SkyRender

I prefer literary pop culture references, myself. He was aiming for the ground, he just forgot to miss is all.

I pronounce it exactly the same way Scott Manley does. Actually, I think he and I pronounce all of the names of the various Kerbal Space Program planets and moons the same way. Funny, that. I can't think of a single example where we don't, save perhaps his occasional calling the sun "Kerbol" instead of "the sun".

I suppose Kerbals are to blame for the Space Sphere crashing into a random house outside Whiterun in Skyrim, then. Seems legit.

I pronounce it like the word "lake", but with a TH sound instead of a K sound.

Eve just got hit with The Corruption really hard, and nobody bothered to hit it with the Clentaminator before all life on the planet died.

Starting with even a token amount of science in Career mode is somewhat pointless since one of the first contracts gives you a nice little dose just for doing a single crew report on the launchpad. Even if that's all your first launch is, you'll still have enough to unlock the two starting nodes right away within less than 2 minutes of starting a new Career save.

The best reusable system is one where you never have to return the reusable parts to Kerbin. This is why ISRU fuel depots are so nice. You can just link up all of your launch stages for the equipment you took up to each other (or repurpose them as fuel ferries between the Mun/Minmus and LKO) and suddenly you have a nice and easy way to store more fuel than you'll probably ever need again. It also lets you launch much lighter SSTOs since they'll be able to refuel in LKO that way.

You pick your poison with the Jool system. There are three moons that are worth mining, and each has its pros and cons. Vall: + Most accessible to the system as a whole - Highest gravity of the eligible moons, meaning lowest overall returns Bop: + Good trade-off between Vall and Pol - Almost as far off-orbit and eccentric as Pol compared to the other Joolian moons Pol: + Very low gravity means great fuel returns - Furthest away from the inner Jool system, and at a very inconvenient inclination

Launch windows are usually fairly generous, especially for closer targets. This is exemplified with the Mun, actually: there's almost a full 45-degree fan of potential low-dV-cost encounters you can get with it each time you're close enough. Generally speaking, Duna launch windows tend to be a solid 30 Kerbin days long for especially good intercepts, and actually almost 150 days long for less-than-perfect intercepts (ie. within about a 33% margin of the ideal window). EDIT: This is an invaluable planning tool for interplanetary and inter-lunar injections.

I figured it was probably the case. The mods I have installed are: Asteroid Day EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements Hull Camera Kerbal Attachment System Kerbal Inventory System Kerbal Engineer Redux TAC Life Support SETI Greenhouse Kerbal Alarm Clock None of those seem likely to have modified the physics settings, but who knows?

Umm, the .craft file does not appear to actually work. KSP is saying it's incompatible with 1.0.4. I'm guessing this is a quirk of the download service in use... EDIT: Yes it was. Why would a download service ever require you to click a link for a file to go to a page with another link for the same file? Madness. EDIT 2: I think we need to make sure we're all using the same physics values... I did three launches, and here's the best one: I'm sure you can see the discrepancy between my results and the next-best on the leader board. The other two were 71,228m and 72,361m respectively, also higher by some margin. In light of this, here are the values that my KSP has listed as stock for the Aero and Drag tabs: Aero GLM: 0.038 LDM: 0.030 BLM: 8.000 Drag * Apply drag * Apply drag to non-physical parts * Apply non-physical part drag at parent CoM GDM: 6 DCM: 0.6 ADM: 2

I'm kind of amazed that there's still no mod to add "do not generate this type of contract" functionality to KSP. Well, at least not intuitively. There IS a mod (Contract Configurator) that lets you do something like that, but it's a lot of work to set that up and it's a complete pain to get rid of stock contract types.

Engineer Kerbals really speed up the ore extraction process a lot. Even an untrained one will boost the rate by 5, and every Engineer on board boosts it even more. My own setup is to establish a proper mining base, and have a fuel ferry that actually does the fuel transfers to an orbiting station. The mining base only stores a token amount of ore and fuel, enough to allow it to process during the fuel ferry's visits to the orbital fuel station. The fuel ferry is basically all business: it's mostly fuel tanks. I tend to set both mining base and ferry up with what I call a "KAS Mouse": a standardized mini-rover with a docking port, said rover being attached to the parent craft via a Kerbal Attachment System winch. Two KAS Mice can attach to each other, and in turn establish a link between their parent craft.

In a brief press release, Nintendo has revealed that the president of the company, Satoru Iwata, passed away yesterday due to complications involving a growth in his bile duct. He will be missed.

You could avoid that cost too and just give up the advance on the mission by cancelling the contract. Since you've already "discovered" the part, it will remain even after that.

Once a craft is "discovered" (ie. you get another craft within loading range of it), it becomes persistent even if the contract expires or is cancelled. This includes any Kerbals on board.

Sweet! That should tide me over nicely 'til the official one is added. Thanks.

There are definitely times when a high-powered antenna is called for. Rapid fly-bys of moons and planets don't tend to give you a lot of time to work with, nor do atmospheric probes on their way to the "surface" of Jool. If you have a situation where time matters, the faster antennae are always good choices.

That thing is really complicated. Why not go for a simpler option? Safely orbits, safely deorbits, safely lands, drops no stages. Admittedly not very maneuverable in space, but then, why would you be trying to maneuver a massive juggernaut to move something like an orange fuel tank about?

That's not actually how atmospheric formation works. The primary determinants of atmospheric formation appear to be gravity, magnetic field, gas density, and systems (organic or otherwise) that continue to distribute and maintain the atmospheric elements as they bleed off into space and/or settle back down onto/into the surface. The distribution systems count for more than anything, as demonstrated by Venus in the real solar system: lower gravity than Earth, much thicker atmosphere. Even with the heavier elements comprising Venus' atmosphere, the whole mess of it would eventually settle back to the surface (and bleed off into space for the lighter elements) without the heavy vulcanism on the surface constantly stirring up the mix. The main reason why Mars' atmosphere is thinning so fast is because it lacks any sort of system to keep the atmosphere in place and replenished: no vulcanism, no magnetic field. Gravity not being "strong enough" to hold it in place is not the cause, or Titan wouldn't have any atmosphere to speak of.

Still really looking forward to farm modules being added to this. No matter how complicated they may be, they'll add a delightful sustainability aspect that will finally make true space colonies a possibility instead of just bases that receive regular shipments of supplies from Kerbin.

I tend not to actually go interplanetary much in Career any longer. Not because it's boring or anything, but because it's just not as interesting to run single missions at a time. Around Kerbin I can set up an elaborate series of simultaneous missions, but for other planets there's just this endless wait to deal with. Wait for a window to the target, wait for a window back to Kerbin, wait wait wait. It feels like I'm wasting potential by focusing on those sorts of missions when I could be doing fun stuff right in Kerbin's backyard on the Mun and Minmus.

Eve's scale height is kind of absurd compared to Kerbin or Duna. Coupled with that is the fact that you hit it going so fast, and the fact that the atmosphere itself is actually pretty hot as well. Aerobraking at Eve is a dangerous prospect as a result. It's generally best to capture with a burn, and slow your orbit down over multiple passes.

People are free to do whatever they please in a single-player game. Whatever you want to use is fair game. It's your experience, you should craft it to suit your needs. I don't use MechJeb and never will. I don't enjoy shared experiences (ie. videos, screenshots, etc.) that include it. But that doesn't mean I think people shouldn't use MechJeb. I just think that I want nothing to do with it personally. That doesn't sound like a very good reason for anyone to change what they're doing to me, unless they're for some reason trying to impress me specifically.

Eventually I refined it a bit more to look even more like a squid. I was on a bit of a Splatoon kick at the time.