Johnny Wishbone

So, before anyone gets their neck in a knot about this, I'm not passing judgement. I find this interesting and I'm asking because I'm curious. Lately, I've been watching a lot of KSP YouTube videos, both older ones and newer ones. One thing I keep seeing is people launching ships into a sub-orbital trajectory, coasting to apoapsis, and then doing an orbit insertion burn (aka circularization burn). That's pretty standard and not interesting. But what I do find curious and interesting is the number of people (especially very experienced players) that take the time to put up a maneuver node while coasting to apoapsis, and actually plan out their orbit insertion burn. I find this curious because, to me, its totally unnecessary. When you get near or at your apoapsis, just burn prograde until your periapsis gets high enough to put you in orbit or you get it to whatever height you want. There is no need for a maneuver node, yet I see players (even people like Scott Manley) do this time and time again. Why? The best analogy I can come up with is getting into your car to go to your best friend's house and asking your sat-nav to give you directions and plot you a route there. You know how to get there; you don't need directions! Plotting a maneuver for something as simple as a prograde burn to raise your periapsis to a desired height seems very pointless to me and yet I see players do it all the time. So, I'm curious to know why? Is it really that much of a habit? Are people that dependent on maneuver nodes? The only time I use a maneuver node is to plot a transfer to another celestial body. Everything else, I use the navball and fly by eye. Its really not that hard once you understand the navball and the information it is presenting to you. Again, I'm not trying to be judgemental. If this is something you do, that's fine with me. I'm just curious.

I have an amusing story about SETI@home: Back in the early 2000s, I worked at a large university on the east coast. We were in the process of retiring a Sun E10k computer (basically a Cray supercomputer that could be hardware partitioned into multiple, independent servers) and I had a weekend to play with it before we got rid of it. So I took all the CPU boards, memory, I/O boards, etc and combined them into a single, large server. I don't remember the exact specs, but i think it had something like 48 processors and over 100GB of RAM (not very impressive today, but back then, holy crap!). I installed a base version of Solaris 8 OS on it, gave it an IP, and then downloaded and installed SETI@home on it. I created an account and fired it up on Friday afternoon. Came back Monday morning to find it had chewed through so many work packages that my brand new account had jumped into the top 10 on the leaderboard! I shut it down after that and sadly helped dismantle it and send it back to Sun as part of our trade-in for a newer E15k computer. Good times.

B.S. Computer Science, Michigan State University, 1998. Christ, it's been almost 20 years since college. Where the hell did 20 years go?

For those of you who care, I have a build thread (including pictures) over in "The Lounge"

You are too kind. Thanks!

Parts bag 12 produced these pieces: the CSM and LES, the Lunar Module Adapter, the display stands, and the static displays of the LM and the CM at splashdown. Includes 4 mini-minifigs (single stud figures) And here is the full assembly in front of my couch Here it is against the giant ruler. Again, camera perspective makes it look taller, but it is actually just over 39 inches Here it is laying on the display stands Here with the stages separated And a final shot of the stages from the bottom looking up I hope you've enjoyed this build as much as I have. It was a lot of fun to build the kit and a lot of fun documenting it here. If you have any questions about the kit or the build, feel free to ask. I'll be happy to answer as best I can. Also, if you have the kit yourself and want to post your own build pics, feel free to do so in this thread!

The final push to complete the build. Parts bag 11 produced the completed S-IVB stage. There were no significant subassemblies; all the parts just came together to form the completed stage And our PS4 controller gets one last chance to provide scale Stacking the stage on top of the previous stages gives us a good idea what to expect with the finished product One bag of parts to go to complete the build.

If the red ones are the pieces you're talking about, they are 8 of the same subassembly with a minor difference in that left 4 have a blank white panel in the middle and the other 4 dont. However, I found that 4 of them attach with the red part facing left and the other 4 attach with the red part facing right (I dont remember which went how). It isnt 100 percent clear in the manual but you'll understand what I mean when you see it. This is the part of the build that I was referring to earlier in the thread as being "janky" and didnt fit quite flush.

