Luovahulluus

@Pinchy, I'm not sure I can be of much help here, but I'm still going to offer my 0.02€. In my GPP game I've concentrated more on the visual appearance and then just 'add moar boosters' to get things into orbit… Kerbal Joint Reinforcement is a must for most of my creations. My game settings are not that hard, so this is a possible way of doing things. If I was playing a harder game, as I have in the past, I would first design the return vehicle as light as possible using nukes/ion engines. Then a light lander that you leave in Thalia/Icarus orbit, if you plan to go to the surface. Add more boosters! Maybe refuel on one of Gaels moons before going interplanetary.

Space Engine looks like a super cool program! I'm definitely going to install it out once I have some time. Thanks!

Just a small teaser Do you think there is enough liquid fuel? (I just love the hangar extender mod!)

The best I've come up with so far would be to create a sphere in a 3D software and put some stars on the inside surface. Then create a plane with a galaxy texture and the central bulge shape, place it inside the sphere just below the centerpoint and then render the 6 projections from that. Sounds like a lot of work… Edit: Now that I try to visualize it in my head, I don't think the projections could be rendered like that. I'd need a cube instead of the sphere and then project the galaxy plane on the sides of the cube. Then extract the 6 sides from the scene. Does anybody know which software could do that?

My vision was, the nebula is right next to our galaxy, on a collision course. According to Wikipedia, the largest known nebula is the NGC 262 Halo Cloud, 1.3 million light years across. There are plenty of stars in the real pillars themselves, as is evident from this infrared picture: http://hubblesite.org/image/3475/news. I'm sure those contribute some light to the dust and gasses the nebula is made of. But you probably are right, it should't look as bright as it does in my version. I'd imagine it would't look as bright as it does now, even if it was in real scale and only one light year away. Let's just call it artistic license I'd like to make a skybox where the solar system was not too close to the galactic center plane, maybe 20ly above a spiral arm. But I haven't figured out yet how to make the perspective correct for an image like that.

That's what I tried to explain. My pillars are, compared to the real ones, about 20 times bigger and further away, outside the galactic rim. Maybe I'll do another version where the pillars are about the real size and very close to the viewer. Even then, the red stars can't be quite as big as they are now.

My solution to a similar problem was to not attach the first stage to the rear of the second stage but to the roof and floor. This way you can manage the CoM and the CoL easier. My first stages were big enough to (barely) reach orbit, so I could deorbit and land them near the KSC using parachutes (and the Trajectories mod).

Here is my version of the Foreign Eagle, based on the great work @JadeOfMaar did. What bothered me with the original Foreign Eagle sky box was that the Pillars of Creation (the part of the Eagle Nebula in the skybox) blocked all the tiny stars and replaced them with a couple of big red ones. This just didn't look realistic to me. The big stars were clearly in different scale than the other stars. So what did I do? I removed the big stars in photoshop and put the Pillars of Creation on a layer behind the Milky Way image. Now the nebula is clearly outside the galaxy, hence the new name: The Extragalactic Eagle. This may not be very realistic, as the Pillars of Creation are actually just 7000 light years from us, and their lenght is just four light years. In my skybox the nebula is maybe 50 000 to 100 000 light years long. That size is not unheard of as far as nebulae go, but on a way bigger ballpark than the real the Pillars of Creation. I also did some perspective correction and a different mask for the pillars and removed the lens artifacts @eddiew noticed before. (Sorry eddiew, no JJ Abrams on this version ) https://www.dropbox.com/s/ldx72j49fi36pfr/ExtragalacticEagle.rar?dl=0

Just in case @Xeldrak is not around anymore, I'll answer this question. You should always make a copy of the KSP-directory Steam makes, and then play the copy. This way it doesn't matter if the game updates and tries to break all your mods. The copy will always work.

I'm going to go completely off-topic here, and announce that my girlfriend gave birth to our second son two days ago. This, of course, means my limited gaming hours have gotten even more limited, but I hope I can still find some time for KSP, GPP and the insanely huge Nero mission lander I've been designing.

In my opinion, this lumpy craft is one of the coolest ones in this thread! I have a Nero transfer window coming up. I originally was planning on letting it pass, as my Tellumo rover has only visited 6 biomes and the other big rover is still on it's way… BUT now here is a competition going on, and I have over 6,5 million kerbucks wanting to be used…

I'd like to have that ability in a mod, but not in astrogator. It would have to be a mod that runs more like the Transfer Window Planner.

I have Photoshop, the source PSD would be great, thanks!

@JadeOfMaar, you created the Foreign Eagle skybox by combining two existing skyboxes, right? Do you have the originals? There are a couple of problems with the Foreign Eagle that I would like to fix (if I ever get the time for it), and I would need the originals to do it.

Do you have Kerbal Joint Reinforcement installed? I believe it eases in the physics when loading a craft.

Not quite as quickly as promised, but I wrote a mission report about my journey to Tellumo.

The Tellumo Explorer arrived to the destination! The atmosphere in there is quite a beast By the way, I have over 80 mods installed. If you have some questions about those (or anything else), feel free to ask.

Running hot! Have to go to bed now, I'll let you guys know tomorrow what happened

Thanks! Usually I build my crafts thinking only about the functionality. I was inspired by your pretty ships to build something pretty myself I like the way it looks, but docking with the ring is not that much fun… The landing will be very interesting for me too, as I have only tested the crafts at Gael

I launched the Tellumo rover earlier. It's inside a huge fairing, behind a 15m wide heatshield. I will report back when that one reaches it's destination. The rover in the picture is an extended version of the Tellumo rover, heading to the Otho system. The Otho explorer is 6 meters longer and capable of ISRU It has a nuclear reactor and one extra deep freeze module for a tourist. It's also capable (I hope) of landing and taking off from all the moons in the Otho system, and should (mostly) survive re-entry to Gael's atmosphere. In my tests, the wheels didn't survive the heat, but I can still land on water.

I desided to make a mission report to share some of the Galilean eye-candy to the masses . Here is the first post! And the teaser image:

I recently started a new game with the Galileo's Planet Pack installed. The planet's are about a billion times more awesome than stock, in my humble opinion. So, after reading reading all kinds of cool mission reports here, I desided to make my own. I'm not going to bore you with the exact delta-V values for every single maneuver. Or even tell you about every single maneuver. This will be more about the journey and the eye-candy, and less about technical details. Except when I do something I consider especially cool ;). Part one is just about getting on the way.

Don't you mean "First Gael problems"? I had the same problem with my Tellumo Explorer. I solved it with Tweakscale. Edit: I misread your post. I didn't have the same problem, my problem was the 10m heatshield was too small. The same solution might still apply.

I remember reading here something about not pausing the game near Icarus and Thalia... Remembered it too late The temps continued to get worse slowly, even after I decoupled the lander from the interplanetary stage. I have four small folding radiators on the lander, working at 100%. I jumped back to KSC, hoping the craft will cool down at some point. Any hope for that?

What is that sphere? A greenhouse? Anyway, it looks cool, I want one! What mod is that from?