cantab

It's unlikely to save *much* fuel, the Mun's surface is pretty bumpy and you certainly couldn't hit the ground at orbital speed. On Minmus on the other hand the prospects are better. A rolling takeoff from the flats is definitely possible. A rolling landing relying on brakes would probably have the issue that the wheels won't offer much grip in the low gravity.

Last night, after a long walk in the darkness Jebediah reached his destination. Now he must sit through the long night hoping, nay praying, that that thing does not stir.

Precision landings. Doesn't matter if there's air or not, I can get the ship down in one piece but rarely remotely on target.

Considerably better I think.

I think the low delta-V requirements are the main cause. The Mun departure burn from Munar orbit is so tiny it's not much extra fuel to take down the the surface, and the small size of the Mun means taking it down isn't hard. The mass of a separate orbiter - duplicate Kerbal accommodation and duplicate engines in particular - will end up worse overall. The three-Kerbal pod being a complete boat anchor doesn't help things either. If on the other hand you're going to Dres, with similar landing delta-V but requiring a much bigger return departure burns, "Destination Orbit Rendezvous" as I call it becomes much more appealing. But even then, better still might be to leave a basic drop tank in the destination orbit, and pick it up again after the landing.

The double lander can in the OP is pretty nice, but I've learned the hard way that those things are fragile, so I'm less willing to use them if I plan on making a landing under parachutes. Same goes for the 2-Kerbal can. In the past I've just stacked 1-man pods the same way up, like so: https://flic.kr/p/qco5ih Not had any problems but then that was before 1.0 brought re-entry heating. More recently I tried the pod+inline approach The service bay holds the main parachutes and a probe core. The fins on the pod ensure that even in an uncontrolled tumbling re-entry it will orient heatshield-first and be survivable. The drogue chutes probably aren't needed but I felt like putting them on.

A quiet voice is heard on the wind. Tsiolkovsky: "I have an equation for that. Why not look it up then you can work out how much delta-V you have." Screaming at Squad, the player fails to hear this.

The first question with anything like that is "real or artefact". The Orion Nebula is one of the most photographed deep sky objects, and indeed it's easy to find other images that don't show it, so we can conclude it's some sort of artefact. Considering other copies of the same image minus the smudge have been found I suspect a deliberate hoax though an accidental corruption isn't entirely implausible.

the ls command will get you a directory listing, that will help you know if a file is where you expect.

In fairness delta-V calculations only do one thing: help you not run out of fuel. While that's essential to a successful mission it's only one of many things essential to a successful mission.

Really? That's a splendid blunder.It reminds me of something that happened when the Antarctic "ozone hole" was first being investigated. Measurements from the ground were showing very low amounts of ozone in the ozone layer but satellite measurements were showing normal levels. It turned out the computers processing the satellite data had been programmed to assume low values were errors and throw them out, producing a similar result to our fps readings here.

10/10. An absolute icon.

5/10. That's not a spaceship, that's an imminent chain of black holes. Let's have something smaller

7/10 pretty nice.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/42877-CPU-Performance-Database The G3258 doesn't do as well the fast i5's and i7's, despite KSP only heavily loading one core, but it still outdoes the FX-series. It's widely speculated that KSP 1.1, set to be the next major release, will handle physics on a one-thread-per-ship basis so a high core count will be useful for things like docking or making bases but not for performance on a single ship. We won't know for sure until 1.1 is actually out though. In general more cores only helps programs that can use those extra cores but better performance per core helps everything.

I wouldn't want stock to go as far as KER in terms of detailed stage-by-stage breakdowns anyway. Delta-V calculations can be complicated and even KER gets it wrong sometimes. I recently ended up having to redo a lander design because KER had told me misleading figures, costing me a fair bit of time in the VAB, and it's a good thing I realised it then and not when I was trying to land! And then there are situations where the delta-V you get depends on the flight plan, such as Apollo-style missions, and therefore no computer program can ever give a definitive delta-V figure without being told the flight plan. So I think I'd be content with something like first/current stage only. That should be reasonably safe against giving misleading figures, straightforward for Squad to program, and still very useful for all but the most complicated of designs. What does make delta-V requirements lower is making a one-way mission rather than a return. Most players do one-way probes and return Kerballed missions, though there's no reason one can't do return probes and/or one-way Kerballed missions.

After visiting Moho and Gilly, decided to head to Bop for the heck of it. Forgot that sunlight isn't very strong at Jool, and I'm using ion engines. The long burns just got much much longer...

Depending on timescale I might do a reconnaissance mission first, take a look at the crash site and optionally drop the stranded Kerbal some accommodation to wait in. Then you can design a ship to lift the derelict and bring it back to Kerbin. I think I'd look to get it in a cargo bay at some point.

"JGT" ought to have been a clue. Although, does that stand for Jool Grand Tour, Jeb's Grand Tour, or even JGT Grand Tour?

Well, that could be Forza...or it could be Mario Kart. I think it is a low priority. SAS including the new "superSAS" as I call it does work, and with a bit of thinking about what does and doesn't control the ship it can work very well. Yes the algorithms would benefit from improvement but there are many more important things to do.Regarding delta-V calculations being linked to Kerbal skills, that's how Kerbal Engineer does it. This has come up before. The players are constantly saying Squad should "make KER stock", Squad mention that delta-V calculations will be connected to Kerbal skills which is just like KER, and the players then criticise Squad for that. I thought KSP players were generally intelligent people, perhaps I'm mistaken. (And yes KER has the chip that you can put on your ship and then forget about Kerbal skills, but there is no reason to think Squad won't copy that aspect of KER too.)

After Valentina returned to the Xena 1 from Moho's surface, they still had 14 km/s left. So Jeb went for a bounce around on Gilly!

Ion engines to Moho? Great, no more worrying about delta-V! Stop off at Gilly on the way back? Sure, that's fun for jetpacking! Let's go to Bop??? Yeah...I didn't think that through...my already low-TWR ship just had its thrust slashed to about 10% of normal. I will go to space, but it isn't going to be finished today.

Am I missing something obvious or does PreciseNode still not support Kerbin time? My game is set in Kerbin time but PreciseNode is not showing matching figures.

Landing legs for a teeny tiny probe: Of course it *would* end up tipping over. The chutes only opened at the last minute because I had them set wrong.

Landed Valentina Kerman in the Hermes 1 on Moho. Took two attempts. First time round I clipped the ground at a shallow angle around 60 m/s and the lander broke in two. Bailed Val out of the can, she bounced once then went poof. I then find the lander can, with its 6 m/s crash tolerance, *survived*