cantab

Yes, it's called libration, and it's because Ike's orbit is not perfectly circular nor zero inclination. From the surface of Ike, Duna would similarly librate. And from the surface of the Moon, Earth would appear to librate.

Gotta be the Puff. I've just never really tried to build with it. I'm not sure what I'd use it for. Anything small enough that I'd particularly want to go monoprop-only is probably small enough to just use RCS thrusters for all propulsion. The terrible efficiency combined with the terrible mass ratio of the monoprop tanks rule it out of anything requiring a decent amount of delta-V. And the terrible sea level performance means it would be a lousy LES. I also don't think I've used the Spider since it got gimped. Lower efficiency compared to the Ant is just a major minus for its expected use cases. The Twitch suffers the same problem. I used to not use the Poodle much either, but now I've been playing RSS lately and it's really come into its own as an essential upper stage engine. On the other hand it's the Skipper that's getting ignored, because the need for increased TWR in lower stages means I go straight from Poodle to Mainsail. My remarks on some other engines: Dawn - It's the easiest option for extreme delta-V needs. Maybe you've never done something that needed over 10 km/s without refuelling. I don't use it that often, but when I do it's to do something that would be far more difficult without it. Rhino - Useful? Debatable. BadS? Absolutely. Thud - Has a niche for a lander that needs about the same thrust as a Swivel but would be too tall with a single central engine. Twin Boar - Taking into account it baically includes an orange tank - and how often would you want less fuel with a 2000 kN engine? - it's the highest TWR liquid engine and great value in career. And in RSS I've been mounting a Mainsail under a Twin Boar to get the power I need without having unlocked 3.75 m parts. Ant - I've used this, and often regretted it! For anything that's not very tiny I end up with longer burns than I'd like and wishing I used a Spark. (And I know, I'll do the long burns with the Dawn, but that's because they're worth it, the same burn time with a chemical engine's puny delta-V is not.) EDIT: I also used to think the Mainsail had been eclipsed, by the Twin Boar and Mammoth. Then, as mentioned above, I started using it as an upper stage engine in RSS.

For me Dres is like a vacuum cleaner. It sits there gathering dust, never being touched by anyone.

Finished my Reddit challenge entry. Jetpacked from Pol to a Kerbin intercept, because Gilly is too easy. And snagged the Kerbal on the flyby with an ion ship, because need ALL the delta-V.

That should not be happening, even on a Jaguar architecture chip like yours. I'd first check temperatures using HWInfo. Normal CPU temperature is 40 C or below when idle, 70 C or below under load. If it's higher, clean the dust out of your PC. If your temperatures are fine, then use Task Manager to try and find out what program is hogging 40% of the CPU, and then either uninstall or change the settings on that program.

Regarding the "programming" idea, I never tried it but maybe the old "Smart Parts" mod would give us some cues; it's able to do certain actions based on certain conditions. Something like that on the probe cores would work too. I don't think it would be too hard to make it simple for simple stuff, yet nonetheless powerful for the real nerds.

This thread was more fun before pings existed. @0111narwhalz

In response to that, I would say that some modders impose a "barrier to entry" when it comes to bug reports or even support requests. Expecting detailed logs, asking people to go to Github, and so on. And while that eliminates useless vague bug reports, it's also liable to just send some users away altogether. End users, just like the modders themselves, have neither the obligation to do any work nor the right to expect anything - it's voluntary contribution on both sides. Personally, after a few times I spent hours trying to pin down a bug before posting about it, and was then promptly told it's well-known and there's an easy solution, I now prefer to just post first. If the symptoms look like a known bug then I can be told about it, either get a possible workaround or wait for a mod update, and it saves me and everyone redoing what's already been done. Only if it's not something that's been seen before am I likely to try and pin down details.

Probably sorted out my booster sep issues. I had been having some epic RUDs as the boosters scraped the rocket and blew stuff up. Since I don't have sepratrons or twitches and larger engines would be kind of heavy, I put basic fins on the top of each booster angled outwards to make the boosters fly away after separation, and that seems to work. But got too salty about an annoying bug I've had since I started playing RSS, and so I closed out of the game. Until the RSS folks can get back to me about it, I might not play.

