Tex

Glad to see things worked out well for Zeus, that's never a good thing when animals get hit. Here's to getting him back real soon! Everybody needs a big ol' doggo.

I think the level of realism is pretty good as is. Devs have to walk a line between representing spaceflight accurately and making the game playable and game-y enough for the average new player to get into and enjoy. Realism is a whole different ballgame, and requires a certain amount of chutzpah.

Howdy, everybody. So this post here is my first true post on the KSP forums in a very, very long time. Months, I think. I want to get back into the game, so I'm going to be starting a stream in just a few minutes with no set plan. Is there anybody else who streams/records KSP videos? So far I'm going to be doing a career game, but I'm curious as to what other people like to do to stream or record. Or any other games people like to record. Heck, if anybody wants to find games to play together sometimes, that's an option too. I think this would be a fun hobby to do every now and then.

Waves slowly crash along a peaceful shoreline overlooking a vast ocean. The salty sea breeze sends small ripples along the tufts of grass that break up the pristine, sandy beach, the only other inhabitants of which consist of only an umbrella and wooden lounge chair. Next to the chair, a bottle of some amber liquid. Root beer. The figure residing in the chair sports a set of khaki beach shorts and a floral print shirt, colored green, with the top three buttons undone. On the being's chest, shiny, but dimmed by the shade, was a dogtag necklace. It was stamped with three letters on one side: KSP. The other side bore his name. A land rover (home built, Toyota doesn't exist, remember) silently glides along the coast on electrical power only. It is driven by a Kerbal dressed in a work shirt, nice shoes, and dress pants. It seems that he had just come from a meeting of sorts. When the rover comes to a stop, a ladder extends to the ground, and the driver disembarks holding only a letter. In silence, he clambers to the ground, and runs with a funny waddle over to the chair and umbrella. Sand flies as his feet kick off the ground,and he stands in front of the seated figure in the shade. The figure peeks over his chrome aviator sunglasses. "Esoj Kerman..... It's been a while, man..." The shaded Kerbal says, shifting the glass in his hand, which contained more root beer. "Looks like you've been hard at work." Esoj says nothing. He never said nothing. Er, anything. He was the silent partner of the team, reunited now for the first time in a long time. He extends his hand, holding out the letter. There is no address on it, but the feel of the envelope is familiar. The seated Kerbal gave Esoj a look when he accepted the letter. It was a wordless exchange, but both of them knew perfectly well what the letter meant. It was a call to action. The seated Kerbal carefully set his glass on the arm of his chair and used a bulbous finger to pull the tape sealing the letter off and open the envelope. He pulled it out, threw the envelope on the ground, and unfolded the letter. "Mmhm..... Mmhmm..... Mm," he said, after reading for a few minutes. He took a deep breath, and spoke to Esoj without looking up. "So Wernher's...... Blown up the entire spaceport. Again. They're gonna have to rebuild from scratch, are they? Mmm......" There was a long silence after this revelation. The letter was signed by the head of the Kerbal Space Program, whose name was obscured by the seated Kerbal's thumb. The letter was brief, but to the point. The Kerbal looked over the letter several times, even turning it over to see if there was a post script. He took the letter, crumpled it up, and sat forward in his chair before tossing the letter down to join the envelope in the sand. He sat for several more moments before he looked up at Esoj. "Well, Esoj, ol' buddy...." He began, and then took his drink and threw the rest of it back. He set his glass down hard and sighed, cowboy style. "Looks like we better get to work. But first thing's first, we've gotta find my hat. Think it blew down the beach a half hour ago. Oh, and I'm driving." The Kerbal stood up, shook Esoj's hand firmly and formally, and began to walk to the rover. The dogtags turned over and glinted in the sunlight. The name read: "Tex Kerman."

