cantab

Mechjeb. It's basically a complete unmanned spacecraft in one part, a bit limited but it looks dead cool.

We're all looking at physics and engineering here, but there is another route to the stars: biology and medicine. If humanity can cure aging and allow individual people to live for millenia, suddenly a 500-year trip becomes not so long.

Regarding the OP's question: Do you want to use lots of part pack mods and not have to worry about RAM? If yes, KSP on Linux is a good idea. Do you have an AMD graphics card and want to use visual enhancement mods? If so, KSP on Linux might not be a good idea because AMD graphics cards underperform on Linux. (nVidia cards by contrast do very well.)

Eye Ess Pee. Because after all, the symbol is correctly Isp, it just gets written inline for convenience.

Well they can't run and they can't fight. So one option is to hide. With orbiter support they might be able to do that, depending on where the Martians are and how fast they tend to move about. Another option is to scare the Martians off. Though slow, noisy mechanical things would probably make the Martians wary. At first - I'm not sure this would keep the rovers safe for long.

This is the approach I used, but then the largest I moved with it was 500 tons.To start with you need to get the thrust aligned with the centre of mass. If you think you clawed badly off to start with I would declaw, back up a bit, and go in again. Assuming you've clawed as precisely as you can, then if you have an engine cluster you can use thrust limiting to fine-tune it. Turn SAS off, do an engine burn and watch which way the thing pulls, then reduce thrust on the "outside" of the path. You might also find it helps to turn off SAS and RCS on the engine section. Let the separate pods turn the asteroid and the asteroid turn the engines. RainDreamer's suggestion, of simply flying the engines round the asteroid into position, is a sound alternative. On a final note, there's always the chance you've hit a game bug. Multiple claws on a vessel are notorious for this.

Granted. There is, however, plenty of corruption, which makes your head explode. I wish the American mm/dd/yyyy date format would go die in a fire.

Granted. It suddenly grows to redwood size in your house. I wish they sold jeans in a 37" waist.

Close. Near Future Technology actually, using the magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters with an Isp of 3200 s. The ship was a 1500-ton asparagus-staged monster propelling a 65-ton payload. Launched in one piece fully fuelled. The hard part was getting the TWR as well as the delta-V, since I didn't really want a day-long burn.The second trajectory was from the return, with just the core stage remaining albeit pushing a much lighter payload. It was part of the Magellan mission, see the album linked to in my sig for more.

Tried out Mechjeb, and flew a quick MJ-only mission. Dead simple ship, the Mechjeb Pod on top of a long SRB and needed ancilliaries. It doesn't seem to understand FAR very well, it wobbled around like crazy in the ascent. Nonetheless, it achieved orbit. I then set up a Minmus flyby, but lacked the delta-V for a landing. I know there's a patch to improve behaviour in FAR. The communotron burned up on re-entry, thus demonstrating that Mechjeb doesn't respect AntennaRange. Once I established I was coming down I turned on landing guidance, and established that Neither does MechJeb understand DRE - it opened the chutes way too early and they cut. Got a cool shot of a Mun-Minmus conjunction: MJ then attempted a propulsive landing, but ran out of fuel. Yet despite hitting the ground at 120 m/s the pod survived :-O Overall, an instructive mission.

Just need a cool shield now like for the Jool 5. I think unfortunately it's a less interesting challenge than the Jool 5, just because the four Galilean moons are all pretty similar. There isn't the landing challenge of Tylo or the spaceplane opportunity of Laythe. The Saturnian system might be more interesting if and when a mod can implement it fully. You've got Titan with its atmosphere, Iapetus has a fairly high inclination, Hyperion with its chaotic spin (unfortunately not possible in current KSP), and in general a wider spread of sizes than the Jovian system.

I still maintain that this is the perfect song for KSP, and specifically KSP as opposed to any other space things.

Once you're out of Kerbin's SOI and on your transfer orbit, target the destination planet. You should get an AN/DN marker, put a manouvre node there. Alternatively just put a node about halfway round your transfer. Then focus the view on the destination planet, and adjust that manouvre node so you come in equatorially with a low periapsis. If you need to avoid or get a moon encounter, trade off prograde/retrograde and radial burns, so you adjust your arrival time while keeping a low periapsis.

Looking great. I think the new UI's going to help a lot for those who only want a few ribbons, less need to scroll through. Definitely like the Grand Tour shield, it really helps illustrate the big multi-target missions. I'd venture it warrants a few more craft devices, notably the multi-part ship. The tooltips for the station and multi-part ship appear to be swapped. Not convinced by the placement of Eeloo, but I guess it's in a situation of "where else can it go". Any chance of asteroid devices for the moons, or do you think it would make the ribbon too busy and confusing? (Shameless self interest wanting to record my Magic Boulder recreation).

Granted. It promptly suffers catastrophic hyperinflation, wiping out your savings. At the same time a new weapon accidentally triggers global natural disasters, demolishing your home and flattening your car. And a new pathogen arises that feeds on gold and silver and emits deadly gas, rendering the precious metal worthless, indeed hazardous. I wish I could add another way to corrupt that.

Speak for yourself. For the rest of us a PC is a major purchase. (Well, maybe not if you're getting a £200 netbook or something.) 2 grand seems like way too much to me, getting into the territory where you're paying massively more to get tiny performance boosts.

Granted. And by operate it, I mean you're the stoker. I wish my data would import already.

Granted detnarg. Yes, your legal name is now detnarg. You may not change it. I wish I had a time turner. And a spare PC.

I'm just imagining the Kerbal listening to Mission Control. "Go on *crackle* vee ay." And the Kerbal thinking "EVA doing Mach 2 a few kilometres up? YAY!"

Umm, granted. You, however, do not. I wish people would read the rules.

The first one as it comes, not very. The CPU is OK but you'd need to add a decent GPU to get good visuals in games. With the power supply rated at just 300 W I'd suggest the GeForce 750 Ti, it has much lower power draw than the AMD competition. However that would be another £100-120. The second is somewhat better. As RIC says the graphics card is on the weak side, but it's still better than the integrated graphics on the asus. Honestly I doubt you'll find a decent gaming PC off-the-shelf for your budget. I think it is however just about enough to do your own build. Pentium G3258 processor, motherboard that supports overclocking (do your research), GTX 750 Ti graphics card, remaining parts to squeeze in-budget.

Clicked EVA instead of IVA?

OK, plane looks good, stability derivatives are mostly green, landing gear's on, I've added an rtg, Launch. Plane spawns on the runway and waitaminute, I need intakes! *Revert to SPH*

Granted. But the only thing you catch is bird flu. I wish Squid wouldn't be so slow.

Granted. You're flagged up as a Nigerian citizen and deported. Nigeria in turn considers you an American citizen and deports you back, and so on. You spend the rest of your life being ping-ponged between the intransigent bureaucracies of both countries. I wish I won a hundred thousand pounds.