SkyRender

KSP felt complete to me back in 0.18. Everything since has been icing on the cake. Delicious Career-mode-flavored icing. Mmm, science...

And now, a haiku all too familiar to anyone fond of suicide burn landing tactics... Routine Mun landing thwarted by sudden mountain what jerk put that there?

I'd suggest going for a wireless trackball. They suffer minimal wear and tear, can be used literally anywhere, and are more precise than a mouse once you learn the trick to it. I've had this Logitech one for the better part of a decade and it's still going strong. Eats one AA every month and a half or so.

Nope. That just happened to be the flattest over-land route between the first two bases.

Well, in terms of sheer scale, there's this: Each of those "landings" is in fact a habitat. They're each spaced about 5KM apart, and each site looked something like this: Back during 0.18, I also participated in a colonization challenge and managed to put down colonies on just about every planet and moon in the game. Good times.

Just in case anyone doesn't know, a haiku is a Japanese poem consisting of 5 syllables on the first line, 7 on the second, and 5 on the third (or 5 - 7 - 5). Here's a few more: Heavy spaceplane launch what was a runway is now disassembly line Broke sound barrier at sea level on Kerbin great balls of fire, Jeb! And of course, if that's just not quite enough, there's also another similar kind of Japanese poem called a tanka. These are 5 - 7 - 5 - 7 - 7 syllables. Here's some examples of those: Launch window to Dres ignored yet again just 'cause lonely potato all it wants is company all it has is rocks and dust Return from Eeloo Jeb is burning through the sky Without a heat shield twenty kilometers up ship is gone, but Jeb is not It's a fun creative challenge! Let's see some more!

Let's have a little fun in prose, shall we? Roll out to launchpad ready to go to the Mun pilot is at lunch Press Space too early mission to Minmus becomes suborbital hop Eve landing success go out on EVA now oops, forgot ladder Let's see a few more!

How hard can rocket science be, anyway? Not very, as far as Kerbals are concerned.

Under the new aerodynamics, you have to build your craft to actually be fairly aerodynamic. While you can feasibly get away with somewhat blocky design, the fact remains that you'll do far better if you buck up and build according to the new standard. Here's a good baseline for the construction of a spaceplane under current aerodynamics. As for lift profile, for the most part you want to build up as much speed within the lower atmosphere (below 20KM) as you can before you switch over to rockets. This means angling up at 45 degrees for the early part of the launch (try to keep your speed at or below 250m/s for this part), switching to about 20 degrees at 10KM, and pushing to full throttle at that point too. (This is for Kerbin; Laythe will have a lower point, I haven't checked where it is just yet.)

Oh boy, one of my favorite discussions, the illusion we call "monetary value". One of the hardest lessons of economics is the one that undermines the entire concept: a product or service is worth exactly what the customer is willing to pay for it. This little phenomenon is pretty much at the heart of every "anomaly" in economics, from bubbles and busts to swindling and sale prices. For what it's worth, I'm of the opinion that KSP has become more than worth what I paid for it, and would still be worth it at its current price (though I would probably wait for it to go on sale, that's more to do with the fact that Steam has conditioned me to never buy anything at full price even if I do consider it worth it).

Looking forward to the next version of TACLS! I hope the "farm" modules make it in there soon too. They'll provide a whole new logistical challenge, and one that theoretically should either allow prolonged or indefinite isolated off-world colonies.

Long ago, back in the mists of October 2011, I happened upon a video by a fellow calling himself Maxwell Adams (formerly the unofficial leader of a Let's Play group called the Freelance Astronauts). He showcased KSP in a video, and did a good job of selling the game as being a fun little diversion to toy around in. Having just recently played Just Cause 2 for the first time, I was quite fond of the idea of being able to wreak havoc with poorly-built rockets, and since it was free anyway, I downloaded it. Within maybe a week or two, the Mun was added to the game, and I discovered Scott Manley by accident in looking up videos on how to get there. The game stopped being an explosion simulator and started becoming something to properly challenge myself with at that point. Not too long after that came 0.13, and the announcement that 0.14 would be the first paid version of the game. I liked what I saw, and where the game was going, so I made the plunge. I'd spent plenty more than what I paid for much worse games, that's for sure! I've been through a lot of phases with KSP since, and done just about everything that can feasibly be done in it at one point or another. Of course I'll take a break from it to play something else for a while from time to time (currently on a brief hiatus for, interestingly enough, a replay of Just Cause 2), but I always come back to the little green men and their do-it-yourself approach to space flight.

