Curveball Anders

I often stash a couple of extras on most missions, both for redundancy and for hogging experience education.

There's always the mountaineers' reason: "because it's there"

It was a slow evening so I ran design and flight simulations (as in trials in sandbox) for the landers, rovers and comsats that are to be added to That Standup Guy and That Other Standup Guy before they leave for Dres and Duna. If tonight is as slow it'll be time for design and trials of the return vehicles.

The slightest error in starting orbit or burn parameters can have large impact over distance. I normally check the projected trajectory post the initial burn and often have to insert a small correction burn like half way to the target. (The exact spot for cheapest correction varies, depending on the bodies involved and the error to correct).

A very small Borg vessel, maybe it's a baby bjorn?

Got a contract to rescue some poor soon-to-be colleague from the surface of Minmus. Sure thing, free Kerbonauts is always worth it and with a lander equipped station in orbit it should be a peanut. Ok, it was at the poles so a bit (86 deg) inclination change but still no issue. Coming in to land close but not on top of the wreck when physics for the wreck kicks in, ejecting the kerbal and sending her shooting straight up at quite some lick. Well, what goes up must come down as Wernher is so fond of saying, I land and wait for the return of my victim rescuee. Sure enough, down she comes (luckily it is Minmus so the fall isn't very fast). As she comes down I notice that she's drifted closer to my safe landing site, and drifting closer, and closer ... In the end she came down 2 meters off the ladder .... A slight hilarious expedition, but the most hilarious was that the spontaneously airborne kerbal was named Naca ...

Latest dev build (1.2) build is currently #648 https://ksp.sarbian.com/jenkins/job/MechJeb2-Dev/

Had similar experiences, as a consequence I always plonk a flag down where ever I land (if not on Kerbin or it's totally routine, and there's a flag plonking able crew member on board ...).

Stumbled over one some evening ago. Had two gawkers that wanted to land on the Mun, so I put them in a lander and plunked them down without really bothering on where (didn't need any more science). And just I landed I noticed an arch some klicks north of the random landing spot. Kind of typical that it was a robo-lander with no professional crew on board so I could EVA and pose

My bright idea to gain some extra cash from tourism didn't exactly play out well. First Space Minibus failed to catch up with Space Bus and will now have to wait for the next intercept directly to Solar Station One. A quick calculation says it'll happen within a year, I just hope they don't eat all the snacks. Secondly I had been too cheap when putting Solar Station One in orbit so it was way to close to the Kerbin system. So when Space Bus was closing in for intercept it was shifted of course by Minmus (it just had to worst possible spot in it's orbit ...). They too will now have to chase the next intercept, that too will happen within a year, I hope. But onwards and upwards! (and sometimes down again) 300 days to next Dres window and 500 to Duna window so the construction of the big and complex That Standup Guy and That Other Standup Guy continues. Together with the never-ending stream of rescue- and gawker-missions for funds and crew.

Is that something you would like to talk about during the next session?

Same here. With the exception that I most often have all 'in-system' (regardless of system) stop over at the relevant station to either re-fuel or drop off excess fuel. I don't use mining (yet) instead I have a standard un-manned tanker (called 'Progress', guess why) and a standard up-and-down craft (not called Soyus but Taxi ).

Solar Station One is in it's expected orbit, spare commsats still attached. It's awaiting Spacebus One for crew rotation and some gawkers (and a resupply of snacks). The latter is en-route but awaiting it's intercept burn in 16 days. So I lolled over to mission control and they waved a fat 5 gawker mission at me. With 4 of them wanting either Solar fly-by or orbit. Hmm, with a smaller version of the Spacebus (codename spaceMinibus) I could take those 4, launch and chase down the big bus on solar fly-by, swap gawkers so the fly-by ones could be returned and the orbit ones continued to the station. Well, minibus is launched, with a planned intercept with the it's bigger sibling in 10d. Leaving 6d for matching speed, docking and messing around, before bigbus must burn for Solar Station. Hopefully the timing will work, or there will be 4 gawkers in an awkward orbit for some time to come ... Luckily the contract allows me to let them roast for some years

One thing to keep in mind is that a piece of user-land software simply should not be able to do that. A system lock-up can almost always (note almost) be tracked to hardware or driver issues. So when an update to a normal program suddenly appears to do such things it's because it triggers something that is broken somewhere else in the system. As in heat issues, power supply issues, flaky memory or a driver bug.

Almost. It's calculated using "drag cubes", either implied by the shape but in some cases modified in the parts definition. So it's not only pure cross section, but also shape (as in pointy stuff generates less drag than blunt ones).

Later visualised by Erik Wernquist as Wanderers.

Well then we disagree on that point.

Well I don't agree. The contracts offered are based on what we (or I as technically the director) could do. My selections (as well of success, or lack there of) will adjust what contracts I'm offered. When I ignore stupid or boring contracts, while taking funny or worthwhile ones, the range of contracts change. Hitting 'reject' on a particularly stupid/boring contract I'll take a wee bit of hit on rep, but at the same time I'll get other and better/funnier contracts. It's a decent implementation of game design, and one that I don't have any issues with from an RP (as in my own story that I want to play) in-game view.

Well if I was HarvesteR I wouldn't have stayed on the forums, at least not visible, or at least not visible under that nick.

Well just as in RL, never accept a contract unless you know how to profit from it

I never bother about saving the crafts, only the crew (and given the fee to recruit a new kerbonaut, rescue missions are severely overpaid). And many has said. On reload the capsule was found below the surface, the game 'adjusted' the position of the part in question. Hilariously enough the kerbonaut was above the surface, so the pod was sent to the air, leaving it's inhabitant on a surprise EVA ...

Dmagic's "EVA Struts" and "EVA Transfer" provides both struts and pipes without the overhead of the whole KIS/KAS. But strutting a base/lander to the ground is a bit different :/

VR doesn't work unless the UI is designed for it. And If you try it in FSX then you realise the the UI isn't designed for it. Please mention one single game where VR works fantastically in games that wasn't designed for it. Don't get me wrong, VR will most likely be next big thing. But with software designed for VR, not bodged on afterwards.