Definitely good for a family project. Keep in mind that the S-IC stage is by far the biggest and most complex of the build, and will take the most time. Everyone else will probably be done with their parts long before the person doing the S-IC is. Only other advice I can give is pay very strict attention to how the pieces are oriented in the diagrams. This is especially important with those "core" sections and attaching the side panels. Some of the side panels are designed to go on one side or the opposite (think 2 way symmetry in KSP) while the other panels are supposed to go on the other pair of sides (if that makes any sense). If you do it wrong, you're going to spend a lot of time breaking down sections to get them apart. I noticed that they used a lot of blue 2 stud pieces (that stood out against the gray, black and white parts that make up the build) in weird spots and figured it was to act as a reference for aligning the piece to the diagram.

The build goes on. Parts bag 8 produced the following pieces which are the first side panels for the outer shell of the S-II stage Parts bag 9 produced the remaining panels for the outer shell of the stage Our trusty PS4 controller for scale again And although we arent finished with this stage, I couldnt resist stacking it with the lower S-IC stage. It fits in snug and secure. Very nice Parts bag 10 produced the following pieces which complete the stage. Here is the finished S-II stage And thats enough for now. Nap time over, so time to resume my parenting duties. I should finish the build tonight and will update the thread. More to follow!

Ok. Good to know its not just me then. After messing around with those parts, I did get them to sit a lot more flush with the rest of the shell. Not perfect, but good enough. I havent finished the S-II stage yet, but i did sit the core on top of the S-IC and I can see already how its going to fit together and should be a nice snug fit. Impressive design. I'm hoping to resume building in a few hours when the kiddos take their naps. For now, we'll continue with our tea party while The Martian plays in the background on the TV.

On yours, do those latticed sections above the "USA" on the S-IC stage fit flush with the rest of the outer shell, or are they kinda janky? I mean that whole section around, not just the specific piece above the "USA". On mine, some fit flush and some are kinda crooked or stick out more, etc. I spent about 45 minutes last night messing around with those pieces trying to get them to sit correct, but they are just a little off. Part of the reason why I didnt get as much done as I wanted to was due to wasting that time messing around with those parts. Its not a huge deal, but if you look close in my pics above, you can see they arent exactly flush like all the other pieces that make up the shell of the S-IC. For what its worth, the completed S-IC stage has a fair amount of heft and feels really solid. A lot of Lego kits often end up feeling delicate or have parts that can easily break off or fall off. Not this guy. Very solid build so far.

Each stage of the rocket is built from specific bags of parts, so it would be very easy to split them up and build in parallel. The only pain point would come from fighting over a single build manual. Overall, the build isnt very challenging, and has a fair amount of "build this piece from these parts, and repeat 3 more times." So it shouldnt be too hard to share the manual.

Part bags 7-10 will build the S-II stage. Moving on to bag 7, it produced this piece, which is the core of the S-II stage Again, PS4 controller for scale So, I'm going to call it quits for tonight. 4 1/2 hours of sitting on the floor has my back sore and I need sleep. I'll continue tomorrow and post more pics of the build.

ok. build started later than expected, but here we go... Parts bag 4 produced the following pieces which are side panels to fill in more of the gaps and finish the coupler/interstage Parts bag 5 produced the following pieces which are more side panels to finish the gaps in the outer shell Parts bag 6 didnt produce any separate parts, as it was the engines, fins, and lower part of the stage. This had the most greebles of the build so far, and finished the S-IC stage It measures an impressive 16 inches (camera perspective makes it look an inch taller, but it is a true 16 inches) with our trusty PS4 controller there to give additional scale

No stickers. Factory painted on the part. Personally, I prefer that as I've done builds with stickers before, and they always end up peeling off.