In my experience, the best kind of food for gaming is the kind that doesn't leave any sort of residue on your hands or require much in the way of clean-up. It also helps if it's difficult to make a mess with and can be eaten in quick bites while paused or idle. To that end, I'd recommend hard pear slices with a fork to grab 'em with.

Uhhh, the ISS has an orbit of 409km/416km, roughly... Scaling that down for Kerbin would have you "orbiting" inside the atmosphere by quite a margin.

Scott Manley just did this challenge and got up to around 3.6km/s before he ran out of fuel. I think he's in the lead right now.

I've run into an interesting problem! Suddenly KER is... really getting it wrong with spaceplanes. I mean REALLY wrong. I first noticed the issue in the SPH: Note the KER info box in the lower left. It seems to be under the impression that the first stage of the spaceplane has 0 parts and 0 mass! All of the spaceplanes affected with it start to suffer from NaNm/s dV readouts on the way to orbit. In fact, the predicted dV for the rocket stage is completely wrong in its prediciton as well on the way up! Here's a link to the craft itself for testing purposes.

Actually, I made one of the first ultralight SSTOs of KSP 1.0 that used a turbojet instead of a RAPIER. The Tourista SSTO was pretty nifty, and so I've re-created it for this challenge. Renamed to just the Tourista, it's a compact little beauty. Since it's so light, it gets off the runway almost instantly! The jet phase of the program is the trickiest part. It has to get up to around 1050m/s minimum before switching to rockets to get to stable orbit. Obviously that run I didn't quite nail that goal. It was close though! (Note KER's readouts being completely wrong; it does NOT know what to do with this thing!) My second attempt went much better. And finally, a beauty shot. Obviously it can't do much once it does get into orbit, though getting it back down to Kerbin and landed is simplicity itself. As you can see, it has plenty of jet fuel left for atmospheric maneuvering as well! I could have adjusted the fuel margins to be a bit better, but eh. EDIT: Just to be sure, I landed it. I figured at first that I might be able to reach KSC. I had quite a bit of fuel left, after all! That idea went out pretty quick as I did some mental math and realized I'd be landing in the ocean if I tried. So, U-turn! And here it is landed safely. Jeb seems disappointed that it went off without a hitch. EDIT 2: Here's the craft itself if you want to try it out! 0 switches between jet and rocket mode and toggles the intakes.

Good grief... I'm guessing you didn't want to refuel in orbit, with a behemoth like that! Still, well done.

It would be nice if a few of the specialty engines (ion, nuclear, jet, jet/rocket hybrid) had larger versions available. And as others have said, some form of heat radiator would also be handy. Might be nice to eventually have a simple winch system ala Kerbal Attachment System as well, but that's a bit of a stretch goal really. Other than that, I'm good.

I generally find that, when someone intentionally ignores what they've learned, they either did not actually learn the lesson they should have (a very common thing indeed!), they failed on purpose for laughs, or they have an agenda that would result in a better outcome for them personally if they did not learn the lesson. I'm thinking the second one is probably the case here...

Console gaming mentality? The belief that the developer should be able to deliver a complete product to the end user without need for mods to finish it? Limited system resources that make mods an impossible prospect? There's a lot of reasons why people play only stock. That's just a few.

Those who have responsibilities to attend to on a moment's notice should not forsake anti-frustration tools. Features like pausing and quicksaving were added to games for reasons besides savescumming, after all.

Getting upset about people playing poorly is an easy trap to fall into for someone who has a lot of skill at a game. I've seen it happen countless times, and done it myself many times as well. The secret is to just calm down and realize that it doesn't actually matter if someone else is not as good at whatever it is they're doing as you are. Especially when it's just a game. Yes, there are plenty of folks who don't understand the fundamentals of flight. For the majority of the history of our species, that included everyone alive. Though it is a bit disheartening when their attempts to solve a problem involve making things worse or missing something really obvious... I'm sure in the future we'll feel that way about a lot of things we previously did in ignorance. That would not be a first.

Ah, how quaint... I remember when I first started KSP. Back then, even the likes of Scott Manley were what you might call "scrubs" at the game. To be fair, 0.11 and 0.12 both were really tricky to do much of anything in! Pretty much anyone who could even reach orbit was considered amazing back then, and being able to land on the Mun at all (regardless of how badly it went) was a mark of pride. The 1.0 version has added a whole new dimension of inexperience for many players: handling the new atmosphere mechanics! It will be a while before certain individuals are able to build rockets that can successfully reach orbit without a ton of stabilization to counteract the whole "rocket flips out of control" issue that comes from an aerodynamically unsound design. Lucky for those of us who cut our teeth on FAR in past versions, we don't have to worry so much about that.