CobraA1

I just wound up using multiple motors. It's still the most efficient motor in space, but you do need to have a few of them if you want to get anywhere in a decent amount of time. The biggest issue is IMO this "space Cthulhu"; the ship exploding unexpectedly when you leave the highest level of warp. Right now, it's practically a showstopper for interplanetary missions. I can fix an underpowered ship by attaching more motors, I can't really fix a ship that explodes unexpectedly x(.

Everybody knows about Vulcanized rubber - we present to you Borgified rubber. It seeks perfection in its elasticity.

aack, I'm getting hit with the explosion bug in deep space too . I'll note that I'm using MechJeb, and I have Kethane installed (but not using it).

Yeah, that's pretty painful x(. I'm likely to do it manually, especially since it won't give you any indication of where it will start the burn. I've also noticed that I have to do stage separation manually.

Well, I did a fly by of Duna and back to Kerbin . Unfortunately, I had to go back to Kerbin the hard way - with a lot of patience. Dunno what I'll do next, perhaps fly bys of other planets, perhaps landing and taking off from Duna. The physics is much improved. Missed those new separation motors - should try to remember to use them for future craft. You can still blow up your ship if you're not careful. Going outside of Kerbin's orbit works great now, the "kracken" seems to be gone. Looking great so far! Can't wait to do more - perhaps over the weekend.

It's still Alpha, give it time. As I understand it, they have big plans for the campaign and such. Downloading it was a pain. And it would be nice if the download resumed where it left off, rather than restarting from scratch when something crashes. Hate to say it, but eventually I just did a download from the web site. Not enough time for a mission before work, though . Will have to do my first mission after work. Between this, iOS 6, and WoW's new campaign, I got very little sleep, heh.

Well, I started the game not using it, and got to the Mun and Minimus without it. So I know how to handle the craft manually if needed. And I'll likely do stuff manually every once in a while. But I do use it. Especially now that I'm using the Kethane mod and need to land at a precise location. And actually, MechJeb has taught me some things I didn't really know much about before. Gravity turns, docking, etc. Why? Because MechJeb gives a lot of feedback on how well you're doing. I have numbers that give me important info. And I really didn't know how to do a lot of stuff when I began playing the game. MechJeb also helps with the tedious parts. Do I really need to manually perform all of my piloting? Not really. I'd rather focus on the mission.

Nice mod - although it would be really nice to have larger parts for larger scale operations. It'll take forever to refuel my deep space rocket with this XD.

Nice vid. Normally, I'd agree, but this seems to work fine. The music has distinct phases, and takes me on an auditory journey. I like music that does that. It sounds like a song Approaching Nirvana would make. EDIT: Went into iTunes. It's "2nd Flight" by Approaching Nirvana in their album Lapse In Time. Kinda figured it was Approaching Nirvana, sounded like their music .

I should note that Minecraft doesn't use a real physics engine. The "physics" in Minecraft are a huge oversimplification of pysics (often to the point of absurdity), while KSP is actually using a physics engine that attempts to be realistic. Minecraft physics are simply not comparable to KSP physics in the slightest. Totally different approaches to the physics problem, and totally different algorithms.

Meh, maybe been watching Scott too much on YouTube.

So . . . . . . I've been noticing that a lot of people are calling the Mun a planet. So I find this odd, especially after some international naming committe spent a lot of time telling us Pluto was no longer a planet. So, what's up with that?

NOTE: These aren't the most beautiful ships, but I build to be functional. So here's the deep space launcher and Deep Space 1. Eight large rocket motors makes for a lot ot thrust for the lower atmosphere, and two large tanks per motor per stage is plenty of fuel. Here it is, just made orbit. Six large tanks and four small tanks worth of fuel left for deep space missions. Droppping the lowest engines from the last launcher stage saves me about 30 tons, and switches thrust to the aerospike. This is the original concept I had, and is what you get once you release the outer tanks. Truth be known, it probably wouldn't have a whole lot of delta v compared to my final design. Here's the "Mars" (Duna) spacecraft. Not as much delta v as Deep Space 1, but should be able to do a trip to Duna or Eve. It was actually the first of the two designs. Here it is, just made orbit. Plenty of fuel for inner plant missions. Here's what the final stages look like.

Yup, a 3.0 GHz Pentium IV is about as powerful as my 2.4 GHz Core 2 for single threaded processes. Although do keep in mind that Intel made a major architectural shift when they went to the Core 2s, so clock speeds are somewhat misleading.

Running a quad core here with a dedicated PhysX card - and KSP, probably the most physics heavy game I own, doesn't support either . But yes, this is in the hands of the Unity folks. There's not much the KSP devs can do except plead to the Unity devs.

Ok, I'll go put some pics in the post itself soon, although the dropbox links had pics.

Grats on making it there. But yeah, I'd send a three kerbal craft with one or two EVAed out before launch.

Heh, usually if I build a rocket that big, I'll get a frame once every five seconds XD.

