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I mean... C'MON MAN THERE AREN'T ANY PARACHUTES ON THAT THING AND NO HEAT SHIELD! YOU'VE ALREADY LOST MORE THAN 75% OF THE SHIP! ARE YOU NOT EVEN THE SLIGHTEST BIT CONCERNED? guess not...

I somehow got to an apoapsis of almost 100km with an SSTO that couldn't actually circularize... I was testing a prototype ion drive system that used a near-future engine that created 28kN of thrust... still not enough, because the thing also had to carry around a small nuclear reactor to provide the ~800 electric charge per second the engine needed. It got to space fine, but didn't really go much further. Then, I came back and tried to replace the ion drive with lighter LF/OX stuff, and the game WOULD NOT STOP CRASHING I had to re-boot almost 4 times so I gave up and went back to rockets. I'm very surprised the plane held together. It was a mostly uncontrolled ascent, I just watched as it wiggled and flopped around at mach-whatever

Some assembly required... (the dish is the telescope from Interstellar mod, I replaced the mesh with one from a comms dish, because I think the interstellar mesh looks terribad) Totally maintainable, replaceable cryostat, and solar power arms. I plan on upgrading the power circuit once I unlock better solar panels. IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO LAND! but I tried anyway... excellent suicide burn YESSSSSSSS Landed at a relatively speedy 12m/s I honestly have no idea how it survived... Sent backa MEASLEY 350 science, though! I was expecting way more. I could have gotten twice that with a single moon lander.

If designed right, a dual-stge lander than leaves the spent descent stage on the surface can be really convenient, and quite a bit more efficient. I try to design them all the time, but always end up packing WAY too much fuel, and I usually end up having enough fuel to simply return on the descent stage, and completely ignore the top stage.

Whenever I get silly with my brother, I always say things like... "If I ever own a car wash, I'm going to name it *something funny pertaining to car washes we just said*" and I just immediately thought "If I ever own a donut shop, I am going to name it 'Kessler's Donuts'" hahaha

chance Laythe encounter? I was swapping my orbital direction to align with (most) of the moons before a Jool aerobrake, and I saw a little yellow blip... "Hm..." I thought. Why not aerobrake on Laythe? this was designed to be a laythe lander, but turned into an all-but-bop Jool tour...

Started my space station... and then realized that the "universal storage" oxygen and water tanks don't have room for CO2 or waste water... so I either need to send up a new module, or edit the config... either one is going to have to happen faster than 3 in-game days, or I get to learn what happens when the waste builds up... I got this thing to orbit with a maximum thrust to weight ratio of only 1.3 (at the beginning of a new stage) the claaaaawwwwwww I love infernal robotics...

I have always wanted to try KOS. I will keep an eye on this thread to see what I can see I have gotten my feet wet writing PID control algorithms recently, and really was wondering how in-depth the KOS language goes... I wonder if I could write my own control code, that'd certainly be neat! (instead of just using built in stuff, which is what I had always assumed it had... like built in functions)

My list that I preened down to is: deadly reentry, TAC life support, Ferram Aerospace, Kerbal Attachment system, near-future (with the reactors and capacitors removed to limit footprint and complexity), Interstellar mod (can mine resources like water and such for use with the life support, plus WARP DRIVE, waste heat mechanics, and some neat-o reactors) and then I run KW rocketry for more parts variety, and a mod that adds a bunch of small girders and such. I don't remember what it came from, but I've had it since 0.20, and it is in a folder called "mods by TAL". I think the original mod had a bunch of other stuff, but I just took the structural components plus some more utility mods in the background, as well as the porkworks habitat pack. It's really all up to you, though. What I do to discover mods is to just skim the mod showcase/release board, and look for things you think are cool. You will end up with a LOT of mods, but then you just need to spend a bit of time to preen through them, and reduce the pack to something manageable, while still having all of the features you want. Don't forget, you can remove parts of a mod you don't like by simply deleting the parts from the gamedata folder (I generally leave plugins and such alone just in case they are needed for other parts I DO want)

continuing along on my realism mod adventure. I built a neat-o mun lander to go milk biomes And I designed, built, and launched what came to be called "The Gator", a Moho orbital science thing I've never sent anything to Moho before, but I figured I might as well try. Here it is all packed away in a 1.25m fairing In this pic, it only has 1 radiator, but an oversight on my part (the radiators have to heat up before they work at maximum efficiency) had me thinking I needed another, which I attached to subsequent prototypes. I think the dual radiators looks cool, so I just kept them. An I know I know... Realism? Clipping? I really like building small things that unfold with IR, so this building style is going to stay. I think I might have overdone the launch vehicle a bit And to go along with the realism, I have started trying to use correct-ish gravity turns when possible The actual Gator 1Ol sits in a 100km orbit, with 7500m/s Dv left... I don't even know what I am going to do with all that Dv! I might try landing... if my dual hall-thrusters can provide enough thrust on Moho, which is pretty small I guess... We will see. I have 60 in-game days to decide and do research while I wait for the transfer window to open up. Here are some shots of some preliminary propulsion system testing

