cantab

Bear in mind though that while TWP is reasonable for working out the windows it's not good for working out the details of the burn. The problem is it assumes an equatorial orbit and that's not efficient for making an interplanetary trip in RSS where the solar system is inclined.

Unless you only ever play Sandbox you're probably gonna use the Flea at least once. But I'll grant that is pretty much it. I have made launchers that use the RT-10 well though, although it's a bit rarer that I don't want the extra power and fuel from the BACC. Maybe it should be rebalanced as an upper stage SRB, with modest thrust (but enough to get the starter pod into the air in career) but good Isp. Regarding non-use of the Launch Escape System by people who just click revert: wimps I swear by ironman mode, no reverts or quickloads except in response to blatant game bugs. With that I need some sort of abort plan unless I want to kill my Kerbals. (Though I'll admit shutting everything else down and powering clear with the final stage engine works OK most of the time.)

Since 1.0 added realistic aerodynamics you are generally OK to go full throttle all the way. The exception is if you have excessive liftoff TWR and don't want to remove engines for whatever reason. If you are having stability issues you're arguably better off improving your rocket's aerodynamics, a few fins at the back are a good start.

If there's such a thing as "real gamers" I don't wanted to be counted among them. From the bad attitude of the "PC Master Race" lot, to the whole "Gamergate" thing that was just an excuse for people to be nasty little [insert favourite swearword here], to the general behaviour of a lot of players online, No Thank You.

Are you using stock or FAR? I recall something about needing to set some extra values for the atmosphere configs for FAR to work right.

Responses to common parts: Micronode - I used it as the centre of a probe rover so I'd have an easy attachment point. But now we have the reroot tool that's less needed. Still, you can use them to play Tetris If they weren't so heavy I'd use them more I think. Ant - Good for small probes where even a Spark is too heavy. Though last time I used it I got fed up of the burn times and switched the later copies of the same probe to the Spark. Inline and Mk2 docking ports - I use FAR, which will make an external docking port affect the aerodynamics for sure. Stack Separators - plenty of cases where you need to split a ship in two and use both pieces. Mk55 Thud engine - I used this on my Serran landers. One Swivel would make the lander too tall, two Swivels would have been massive overkill and excess weight, the 909 performs badly in atmosphere, and a Spark cluster would have been tons of parts. The pair of Thuds was the best option. Plus the huge gimbal range was reassuring when ascending through a poorly-understood atmosphere. Now as for my nominations: Both Canards. I just rarely if ever use these, I prefer the look of the AV-R8 fin. Poodle. For my orbital spacecraft it's just overkill, I'll use the 909 if I'm not going nuclear. As an upper stage for a launcher I might consider the Poodle, but I'll probably end up going with the Swivel instead, it's lighter. The new stock fairings let me shroud 1.25m engines in a 2.5m stack fine.

Of course. I know what controls I want doing what job. FAR gives me more subtle options to control how much they deflect by too. And pod torque and engine gimbal go off for a regular plane, the control surfaces alone should handle it. But I'll use the magic of reaction wheels to make unorthodox things fly straight.

6/10. Capable, but I don't recall the original going to space.

You could try catching him in a cargo bay and bringing him down that way. However he is liable to drift out when timewarping. If your orbital period is long you may have to keep recatching him. If it's short just use physical timewarp only, you can force it in space with alt+.

Where did you get that? When I looked I found that while 4 GB DDR2 sticks exist they were prohibitively expensive, something like £100 each.

My attitude is an orbit's an orbit. Once established I can worry about making it neater if I want.

Regarding wide landers, bear in mind that while yes a wider lander is easier to land without tipping it over it can also be harder to launch. This isn't 0.90 any more, aerodynamics matters, and if your payload is wider than your launcher then whether you use a fairing or not your rocket is going to want to flip during launch.

Kerbal Engineer reports a maximum temperature of 800 K. And they seem to heat up *really* easily. A bare Kerbal went poof on Kerbin re-entry from a 75x65 km orbit.

You need to split your calculation up, calculating the delta-V for separate "stages" in a loose sense. Any time your ship loses any mass other than the fuel it burns off, or gains any mass such as from mining, treat it as one stage ending and another one starting.

Here and Squadcast. I was on Reddit for a bit but left after the Ellen Pao dramastorm. I consider Twitter for twits. And I always forget about that kerbaldevteam blog, does it even still get updates?

