Atkara

If you can back this with enough fuel, by all means, go for it -see how it goes

Looked it up too. They don't seem to be working the way they used to.

Didn't have to, so far. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I guess I'll reach that point eventually

Didn't really do anything in KSP itself, but I did sit down to arrange some old screenshots, dating back to 1.2.2 and onward. Not much in the area of looks, given the state of my backup machine and the 4:3 aspect ratio -but anyway, here they are.

Not a pain at all, if you make an intermediate stop around Duna, as the DV requirement for a Duna to Dres transfer is significantly lower. If you have a miner with an ISRU onboard in the system, you just mine the ore from Ike, bring it to the craft in question, fire up the converter, refuel the thing as many times as necessary and it's ready to go. This obviously isn't the Kerbal way of doing things -but using common sense every now and then, doesn't hurt -does it?

In my 1.0 career, besides Mun & Minmus, I went to Gilly, Duna, Ike & Bop. In 1.05, I established permanent presence in both kerbal boots and infrastructure, on and around Mun, Minmus, Moho, Eve, Gilly, Duna, Ike, Dres & Eeloo, with the prospect of doing the same on the Joolean system, which I was saving for last. This network of mining vessels, orbital refineries, surface outposts, exploration ATVs, orbital labs and landers, would be connected with what I appropriately named "Deep Space Liners". The end result, would be a reusable infrastructure, allowing for crew rotation and tourist contracts, without having to resort to monstrous designs. Science, flag planting and mining contracts also became easy money, since wherever the contract wanted me to go, I was there anyway. I know, I could've just planted the flag and call it a day. But I could do so much more! That's why I'm doing it again.

Neither is really a badass moment but: I always smile when pulling off a suicide burn on the night side of a planet/moon. Nothing but darkness, then the engines light up towards seemingly nothing. This, until the ground gets lit up by the spotlights, with the craft coming to a hover, usually 30m from the surface, before initiating touchdown. Another one, is when pulling off a suicide burn and at the same time, zeroing in on a stranded kerbonaut's landed pod (rescue contract). The end distance can be anything between 20-200m, something any kerbal would feel comfortable walking. Things do get more technical if I have to retrieve the pod too, but I've become somewhat decent in hovering around and using RCS to properly line up the claw, before landing on top of the said pod and grabbing it. No more desperate jumping around for me

WhatInGod'sNameWasIThinking Mk1 Seriously now, as long as it can lift off the ground, reach orbit and get the job done, it's a go

I wanted to mention solar orbit rescues, which I do every now and then, out of pity for the kerbal that hasn't even spawned yet (go me :p), but you guys have equally interesting stories to tell. Reminds me of the days I did those too. Nowadays, I just take contracts concerning mining, asteroid detection and tourists, as long as they don't want to land on Eve, which I may start doing, once I'm done with my own goals.

The composition of the people visiting -and posting- in these forums, doesn't necessarily reflect the actual age spectrum KSP is being played and appreciated by. Any poll on this, is bound to be answered by the former, which in my opinion, renders it inaccurate. So, the proper question should be: why would an adult pick this game up? I can tell you that I initially didn't. I saw the little green people, the simplified graphics look and thought this game isn't for me. The fact that I'm here, is testament to how I couldn't have been more wrong. There's a very well thought system underneath, combining very good (to say the least) approximations of rocketry, orbital mechanics and atmospheric flight, with the ability to put together your own designs to the test. And it doesn't stop there. With the inclusion of asteroid/planetary resource utilization, you can set up meaningful infrastructure, on and around anywhere possible. You can expand, if you so choose. There isn't a flight simulator, where I didn't find myself trying to get out of the atmosphere. Space is what I wanted. I almost ended up playing Orbiter -but I can do so much more in KSP. As for the little green people and the graphics look, I don't ignore them, I accept and often, appreciate them too. I'm 44 years old.

Mine wasn't a contract either -it was one my own kerbals. As for the inclined orbit you mentioned, at some point you'll become familiar enough with injection maneuvers and you'll be setting up inclined orbits at will. Besides rescuing Jeb, the view from either of the Mun's poles is something to look at. Just be careful on the north pole, as often there isn't enough flat surface -you'll have to either do a pinpoint landing, or carry extra fuel.