I began my journey through a new perilous and exciting career mode with ASTEROIDS, LIFE SUPPORT, and DEADLY REENTRY (I haven't ever played with any of those things before) So far I am enjoying myself, and have preened my mod list to what I think is a great compromise between having too many, and not having enough. I have already landed a kerbal on both of Kerbin's moons, and need to go back soon for a healthy dose of science. I also scooted probes off to Jool and Duna. The Jool trip should be fun! I packed around 3500m/s dv for scooting around the Joolian system, and built a nifty little Jool descent probe. I was quite happy with my design! (I am also pretty "low" on the tech tree. I haven't unlocked a single 500-science node yet, and still have a bunch of 300-science nodes left) Here it is, en-route to Jool. It will only require a small adjustment along the way to bring the periapsis in low enough to jetison the impactor probe. (you can see it up there on top) I had a little mishap (AGAIN) with forgetting that the nuclear engine covers shoot OUTWARDS... so the ship is down 2 solar panels. It shouldn't be a big deal. And thinking about it now... I probably could have put on those 2 more goo cans for 8x symmetry and been fine... I think 6 will be enough. I don't want to sap TOO much science out of the system to transmit. I'd rather leave some there for when I send a manned crew one of these days!

Been having fun with my couple new realism mod... I've had FAR for a while, but the new structural failures have really been helping me design less wobbly rockets. Also, deadly reentry has been interesting, and has been helping me re-enter atmospheres more realistically (instead of just bombing straight in and hitting the chutes high up) I'm thinking life support next.

I think without counting messing around and having fun at the 'ol KSC, I have only had 4 or 5 TOTAL extra-planetary deaths in the two or so years I have been playing this game. (on SERIOUS missions, that doesn't count the inevitable "I wonder what would happen if..." launch) I have stranded quite a few Kerbals... But if I send them somewhere other than Kerbin's SOI, they get a hab module, so I guess it really isn't QUITE stranding... more just "extended colonization"

i killed Jeb on my first lunch... quite often. Getting a high apoapsis on tech-tier 0 with FAR makes it pretty difficult to NOT kill kerbonaughts. i could probably revamp my design and flight path to enter at a shallower angle, but I am always too lazy. pod. solid booster. parachute. GO. I just need the science to unlock the first tier... Jeb'll be back, he always comes back.

I started trying to not warp too far, but I'm not sure I like it. I'd much rather finish a mission all at once. I do still try and keep things moving along without warp though, but if I run out of things to do, and have a ship arriving at it's destination in 35 days or something, I'll warp to there, finish the mission, and find something else to do with the science I earn.

I've launched some pretty silly stuff with turbojets before. I actually like the idea, but I haven't gotten around to it as much now that career is a thing (I haven't unlocked the higher thrust engines yet) I launched a jool-tour probe with a turbojet ascent stage. I can't seem to find a picture of the ascent stage... Here's a kethane mining rig destined for Minmus, though http://i1273.photobucket.com/albums/y402/UU92/KSP/screenshot277_zps980496c6.png (photobucket is over bandwidth, can't embed pics)

I've crashed into the sun before, and I couldn't even tell when I was getting really close... I think the rendering of the sun is a little wonky at close ranges.

Still playing 0.23 I wanted to send a big long train-rover to duna... so I wanted to first test the parachute system. Toss it on top of a solid stage, and wait for Kerbin re-enrty! What could go wrong? Oh... The actual launch didn't go too well either.

I think it will "balance out" a bit more once other planets and moons get the biome treatment...

going outside and looking at the stars, and the moon, and the planets it just makes me want to go clamor back to the VAB and build me some rockets! You know, I was JUST thinking about this mere minutes ago. I was like "It's 2014... and I am only 21 years old. All this talk of "Landing on Mars in 20-sometime soon", or "capture an asteroid by 20-whatever"..." I'll be around to see all that advancement. It makes me excited!

The second stage had almost 10K dV when it hit a stable orbit... it was just silly. That's with no nukes, and a mainsail as the core engine... EDIT: too many asteroids for my taste.

I have only ever gotten attacked ONCE before today, and it was some random issue with my ship's COM coming de-coupled from the ship itself and floating off into space (and other such errors and silliness) and today, literally minutes after installing the new update, I can't seem to do ANYTHING without my capsule flying off in some random direction, or my spacecraft rapidly disassembling itself in an unplanned manner.

Apparently in ARM world, this is an SSTO. As soon as some of the bugs get ironed out, I will be constructing a custom stable of rockets with a mix of Squad and KW... probably mostly KW, with Squad 3.5M tanks, I like the aesthetics better. Not a single SLS engine will be left in my gamedata folder, that is just ridiculous. I'm pretty sure there's MAYBE KW engine that could do that, too, but I've never thought to do this before with KW parts, so there must be a reason... I LOVE the asteroids (just... MUCH LESS OF THEM PLEASE, it's like a war-zone out there right now) but the new parts are sort of meh.

NO... NO... BAD... BAD MONSTROUS SPACECRAFT uuum... CURSE THIS PHANTOM ACCELERATION

built an SSTO... Now you have to admit that that is just a tad ridiculous.