The Yellow Dart

I just made this the other day after being inspired by some of the beautiful examples found here and elsewhere. Edit: Background is transparent, f.y.i.

I've been thinking that maybe they should add a "Contract" tab to the tracking station and map screen filters. That way you can leave all those useless satellites and bases, etc. in place and not see them everywhere when trying to see orbits and maneuver you crafts, but can still look at them all later if you want to proudly look back on your handy work and reminisce on all your myriad accomplishments.

I don't have a surefire solution for you but I have 2 ideas that might help. If you have fuel lines unlocked you could use drop tanks to significantly extend your range. To avoid conflict with landing gear you can launch vertically or at a high angle using launch clamps, since you won't have to land with them. They tend not to mess with center of mass very much since they can be attached right near the center of mass. I recently used this method to fly to the north tundra area with 3 jets, 2 round mk 1 tanks each and 1 drop tank each. I ended up with tons of fuel to spare even after flying around to the various targets. The other idea would be similar to a Dreamchaser but with 2 jet engines (since you can't attach a jet engine to a stack you'll have to have at least 2 on either side of a central body) and liquid fuel. It would be launched vertically into orbit on a disposable rocket with large wings to keep it aerodynamically stable, then it would reenter on the far side and be able to fly around the area with the mission targets, assuming they aren't too far apart. This method will bump up your cost and decrease recoverable value but cut real life mission time down by a lot since you can timewarp to the farside rather than physics warp at 4x only if you have a very stable plane.

If I understand your problem (I'm not sure I do), Try holding alt to disable surface attach.

If, like me, your main issue is too much easy science coming from those contracts and not from actual science experiments, this mod may help. Or it may not. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/99664-Contract-Science-Remover

Yeah, I'm going to have to use this, and probably start a new save. The whole reason I was excited about the introduction of the difficulty menu was that I'd finally have to leave the Kerbin system to get significant science, but now the amount of science in contracts is just insane, and you can't turn it off! It would be fine if they capped it at 10 or 15 per contract, then it would probably be okay while using 60% science from the menu, but a few hundred per contract just for temperature readings on the Mun is crazy. Thanks for a great mod!

Yeah, I kind of really want to see this thing driven over a cliff right now. Or just try to turn it. That would be fun too.Seriously, though, I can't believe your framerate is almost in the green. My computer would be in the RED.

I also am kind of disappointed by Duna's 5 biomes. Duna is such an important destination, usually the first interplanetary mission, and the number of biomes on a planet sets the scientific value of it, and serves to make missions there more interesting for the player with multiple expeditions and/or landings to max out science. And it is not like there isn't any geography to speak of. There are several mountains, hilly areas, plains, valleys, areas with darker and lighter terrain and Easter eggs. And if you don't like those or think they are differentiated enough, you can just give them place names like Lathe's Sagen Sea or Eve's Explodium Sea. I actally like that idea a lot, it would be nice to have more interesting names than, say, 4 different kinds of flats. I just don't know why Duna got shortchanged like that..

I've had that bug as well, I remember it was due to a mod but I can't remember which one. If it persists, try uninstalling mods until it stops.

I could agree with that if it were an unlockable part or feature of a building upgrade. Similar to unlocking probe cores with SAS, you should have to try landing a few times without knowing your altitude before unlocking a radar altimeter. It could even be paired with a mapping science experiment part.

The Homeworld soundtrack has some of the best space music ever, IMHO. My favorite single track for KSP orbit music would be the "Tutorial" music from Homeworld , followed closely by "The Beginning and the End" The full soundtrack can be found here:

I finally got around to putting this thing together. They were handing these out at the KSC Visitor Complex on Orion's launch day. I thought it turned out pretty good, although I'm not sure why they made the docking collar stick out so far, even in the art that came with the model, the docking mechanism is pretty much flush with the top of the pod. You can also download and print this from NASA's website here: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/2014_Orion_Desk_Model.pdf or the slightly older model with the circular solar panels here: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/714676main_Orion_Model.pdf Also, if you are interested, my photos from Orion's launch day(s) are here: http://imgur.com/a/mnw5W

Much appreciated gentlefolk, I must have overlooked that, should come in handy now that I know it's there!

