cantab

There did used to be a flaw with fuel pumping not obeying conservation of momentum. So you could pump fuel, rotate, pump fuel, rotate, and slowly but surely "ladder" yourself along. Tedious though, unless maybe you automate it with kOS.

I got this one up to 85 mph on a downslope. Then I rolled it over and it broke apart. The Kerbal survived, but he wasn't going anywhere.

My Jool expedition reached Ike, and now I need to figure out a transfer to the Kerbol Plus body Vix. That's going to be fun, it's in a super awkward orbit, but I'm sure I can figure it out.

Landed on Duna And on Ike

Update: I just hit a similar bug with DMagic science instruments claiming to be out of Ec when they weren't. So at the moment I don't *think* this is a ScanSAT issue. Maybe there's a stock bug with excessive amounts of Ec.

With the new extended physics range doing it manually should be much more feasible. I think the flight plan would be: Climb with the two planes together. Separate, and send the spaceplane into a suborbital trajectory. Switch to the motherplane and land it *quickly*. In the Tracking Station switch to the spaceplane and put it in orbit. As far as the vehicles go, the motherplane you want to be capable of diving quickly then shedding speed, so I suggest airbrakes or even drogue chutes to help it do that. The spaceplane you want to have lots of acceleration to blast its apoapsis high enough quickly enough, so I'd recommend a high-thrust chemical engine, not a nuclear-only design. Twitch streamer Matoroignika has a couple of Falcon 9 style rockets that he flies in a similar manner, doing the powered landing manually each time, no need for Stage Recovery or FMRS.

I did something similar with the mission of the Macbeth 1 asteroid tug, way back in 0.23.5. Sent a tug out to meet the asteroid in solar orbit, and set up a Kerbin>Duna gravity assist. Met it with a whole bunch of stuff during the Kerbin flyby. But I've never attempted the really hard part, which is the launch directly to escape speed and rendezvous with a craft flying by, I made orbits.

My Coleridge 1, the mothership for the antennaless lander I posted before, left Dres, dropped a probe into Jool which blew up pretty much instantly, then arrived at Duna. The atmo landers have antennae at least, so I should get good science from Duna's surface. (This is in the New Horizons system, with Dres, Duna, and Ike all orbiting Jool.)

Tons and tons of Ec, but static by cantab314, on Flickr Tons and tons of Ec, but still getting the static.

My right thigh. Hey, I'm not that kind of girl! The object in sight that's blueest is now on fire.

In your original design you have a payload fairing that bulges out to about twice the diameter of the launcher. What were you expecting with a shape like that?! Of course sometimes we want to launch unaerodynamic payloads. Often the simplest solution is to put whacking great fins on the bottom of the rocket.

Well the directors had two options. Use CGI, which is expensive to do and liable to look fake to many viewers. Or use a stand-in, which is cheaper and will look real because it is real, but might be recognised by a small number of NASA geeks and complained about by an even smaller number. I recognised the Delta IV Heavy, was mildly surprised it hadn't been an SLS, but didn't care any further - it has basically no bearing on my enjoyment of the film.As for what did annoy me about the film: Gratuitous gorn at the beginning. Totally at odds with the rest of the film. What's the point? To establish Matt Damon as a tough guy? The rest of the film will do that just fine. To earn the film a higher rating because teenagers won't see a PG? Bleurgh. Matt Damon fanservice throughout. It's not an action movie, and while it is sensible that an astronaut is in good shape I found myself less able to identify with Damon's Hollywood-hunk version of Mark Whatney than with the original book's character. Showing that thin plastic used to hold air in stuff. It stretches belief that Watney would take off his suit inside with such a flimsy seal. From the book description I envisioned something much thicker, maybe something like what a bouncy castle is made of. Almost completely skipping over the epic Mars road trip. I know time is a constraint but I'm sure more could have been included if cuts had been made elsewhere. Drop the opening gorn and gain five minutes, for a start. The ending. Poking the hole in the suit. He didn't do that in the book and it just felt silly on the screen. Why not just jump from the MAV and coast towards the Hermes - timing would be tricky but it ought to work.

Keelon, the outermost planet in the Kerbol Plus mod, fits the bill. Kerbol Plus is really buggy though. Also the surface gravity is rather lower - more than one planet designer has found that anything above 2.5 g or so causes problems. Titanus in New Horizons is also similar, and that mod is a lot more stable. You might be able to pull Titanus out and add it to the stock system with a custom config. Titanus's atmosphere has oxygen, unlike Keelon's, so you might like it for a spaceplaning challenge.

I think the British government - Oh noes! Politics! We continue to be gagged from meaningful discussion of space exploration on a forum about a space game.

Killed by a progress bar! The object to your northwest is now moving at Mach 2.

I would assume that's intended behaviour. It's a bit difficult to eat noms when you can't open your helmet visor without dying.

Hmmm, you'd got a point there. One engine for air and space alike, and it can even do roll by gimballing if I remember rightly. Still, I think I prefer the BIG engine myself.

I'd save edited myself several million Ec. I might have had no generation but I certainly had enough power. In any case, I was unable to reproduce the exact same behaviour later in the mission, so I'm really not sure.

The King is dead, long live the King!

vrothenberg, check you haven't left the pilot assistant tools on. That has caught me out several times.

On the stability derivs screen there's an AoA value. If that shows 0, it actually means you can't fly level at any angle at that speed and altitude, ie you're too slow.

Nooooooooooooo... I have ten probe landers like this.

Dres isn't a lonely space potato any more I made two Duna assists, the first for an initial capture and the second to more or less match planes with Dres, before spending about 800 m/s total to raise my Jool periapsis and then capture into Dres orbit. Plenty left in the tanks and with DMagic and SCANSat parts I'm already raking in the science even on 60% gains. Next task is to get one of the little probe landers on the surface and zap this space spud with a laser!

You're a bit mean to Dres, by the way

The composition is a trade secret of the booster manufacturers. We just know it makes lots of fire. And Jeb got there with our Minmus lander. We told him Minmus was tasty, but he was thirsty. New Horizons (the probe) hit your car.