Internet forums can be weird places, in my experience. I'm a regular on some other forums and gone there with stuff like this (relating to subject matter of that particular forum) that I thought would be right up their alley, only to be told "Nobody cares. Go away." For all I knew, the response to this thread would be something like "Nobody wants to see you play with Lego, even if it is a rocket." I'm surprised to hear that. I'm fortunate enough to have 2 Lego stores within 10 miles of me, and the first one I went to yesterday afternoon had a whole shelf of these kits. The store was empty, and the employee looked really bored, and that was at 3:30 in the afternoon. If they are that hard to find, I'd think they'd be flying off the shelves. You already have yours built? You must have got it first thing and cruised through the build. It's not a very difficult or challenging build, but I guess I'm taking a lot longer due to all the documenting I'm doing. I've built many kits before, but this is the first one I've documented and posted about on the internet. It has been a lot of fun. I'll resume the build at 8pm Eastern tonight. Since I enjoy eating and having money to buy stuff like this, I have to be a wage slave for the day. After work, I have to attempt to be a decent parent to my kids, so my free time doesn't start until they go to bed. My hope for tonight is to finish the S-IC stage and the S-II stage. Maybe more depending on how quick things go and how late I stay up. Thanks for the comments and interest so far; I'll try to build this as quick as I can so I don't drag it out too long and people lose interest. I'm enjoying this and hope you are too.

Absolutely. I plan to post the entire build start to finish, unless people dont want to see it.

The first bag of parts produced these 2 core pieces of the S-IC stage. The right one stacks on top of left one. PS4 controller for scale. The bottom is the thrust plate that the F1 engines will attach to. The top will be where the S-IC stage couples with the S-II stage. Second bag of parts produced these 4 pieces Which attach to the sides of core pieces to start forming the outer shell of the stage Parts bag 3 produced these side panels which attached to the upper half of the stage. The rest of the parts in the bag went on the top of the stage to start forming the coupler/interstage Thats all for tonight. Took 2.5 hours to get through the first 3 bags of parts (with all the pics and these posts). I'll continue the build tomorrow and update the thread with more images.

Stopped by a Lego store on my way home from work and grabbed the new Saturn V rocket kit they just released today (June 1 2017). Unfortunately, I wont get to start building until later tonight or this weekend due to the small children I have in the house (one would "help" by hoarding and hiding parts, the other would probably try to eat them because everything that can be grabbed is obviously delicious). I will follow up here with pics of the build if there is any interest. Alternatively, if anyone else has the kit and wants to one-up me by posting their own build pics, this is the thread. Feel free to do so if you want! Here's the box. PS4 controller there to give it scale. I also got a free kit (the little yellow/orange box) with a minifig and some random parts, presumably because I spent over a certain dollar amount. 12 bags of parts and an instruction manual about a 1/4 inch thick. This is going to take more than a few hours. The first couple pages of the manual have some neat historical info on the rocket, some tech specs and diagrams, and info on the guys who came up with the kit idea and the Lego designers that finished the kit and made it happen. The first 6 bags of parts are for the S-IC stage only.

Props, dude. Very cool design.

Landing gear doesnt count, so I suspect that you need ALL the wheels to be motorized (aka rover wheels). When you tried having all the wheels motorized on kerbin, did you actually drive the vehicle? According to this thread, that makes a difference:

Mass Effect:Kerbol A bunch of aliens journey to the Kerbol system in <whatever> galaxy and meet a race of tiny green spacemen in cobbled together ships full of snacks. /Not sure if it has ever been specified what galaxy the Kerbol system is in.

I learned to play the game by *gasp* playing the game! I didn't let MechJeb do it for me, I did it myself. I read some of the basics here on the forum (back when this forum was a lot more active than it is today) and I played the game. Having already had a basic understanding of aerodynamics, orbital mechanics, and physics, it wasn't a very steep learning curve for me. I played the game and eventually got pretty good at it. My 2 tips for getting good at KSP: 1) learn to read and understand the navball 2) learn how to properly rendezvous Once you have a good understanding of those 2 things, there isn't anything in KSP you can't do with ease.

I forget which version it was where they added that stupid contract decline penalty, but I missed that in the release notes and started a new career in that version. Kept wondering why my reputation was going in the crapper until I found out that they now punish you for declining too many of the ridiculously stupid contracts you're offered (to cover up the fact that the contract system was and still is broken as heck). Thankfully, they also put in an option to disable that nonsense (I wish it was disabled by default, but at least I can turn it off). Probably my second biggest gripe about this game. It ruined a perfectly good career game I had going, and left me banging my head in frustration until I went back and read the fine print in that version's release notes to figure out what the heck was going on.