest 5 minutes of my time in KSP (while this was technically not a "close call" - this wasn't an accident, it was in my flight plan - it was definitely very hair-raising!)

Running out of fuel as I was trying to correct an orbital error, not having enough delta V to correct it and ending up on a sub-orbital trajectnirory with no heat shield on the craft and Deadly Reentry Continued installed. Parachutes overheated and exploded on the descent through the atmosphere. Amazingly, the pod (this pod was the Taurus 3.75m pod, can hold 7 Kerbals, can highly recommend the mod) survived the descent. Its fitted with powerful booster rockets that give you about 3 seconds of power (presumably designed for ensuring a powered decoupling from a spacecraft when preparing for reentry), but I hadn't used them, so I waited until I was about to hit the water, fired the rockets and slowed my descent to about 10m/s, then fell into the ocean, hitting the water at about 20m/s. Crew survived

Was attempting to dock a manned craft with an observation station I had around the moon, set up a Hohmann transfer and went for time acceleration. Unfortunately, I hadn't realised that the orbit of my station was so low that my renedevous trajectory...sort of...went through the moon. Next thing I know, my ship is 6km above the moon coming in at 600m/s. Tried desperately to brake with the engines and sort of succeeded - only hit the Mun doing 400m/s! Command capsule exploded, as did the rest of the craft, and I thought Seanfred and Billy-Bobbrett were goners...until the command capsule magically reappeared intact flying away from the surface at around 420m/s about 2 seconds later! :@

Ah ok, well it was to be expected it sort of depends what 0.24 is like, I suppose

Agreed. I find rockets way easier to use. As for pricing, I would imagine that jets would be favoured, mainly from a logic standpoint. Chemical rocket engines employ jet technology + other stuff (as in: they normally use a combustion turbine to drive the pumps which mixes the fuel and oxidizer. I'm sure many people on here can explain it much better, I'm not an engineer!) So from that point of view, rockets + their fuel consumption will = more monies (which sucks for me cos I don't use jets much :/)

If you want marker lights, I think B9 Aerospace would be your best option right now (afaik that mod includes them)

Obviously it won't be long before the 0.24 update comes out and that may actually prove a problem for those of us with (lots of) mods: Are we gonna have to reinstall all of these mods which will hopefully be updated to be compatible with 0.24? (and its likely that quite a few won't be) I'm just asking because I didn't start installing mods until 0.23.5 so it would be interesting to hear what people who have been modding the game for longer have experienced with previous updates

I'd love to be able to just place flags wherever you want on the stuff you build in the VAB/hangar and alter the size. Editing would be nice for that too but maybe that's asking for too much. Only other small thing I can think of would be a cryogenic sleep module for Kerbals so I wouldn't feel guilty about having them stuck in a spacecraft for 6 years (although I did add a storage container and ladders so they wander around!)...and that's just to Duna and back!!

Yeah fair enough. My main point was that that sort of thing can't happen in a democracy cos of the way it's structured, so this is an advantage of an alternate system. As for the popularity test thing, you've hit the nail on the head much better than I did Anyway, it all sucks. Kerbin is far superior

If suckage wasn't transitive, there wouldn't be an explanation for why my spaceplanes all equally suck

Since Kerbals seem a lot less violent and...how can I put this in a nice way...simpler than humans, I imagine they all live under a unified system A good example of this - and I'm not necessarily picking a "dictatorship", here, this example isn't intended as that, but I'm just picking a nation which isn't democracy-based - is what China did during the 2008 economic crisis. Because the majority of the biggest industries, banks, corporations, etc. in China are state-owned (unlike in a democracy, where they are privately-owned), China was able to get spending before the big crash and turn its money into infrastructure and investment before all that money was devalued. Sure, they now have debt to deal with, but its fair to say their economy is doing a lot better than most others (they're set to overtake the US economy by 2020, some estimates as early as 2018). I'm not anti-democratic, but I'm just putting this out there to back up the idea that democracy isn't the ONLY workable political system, which is a viewpoint that some*people naively adopt. There are some advantages of other systems too. Alternative models could well work if bred in the right environment, so to speak. But that's just my opinion. I don't want to turn this into a political argument, I just think this was a point worth supporting because I expect some people may well attack it, and I wanted to give them something to seriously think about before they tried that which might make them reconsider.

