WyDavies

I was reading an article on the NASA web site (which I am now unable to find - I was on a different computer at the time) and the author was talking about the energy that would be required for another mission to Pluto. He expressed the delta-v as 130 km^2 / s^2. I've never seen delta-V expressed like that and it doesn't make much sense in my head. Was this a typo or is it a different way of describing delta-V?

After building a better plane for Jeb and doing some skydiving from 25km up, I then took it to the logical extreme. It turns out if you slow down to around 1500m/s in orbit Kerbals can survive re-entry. So... time for skydiving from space! Edit: CliftonM - it just hit me. 96 Passenger Jet! Awesome. Now get some skydiving going!

I've been playing Kerbal Space Program for quite some time. I have a video from one of the earliest alpha builds. And it shows that I didn't have a clue. And most of the time I still don't! But anyway, despite all of this time playing, I sent a mission to Eeloo and it was only when it got there that I realised I'd never even done a flyby before. I would of remembered that world as it is quite striking visually. So I landed my failed VTOL/Rover/Spaceplane (it does work as a rover and once the rover wheels are ejected it can land like a spaceplane) and went for a drive. And also looked at a tiny bright dot, that turned out to be the Sun. I didn't take any screenshots, but I did record it in Fraps and put it into a video on Youtube. I put it on there because I keep losing videos I store locally. Have a watch. Or don't If you want to see Eeloo with your own eyes first, then ignore the video and go out there and visit! The gravity isn't too strong so you can land pretty much anything that would land on Mun. It does take a while though. Poor Kamby Kermin spent 18 years in that one spacesuit. https://youtu.be/XXOOBmbDZCA

I was trying to get from Mun to Minmus. I left Mun's orbit, but with only a slight increase in speed, so of course Mun caught back up as my ship started going into a higher orbit. So I went back in to the map view to adjust the orbit and saw this! Can anyone explain this orbit? I've never seen anything like it. Youtube link in case the picture below isn't clear enough: https://youtu.be/_Q_MywBgnRM

You're trying to build cool and creative stuff. I've never tried to do that, but some of it is. I started playing KSP from one of the early alpha releases and all my early rockets looked like standard rockets. Then came the release with buggies and I started trying to make a buggy. It was awful. Really bad. It was a square of metal, with wheels on each corner and a seat in the middle. I couldn't work out any mechanism for landing it on Mun without quite a drop. So I stress-tested it on the runway. For some reason, instead of launch clamps I used fuel tanks as the pillars. And then I stroked my chin and went "hmmm....". It is the stupidest buggy launching system you can imagine. And it looks amazing! Since then most of my rockets have been stupid, and some of them look amazing (about 99% just look stupid). Here's an example of stupidity: I build a car to drive around and gather science from the various bits of the Kerbal Space Center. And then I stuck a nose-cone on the front, strapped a rocket to the back, put fairing around it and launched it into space. Then realised a small mistake - wheels don't work in space. https://youtu.be/jm0D7wd_PMo Screw cool and creative. Build stupid stuff and when it works it will make you smile.

It wasn't today that I made the launch, but it was today that I realised how pointless it was. Yup, I fired a car into orbit. It is still there. No wings. No parachute. No docking port. I did give it an ion engine, so I could de-orbit it and watch it go up in flames I guess. Edit: Oh my god, I'm an idiot. It does have a docking port. Que for a stupidly overcomplicated rescue mission, involving multiple excessively large rockets!

I was just lining up to dock at a refuelling station in a 100km Kerbin Orbit when I got a complete shock. The space station suddenly exploded, with debris flying everywhere at high speed. I was ever so slightly shocked. Looking at the debris in the space center I discovered what had happened. I had a science station in an elliptic polar orbit, which hit 100km at one pass by the equator. The chances of collision were... well... 100% obviously. Of all the things I've done in KSP over the years, that is one of the dumbest and also most spectacular.

