cantab

If you're just launching fairly simple ships you can probably manage without fairings. For example the Apollo CSM didn't need one except around the engine bell, only the LM needed fully enclosing in a fairing.

48: When the EU bans vacuum cleaners from having motors with a power higher than 0 Watts.

Oh yeah, OP, can't you just try all the possible values for the destroyed digit?

Did you unplug the laptop power supply and remove the battery before upgrading the RAM? If not, whoops! (I did just that to a desktop during the build, wrote off a mobo and CPU and had to get professional assistance to sort things out.) Otherwise, you might try clearing the CMOS. You'll probably have to look up how to do that for your laptop.

A manned entry along the same lines, but with even less weight of wings - just three small control surfaces - and wider landing gear. Headed north, landed at 10.56° N, 76.10° W. Ready for takeoff by cantab314, on Flickr I put it way over the side of the SPH, so it spawned over the bank and rolled back, allowing me to do a ski-jump takeoff. The plane can takeoff normally but I figured this'd let me use a bit more fuel for climbing. Trajectory by cantab314, on Flickr Safely landed by cantab314, on Flickr More pics in the mission album. I filled in some "gaps" in my screenies using a previous run that crash-landed there. If you disallow the carrier-style takeoff, Jeb's run used a regular takeoff and landed at 9.66° N, 74.66° W, https://flic.kr/p/p4WEDA

Actual books. I like owning my books, not having them only so long as a megacorp decides I'm allowed to.

I think it might be an idea for resources to not be finite per se, but abundances of decline with extraction, thus requiring more "in" in order to get the stuff out. That would be closest to how many natural resources are in reality.

If you're using the stock game or the demo, I would be inclined to focus on the orbital mechanics. To that end you can set up your scenarios with craft already in orbit. If you plan on teaching aspects of rocket launches I strongly advise an aerodynamics mod. For rocket design, I suggest encouraging people to keep things simple, such that structural failures - which aren't handled at all realistically - aren't an issue. And indeed, once the course gets into more advanced aspects of gravitation, you can talk about how KSP uses the patched conics approximation and thus can't model certain trajectories.

That would still be somewhat abusable though; you could just leave the game running overnight.

IMHO a good idea for resources would be to have a wide range of real raw materials, with varying availability by celestial, but to keep the number of "steps" involved in getting from resource to useful product low, and have plenty of overlap so that with the right equipment most places can produce most materials. That would give some rich variety and interest, but avoid having to criss-cross the system just to do something useful.

Landing legs are just for looks really. Simply landing on your engine bells saves weight and isn't any harder.

It's generally easier to establish orbit around the Mun first, rather than trying to land directly from your inbound trajectory. Then select a landing site, preferably somewhere that looks flat. Make a small deorbit burn somewhere between 90 and 180 degrees ahead of that, lowering your orbit so it about touches the surface where you want to land. Watch out for mountains that might be in the way! When you approach your landing site, put the navball in surface mode (click the speed) and burn hard retrograde to reduce your horizontal speed to near zero. The closer to the surface you do this the more efficient but riskier your landing. Finally descend keeping your trajectory vertical and controlling your speed. In stock its hard to judge your altitude over terrain, the regular altimeter gives altitude over "sea level", but you can use your shadow or enter IVA view and use the radar altimeter. Or on Minmus the big flat areas are at sea level. With a mod such as KER or VOID that reports your altitude over terrain landings are much easier. When you touch down cut the throrrle with x and be ready on the controls to ensure the lander doesn't tip over.

It would only be workable if life support was in the game.

Congrats! Ulations!

I'm sure I've seen one before. Couldn't tell you the mod though. But the easier way would be to use the banana for balance, it weighs the same as the goo I think.

Which is in general the biggest reason behind TWR rising as a rocket ascends, at least. Compared to many of KSP's issues, I don't think the constant thrust is the end of the world. But then as discussed it'd hardly be difficult to change either.

They do. But most of the bodies in the system don't have an atmosphere.

KSP Interstellar might be the closest thing. Anyway, one thing to like about KSP is that when you're learning to play the game, you're actually learning an approximation of real rocket science. A fictional resources system wouldn't enhance that.

They call it an eclipse because when Jeb's flying a Mun lander and suddenly Kerbin blocks the Sun, 'e clips a mountain cos 'e can't see.

The most KSP-like feature in the Ariane isn't the boosters - I mean come on two's positively tame - but the struts that hold them to the core. It's like, how shall we make sure the boosters stay attached? Some nice sleek design that looks like it was always one piece? Nah, just stick some metal bars across the gap and be done with it.

When placing a flag, the game instantly calculates a 12-dimensional matrix of everything within a 2.2 km radius, determines the orientation of the flag that will be most photogenic - and then puts it at 90 degrees to said orientation.

I've had the just-decoupled boosters clobbering the rocket (who hasn't ) and the accelerating into the thing I just undocked from, but no 'real' debris hits.

Stock entry here. Unmanned, flew northwest on a rocket-style profile ie straight up as soon as possible then pitchover at 10 km, landed at 23.07° N, 94.81° W. On the runway by cantab314, on Flickr Trajectory by cantab314, on Flickr (Ooops no navball, but VOID has all the info.) Don't land in the water! by cantab314, on Flickr Intact landing by cantab314, on Flickr Well, mostly intact. If it hadn't sideslipped for no obvious reason (you can see that in the picture before) I might have been alright. Couple more pics in the mission album: https://flic.kr/s/aHsk2ZwcMB

Marketing is important. Important enough that whole companies exist that specialise in handling the marketing of other companies. I think KSP''s own lead developer worked for a company like that, Monkey Squad or something they're called.

I don't know how close to reality KIDS is, but I know that many real rockets have to throttle down to avoid destroying the craft from aerodynamic stress, the point of highest stress being known as "Max Q". For the Space Shuttle the main engines and boosters dropped to about 2/3rds thrust at a certain point in the flight to keep the stresses under control. Rockets may also need to throttle down to keep the g-forces or other potential issues under control; the Saturn V outright shut down the centre engines on both first and second stages during its flight for this.