Dessen's Big Scare I had gotten the contacts to do a flyby of the Mun, which I desperately needed the funds and science from in order to continue my space program. The mission went well enough, even though it took literally a month of game time to get an encounter with the stupid thing (Because yours truly has gotten a little rusty in guesstimating encounter locations along orbital trajectories), and I had to use some aerobraking in order to come to a safe stop. The short of it is, I had to do two passes through the atmosphere to slow down because I was being cautious about the rate with which I let Dessen descend, because, as we all know, friction plus metal equals slimy metal, and dead pilots. On the second pass, I was wanting to make sure that he was actually going to slow down enough to actually make it to the surface, so I spent my time in the map view, watching the apoapse falling in height. I watched for a while, maybe fifteen seconds or so, and then it occurred to me- Hey, he's been in the mid atmosphere a while, maybe I should check on him.... Why is is comms signal getting weaker? (I had noticed the line connecting the spacecraft to a ground station was now red.) At this point, something hit my brain: re-entry blackout. This was not a good thought to have. I switched to vessel view as the spacecraft was burning up- I forget now if something actually exploded or if the explosion happened after I smashed the spacebar- and the temperature gauge for the capsule was rising super fast. Dessen had perhaps two seconds left to live if I didn't decouple the final rocket stage and orient the heat shield to retrograde, which fortunately the atmosphere itself helped me with. The temperature fell, as did the apoapse, and once I saw that everything was situation normal, I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. Mission landed and I got a heaping of Science and funds from it, and best of all, Dessen made it back home. Scary stuff.

KSP Tourism Department Have you ever wanted to explore space? Have you ever NOT wanted to go through the rigorous physical and mental examinations required to join the Kosmonaut corps? Do you love throwing up into barf bags? If so, the KSP Tourism Department is here for you! For the low low price of a few thousand Funds, you too can join an elite fraternity, and wander amongst the stars! At least until the "please fasten seatbelts" light comes back on. Tourist Rocket Fleet "Nervous" Seats: 3 (1 pilot + 2 passengers) Travel Capabilities: LKO Successful Flights: 1 Safety Rating: 100% The "Nervous" is the first of a line of luxurious space cruisers, blasting their way through the heavens with style and convenience. It's certainly the cheapest method to get to space yet devised, and you better bring along a plus one you can stand staring in the face of! Because you two are gonna get close. Real close. Okay, not that close. But pretty close. Close to that amount of close. Does "close" not sound like a word anymore?

Huh, both of these things totally make sense, and I've never thought about them before.

Good to be back. I'm hoping to stay on track with this one.

