Fearless Son

Cryovulcanism!

This is going to revolutionize off-Kerbin atmospheric flight. Think about how awesome it would be to gracefully flapping around Eve, gathering science and finding anomalies, before returning a mountaintop-parked launch vehicle.

Hell yeah.

I might expect to see some contracts that play around with this concept that might make rovers useful. For example, a "take sample readings at positions A, B, and C triangulated around this particular surface feature you already discovered," would be a good reason to keep a rover in play. Assuming it can generate power, it doesn't have the limited mission duration that a "hopping" lander would have, and you can leave it alone until you need it again. The other element to this is those deployable science stations that the update is adding. From the sound of it, you set them down and they gradually build up science data over time. We'll want to get a scientist out to the point we're placing the station, then later have the scientist return to collect data. Might be worth keeping a rover by a surface base to enable trips to and from the sample site.

"The Krid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of science as they relayed about the kosmos. What did they look like? Rockets? Rovers? Were the transmissions like Hohmann Transfers? I kept dreaming of other worlds I thought I'd never see. Then one day... ... I got in."

Know what else I want to do with these parts? I want to make hinges for attaching different rover parts together. For example, I might have a "drive" section of a rover, with a "trailer" section it attaches to that can maintain a loose hinged connection. That way I can undertake some awesome surface expeditions (which I expect to do more of with the new surface anomalies you can investigate for more science) with modular trailer components for crew or scientific experiments or extendable solar panels for more efficient recharging. I think that would be really neat, and something I would expect NASA to do in future missions to the Moon or Mars.

Two big implications I am looking forward to: Base building becomes much easier when you have robotics to take modular parts and put them together. Really helps the docking ports line up. Unfolding segments tucked together inside a fairing. Landers become much safer when I can have several beams extend out to ensure the landing legs are widely spaced, a design that is much more difficult to get out of the atmosphere otherwise.

As others have mentioned, Minmus is lower gravity and easier to land on and take off from than the Mun. It is further out than the Mun though, and with a more inclined orbit. This means that the delta-V requirements of the mission are about the same, which is why anything that can land on the Mun can probably land on Minmus. However, while the total delta-V requirements are about the same, to be efficient they need to be staged a little differently. Firstly, it's probably overkill to leave a descent stage on Minmus. The gravity there is so light and the planet is so small that getting back to orbit requires very little delta-V. Instead, I might recommend you do a transition-stage/landing-stage style setup, where you have an engine with a comparatively large fuel tank attached to the lander for the burn out to Minmus, then decouple the transfer tank and engine when you reach Minmus orbit (or are making your descent) and use the lander's own engines and tanks. You can do it with a very light lander without much effort (compared to the Mun, where starting your breaking burn at just the right time can be critical to keeping enough delta-V to get back to orbit) and use the lander to return to Kerbin with only a modest burn and some conservative aerobreaking.

It sounds like a big part of your arguments are, "There are mods that to this already but more." And uh, okay, I can respect that. But for me, I tend to go unmodded. Not because I hate mods, but just because I like what I do to be sharable, I want to make things that make someone with a stock copy of the game look at it and go, "Hey, I could do that!" without having them jump through a bunch of unofficial hoops to get to it. So as part of the core game, a lot of this appeals to me. I appreciate the new mechanical parts (which I felt the base game was lacking as I want to make craft that can fit inside a fairing and then unfold into their space configuration once they break atmo and shed the fairing.) I likewise appreciate that you can now find specific terrain scatters and interact with them. I like to use Science as a lure to draw me further out, and having those gives me reason to do things like send rovers that can seek out new sites to sample.

The exact height they can operate at for an extended period before your plane begins to lose altitude will depend a lot on it's mass. As they approach their flight ceiling, air-breathing engines gradually drop thrust, even if you have plenty of intakes, and a more massive plane will begin to lose altitude more quickly than a less massive plane due to that decrease in thrust.

Ha! We are Kerbals! We live for the challenge of space exploration! Summon the Kraken, I say, so that we may prove our valor in overcoming it! Let's do this, Mooooooooooar Booooooooooooooster!

That is some mighty Electrosphere-looking aircraft you have there. Where did many of those parts come from? They don't look like stock (though they should be.)

Saw you post this on Twitter, wondered if they was a wheel beneath the front section or if it just skidded along on it's belly, pushed by the wheels at the rear.

"Look, ma', no arresting wire!"

Not even necessarily Kerbin-bound stuff. I would love, for example, to send a flying explorer drone to Eve. It lands, pops its heatshield and fairings, then gently unfolds its long, straight wings and spins up it's propeller. It occasionally lands to take samples and let it's solar panels recharge the batteries that power it's electrical engine.

Is that a modded part? Because I've been waiting for Squad to add a two-seater Mk1 inline cockpit for a while now.

"KRS A Significant Surfeit of Boosters" "KRS That's An Impossibility, You Can Never Have Too Many Boosters" "KRS Enough Boosters That I Can Touch Down On Eve In My First Stage"

I credit SimEarth for instilling me with an appropriate understanding of the word "biome", where it was a direct factor in the gameplay: (Does this mean I'm old? Oh Kod, it does mean I'm old...)

Are you trying to post the actual craft files themselves, just a series of pictures of them, or both? First of all, the forums themselves do not host any files, you need to find external sites to host those things and link them to the form. For craft files, KerbalX is popular, you would need to go there and make an account to upload your craft to. As for pictures, most image hosting sites will work. Imgur is pretty popular for that, and works pretty well with the forms. Again, you need to go there and create an account to upload photos you take. Other than that advice, welcome to the forums, @kerbalkrasher!

Yeah, "biomes" always felt like a misnomer or awkward translation because it implies the presence of life that is distinct to that region, and only Kerbin shows clear evidence of regionally-distinct life beyond an endolithic scale. "Ecotopes" would probably be more accurate term, since that implies a spatially homogeneous region of geography that can include both biotic and abiotic elements, so it would apply to Dres as equally as it would to Kerbin.

See, that seems like even more reason to use the Sentinel. Need to see those asteroids coming from far enough away that you can avoid them. (I'm being facetious, but I did once detect an asteroid on a collision course with Kerbin. To my disappointment, it didn't cause an extinction-level disaster when it impacted.)

Legitimately, yes. I can think of other uses for them too. Imagine a mk 1 passenger module that still has it's rear hatch accessible without causing a ton of drag. Heck, give it some variable geometry articulation and you can make it a small control surface or airbrake by changing how the edges of it are inclined. Would be good for non-gimbling boosters on ascent vehicles too.

I feel like KSP needs a kind of "aerodynamic shroud" attachment for sticking on the rear of engines that'll let the exhaust breath through while providing some straking that will break up the air and make less of an induced vortex behind attachable engines like this. Also, it might look good as an aesthetic feature on some rocket designs.

I sent a trio of communication relays into Duna orbit, along with a rover: The relays were released one at a time into a resonant orbit so they're all in line of sight from one another. Feels extremely satisfying. The rover was inspired by NASA-style Mars landers, and so came in with an aeroshell and heat shield structure that was honestly probably unnecessary on Duna, but I wanted to do it because... NASA. The aeroshell had some drogues and a standard chute, once it was low enough the head shield was jettisoned, the aeroshell detached, and the rover was lowered on a skycrane. In the picture above, the skycrane had already rocketed off after detaching the rover, and the aeroshell survived the impact with it's chute and is gently rolling by in the background. Unfortunately the rover flipped over when driving over a hill and exploded. FML