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Over the years, I realized, that rovers tend to differ from user to user - some are small and easy to deliver and some rovers are quite big and take some more effort to land on alien worlds. Also, they tend to differ, depending on the mods in use and the stage of your career save (if you do play career). So, what do your rovers look like and how did you get them where they are now? Here's a selection of mine: My very first rover landed on the Mun. Has been delivered on top of a rocket that was used as sort of a skycrane. The final "descent" of that rover actually was more or less a free fall. The skycrane has been used as an impactor shortly thereafter... That thing was delivered by a skycrane and comes with 5 winches mounted with various docking utilities. Planetary base building requires moving modules for several meters to the perfect spot. This thing is capable of carrying two K&K modules next to each other. Well, or at least it was before some version change came around and messed with the direction the wheels are pushing the rover to... And this mobile laboratory was driven at around 45m/s on the surface of Duna - faster than you drive on the express way, right? In the background there's my mobile ore miner which is able to express-deliver ore to the next refinery. 7 powered axes - top speed? Never really tested... This rover was sent to Moho just before the ComNet was introduced. The delivery mechanism: two LF boosters mounted fore and aft landed that thing on Moho with stack separators freeing the rover from the boosters. Tested it on Kerbin but wasn't really successful on Moho - had to have a lot of patience with F9 to get that thing down in one piece...

Never really manage to build these toy-car sized rovers. To me small means "not assembled in orbit"...

Saw that an Eeloo window was up ahead and as an orbiter is already on the way, I decided it was time to send a small rover to the outer reaches of the Kerbol system... Probably could have done with less than a TWR of 2 but the asymmetrical load distribution of the rover with respect to the center of thrust just let me go for the "moar boosters" approach... The rover basically consists of a lot of dishes, some experiments and a set of wheels. The landing plan is totally foolproof: The final stage will go down and then tip over onto the wheels of the rover. Nothing can go wrong. Still wondering how that mission was awarded the appropriate funding....

I guess copying the standard model is not what you call meeting the requirements for a Nobel prize nomination...the multi messenger observation of the neutron star coalescence was a far greater achievement (it has already been nominated 'scientific breakthrough of the year' by this niche journal called 'Nature' ). I hope that event is recognized by the royal academy... If you are eligible to nominate somebody (which the vast majority of people are not) - the deadline is January 31.

Kerbulans and Kerbals do have the same Kerb number (+1). So far you'd be right: A Kerbal (+1) and a Kerbulan (+1) have a Kerb number of +2. However, this isn't the only Kuantum number that affects crew count. There's also the Kerb flavour or family and that's where things get a bit complicated... If Kerbulans were just anti-Kerbals they would annihilate upon contact. But they don't as we have already seen in previous comics. So...they are members of different families like the electron, muon and tauon in the standard model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepton_number Now, a Kerbal has a Kerbal number of +1 and a Kerbulan has Kerbulan number of +1. If you put a Kerbal and a Kerbulan in a module, you will end up with a Kerb number of two, but a Kerbal number of 1 and a Kerbulan number of 1. Since Kerbal modules are affected by the Kerbal number but not by the Kerbulan number, the module isn't occupied by two Kerbals. Similarly, the Kerbulan modules are affected by the Kerbulan number but not by the Kerbal number. This problem is easily solved, since there are space suits as well: The empty space suits are basically fulfilling the same function as electron anti-neutrinos (Kerbalantineutrinos?) which do have a Kerbal family number of -1 but no Kerb number. Similarly, a Kerbulan space suit has a Kerb number of zero but a Kerbulan family number of -1. So....let me sum up: Three Kerbals (Kerb number 1, Kerbal number 1, Kerbulan number 0) + two Kerbulans (Kerb number 1, Kerbal number 0, Kerbulan number 1) + three Kerbal space suits (Kerb number 0, Kerbal number -1, Kerbulan number 0): -Kerb number = 3+2+0 = 5 -Kerbal number = 3-3+0 = 0 -Kerbulan number = 0+2+0 = 2 As we can see, the Kerbal number in that particular module is zero and that's what causes crew count. That means, you could actually put another three Kerbals in the same module, as the Kerbal number is zero. Well, that's basically the standard model. But, I assume we will soon see if it applies or not.

