Anyone else just enjoy those moments when it all clicks?

[G'th]

Just had one myself. I've been playing around with shuttles/spaceplanes all day because I want to revive the Saturn-Shuttle challenge I came up with, and naturally my initial reasoning to not bother with planes in KSP was quite justified.

BUT, after many hours of toiling (8am to exactly 2am) and finally ending up with a shuttle-like flying contraption that actually behaves like a plane should and then getting used to the oh so finicky controls (I'm no stranger to how to fly a plane, game or otherwise, but these controls. Even with caps lock its just ugh) I've finally had my very first landing.

And naturally, I did it at a whopping 10m/s (Obviously I need to fine tune how I approach landing. Clearly I can go much faster). And after that, I was able to fly up again and land back down, promptly destroying my engines because I tried it on a slope. But hey, its my first shuttle landing! And after completing an orbit nonetheless. (reentry wasn't as bad as I thought it was, though then again I probably stumbled on the magic entry angle)

What experiences have you guys had?

[User Unrelated]

I was trying to get my plane skilly up to par today, too...

I want to build a reuseable SSTO to launch small satellites, and bring more life-support to my station in LKO

can't

make

planes

fly

I tried and tried and tried

and then suddenly, it clicked!

and my computer crashed.

The click was the hard drive shutting down

[KvickFlygarn87]

I was trying to get my plane skilly up to par today, too...

I want to build a reuseable SSTO to launch small satellites, and bring more life-support to my station in LKO

can't

make

planes

fly

I tried and tried and tried

and then suddenly, it clicked!

and my computer crashed.

The click was the hard drive shutting down

*facepalm*

Stop breaking threads!

[phoenix_ca]

I hate those moments. I hate feelings of accomplishment. I hate being happy.

[xcorps]

^^^

Succesfully completeing a mission is the end, not the beginning.

[InterCity]

That moment when I reached LKO for the first time...

Probably the best feeling ever.

Even eve return was less of an achievement for me.

[joekidd1992]

`When by luck I managed to orbit the Mun and then return without running out of fuel. Then for about 10 more times after that I could not repeat it.

[Defender90]

Last night I had a great moment. I was doing a resupply to my space station in LKO with 5 fresh crew, a small tug to leave up there and a boatload of RCS fuel - I don't know the total mass but it was pretty heavy. The small docking port on the station sticks out on a boom of three fuselage sections, and the command pod on the shuttle has a shielded docking port on it.

Normally when I dock I get within about 4 clicks, fire towards the target at 30m/s and stop about 150m away. Then comes some hopeless flailing about while I eyeball the shuttle's orientation before switching to docking mode, and even then I can sometimes still burn a ton of RCS getting lined up.

This time was different. I managed to get an encounter 300m away, braked within 30m, spun smoothly into the right orientation first try, set the docking port as my target, had to make only little corrections to get everything to line up on the alignment indicator (awesome mod by the way), approaching at 1m/s. A few tiny RCS tweaks and about 90 seconds after braking to meet the station I tapped the action group to open the shielded port and switch the lights on and had a perfect, and I mean perfect, docking. Perfect speed, perfect alignment; the magnetic coupler could have been turned off entirely. Just instantanous tap and dock with almost zero wiggle. It was amazing.

On the way back down I accidentally deorbited the shuttle's hitchhiker container with one of the crew still in it. Can't win 'em all.

[Rowsdower]

I was trying to get my plane skilly up to par today, too...

I want to build a reuseable SSTO to launch small satellites, and bring more life-support to my station in LKO

can't

make

planes

fly

I tried and tried and tried

and then suddenly, it clicked!

and my computer crashed.

The click was the hard drive shutting down

Has there been any other time you managed to make things click without a shutdown?

[Taki117]

I think my proudest moment was getting my first Spaceplane into orbit. I went through tons of iterations, trying to get engine placement down mostly, and then I got it. Took off, hit the rockets at the right time, and made it to orbit, it has since become my standard design for ferrying passengers to and from my space station. And in my latest play through actually constructed a large portion of said station.

[Jean Deaux]

Sadly, after about a full year of playing KSP, I still have that "why bother with spaceplanes" feeling. I am hoping one day a future release will get me closer to that feeling that moment again. My biggest "WOOO HOOO" moment thus far was finally figuring out how to rendezvous and dock in space. I'm hoping the next one is landing on Eve and taking off again...