Made use of the tonne of new parts I got from the NearFuture mods (I can highly recommend all of them) to build my first manned interplanetary craft, the Odyssey II (Odyssey I was a probe) and very happy to say that it performed very well on its maiden voyage by taking Jebediah, Seanfred and Billy-Bobbrett Kerman to Duna and then safely home again probably go for Eve next, then will have to work on a new design to take them further. Also put another module on my Kerbal space station Aurora

1. MechJeb is an incredibly useful and time-saving tool - I use it all the time - but it is important to get to grips with at least basic orbital manoeuvring first. Why bother? Well sometimes MechJeb makes errors (e.g. putting you on a Kerbin escape trajectory that sends you through Kerbin XD) and when that happens you are gonna need to know how to fly by yourself. My confession is that I probably couldn't do Munar/Minmus landings without it; orbital manoeuvring, rendezvous and docking I have done without it, but not landing :/ 2. 90% of my mission restarts have probably come from forgetting deploy the solar panels/activate power source. Don't forget it 3. If the craft is Kerbal'd (i.e. has Kerbals on board), try to implement some sort of escape system (especially if you're someone who doesn't like restarting/quicksaving) and have a plan to get them back to Kerbin or be able to keep them alive if things don't go too well. 4. Locking the gimbals on your first rocket stage can be extremely useful because it greatly reduces wobble (this mainly applied if you've got a very powerful first stage or you have some potentially unstable connections in places). At the same time, it can be very helpful to have an action group set up which toggles the gimbals because - and this mainly applies if you're trying to push a lot of weight into orbit - the center of mass is going to shift as you drain fuel and lose weight. If you have a lot of weight at the top of the rocket, the directed rocket thrust from your main stage may be the only thing that stops it from spinning. 5. Try to go for a sensible reentry. I have Deadly Reeentry Continued installed, so I have to do this, but sooner or later deadly reentry is going to be implemented into the stock game anyway (as far as I know) so its worry getting to grips with it now before you start frying your Kerbals later on. Having a periapsis of about 25-30km on reentry has worked for both from orbital reentries, moon returns AND interplanetary returns. That's all I can really think if, aside from all the stuff that's already been posted. Most importantly: have fun and play how you want mods or no mods, it doesn't matter what you choose. Be sure to play at your own pace that you're comfortable with

I think its just called "Mk2 cockpit", I found it on the list of mods on Reddit that Scott Manley uses for his Interstellar Quest videos. Sadly it was on Spaceport and I don't know if it was moved in time but try having a look on Curse, its worth getting

If you've gone to the Dark Side, I've already gone full Darth Vader got a fair number of mods, including MechJeb Exactly. KSP is great because of how easy it is to integrate player mods (on games like ArmA it can be a pain). Plus remember that some mods add stuff which perhaps should (and in some cases, will) be in the game, e.g. Deadly Reentry and the proper view for the Mk 2 cockpit (love those mods)

No, those are stack separators, they're useful I was referring specifically to the interstage decouplers in the KW Rocketry mod, which are kind've annoying cos they only have 1 attachment node (Forgot to quote Kerb's post in this reply)

Ah ok, didn't know you could use them without shrouds. Thanks Yeah I'd thought about using them as a kind of interstage fairing, but the way the nodes are arranged put a stop to that and made me think they must be for something else :/ although with some docking port attachments it might work

...when you think that launching a shuttle design that doesn't have a balanced centre of mass is perfectly legit (normally starts off ok, but by the time you get to about 30km you're spinning wildly cos the centre of mass shifts) Install the Deadly Reentry mod, see what happens

So can someone please explain the use of interstate decouplers? This is mainly aimed at those who use KW Rocketry mods but also those who understand the uses of interstages in general (e.g. historical/real-life uses). What's the advantage on an interstage over, say, a standard decoupler?