After bringing home my first Duna mission just in time for Christmas 2016, I decided to go to Jool in January 2017 - it seems I spent most of the last year to build the appropriate vessels and test them. I finally launched my carrier and sent it to Minmus in order to refuel... So well, yesterday, the refueling operation had been completed and I consequently launched the rocket to low Minmus orbit. Was a spectacular sight to see 6MN propelling a rocket to orbit on a non-atmospheric body: And today, I realized the vessel is big enough to cast a shadow on the surface of Minmus from 22km up in the sky - at least with scatterer (that small black blob between the vessel and the altimeter)

Well I guess it's due to crypto mining. At least it was half a year ago, when I wanted to buy my gtx1060. Pricrs more than doubled for some cards. So yeah, do some price investigation if you want to get a new VGA. Although, I assume the 950 might still be more than good for KSP...

Wait, did they use the space craft and the KSP skybox and just planted an image of Mars on top?

I am with @Harry Rhodan on this one: Pretty sure the fps increase is caused by the two different GPUs. The GTX1080 is quite a sledge hammer. It does outperform my GTX1060 6GB by ages. When I used integrated graphics of my i5 4690 @3.5 GHz, I have been bottlenecked by the GPU, not by the CPU. Using the GTX1060, I gained a huge increase in fps while keeping all other components. (Actually KSP runs at higher fps with Scatterer and EVE compared to integrated graphics without eye candy)

Before I had a VGA, I used onboard graphics as well. On certain planets, I ran into huge FPS issues, so I asked a question similar to yours. Somebody - no idea who - told me to try this one: In your KSP directory, there's a file named "settings.cfg". You can open that file and search for the line UNSUPPORTED_LEGACY_SHADER_TERRAIN = False Change the value to "True" and save the file. Do not forget to backup before saving. Activating the unsupported shaders, gave me quite some FPS while it didn't look as pretty as the supported shaders. My game went from "not playable" to "slideshow" on Moho and Duna, so yeah, it might be worth a try.

I have literally no idea, what you are talking about, except you failed to send something to the Mun. Images do help a lot, since what you might consider to be a problem could in fact be caused by something totally different. Generally speaking, the dV maps of the Kerbol system do help a lot. They basically tell you how much fuel to pack in your rockets. See here for example: Furthermore you need to know what amount of dV your rocket does have. It is given by the Tsoilkovsky equation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation You could calculate that, which is a nice exercise (I propose you do it at least once for one of your rockets in order to understand the equation) or you could install a mod like KER or Mech Jeb which give you the data (and other features). Unfortunately, I have been away from the forums for about a quarter year, so I don't know the latest tutorials - you might need to search one on your own or someone else has to help out by pointing a link to some rocket stability / CoL vs CoM introduction or explanation. If you're more the TV guy - Scott Manley offers a lot of physical explanations and background knowledge in a easy to grasp way. His videos are generally of good quality, although, there are other sources as well.

I don't leave Kerbals behind. Although, I have to admit that Jeb et. al. decided that staying on Duna for just 30 days was too short and consequently extended their trip a bit..

Kerbals are partially made out of antimatter. Death is nothing else than a loss of containment as they simply observe the Einsteinian euquation E=mc**2. The small release of energy proves that c is different in the Kerbin universe....

So yeah Monday was exciting as it could be. Having a certain scientific background, here's some additional information. The detection paper is publically available at PRL as are all GW (gravitational wave) detection papers so far: PRL 119, 161101, 'GW170817: GW170817, PRL 119, 161101 The intro text says the GRB (gamma ray burst) came 7s after the GW signal. According to the paper it was 1.7s. The alert wasn't sent immediately but after the LVC (LIGO VIRGO Cooperation) received the GRB notification. When that notification was checked with GW triggers and a possible detection was seen a process within the LVC started which saw the release of yet another notification about an hour later. When the location data was available about 4-5h post event, a new, updated notification was sent. About half a day after the event, some telescope detected a 'new dot in the sky'. The text says the signal lasted for about 100s. This needs some clarification. The sensitivity of a GW detector is a complex function of detection frequency which is dominated by various sources of noise. If we talk about the signal length, we need to keep in mind, that we are talking about the length the signal was observable in our detectors. That was about a hundred secinds. That said, LIGO published data featuring 2048s in length (after noise substraction) See here. Pinning the source down on the sky took several hours since one of the Ligo detectors suffered a glitch and Virgo suffered data transmission problems if I remember correctly. MMany of the GW170817 related papers are available at PRL, go have read ; )

While my carrier is still carrying out its refuelling operations, Kerbin, Sol and the Mun just rose above the eastern horizon of the flats...