A-Series The A-Series of missions and rockets is just the initial forays into space exploration. Super basic, nothing really special about the launchers and/or capsules. A1 For the first mission, it was standard stuff, though I actually did things differently than I usually do for the first launch of a career game. I forgot to edit the thrust limiter for the "Flea" booster, so I took off with a higher rate of acceleration than I usually like to do. I did set the chute to deploy at 800m, because I never like waiting for an hour for the capsules to descend and land safely in the ocean- calculated risks, let's say. I got the "Launch the first vessel" and "Collect data from the atmosphere" contracts first, and overall netted 24.7 science when all was said and done. Jeb got an XP point, no stars yet. I noticed when building my vessel that, because I didn't have any decouplers or anything, the parachute and solid booster were grouped in the same stage. Luckily I remembered to check that before launch, because chute malfunctions like that have been the cause of many a launch failure. I remember that being one of the things that always bugged me, but really I don't think I can blame the game for it. The rules were being followed. A2 Pre-Launch: I invested some of the funds from the first mission into upgrading the launch pad, and spent ten science points unlocking basic rocketry and XXXX. For the A2 rocket, I decided to go with a two-staged solid booster design for simplicity. In keeping with tradition, I've assigned Valentina Kerman for the second launch, as she's the only other Pilot kosmonaut I have. Here's hoping the mission goes according to plan. Post Launch: Things went well. There was a scare, like there always is on my second mission of a game, that maybe I overdid it, maybe I put too much boost on, or the capsule is going to re-enter at too steep an angle, or a bunch of other things like that. However, once the warning temperature gauge on the command pod went away, I knew I was in the clear. Valentina managed to get to about 81km up, and recorded some Mystery Goo observations, plus the temperature log and a crew report. Situation normal, and I finished the flight with 68.7 Science so I can get some real parachutes and safety measures for future flights. A3 Pre-Launch: For the A3, I went liquid-fueled for the first time, though I am keeping some solid boosters on the side, to assist with the first push into orbit. I always like to overestimate the delta-v I'd need for any given scenario, especially with my math-free approach to rocket science. Better to have it and not need it and the rest of the analogy, right? I've put Jeb back on the mission, as per rotation. I've also added the obligatory heat shield- even though, through my launches, I found that, with the right angle of re-entry, a heat shield for the Mk-1 Command Pod plus a few accessories isn't actually neccesary. However, better to have it and not need i- Oh, I already used that one. Mid-Launch: Wheeeeeeew. I made it to orbit by the skin of my teeth. I had two FL-T200 tanks for my last rocket stage, giving 180 units of fuel and whatever oxidizer it had. When I got to a periapse of just 72km, I had 4.78 units of liquid fuel and 3.91 units of oxidizer left. I was trying to eke it out so I could have some to actually do a retrofire, and it looks like Jeb has just enough to do so. Post-Launch: The mission went well, nothing notable about the re-entry, other than my addition of drogue chutes for further playing-it-safe-ness. Jeb landed safely in the Highlands somewhere, and the Science total is up to 77.8. I plan to invest the Science into getting the Aviation tech next, because I like to run observation contracts for easy Science and funds. A4 Pre-Launch: For vehicle/mission A4, I decided to develop an airplane rather than rocket. The reason being, as I explained with the A3, I like performing observation flights with airplanes to generate extra science/funds in early game. I'm going with a simple 2-engine design, and I did add parachutes for safety. I mean, according to what I remember about designing planes, it should be able to fly. Flight 1: Well, the first flight didn't end so well. It had a strange list to it, which shouldn't have been there, as the wheels were aligned well enough. However, I did notice it wasn't producing the lift it needed to actually take off. I'm going to angle the wings upward just a hair and try again. Jeb is as eager as ever, despite the little rollover. Flight 2: Again, a bit of a failure, but this time Jeb could actually keep it on the road. Runway, anyway. It's still not getting enough lift, so I'm going to the big guns and adding winglets on the front of the aircraft to help get the darn nose up. Flight 3 is going to be the winner- only time will tell if it can be set back down again. Flight 3: I gotta tell you, having no respawns helps keep things..... interesting. I want to keep Jeb alive, as any mission controller would, so I called off another flight. It still won't go nose up, so what I'm going to do this time is slide the rear landing gear forward to reduce the angle it needs to take off. Generally I try to avoid doing so because, as we all know, the starter landing gear is ridiculously low to the ground, and therefore offers not much room in the way of ground clearance. The engines will be more at risk, but it's worth it in the long run. If this next run doesn't go as planned, I'll redesign the plane a bit from, say, square 2 or 3. Flight 4: About 44 or 45 seconds into the flight, I think I may have narrowed down the root cause of the plane's lack of flying-ness as being too heavy. This came at an inopportune time, as Jebediah was killed on impact 51 seconds into the flight. Losing a crew member is always a great regret of mine, but in the words of Elieen Collins, shuttle astronaut: "Some people said, 'we don't wanna risk astronaut's lives anymore, we need to stop doing this.' Well, the astronauts don't feel that way." Flight 5: Man, maybe I'm just not very good at early plane building. The newly redesigned plane, the A5, as pictured above, worked surprisingly well- It was just a shortened and less heavy version of the A4, and was actually able to take off without winglets towards the front of the plane. HOWEVER, I made a judgement call when there was a tail strike, resulting in a very strange looking damaged vessel that I was unfortunately unable to get a picture of, because, as I was attempting to set the plane down again, the nose of the craft tipped forwards and impacted the ground, resulting in another death. I think I'll go back to rockets for a little bit. A5 Pre-Launch: For the A5, I decided to take a half step backwards. I took the capsule stage from the A3 and put on a simplified liquid-fueled rocket booster on the bottom. What I need is just ten more Science points so I can get a passenger fuselage and then do some moneymaking tourist runs. In addition, this will be Dessen Kerman's first flight, as he was the first Kerbal I was able to hire for the pilot position. Should be fairly straightforward. Post-Launch: Mission went swimmingly, and Dessen's first mission was a great success. It was a suborbital flight, but it brought me to a total of 56.7 Science, which is more than enough. The Space Program is saved!