The first time I landed on the Mun. Main engine flamed out on the way back (no crossfeed back then and no fuel ducts installed on the craft) and I had to rely on four Ant engines I had attached on the peripheral tanks. It was at that moment when I realized that once in orbit, it's not about thrust to weight ratio, but available DV. As long as you have enough of this, even the most minuscule amount of thrust will do. The first rescue mission I did around the Mun (the very first I've ever done actually). Up to that point, I wouldn't take rescue contracts, as all my previous attempts on the tutorial scenario, hadn't ended well. Until one of my Kerbals didn't have enough fuel to get back from the Mun. Either I'd launch a rescue, or it'd be stuck there. I suppose doing this around the Mun, which is a lot more forgiving than Kerbin when it comes to relative velocities between craft, helped a lot and gave me enough confidence to do orbital rendezvous around Kerbin and later on, pretty much anywhere. The first time I got into solar orbit, while en route to Eve. I kept thinking "This isn't like going from Kerbin to the Mun or Minmus. This is interplanetary space and either you'll do this right, or this crew is lost." I also remember the circularization burn around Eve. Watching the NERVAs burning, with the purple planet on the background... "we're here. We're finally here." My first attempts at docking with an actual station, instead of vessel to vessel. Shaky and sweaty hands, the vessel wouldn't initially line up properly, but after 5-6 tries I -finally- got it done. Later on and as I understood better what I was doing, day by day, I became quite decent at it. I had to. My whole expansion plan depended on it. The first Class E asteroid I got into tow. No autostrut back then so, the craft would wobble like you wouldn't believe, when lining up for a correction burn. The solution: turn SAS off, go inertial and do the lineup yourself, before enabling SAS again for the burn. Later on, I put one of them around Gilly and shot another one out of the solar system -both of them contracts. The latter had also happened to be on a collision course with Kerbin. Driving an ATV on Eve. Watched dawns, noons, sunsets and evenings, en route to each and any biome, a car could roll on. Those little lakes you see from orbit? They're there, trust me. Eve's gravity and mountain regions made driving down a much tougher challenge than driving up -had to get creative with brake and motor settings. Moho was also exciting -I can't remember how many times I had the engineer EVA and fix the wheels, with the car flying above the surface, at about 40-45 m/s. I've driven elsewhere too but by that time, there was no element of surprise -I knew what to expect.

Well, as long as you learn something from it, it's not that bad. After all, Jeb doesn't really die, even if he's listed as "dead" in your save (depending on your gameplay settings). To actually kill him, you need to somehow manage to kill KSP itself and well... good luck with that

I generally don't strand kerbals -let alone leave them to die. Even the 3 guys currently driving and collecting science on Eve, will get home. The vessel to take each one of them off-planet has been designed. There have been occasions where I even accepted solar orbit rescues, because they popped up -even though I know the kerbal doesn't actually spawn if you ignore or just discard the contract. With these aside, the hardest KSP-related decision I've ever had to make, was to retire my 1.05 save: I had explored and established infrastructure on and in orbit of everything but the Joolean system -was saving this for last. Then 1.1 came out and Hullcam VDS wasn't working -I had an external camera on my 8-wheeled ATVs that required it. Asteroid Day also wasn't working, as it was still separate from the main game back then. Then a rescue contract-related kerbal I had sent a flight to pick up from a perfectly fine orbit around Minmus, crashed on the surface. The update must had also done something to the asteroids, because I had issues with a large one (Class E) I had brought closer around Dres and the miner, attached to it. I could've just waited for Hullcam VDS to be updated, while still playing on 1.05. And I did for a while. But my frustration over the 3.1GB CTD was so much, that I eventually decided to archive that save and start anew. Even then, I was so tired that I didn't get back to interplanetary exploration, until 1.2.2 came out. At least not all was lost. The crafts I had assembled in 1.05, are the ones I flew in 1.2.2, 1.3 and 1.3.1, with a number of others added along the way.

There was one other occasion which counts as a "you won't land back on the Mun today". I maintain orbital refineries around Kerbin, Mun and Minmus, with the long term plan to establish one of these around each major planet & moon. Anyway, the miner I've got stationed on the Mun, had just delivered it's cargo on the refinery. So I undocked, maneuvered out of the refinery's path and initiated the intermediate orbit altitude change I always do, before the de-orbit burn. I thought I had enough clearance. It's the first time in playing this game that knowing I couldn't do anything to prevent it, I just watched the event unfold -in shock and possibly, even horror. The miner crashed into the refinery. They didn't just disassemble -they literally disintegrated each other, with few bits and pieces floating around. I wasn't laughing. But: KSP is a game. So, I reverted. But I did learn my lesson: When you think you have enough clearance while departing from a station, check again.

I had a similar occasion, where I deleted the entire ksp folder while moving to a new version, without copying my save over. And even though I had long ago acquired the habit of keeping local backups, this time for some reason, I hadn't bothered... What I had bothered with however, was to upload a backup on mediafire, a couple of weeks prior to the incident. This contained 90% of the deleted save's craft files and 90% of the career progress. So I had to redo very little. And to think that I kept telling myself "you're paranoid", while uploading that backup...

Now, I've stopped using graphics mods back when my main machine was still fine and my "designs" don't go beyond the 220-250 parts area. Although the backup machine I have to use for the time being, consists of a [email protected], 4GB RAM and an old GeForce 8800GTX, the only thing I can think of that could take 10 minutes to reach LKO, are the spaceplanes I use to get fuel into orbit. But that's 8 Rapiers, pushing a 50ton payload, which requires a very smooth flight profile, in order to get up there. A 10 minute rocket launch though? No, I don't think so.