Hey, so wanted to share a couple designs that I may attempt to use in 0.17 with the new planets. The first is MechMars 3, which is designed to go to a Mars-like planet (now confirmed to be Duna). Right now, the top stage is MechJeb, but I should be able to modify it to use a lander for a crew when 0.17 comes out. Took quite a few iterations to get something that won't blow up on stage separation, and my solution was to simply use the smaller parts for most of the craft, with the larger parts acting as a booster through the lower atmosphere. It's the first craft I've really designed for interplanetary missions. Not much to say about it, hopefully it will get me there. Designed mostly to be a one way trip, although I think it has enough delta v to swing by and return to Kerbin if needed. I may end up doing what most people are recommending and sending two craft: One with the lander, and one with a return capsule. A future iteration will need a lander capable of taking off again in an atmosphere. The second craft is Deep Space 1. It's the result of asking the question "Let's say I want to use only a single aerospike engine. How much fuel can I send into orbit with it?" The reason being, well, it seems that navigating space is all about delta v. How much you can change velocity. And since it's space, it doesn't really matter how much thrust you have, only how efficient the rocket is. Basically, you want your ship to be a flying gas tank. So, I designed a big gas tank to go with my engine. This thing should be able to make it to any planet in 0.17. It's not really designed to land (although I chose the MechJeb lander as the payload), but should be able to get me basic info about all of the planets and moons in the system. The original design was two large gas tanks attached to a thinner, inner stage. After a lot of experimentation, I figured it would be boosted into orbit with large rockets, each two tanks high. Well, the launcher got to four tanks long and two tanks wide, and that was getting me into the upper atmosphere, but not into orbit. It was, however, getting me there fast, so I knew that I had more than enough power, just not enough fuel to get into orbit. So, I decided to add another stage to the bottom of the existing rockets. That proved to be way more than enough - indeed, I had a lot of fuel left! Once in orbit, my launcher had four large tanks that were completely full, with four more tanks containing some leftover fuel. I had to incorporate those tanks into the final spacecraft - so I did, adding the ability to drop the four powerful rockets of the final liftoff stage, and allowing fuel to go back into the interplanetary craft itself. The result once in orbit? Over six large fuel tanks, filled to the brim, feeding a single aerospike engine. Plus some fuel left over in four more large tanks, and the four small centerline tanks. And it turns out to have great endurance, even being able to make the 8 km/s delta v for a sundive. Never imagined I'd ever want to create such a craft, but once I decided I wanted a deep space craft, I figured I might as well test the sundive. It does take nearly the entire craft to do the dive, though. I was down to the inner tanks, having ejected all of the outer tanks. And it is annoying fighting the kracken on the way down. Screenshots taken are basically launching and in orbit. I didn't take any screenshots during the missions, will have to remember to do that in the future :/. NOTES: -MechMars has a higher thrust/weight ratio of the two, and should be able to make it to the inner planets. -When you break off the last four large rockets, Deep Space 1 will have a really low thrust/weight ratio. Be prepared for some really long burns. If you don't mind wasting a bit of fuel, you can keep the last four large rockets attached for a while longer. -Be careful about launching the last two large tanks on Deep Space 1, as they can snap off the rest of the vehicle. Best to do it with the engine off and wait for them to float off. -MechJeb is required for these two rockets. No other mods were used. Both rockets should be safe for a MechJeb launch. MechMars 3: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hiiam0iqixpppq9/IViYWR-36h Deep Space 1: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rbt9zvylrxdav0a/oPPFAyLZoi

As one who has played flight sims in the past, first person will especially make sense for flying aircraft. Maybe not so much spacecraft, but flying an aircraft in first person is a lot more intuitive than third person.

Can't watch the video at all in Germany, and ProxTube doesn't seem to be able to get around it either X(.

It's the physics. I believe a better CPU would be the answer. I dunno if the physics supports multiple cores, would have to test that.

I guess it depends on the plans of the developers and how they perceive the role of the player - do they see the player as a mission planner, or do they see the player as a pilot? Or perhaps both? One thing I've noticed practicing orbits around the sun is that I really don't do a good job of planning orbital transfers. I can see already that planning interplanetary transfers will be much harder than planning a moon transfer. I don't think I could eyeball it. As this game scales up, it's going to very much require some automation if they want to keep the game accessible to most people.

Well, it was well beyond what everybody else had at the time. For that time period, it was quite advanced. We also poured an enormous amount of money into it - if you account for inflation, the mid 1960's was the most funding NASA ever had. We basically wrote them a blank check and told them to get us to the moon. There was some automation on Apollo as I understand it. Maybe not a whole lot due to the technology at the time, but the first integrated circuit was invented about five years earlier, so we're probably talking late transistor / early IC computing devices at the time. But, a computer is a computer, and they likely at the very least computed orbits and burn times for the maneuvers with computers at the time. The orbital information MechJeb gives you is likely on par with what a computer could do at the time. With today's tech, we can very much automate it completely if we wanted. Heck, we just completely automated landing on Mars with a crazy "skycrane" maneuver, something that would be impossible with 1960's tech. So if you want to emulate today's tech, I'd say MechJeb would be perfectly legitimate. Agreed - it's a game, and you should do what's fun for you . I started out without MechJeb and got to both the Mun and Minimus, so no I didn't really "cheat" IMO. For the most part, I'm using MechJeb to perfect my designs for missions to the other planets in 0.17. I have a feeling that MechJeb is going to pretty much be required for the other planets. I don't imagine I'll be very good at transfer orbits between major planets without it. I'd time it poorly and waste a lot of fuel. I've done a test transfer, and it does take a fair bit of ∆v to transfer to another planet. I won't want to waste a lot of fuel.

Assuming the devs of KSP upgrade to that version when it comes out. It would actually be quite nice - I'm running dual video cards, with one dedicated to graphics, the other dedicated to PhysX. I'd very likely get a substantial performance boost on the physics if they started using PhysX.