Kerbal Space Program.... We meet again, old friend. I haven't really sat down and played the game for real in a very, very long time. I'm talking many months, if honestly not more than a year. Waking up this morning and coming to my gaming rig, I decided, "You know what? I think it's time to go to space again." And so that's what I'm doing. I want to try and get back into the game I love, and I want to do it with a bit of accountability, in the form of this mission report. I want to see myself grow, and get further than I've been before. I want to visit Jool, land on Laythe, maybe, and send Kerbals to the furthest reaches of the solar system and back. Actually capture asteroids. All the stuff I haven't been able to do before. I'm starting my game with custom difficulties. No respawns, no reverts, comms blackouts enabled, all the things I consider to be "realism" settings in the vanilla game options, just for my own fun. Other than that, it's standard KSP Career mode, √25,000 to begin with. I'll use this OP post to record a table of contents, and update in various posts with whatever I decide to do. Already I know I'm going to be grouping many of my early missions together- you know the drill; I mean, they don't take long to complete and don't get anything super groundbreaking done. All right, no more talking. Let's get down to business. And up to space.

Ten all the way. Mr. Sandshoes.

I am personally a huge fan of the Artemis Fowl series. It has a ton of cool sciency and futuristic takes on the genre, and even offers humorous explanations for many strange real-life events.

Well, there was that one time I dreamed that I turned into Robin Williams. Essentially, I was just driving along this road, which looked like the neighborhoods around my old residence, and I noticed that there was this concrete canyon type thing off to one side, like a huge drainage ditch. It had train tracks running through it, and even had multiple tunnels that were connected by rail, including one in a spiraling pattern (hard to picture, I know, but it was there). I got it in my head that I had to jump the car I was driving into the canyon thing, ONTO a train, and so I just did. I didn't even realize/remember when the transformation happened, I just remember looking in the rear view mirror and realizing "Oh. I'm Robin Williams now."

Not this time. @Deddly

Howdy, everybody! It is once again that time of the month- a GOOD time of the month, that is, because it is time for some of the best threads the forum has to offer to get celebrated by you, the forumgoer! If you wanna see last month's thread, you may find it right here. If you think that we've missed any important threads that should be recognized, don't hesitate to contact one of the site moderators and we can put them in the running for TOTM. I'd like to give special thanks to @Deddly, @monstah, @Kerbal101, @Vanamonde, and @Dman979 for helping pick this month's winners! Here is this month's very special TOTM badge: Dun dun dunnnnn.... Time for our winners! First of all: Do you like graphs? Do you like experiments? Do you like travelling at Mach 5 across polar ice caps? Then this thread by @Stratzenblitz75 is the thread for you! I'm a sucker for land vehicles, and especially fast ones. Bravo. Now, if you're like me, then all this crazy coding nonsense bungles your mind. Well, it certainly doesn't seem to bother @cantab, as he's using something called Python (or something) to fly missions. Excellent going, and I'm surely still going to be confused an hour from now. Now this next thread is a bit of a doozy (aren't they all, though?), but I'm confidently told by a confident confidant that this old thread by @Warzouz is really good for helping figure out efficient launches. I'd tend to agree! Nice going. Hoooooooly crap. Tanks. In KSP. Tanks. In KSP. Pretty much sums up this thread, by @Makc_Gordon. It even manages to do a bit of educating! Now, I'm not gonna lie, this next thread is a bit of a tie. It belongs to one @qzgy, however.... I believe the credit should go to every single one of the participants in this thread- Remember that dumb little Eclipse thingy that rocked North America this last month? Here are some amazing photos of it! It was a magical moment, and I wanna thank everybody on the forum here that was able to share it with me and then share pictures here. You know, building a rocket isn't simple.... Hey... That sounds like a great idea for a mod na- Oh, you're kidding. @Angel-125 beat me to the punch. Well, here's this mod that really pushes the limits of what skilled building can do! Redundancy, people. I just want to note that this thread is now the record holder for most users suggesting it to me! Way to go, man, this mod really seems to have something special! Wait.... It's over? Aw, I was just having fun. Ah well- Time to end this installment of Threads Of The Month. Congratulations and back pats are in order to all of our winners this month, and don't forget to message myself or moderators that are not myself to suggest threads for the next round! I love seeing threads like these, they're such a source of inspiration. See you next month!

I own a little telescope that I use to sometimes make observations of the Moon. I usually don't because I live in a town, so the light pollution means I don't get to see much else. I did sign up as a member of Asgardia, but other than that not too much real-life stuff beyond teaching concepts and discussing space science with other like-minded people.

