DerekL1963

A much improved VAB/build system! Modestly excited about Multiplayer!

Speaking strictly for myself... Certain mods tilt the playing field and/or reduce or entirely eliminate the challenge... and the challenge is the point. To demonstrate a breadth and depth of knowledge and a certain level of skill. To make the challenge badge something a player has to work to earn. To make it a mark of achievement. And when I did it, I had a blast solving all the engineering and operational challenges. If that's not what you find fun, the challenge is not for you.

That assumes that things break, or that you've failed to design a ship that doesn't require reconfiguration (or requires more than docking and undocking), or that your mission requires ISRU. My Jool 5 run, linked in my sig, is in most ways trivial to run unmanned. (In some ways easier, because I could get rid of the weight of the kerbaled components.) There's nothing to break, nothing that requires reconfiguration, and it doesn't rely on ISRU. I'd have to add some Experiment Storage units, but off hand that would be the only change.

I would agree. If the fairing is merely protection during assembly & transfer, that's one thing. If it's a functional part of the system, that's another very different thing. That is, if you can fly the mission from LKO to LKO* whether or not the fairing is there it's cosmetic. If the fairing is required for any part part of the mission and would prevent mission success if absent, then it's functional and must be recovered to be considered reusable. "Imagination and pretending there is a cargo door" is, to me, contrary to the spirit of the challenge because that is in effect a mod that alters the physics of the game. * My definition of "re-useable" for spacecraft as opposed to boosters.

I would like to know what mods the hardware comes from... And a shot from the top so we can see all the modules!

On the sheet itself. You can't depend on people linking to the forums instead of to the sheet.

I've heard it said that the best SF is about people - the technology is just the background that enables the story which may or may not play a actual role in the story. Consider Clarke's Imperial Earth, cloning and the Asymptotic Drive power the story, but ultimately it's about neither.

Which could mean the setting is inconsistent (poor buying expensive stuff), or that your assumptions are wrong (what you're assuming to be expensive actually isn't). It's also worth considering that mass production changes everything. As does the size of the potential market - if there's a trillion dirt poor farmers (of whatever stripe) across the galaxy who want anti-gravity flivvers to get into town on Saturday nights, I suspect somebody is going to figure out how to fill that need. And that's disregarding the secondary market...

Ore is easy to come by. The equipment needed to mine and refine the ore, and process the resulting aluminum metal into a useful form... not so much. Which brings up the question, where do you get (and/or store) the power required to run this (decidedly non trivial) industrial infrastructure you need to bootstrap your power system? Why aren't you just skipping the middleman and using that power source to run your base in the first place?

Cats absolutely can be trained. Problem is, most people suck at training animals.

Does this obey the "All SAS Modes" option in the difficulty settings?

Be careful with Rigid Attachment - it turns your rockets into glass, rigid but unbendable without breaking. It can cause rockets to break that otherwise might not. IMHO: As far as autostruts go, usually Grandparent (preferred) or Root (for parts physically close to the root) are the best bets. Which part is the heaviest can and will change over the course of the flight (I.E. as fuel is consumed), and the struts will change when it does, that can lead to... unexpected results. Grandparent and Root only change when docking/undocking and the dynamic loads are generally very low during that process.

It's handy in the early game for establishing relay networks within Kerbin's SOI.

Four. HG-5, RA-2, RA-15, RA-100

Yeah, no. Dangerous is dangerous. If an ocean vessel, which is a threat to a port where millions of people can live, are legal to own - then it doesn't make sense to limit the ownership of spacecraft on the same basis. (You're forgetting the cargo shipmate - that's a much larger threat than the hull itself.) And there's marginal shipping companies aplenty moving dangerous cargos across the oceans. (One such finally got caught, and it was their seized and improperly stored cargo that took a chunk out of Beirut recently.) And when it comes to Han Solo, same mistake. There's plenty of airliners and large bizjets in private hands.

Ramjets want high speeds and high altitudes for maximum efficiency (or even decent usability), and that's a pretty niche application. Scamjets are still in the process of consuming flaming truckloads of money in hopes that they'll someday be a) practical, and b) useful. Given that they also (like ramjets) want extremely high speeds, I have my doubts about "b".

TFW when your lifter is just a hair too efficient...

Your complaint isn't that MJ isn't working, your complaint is that MJ/KSP has a graphics bug. These are nowhere near the same thing. The best place to report a bug is in the MJ support thread.

I'm looking at it right now, and there's no text about making a copy. A version number/effective date would be of the date you released it into the wild. You only need one, so people can compare to their personal copy.

So. Much. This. It's also why I laugh uproariously at the fanbois who go about "getting off this rock so we can survive an extinction level event!" Getting off this rock is the easy part. Surviving Thriving after a complete loss of support from Earth (as opposed to merely prolonging the agony) - that's the hard part. But they never talk about working on that part. Just the easy, sexy parts.

It's not impossible to do. The trick is to ensure your burn time doesn't exceed 1/4 of your orbital period. (Preferably closer to 1/8.) If you have a 20 minute burn, you want to be high enough to be in an 80-160 min orbit. That minimizes the amount of correction you'll require because of spending too long thrusting off prograde.

Just a suggestion.... Getting your information from YouTube is only slightly better than getting it from an Oujia board or from a random text generator. On any given topic, there's a couple of folks who know what they're talking about... But they're vastly outnumbered by the 99.99999% of Tubers who haven't a clue.

Welcome to the wonderful world of KSP! As always, YMMV... No offense intended, but you're wrong. MechJeb doesn't do "everything" for you... You still need to properly design the vehicle and the mission. (MechJeb doesn't design, doesn't tell you if the design is good or bad, and can't save you from a bad design.) You still need to make key decisions, even if MechJeb then executes those decisions. (Such as deciding on orbital altitude, when and where to land, etc... etc...) MechJeb is a tool, not an "easy button". I use MechJeb for two reasons: - My enjoyment from the game comes from engineering the vehicles and designing the missions and mission techniques. When my lander plops down on Duna, it's because I did all the hard work and skull sweat that it made it possible. All MechJeb did was (essentially) execute the script I wrote on the hardware I designed. (I say "essentially executed the script" because you don't actually write a script, you punch buttons when it's time to punch them. But you decide when it's time.) - With my eye/hand coordination (or more correctly, the lack of), it would be impossible to play KSP at all. Use MechJeb or not, either way is fine. The only mistake you can make in this regard is to listen to the fools who talk trash about MechJeb, who misrepresent what it does, who call it "cheating", who try and imply that you're somehow a lesser person for doing so. It's your game, play it your way. There is no One True Way to play.

Need to add a note at the top with a version number or effective date, and telling people they need to make a copy to use it themselves. Other than that, great contribution to the community!

They used it to some degree on practically every flight. This file [warning:PDF file] only runs through STS-88, but it shows the amount of cross-range used on each landing. Not quite. Certainly they may have had Edwards planned as a contingency (in case the weather was bad at the Cape), but just because it was planned (whether a nominal landing or a contingency landing) doesn't mean they didn't use the Shuttle's cross range capability to execute the landing. For example: STS-79 was planned for KSC [warning:PDF file], landed at KSC on schedule in the first planned window, and used 777nm of cross range (see first link above) to do so. That's why I said what I did above: You could argue they used the capacity because they had it... And I wouldn't disagree. But you can't honestly deny that it's a useful capacity. (It would probably have been better to provide it via OMS than wings though...)