cantab

Well really you're going to have to pick. A fast flyby, a slow mission that can land and return, or an insanely huge mission that can land and return quickly. Getting an assist from one of the gas giants can help reduce your capture burn at Pluto, but at the cost of taking *even longer*. You'd be looking at in excess of a century each way for a fuel-optimal flight. To find such assists, look for Earth-giant windows and giant-Pluto windows that more or less coincide in time.

Indeed. Remember, for a 3D print you only need to make it in the VAB. It doesn't have to be even remotely capable of flying anywhere.

I suggest chucking a probe at Eve. Or a Kerbal if you don't mind leaving him there. As far as landings and return go, consider Ike, once you're there it's just like a Mun landing.

Well it's all to an extent, I suppose that's kind of the point. But I'd say it's in a genre of games I'll call "Build-and-use", for want of a better term. You try and construct something using parts in the game in order to do a certain task. It's not too common for games to give the kind of freedom KSP has; I expect more of the genre than merely selecting things to fill a small number of defined "slots". In this respect I'd relate KSP to games such as the Bridge Builder series, Robocraft, and Minecraft.

Because Squad didn't think of making the rocket exhaust work as a light.

I guess the problem with the poll is that you can quite easily have one significant issue, for example the game crashing after playing for a bit. It's not "loads of bugs" but neither is it "no major problems".

I will admit there have been a few times background working would have been useful for me. It takes the best part of the day to fill up my Kethane plane, and if could have one mining while I fly another one I'd save a chunk of time overall. When I've got Kerbals waiting for a rescue that's important. But ultimately not having background working isn't the end of the world.

The other thing I would keep in mind is that product designations, for example for processors and graphics, are marketing. Similar names and numbers are used on desktops and laptops to make you think you're getting similar performance, and you just aren't. They're designed to hide the performance you give up. The fastest laptop "Core i5" is about the same speed as the slowest non-"low power" desktop "Core i3", no great surprise since they're both dual-core hyperthreaded chips. It's a not dissimilar story on the graphics cards. So check actual tests and benchmarks.

On the topic of shielding, now I think about it, how do you check it in flight?

So no bugs in Windows 64-bit, except for this one big one. I've not heard of it in other architectures, it's not happening in my standard install (Linux 64-bit with assorted mods), I've seen other people do seaplanes without a hitch.And yes, what you describe is exactly the sort of weird bug I'd expect out of the Win64 version of KSP.

C) I rotate the rocket in the VAB so I can pitch east. If launching inclined I rotate so I can pitch down. C) I come in shallow and suicide burn. Or at least I try to. That's the most efficient way.

I play KSP exclusively on Xubuntu Linux, with a whole bunch of mods, and no problems. Crashes aren't unknown, but they aren't common.

Finally put my Kethane miner on the Mun! Going up. The outermost boosters were added using KAS Landed and working. Hurrah! Now, let's hope it has a long and useful service life, and doesn't break down.

Where were we? Oh yes Episode 18 saw us play crane games! I built a fairly simple crane capable of picking up and carrying 1.25 m boosters, and a pair of them were secured using KAS pipes and struts to the RC Nope. It wasn't without incident, and I decided to blame the Kerbals and punish them. Episode 19 saw at long last the RC Nope lifting off! The boosters were quite stable, though inevitable slight misalignments made the rocket overall a little squirrelly. Despite that, orbit was attained with no difficulty in a few attempts. At the end of the episode, the RC Nope landed and fuelled up with Kethane! I selected the landing site to be well placed for rendezvous with the RC Yes, and despite not landing quite on target it should still need only a modest plane change. RC Nope Mining on the Mun: https://flic.kr/p/rbNWMd

I would *not* rely on Microsoft Security Essentials. It's bombed in recent tests, and I've personally had it fail to protect PCs. As far as free AV goes Panda and AVG do well. For commercial software, I find a lot of it suffers from featuritis and bloat, often of dubious merit. Kaspersky in general I rate but I'd go towards their simpler, slimmed-down offerings if I was buying. Keep in mind that firewalls can be a nuisance since their job is to make things not work; I'd only bother with one if I used public wifi a lot, there's no need at home since your router firewalls you.

Wild guessing: the antenna isnt perfectly symmetric about its attachment point, and one is rotated compared to the other.

Which jets are you using? The basic jet gives full thrust at no speed, and drops off as you accelerate. You can get high but expect a fairly slow climb. The turbojet on the other hand can take you nearly to orbital speed, but does not give full thrust at zero speed. Use extra jets, or rocket boosters. Either jet takes time to reach full thrust, so hold the rocket on the launch clamps while they start up. And of course all jets need intakes!

Yeah, as soon as you have a satellite somewhere the "Transmit or Recover Science Data from..." contracts are easy money. Also fun tip: Crew Reports only need a command pod, no Kerbal required! This might be useful if your mission used a separate ascent vehicle and return ship, or if you're using a life support mod.

I've had KSC cluttered a bit with vehicles, the lag spike when approaching to land is annoying. The old ones I've taken to taxiing a few kilometres south, out of the way yet not so far I can't use them again if I want to. Not particularly tried to group them together but I certainly could. If you want something by the runway for looks, maybe you could make a version with as much welded as possible. You don't need it to fly or even move under its own power after all, so a single part "mockup" aircraft that you tow into place would do the job.

I've not had too many screwy individual contracts, but at one point I was offered I think *four* different contracts for temperature scans of the Mun. The thing was covered in markers in map view and I was like, Seriously?

IMHO this thread could use a rename to "Building/Buying Megathread" or similar, to take account of that. But it looks like the OP hasn't been around for a while.

Do OEM license keys (printed on the "Certificate of Authenticity" on the PC) work on an installation of retail Windows (as downloaded from MS)? I thought they didn't.As for the gaming laptops, I'd consider two questions. How likely are you to want to play away from a plug socket*, and how often are you going to want to move it? If the answers are not very likely, and once or twice a week, I'd say the case for a desktop is strong. If on the other hand you'll be carrying it around on a daily basis, yeah you're going to want a laptop. *A proper socket you can run a desktop PC off. Not counting those "phone/laptop only" sockets on trains and stuff.

Added MOAR BOOSTERS. Literally, using KAS. Punished a Kerbal after a mishap.

Obligatory guess, is it the Doctor? Otherwise, how about the curtain in a theatre?

Sand? Or coconuts?