I whipped up a craft in a few minutes as a hypothetical. In fact, I called it the "Hypothetical." I retained the same basic shape with all stock parts, mirroring the shape of the clip art as closely as I could. Came up with this: Around 2,500 m/s. Not quite enough to get into orbit, but the TWR was extreme so of course I gunned it going straight up with all the orange suits inside. However, I was encouraged by that number. 2,500 m/s of delta-v? Surely I could squeeze it out somewhere. I made a few refinements, higher ISP engine, and used every possible fuel space. I used no part clipping other than to cheat a tiny bit by squeezing two toroidal fuel tanks into the tippity top of the rounded nose cone, as it couldn't store fuel. The top section, right above the hitchhiker capsule, is a C7 brand 2.5-1.5m adapter, because it holds fuel and oxidizer. At this point I was like Holy crap, this might just be possible. It was so tantalizingly close to be able to make orbit, and while all of these designs had the guts to get into space, none would make orbit. Then it hit me- fairings. Use a fairing for the upper body, and stuff as many fuel tanks as possible as I could. So I did just that. Yeah, a little cheaty, but the point was to keep the same basic body shape while still having as much fuel in there as possible. I pretended that the fairings were solid pieces that contained fuel tanks. Besides, you can't tell from behind a fairing anyway. Shush. Then guess what happened? It worked. It freakin' worked. Way, waaaay back a long time ago, I did the K-Prize challenge and got a badge by the skin of my teeth. This vehicle, this thing I hammered out in twenty minutes from a piece of clip art, was literally the first SSTO I have built and flown that wasn't based on a plane. Ever.

The main thing that arouses my skepticism is the quality of the picture. Hell, I'd really like to believe in the idea of a hollow Earth or plenty of the other supernatural places or phenomena- the problem is that the science just doesn't line up with the stories, and "photographic evidence" that is conveniently too blurry or low quality to be worth it actually detract from the story, in my opinion.

I love Startalk. I need to listen to more, but so far it's the only one that captures my attention. I've fallen way behind on it, though.

Howdy everybody. So I'll admit that when I'm not playing with rockets or airplanes, I love driving and seeing cars. I have so many things I want to learn and do with cars, but one of these things is attempt to build cars in Kerbal Space Program. I have done so in the past, with various vehicles under my Kerbolet brand, but some things I simply can't seem to figure out. namely quarter panels and fenders. And trunks. And having wheels that don't lock up from parts being too close. Any car builders have any tips for building these tricky buggers?

I'm in the KSC2 camp. Would be a fun place to mess around with a launch site that isn't on the equator.

Oh boy, so many. I push things to the limits a tad too much sometimes, so it's usually all my doing, but it still makes me smile when I can put a craft down that's limping. There was: -The time I had Valentina make an emergency water landing after some failure of her airplane (Don't remember what the problem was, but I DO remember the plane being a big one). Then again, I've had to do a ton of unplanned water landings. -The time just this morning when I pulled out of a dive too steeply under phys-warp, knocking Jeb unconscious and removing most of the wings and the front landing gear. Destroyed the nose upon landing but managed to grease it on at the northern ice cap. -The time my plane inexplicably stalled while doing photography for a mission report on the forums, resulting in a destroyed plane, a surviving Jeb, and some cool photos. -The time in an early career game where I suppose I had the re-entry angle a bit off, causing my Science Jr. module to be destroyed and leaving just the heat shield hanging on by air. As in, the only thing saving my bacon was the superheated air cramming the heat shield into place. -The time I had to complete the final 3/4 of a mission on only 10 units of electricity because I not only had no batteries but no way to charge them either. I think it was a Munar flyby. -The time I had to design, launch, and attach an aftermarket parachute pack onto a Munar lander in order to fulfill a contract objective. The list goes on, but my memory does not. I'm working on some new near-death experiences, though, so I shall return.

I've got Tex Kerman to fly me out of the situation. That, or he pulls out of a dive too steeply and blows up half the plane like he did earlier today.

The one skill I can say I definitively haven't mastered yet is being able to design rovers and package them into crafts for use on the Mun or elsewhere. I've built plenty of cars, and rockets, but for some reason combining the two hasn't managed to stick in my brain yet.

Roleplaying is generally not allowed on our forums because it is highly difficult to moderate- Not from an over-moderation standpoint, but from one where personal attacks are disguised or dismissed as "just roleplay." It's one of the most common questions asked, and the reason why roleplay isn't allowed goes back a very long time. It just causes headaches and more problems than it's worth allowing.