I'm having a persistent issue with rockets sometimes spawning vertically clipped into the launchpad. It seems largely random - sometimes slight clipping, sometimes severe, sometimes negligible, a revert-to-launch or revert-to-VAB and relaunch will often produce a different result. For a rocket sitting on the pad it kicks it into the air, for one on launch clamps it shakes it around and actually bends the clamps over. RSS (and Kopernicus and Module Manager) only* with 8K textures, 64-bit KSP 1.2.2 on Debian 8. Any suggestions for a workaround other than having to repeatedly retry the launch every time? (* Yes, I'm playing with unaltered stock parts, just to see if I can. So far in spite of this bug it's been going alright.)

My two cents: In contrast to Snark, I've been greedy and added all sorts of stuff. But as for what I particularly like. If the system is being rearranged I like a challenge. One or more of Kerbin as a moon, inclined orbits, or a non-equatorial launch site will all add a challenge that isn't in stock. I like planets that stand out, offer fun gameplay opportunities, or are just plain awesome. I think "stockalike" is bad for planets because the stock ones are a bit lame. Oh, and Kopernicus-only please. Supporting stuff like EVE and Scatterer is cool, but requiring and bundling those extra visual mods will make me pass your pack by. And I suppose it goes without saying, but make sure you don't have bugs, like touching down but not being landed. My favourite planet pack I've tried was old New Horizons. The system layout with Kerbin as a moon of gas giant Sonnah which is in an inclined orbit round the Sun gives me that extra challenge I love. Serran was vibrant from orbit and had a stark otherworldly beauty on the surface, Leouch inspired true awe with its giant chasm, and Nolas's canyons let me trench run like the best of them. And I don't like when my beloved planets get changed on me. New New Horizons came as quite a shock, removing many of the aspects of the mod I'd loved. (New Serran, for example, is rather drab.)

So I found something out. Suppose you have a rocket with one engine, and a control point (eg probe core) that's not in line with that engine's thrust. Then when you fly the rocket it will try and use the engine's gimbal to roll, and that is a disaster as it induces massive unwanted pitch or yaw. This was a relatively recent change in KSP's behaviour, after 1.0 I think. Furthermore, if you have a rocket that normally has its control point in line with its engine, but the rocket bends, then the same effect will occur. This may be why my rocket has such bad handling. Fortunately the solution is simple: Right click the engine in the VAB, choose Show Actuation Toggles, and then turn Roll off.

Maybe. Without a lot more information it's impossible to know. Will it fit in the case? You'll have to check the dimensions. Will the power supply run it? You'll have to check the make and model and the connectors. If it won't, can the power supply be replaced? You'll have to check the form factor and what connectors go to the motherboard. Will the motherboard support the graphics card? 99% of boards will have no problems, but there are a few weird ones out there,

Having thrown a bunch of probes towards Mars, I've set about the task of landing a Kerbal on the Moon. It's gonna take some big rockets. Nine "Main Boar" (Twin Boar+Mainsail combo) stacks asparagused, then a Mainsail stage, then a Poodle stage. I'm taking an EOR+LOR approach: That's only the CSM on top. The LM is going up on a separate launcher, and the CSM will need extra drop tanks which will go up on additional launches. In the test flight it suffered violent SAS wobble. I should be able to fix that easily enough with some autostrutting and a lower stage probe core.

Yeah, it's been modified from a simple exponential decay to something more complex.

Incorrect, it shows K when that's appropriate. Example: https://flic.kr/p/RBth3s (in RSS, but it'll show in stock too.) I think the largest I've seen is Y. But I doubt anything beyond T will appear without glitches or cheats, considering 100,000 Tm is about 10 light years. (That said, I've not been in interstellar space in the Galactic Neighbourhood mod).