I was just searching on the forums as I had a launch of a huge rocket go perfectly fine until I hit 50,000 metres and then suddenly a launch clamp appeared about 20 metres away from my ship, flying in formation. Reverting to launch and it turned out to be the one clamp that was hanging off the edge of the launch pad and so was floating in the air before launch. This seems slightly different from the cases mentioned above as the launch clamp only decided to join me at 50km altitude. I was recording in FRAPS and you can see the launch clamp suddenly pop into view. I've fixed it by moving the clamp slightly so it doesn't hang off the edge of the launch pad.

I made my first landing in Jan 2012. No idea what version that equates to. I remember sweating hugely as I tried to get my brain around trying to control both the main engine, the tilt of the ship and the RCS thrusters, and finally I landed. And the ship tipped over The second landing I used tail fins as lander legs (as this was before lander legs existed). And it turned out I put them slightly too high up, so the rocket engine fell off on landing. Third attempt was a successful landing, exploration and takeoff. But I ran out of fuel with a periapsis of 68,000 metres trying to get back. It took a ridiculous number of orbits for the tiny amount of drag to pull my ship down. And every one of the landings felt epic! edit: I just found a video I made of the 2nd landing. Completely forgot I had it until I wrote this post. Also forgot about my launcher and how it would fall apart on the launchpad unless I launched it within 2 seconds. It would shake and the shaking would rapidly escalate and bits would fall off. Can't say my rocket design has changed much over the years

If you are trying for a spaceplane, first try to make a plane that can fly up to 30,000 metres. Then swap the jet fuel tanks for rocket fuel tanks and swap the jets for RAPIERs. An alternative is to add just a little bit of rocket fuel and add an atomic rocket engine. This is much trickier as you need to get up to at least 40,000 metres and 2000 m/s before switching to the rocket (atomic rockets have very poor thrust and work poorly in the atmosphere). Tip: start small. The bigger a SSTO is the bigger a pain in the butt it is. Stephen Hirst impressed me mightily with a small buggy that was also a VTOL jet and could also go into orbit. In the following video he demonstrates the exact technique for getting into orbit - http://youtu.be/cu2pVvMehi4 I've got a youtube video of flying a vehicle inspired by his that is a little bit bigger and has an atomic rocket - http://youtu.be/h0cOAJof1jo Two jet engines are a pain as the thrust gets uneven as the air runs out. As to the question - why did I make a buggy that could fly into space? Because everything is better with wheels!

Ah, okay. That would explain the extreme terrain. Although it is impressive. The South Pole of Minmus is particularly angry. It flung my rover a considerable distance and then made Jeb explode!

Sorry about the very late reply. Incredibly I managed to forget I posted this. I checked the map view and there was nothing. I hung around in that orbit for ages and nothing reappeared again. It may have been some weird glitch as I had a hell of a lot of debris floating around Kerbin and maybe the KSP engine said "Take some of your junk back!" and hurled a bit of it at me.

I had heard that there was a pyramid at the North Pole of Duna and realised in all the time I've been playing KSP (started back when it was just Kerbin and Mun and getting to the Mun was just firing your engines and hoping you were pointing the right direction!) I've never been to the poles of Duna. So off I went. And oh boy, that wasn't like any pyramid I've ever seen! I've put what I found in a short video clip: http://youtu.be/S3X6YI8Q8rk. If you want to find out what is there yourself don't view the link and instead get that rocket built! Has the terrain generation changed or do people have very different definitions of a pyramid from me? That was recorded in version 0.24.

I was taking off from Ike and had gotten into a 20km equatorial orbit. As I was admiring the scenary something shot under my little ship at very high speed. At first I thought it was dropped stage, but my lander doesn't have any detactable bits and it had left the mothership in Duna orbit. I have no idea what it was. I checked my ship to see if anything had fallen off, but it was all intact. Plus this object was moving at considerable speed relative to my ship. Way too fast for me to work out what it was. It was targetable, but it came and went so fast I didn't have a chance to do anything. Waited for a while, but I didn't see it again. Is this a glitch or maybe some Easter Egg I know nothing about?