So I was building a ship in the SPH last night and I somehow got it into radial symmetry mode as opposed to mirror symmetry that is normal for the SPH. I do remember something from a devnote a while back saying that we would be able to switch from one to the other but I hadn't seen anything since the release to say that feature was there so I assumed it was left out. I looked all over the screen for a button or switch or toggle that I might have clicked by accident but I could find anything. Does anyone know about this? Is this an actual feature or did I just find a bug? A bug wouldn't surprise me, since they said the SPH and VAB were essentially the same now, just with a different backdrop.

If you look at the target orbit, it gives you not only the apoapsis and periapsis, but also the ascending and descending nodes on the target orbit. I used these to launch at the right time and get my initial orbits inclination difference down to under 1°. To do this, focus your camera on kerbin and line up the asc. and desc. nodes so that they look like this on the screen over the equator: ><, then timewarp until your ready to launch craft is between the arrows: >x<, and gravity turn in the proper direction. Then I get it down to 0° once the orbit is close in size to the target just by burning normal or anti-normal when near the nodes. This doesn't work until you upgrade your tracking station so it might not help the OP.

Just to give my 2 cents, if you are trying to keep this pack stock-a-like and mostly inline with stock progression, then as you mentioned above, the SAS "stability assist" on your 2 probe cores should probably be removed. Not that it wasn't nice having it, but unlocking the Stayputnik in the 3rd tier is a significant step down from the guidance cone, and the radial, being small and simple and weightless, should probably be on the same level as the Stayputnik, with no reaction wheels and no SAS, just giving you control of whatever systems you have on your craft but not providing any additional abilities on its own. That is just my feeling, though. It is still a big improvement over stock having a probe at the start, since it is pretty silly to have to launch a kerbal just to test a decoupler spashed down or an SRB landed.

Thanks for all your quick updates!

I wasn't actually at KSC for the launch, I watched it from Port Canaveral, right here: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=28.41924,-80.621625&hl=en&sll=32.678125,-83.178297&sspn=6.729943,11.634521&t=h&z=17&iwloc=A I was wondering if there were any KSP players around me. I actually had some guys standing behind me from NASA Langley who worked on the Launch Escape System. They said they didn't want to fight the crowds to watch from the causeway.

There are also bugs with right click menu buttons. I frequently lose access to the thermometer's log data button, and I think I've had the same happen with antennae before but I'm not positive on that.

One big regret I have is that I could have driven down and seen a shuttle launch when I lived in Georgia for a few years but it just never occurred to me. Now I'm kicking myself.

I wanted to share my photos from the Orion launch and a visit to Kennedy Space Center, and a little bonus at the end. Seeing as this community includes modders and people with more than just a minor interest in such things, I tried to get photos of lots of the small details that you can't find easily except on the real thing. Unfortunately I arrived too late in the day to get the bus tour so no good pics of the VAB or any Saturn V . To view album on imgur: http://imgur.com/a/mnw5W

That's actually the exact reason I think it is a good idea, it is the difficulty panel after all. If a player wants to tax his craft with 10x the normal weight to use strong reaction wheels that is fine but it will cost him fuel and money and give him a larger craft to get into orbit. Or if he wants to use only RCS, he'd better think hard about how long his trip is and how much monopropellant he might need. Otherwise, at this point I can dock usually with less than 10 units of mono and sometimes none at all, so what is the point of all those RCS tanks. It would also be a difficulty *option* so I don't think force is the right word.

First off, I love that there is now a panel for selecting desired difficulty. It is something that I have wanted for a long while. I think reaction wheels are good for beginners, as they will have enough problems to worry about like getting to space and staying there, without worrying how to make their ship turn while it's up there. But once you have a good grasp of KSP basics, I feel reaction wheels tend to make things a little too easy and a bit too unrealistic, and RCS thrusters get underused, strictly for docking only. For me, I only use RCS once I get very close, unless both ships are quite large. I think it would be a nice and easy improvement to put an option on the difficulty panel to nerf all reaction wheels down to, say, 1/10th of their original values. Or, since there will soon be lots of different options for SAS and more to the SAS module, perhaps an option to limit reaction wheels to holding a particular direction only, no turning ability, which would be quite realistic. I think a lot of KSP players crave more difficulty and this is a good (and simple) way to provide it.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking when I was writing it. The only way to make it make sense is to install both Real Fuels (I assume that is the sort of thing it does, I've never used it) and Engine Ignitor mods.