Since you're already saying you don't want the Wii U, I voted for XBone. Sony have a record of being completely obnoxious towards their customers, from the Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal to the removal of features customers had paid for from the consoles they already owned, to responding to a class action lawsuit against them by attempting to contractual disallow customers from being involved in class action lawsuits, Sony have been a nasty piece of work. While I firmly believe that all companies will do obnoxious, nasty, unethical, and indeed illegal things* to make money, Sony have become one electronics company I now refuse to buy anything from. * KSP forum rules ban me from using the kind of words I really want to use here But personally I find neither the PS4 nor the XBone appealing because they just look like cheap gaming PCs. PC processors, PC graphics, massive overlap with PCs in both individual game titles and the genres of games that are prominent on them. The XBone is even set to run a PC OS. I own a gaming PC, I assume you Cobalt60 and most other members of this forum do also, so why buy another that's no better? The Wii U on the other hand I see as offering something unique, gameplay I just won't get on PC. (I haven't *bought* one mind you, but I'd at least consider it.) There's one more option that's not included: the 3DS. Quality go-anywhere gaming in contrast to the micropayment rubbish that plagues iOS and Android, and a library that's full of exclusives you won't be playing anywhere else. And it's cheaper than any of the desktop consoles or a gaming PC too. For several years the majority of my gaming was on the DS and 3DS, until KSP got me back into PC gaming somewhat.

If your requirement is to play KSP on a Macbook, as distinct from to play KSP under OSX, then you could install Linux which currently has a 64-bit version of KSP. But installing a whole operating system for one game is a lot of hassle. You're probably better off waiting for a month or two when KSP 1.1 is expected out, it should bring a 64-bit version to OSX.

I'd expect it to use the craft's current state. In my case the plan was to deploy the airbrakes upon or before hitting the atmosphere and leave them out until hitting the ground. (I use the "handbrake", clicking the altimeter icon, rather than the B key for this)/ I don't remember noticing any difference in the trajectory when deploying or retracting , though I didn't try the "Update" function. I'll try and remember when I fly the next mission.

I don't think I have a favourite size, I mix and match a lot. In particular for my orbiters I'll often push 2.5m fuel tanks with a 909; I want shorter fatter tanks for a stable craft but the Poodle is just massive overkill for the masses involved. Likewise for smaller craft I'll push a 1.25m tank with a Spark or an Ant. No doubt when I build bigger rockets I'll find myself pairing Mainsails and maybe Skippers with Kerbodyne tanks.

Sounds like normal aerodynamic forces to me. Aircraft don't primarily turn by yawing but by rolling.

Any chance of an update getting Trajectories to work with airbrakes? Using the latest FAR ("Haack") it doesn't seem to take them into account. I have a lander for Serran (New Horizons planet) that relies on them to maintain stability during descent.

After plenty of effort and planning, I've landed a Kerbal on Serran and returned him safely to Kerbin The program and the ship were both very like Apollo; I ran missions analogous to Apollos 8 (Serran orbit), 9 (tests in LKO), and 10 (aborting a landing at the last moment) before going for the landing itself. I have quickloading turned off too, that really puts the pressure on and means I needed to learn from the preliminary missions and indeed my previous unmanned programs to make the manned landing a success. Launcher: https://flic.kr/p/y1YBnX Lander and orbiter: https://flic.kr/p/xHFY2h Lander atmospheric entry: https://flic.kr/p/xMab9j Home Sweet Home: https://flic.kr/p/y4Lg7X Next, I start thinking about interplanetary probes. I expect my manoeuvre planning skills to be tested to the utmost.

Nice! Some day I'm sure I'll visit Thatmo and Nisse. In the New Horizons configuration that will be a long and distant journey indeed.

Spin-stabilisation works reasonably well for balanced craft and can be handy if you haven't got SAS for whatever reason. But I'm not sure how well it will work for an unbalanced craft, I think you might just wobble.

SimpleRockets and SimplePlanes, whose own developers have admitted they owe a lot to KSP. Neither game has quite the scope of KSP, SimpleRockets being 2D while SimplePlanes lacks the space aspect, but the similarities are strong. A hypothetical SimpleRockets2 could quite plausibly be a better KSP than KSP itself.