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el_coyoto

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    Canis Vulgaris Asparagus
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  1. Today, I had some fun on and around Iota (Galileo's Planet Pack) 10/10, would plunder again. EDIT : also found these in my screenshots folder
  2. "Yay, we're not dead!" \o/ This cargo bay setup makes me chuckle a little bit every time I see it...
  3. I've been working a bit more on the aerodynamics of my nuke SSTO and found a setup that handles reasonably well and had some fun with it : "Yay! We landed in one piece!" \o/
  4. Wow, thank TOTM for making me discover this, it is awesome! Awesome work @Cydonian Monk : I love the scenario (keeping ships from your older saves and finding a way to integrate them into a new campaign is an amazing idea), the storytelling is top notch and I love how you include geeky references/puns in your writing without making it too "gimmicky". Love it, thanks for all the hard work you've put into writing this awesome story!
  5. Yup, it's a cool promotional video that does a very good presentation of what KSP is and why it's good to let your kids play it : I'm not new to KSP, not a parent nor a kid, but still watched it 'till the end... "And as always, fly safe !"
  6. My username had been "Wile E. Coyote" for a long time (me and my father loved that cartoon character), but I kept being bothered when playing Quake I with friends (that was during the previous millennium, I know) because the username length limitation of the game forced me to butcher it. Then I saw a "Simpons" episode where Bart tags "el barto" everywhere in Springfield, and no one realizes that's him. Next day, right before I joined our Quake game, I knew exactly which username I would use from now on...
  7. Plenty of good answers above me, thought I'd add my 0.02. As said before, spaceplanes have a rather shallow reentry corridor because it's hard to fit aeroshields on them. To get my spaceplanes back to KSC : I try to use spaceplane parts only or parts that have a good max heat (2000k is NOT enough) Before re-entry, I set myself on the lowest orbit possible (70x70km) either through orbital maneuvering or prior aerobraking maneuvers Rule of thumb : anything with a PE < 30km gets back to Kerbin. My orbital parameters just after the deorbit burn are usually around 70kmx30km. Note that there probably are better re-entry profiles, but this one usually works fine for me. In high atmo : the most painful part of the trip because you keep heating and don't brake that much. Plus your orbital speed is still increasing. What I do is keeping a very high AoA, sometimes as high as 90° (ie nose up) to generate some drag. I also activate everything on the plane that generates drag : opened cargo bay, airbrakes, etc. Note that the airbrakes will overheat, but I've re-entered so many planes with opened cargo bays... Note that the belly of the plane is exposed to the airflow and this is why I use heat resistant parts (mk2). When the air gets denser (50km, 45 km when I feel lucky), I get back to a saner 45° AoA. The goal is to keep only the belly of the plane exposed to the airflow, while generating drag (lower your speed) and a bit of lift (reducing vertical speed and thus avoiding hitting the lower atmo too soon and too fast) Critical altitude is 30 km : atmo density is going to climb fast under 30 km. This is bad if you are coming too hot (I'm usually around 2000 m/s IIRC) because you'll get fried. But if you slowed down enough in high atmo, you'll be slowed quickly through high drag. Heat will go up as well, but since the atmosphere is getting thicker, convective cooling will start working again. It's a nervewracking moment... Once you're confident enough with your plane speed and handling (I usually wait until I'm under Mach 2), you can start all the "plane" stuff : leveling your wings, relighting your engines, lining up with the runway, etc. A cheesy trick I used for quite a long time was putting a radiator on the back of the plane. It's bad during ascent because of the drag, but during re-entry, it is protected from the airflow because of the 45° AoA attitude and can be deployed/activated to suck the heat from critical parts (usually the nose cone) and will dissipate it in the atmosphere. Not very realistic, I know. I guess the next step would be putting the radiator inside a cargo bay : shielded during ascent, exposed by the open cargo bay during re-entry (especially now that the flush radiators panels can turned on and off). Hope this helped!
  8. I remember using these formulas a lot in my Orbiter days to compute the launch azimuth. Not sure how it translates to KSP + RSS though...
  9. It had been a while since we decided to go to Duna, not because it's easy, but because the rest is harder. After a long series of launches, docking, refills and crew transfers, the Duna flotilla has been completed and 6 intrepid Kerbals have been sent to Duna! The flotilla includes an orbital science station/fuel depot, an Ike miner, two scanners probes, two unmanned rovers, 2 crewed landers/return vehicles and a mobile ground science station. The ejection burns have all been made, SOIs crossed, mid course corrections set up and now, everyone is on his merry way to Duna.
  10. I advanced far enough to unlock RAPIERs in my 1.1.2 career and had fun making SSTOs today. I wanted to make a nice, easy to fly vanilla SSTO before adding more spaceplane parts. I also landed Jeb, Bill and Bob on the Mun, since Jeb hijacked the previous Minmus orbital science mission and landed the orbiter in the Great Flats. A better lifter, a few landing legs and Jeb is now a happy kerbal!
  11. I've heard a few Desert Sessions a few years ago when hanging out with friends, but never got the EPs and focused on their discography for some reason. As a Josh Homme fanboy, I should definitely get them now that I have run out of studio albums to listen to. Also, "Blues For The Red Sun" is the title of a chapter in Carl Sagan's awesome Cosmos (which I own and love). What a bunch of geeks they were...
  12. Yiiiisss, 'tallica and Kyuss are on HEAVILY featured on my playlists. "Stage III" from Wretch by Kyuss seems especially fitting, as it really reminds me of a *huge* booster slowly getting to orbit. I listen to different genres, but I generally put upbeat stuff when I play. I don't focus on space themed music on my KSP playlist, just stuff I really like, namely : Metallica, Kyuss, Queens Of The Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures, Sepultura/Soulfly Kavinsky, Carpenter Brut (totally hooked on this one, check it out if you like the Outrun genre), Daft Punk (the TRON Legacy OST is a master piece IMO), Télépopmusik, Bjork Gorillaz, Massive Attack, Beastie Boys, Morcheeba, Portisead (not so upbeat, but I really like 'Dummy') And a few others I can't remember right now
  13. Did some nice progress on my 1.1 career and had some fun with a low tech probe on a munar free return trajectory and made a good use of an early Eve launch window today... Off to bed, it's late...
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