No quickloads or reverts. (Except for blatant game bugs). That more than anything else ramps up both the challenge and the sense of achievement, when you know that one false move will at best mean flying the whole mission again, and at worst means a zillion credits go up in smoke or a bunch of Kerbals die. On the minus side I find it slows my progress down a lot. The next most important thing, for real difficulty, is probably a modified solar system. Preferably something that either adds significant inclinations, or makes Kerbin a moon with no moon of its own, or even both. Either way it makes transferring to other worlds considerably more complex. And if those worlds are new too, then you don't know how to land on them. New Horizons is great, Galileo Planet Pack is very 'in' right now, RSS is always a challenge, there are others. I think after that, most other things are secondary. To address the science and tech tree issue, probably the best way is a modified tech tree that will require a lot more science to unlock everything. Dropping the science gains is likely to make the early game too grindy, although if I'm using extra science parts such as DMagic I drop the science gains enough to compensate for that. And you'll want the comms system on its strictest settings and a life support mod. But no reverts and modded solar system are my big two. At the moment I'm playing RSS (with stock parts ) , Science Mode, but I am using reverts, and it's still been pretty challenging. I nearly wasted a Duna probe fleet because it turned out that launching into the ecliptic plane wasn't the right way to do things, but fortunately I was able to set up Moon flybys to fix the inclinations, but of course I can only do that because I'm pretty experienced with gravity assists.

@Slam_Jones love your craft. Back in the day I did something loosely similar, built it to hover on the electric thrusters on low-grav worlds like Minmus and cruise around at highway-ish speeds. It was great fun, really a new way to explore those places, faster than a rover but more relaxed than a chemical 'hopper'. As for me now, designed the O-Zone relay sat. Simple design but I kind of like it. Got about 2500 m/s using a Twitch engine, and I have a 909-powered kicker stage for another 4000-ish. This one's orbiting the Moon (not in shot), I'll also be sending one to Mars to support some other probes going there, and two more can go into solar orbit and drift towards the Sun-Earth L4/5 points.

@Jabbman love the shuttles! I've never seen the Mk2 parts used edge-on before, but with the mod cockpits you have it looks great. @NISSKEPCSIM the strutwork on that booster brings back memories. Back in the days of 0.23 and before when we needed sooooo many struts. @regex that's the big dish from DMagic right? Are you saying that even that would have trouble reaching Kerbin from Urlum? If so ... then my RSS plans are so screwed.

Tried to get more range out of my Lemon Demon plane Put my first Kerbal in low Moon orbit on the Muse. And got my own take on Earthrise Put the science station Nightwish in LEO, using the same lifter as on Muse (which does 13 tons to LEO), and began raking in that lovely science. I'll have to spend it wisely though - it's imperative I get the tech to land on the Moon now.

I don't use visual mods. I want to. I see other people playing with them and it looks fabulous. But I feel KSP already runs badly, any mods will make it run worse, and I have to prioritise performance and gameplay over pretties. The modded installs I have run have often seen a 20% or so fps drop compared to stock, with no single mod responsible for that but rather the aggregate impact of a bunch of them.

Grubbing around for science in the old jet car at KSC, then took a little plane out to a couple more biomes. Forgot to take screenshots like a numpty. Unlocked the Mainsail and Twin Boar out of that, which is gonna help me build some decent sized rockets.

I pointed at the Sun. D'oh! I did reload the quicksave and fly the mission of the John Lennon successfully, a free return (ish) round the Moon and returning the science to Earth. Inside the small-tiny adapter is one of those new science storage gadgets, and a heatshield on the bottom, it did the job nicely. Got about 240 science out of that.

If you want daffy engine layouts, the B-36 probably takes it. Six turnin' an' four burnin'.

I slingshotted the Halestorm 2 low over the Moon And onto Venus The margins were thin as they could be. I'd used up my reserve fuel and then some limping the probe to LEO to compensate for the shortfall from the lifter, and had to get the Moon assist to compensate. I achieved the Venus flyby with about 0.5 units of LF left over, maybe 50 m/s out of 12 thousand total. Flush from that success, I sent Val on a free return flyby of the Moon in the rocket Inna. RSS doesn't half need a BIG rocket to get places. Four Swivels under the core, four Reliants under each of the six asparagus-staged boosters, 909 for the upper stage. Meant to make LEO with the upper stage core remaining (having shed the drop tanks). And it still fell short and had to use some of that dV. Nonetheless, Val got her view. Stupid night flybys.