Kerbal Engineer Redux: for DV calculations, orbital data feedback, suicide burns, etc. Kerbal Alarm Clock: to keep track of my active flights maneuvers, SOI changes, interplanetary departure dates, etc. Transfer Window Planner: you can either get into solar orbit and burn fuel you could've easily saved otherwise, write down or have KAC (above) monitor the optimal phase angles between planets, or use TWP. Your call Waypoint Manager: because well... waypoints. Docking Port Alignment Indicator: Not that one can't do without it, but it does help getting the job done faster -especially if you do at least 4-6 docking operations per session. Kerbal Flight Indicators: A nice visual aid, eliminating the need to have a flag in front of the runway, which your spaceplane can target and place the prograde marker at it, in order to get something that resembles a proper landing profile GPO Speed Fuel Pump: to automate fuel/resource transfers -and I do a lot of these. And there's Planetshine & Distant Object Enhancement for a little eye-candy. That's it for me

I don't remember when exactly did I hear about KSP for the first time, but I certainly didn't give it the chance to impress me. I've got to be honest, the little green guys put me off -and they were all that I saw at the time. Anyway, fast forward around 1.0 release and I kept hearing about it more and more. Then a friend mentioned it -he didn't say much, only that it's a good game. So I decided for the heck of it, to take a look at videos and livestreams -see what's this all about anyway. The little green guys I initially dismissed, were doing actual rocketry, EVAs, docking in space, interplanetary travel, resource mining and things I always wanted to have and do in a single package. Been playing eversince. So yes, a huge thank you from me too -for the little green guys who opened my eyes, even though I can't play any other space game/sim anymore without thinking "this ain't right, they're doing it wrong"

Well, assuming you play on sandbox, you can make a save at any point (Alt-F5 or ESC-->save game), launch your craft and if you want to try something different but not keep the other (or others) in orbit, revert to that save. All your craft files are saved on a different location in the profile folder anyway so, as long as you don't do either of what Geonovast already mentioned, they'll be there no matter what.

Why start a new game every time after exiting, if I may ask?

Not my failures, technically speaking, but I was nevertheless surprised, when tested launchers with also tested payloads started exploding on the pad. Turns out it was the 1.3.0 bug with fairings and their explosive interaction with struts and fuel lines Anyway, it's been fixed and everything returned to normal

That's nothing compared to how easy it is for a Kerbal to strap itself on a Mk1 pod, get stuck in solar orbit, have it's agency ask your agency to go pick it up, then sit back and wait for a TBD (to be determined) amount of time, while you're trying to figure out how did it manage to get stuck in a retrograde orbit in the first place

Since I perform all of my transfer maneuvers in LKO, I initially used a surface miner to haul ore from Minmus, dock with the outbound craft and fire up the ISRU. Nowadays, I haul fuel straight from Kerbin with a spaceplane, then call in a fuel drone to pick it up and dock with the craft in question. It's a bit more work, but takes less ingame time to get the job done. But as far as the outer solar system goes and if one's into asteroid mining, Dres would be the place to set up a gateway, in my opinion.

I'm fueling up a surface outpost, an ATV, a surface miner, an asteroid miner and a NERVA propelled explorer (set to plant the flag and come back with the first bunch of science data), all separate flights, shooting for Dres in about 120 days or so. That's 5 flights, not counting the relay/survey satellites, which are already in place anyway. For Duna and Ike I obviously had to send two surface outposts, two ATVs, a surface miner and an explorer. That was 6 flights. Eve and Moho expeditions set out together, since I would use Gilly as a pit stop, before sending Moho expedition on it's way from there. Eve got an ATV and a small habitat, Gilly got an orbital lab, a lander and a surface miner. For Moho, it was my "usual" surface outpost, ATV & surface miner. That was 8 flights in total. Coming back to Dres expedition, 5-10 days before the transfer maneuver, I'll send up their respective crews via spaceplane. There are also a pair of relay/survey sats, reaching Eeloo in about a year and a half and a 20seat Mun-Minmus-Solar orbit tour/training lander, currently on it's way out of Kerbin's SOI. Haven't done anything about Jool yet, but I'm sure it'll be interesting, given the amount of flights I'm allocating on anything a Kerbal can set a foot on. Besides these, there's a bunch of rescues I've got to do around Kerbin, Mun, Minmus and Duna, along with a part recovery in Moho's orbit, for none of which I've sent anything out -yet Still, none of these has beaten the pressure I had faced back in 1.05, with 6 (or was it 7?) flights reaching Duna while headed for Dres (was using Duna as an intermediate stop back then) and refueling all of them in time to hit the optimal Dres transfer window, which was in about 20 days or so...