bobcook

Today continued the Duna Voyager with Jeb, Bill, Bob and Val in orbit starting the science mission with the launching of an automated probe to the Midland Sea. Things didn't go exactly to plan with the probe's landing, some sort of glitch caused a misfire of the engines during the last phase of the descent. In other words, a disfunction occurred between the keyboard and chair! But the probe did survive and provided adequate science to better understand this new planet.

Today's adventure involved Jeb, Bill, Bob and Val launching on the Duna Voyager, headed to (surprise!) Duna! The ship is a single-launch style, 472 parts and 1.7M tons. Plenty of legroom and has the obligatory science laboratory and plenty of instruments. Also carries a two-Kerbal lander plus three autonomous probes for exploring different regions of Duna. After many months of doing not very much the crew arrived at the target destination, parked in a 60km polar orbit, and will start operations soon.

Fired up the classic KSP again today after a long break. Made a Duna lander prototype somewhat inspired by the Blue Moon architecture with fuel tanks above the crew cabin. Also put the parachutes onto a separate part that could be jettisoned after landing. It worked quite nicely!

Might be a difficult return, but I'm sure you're up to it.

Continuation of my Jool science mission in this new career save with the same spacecraft. Flew by Tylo then Vall then back to Laythe but unfortunately we miscalculated the insertion burn at Laythe and entered the atmosphere. The spacecraft exploded. Managed lots of science before that unfortunate accident though. Fortunately there is another, identical spacecraft due in this system in a few weeks to explore the other moons (launched more or less the same time from Kerbin but different path). The gravity assists within the Jool system makes it pretty easy to get around with a small amount of fuel.

First mission to the Jool system in this new career save is a success. Got a nice flyby of Jool itself then on to a Laythe encounter, collecting plenty of science along the way.

It does take some practice and a lot of patience. Try putting your target vehicle in a higher orbit (>100km) and be prepared for a rendezvous that requires multiple orbits. My first rendezvous had both vehicles in nearly identical orbits, same periapsis but one with a slightly higher apoapsis on the sunlit side of Kerbin. Took a number of orbits for the vehicles to close in on each other, but this also had the benefit that the speed difference between the two was pretty small as the distance separation also got small.

Jeb spotted this silly thing in the mountains to the west of KSC during a recent awful landing flyby. Never seen it before, but sure its been there quite a long time. Didn't seem to have any special properties and Jeb didn't get super powers from climbing on it.

Returned to the game recently after a long time away, and having fun again with a brand new career. A few things I've never done, that I hope to do at some point in 1.10: manned mission with return to Eeloo, Moho return mission (doesn't have to be manned) from sea level on Eve actually finish the career mode tech tree - usually get bored with it Probably completing the career mode tech tree will come first.

Seriously? What did Val do to you to deserve this? Likely nothing at all, and yet you want to play god with your pet Kerbals...

Someone was talking about "that space game that allowed you to build rockets and get into orbit" but he couldn't get into orbit. I immediately bought the game, was version 0.19.1, somewhere around April 2013. Amazing and really fun. I don't play as much anymore but keep up with the forum and every once in a while fire up the game to toy with new ideas. Definitely the best $22 ever spent.

ibb.co has to be the most spammy looking link I've seen in a while. You should try harder. Imgur is quite easy to use and way more legit. Error 403 means you didn't provide proper authentication. Create a valid account and you can post images for free.

First time I managed a orbital rendezvous and docking in Kerbin orbit. It took me a long time to figure out how to do it, but when it happened it was definitely magical. First of many delightful accomplishments in this game.

4:22 for a 30 part stock rocket to 85km orbit with my MacBook Pro from 2013, 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7. Hardly breaks a sweat with stock. Mods probably affect this quite a bit. I've never tried any of the visual mods e.g. Scatterer but would appreciate hearing the experience of others with this same h/w.

I have no idea what sorcery this is, but I am completely and thoroughly impressed. And a little frightened for the Kerbals in that world.

Continued the design and testing for my Apollo style craft, this time refining the command module and transfer stage. The fuel tank is large enough to resemble the service bay from the NASA Apollo spacecraft.

There have been (discussions of) KerbalCon events in the past. From the searchable archives: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/search/&q=kerbalcon&item=164395&sortby=relevancy The idea is really cool but I don't know if there is enough momentum to get people together IRL.

Can't really disagree with your logic, the Twitch is a better performance choice in every way, but I liked the look of the lower profile of the Spider engine when mounted to the side of the lander. Also loved the visual effect from the plume of eight Spiders firing up at the same time. Sometimes its just about how it looks.

I designed and tested an Apollo style lander for the Mun, suitable for two Kerbals. Has a descent stage and an ascent stage. Works great as a lander as well as a science platform!

macOS 10.11 for me. I was really surprised at the poll results, macOS & Linux have a much higher share than I'd have expected. No complaints at all, just surprised given the stats published by Steam (June 2017: Windows 96.24% macOS 2.95% 0.72%).

Finally got my latest design for a "deep space explorer" transit ship plus lander to be workable. The lander is Duna or Laythe capable with parachutes as well as many (but not all) of the airless moons around the Kerbol system. After achieving LKO the transit ship has 6.9k dV.

Probably when I completed my Jool-5 mission. It took a lot of planning and many hours of play to complete, and it was amazing fun.

Finished a workable original (original to me, at least) spaceplane design. It took eight iterations of design and testing to get something reasonably aerodynamic with the right crew capacity and feature set, and could get to orbit without completely flipping or exploding. I can even land it. It flies slightly better than a brick with wings, but then so did the NASA Space Shuttle vehicle. I call it a win! Not the prettiest thing, but it works!

Ha ha, one has to ask, on a collision course with what? Of course, I'm kidding. I assume you put the debris on a suborbital trajectory with the closest planetary object. Me too. Feels messy to leave debris in any orbit.

The general response is that "its impossible to cheat in KSP because its single player" - seems sort of obvious. Unless you are claiming things you've done without MechJeb, but you really were using MechJeb. Which would be weird. Anyways, the only person you are cheating is yourself when you are cheating. Lots of people in the forum like docking via MJ. Its not very efficient fuel-wise, but it does the job. On the other hand, its possible to learn rendezvous and docking well enough that you no longer need MJ. In fact you can learn orbital rendezvous and docking without MJ (I did it that way and I'm sure plenty of people did). MJ offers automation for things some people find tedious e.g. launch or insertion burns. Also for planning maneuver nodes. Obviously all of that can be done manually as well, and its only a matter of choice rather than one technique being better than another. MJ also offers really nice delta-v readouts. On the other hand, Kerbal Engineer does as well most of the time. I had to switch to MJ from KER for my Jool 5 mission as (at least at that time) KER couldn't cope. These days I'm back to using KER as I really like the heads-up display that KER offers. My recommendation is that you install it and find out for yourself whether you like it or not.