There are 60+ year old Counter Strike gamers. There's an article on a German newspaper about a 78-year-old dude - they call them Silver Gamers.

No idea what these age groups are good for. School may last 9 to 13 years, depending on your residence and education. College doesn't exist in most countries and what to vote for people aged 18-24 not in college? Then 25-40? Seriously? What do have CEOs and grad students in common? Also the varying size of those groups doesn't really allow for interesting conclusions.

If you plan to visit all biomes with something else than electric power, you'll need ISRU equipment on the Mun. You could build a base that processes fuel and hop forth and back to base to fill up again. Or you could carry your ISRU equipment with your vessel, which might become problematic due to Ore distribution. Depending on how complex you want to make the entire enterprise, you could build an orbital base as well which serves as a hub and fuel storage for crew rotation and whatever.

Today, I landed my carrier next to the Minmus base. I didn't realize the carrier would scale the base and the vessels parked next to it... With all those parts in one place, I forced my timer into the solid yellow regime revealing some slide-show effects.

It basically says, the RAPIER is an efficient jet engine with a much too high TWR...also the RV-105 RCS block is horrible... Yes, sure you can have that....here we go. Don't use Ions. They have a high cost to thrust (CTR) ratio. The Ion engine gives you 4200s for 3 funds/Newton. The Rapier gives you 305s for just 0.03 funds per Newton. Also, SRBs are cheap in terms of CTR. All plots - including zooms into the LF area - can be found here: https://postimg.org/gallery/2jtaoyvl2/

Rocket design needs to take into account two stages of usage: Launch to orbit and travel in vacuum. During your interplanetary travels, you want to have a high Isp with low engine mass to increase your dV. During launch to orbit, you can sacrifice a some m/s of dV as you can stage away the unused mass during ascent, but you want to have high thrust with low engine weight to get of the pad. The mammoth weighs 15t and gives you 4MN of thrust, the Isp is 315s. That's roughly 266 N/kg and 21 s/t. The Reliant comes at 192 N/kg and 248s/t. The Terrier gets 240N/kg and 690s/t. So comparing those three engines, the Mammoth would be a good lifter to orbit but a horrible engine in vacuum. The Terrier is nice for travel in space, however. When doing spaceplanes, you can't just throw stuff away as you like, so you need engine combinations that work well. That's one of the reasons for the popularity of the RAPIER since it is basically two engines combined to one part, meaning you save some engine weight.

For some reason, I felt like plotting the Thrust of KSP engines vs their specific impuls. It is basically a table of "How efficient is the boom you selected?" Nothing surprising, but I figured, somebody might be interested in it, nonetheless... Except for Jet engines all values are vacuum data. Jet engines feature highest thrust possible. RAPIER and Panther come with one entry for each mode. Pay attention for the double logarithmic scale, though. The plot can be split in four regions. In the top left you do have the Liquid and Solid fuel engines. They come with various amounts of thrust at Impulses up to 340s. In the bottom left, you have the RCS thrusters - low thrust and low impulse. The top right, that's the Jet engines - unfortunately you cannot use them in vacuum. In the bottom right you do have the Ion engine. I am not really sure weather it is a Jet engine without thrust or an efficient RCS thruster. Reading stories of hour long injection burn times, I come to believe it was intended as an RCS thruster... And a zoom into the liquid fuel engines in the top left corner. The conclusion you ask? I guess, I should implement price and weight in a future plot. But unless I figure how to present 5-dimensional data in a meaningful way, I am kind of stuck, I guess...

I think filled Ore tanks have a higher density than water...

For some reason, jet engines and air intakes seem to work perfectly below see level....

Wait, now that you mentioned it, I bet somebody is already working on that one... Yeah, I know but it isn't stock, though. That means @SQUAD's Kerbals won't join the Federation, while everybody's Kerbals who already developed that drive might join sooner or later...