EdFred

The assumption - or at least the one I made - is that after the monolith they discovered (were given?) the ability to develop tools. The monolith pushes us to the next step in our evolution. How? Who knows, but that's my take on it. No monolith - no dawn of man.

This is a common misconception - at least here in the US. Most of the airports do not have control towers, and most training - especially gliders - is done away from class B/C/D airspace. The rest of the post is pretty much spot on though - flying is something that takes a bit of maturity and dedication, and most anyone pursuing it isn't going to be reckless. Although that doesn't stop people with more money than brains in doing stupid pilot tricks.

My guess would be they are just too small for the mass. Try the Clampotron Sr?

This is incorrect. As I stated earlier, you have to be 16 to get your certificate (license) for gliders and balloons, 17 for all other categories of aircraft. You may solo at a younger age. 14CFR§61.103 Eligibility requirements: General. To be eligible for a private pilot certificate, a person must: (a) Be at least 17 years of age for a rating in other than a glider or balloon. ( Be at least 16 years of age for a rating in a glider or balloon. 14CFR§61.83 Eligibility requirements for student pilots. To be eligible for a student pilot certificate, an applicant must: (a) Be at least 16 years of age for other than the operation of a glider or balloon. ( Be at least 14 years of age for the operation of a glider or balloon.

Hey, I showered............this week, I think. I also don't think there is any cheating in KSP - unless it's going against the rules set forth over in the challenge section.

In the US the age to drive varies from state to state - some as early as 14 with certain restrictions. Some states also have levels of licenses until you are a certain age, or have a certain requirements until you get a full license. In aviation you can be 14 years old and solo a glider or a balloon - and 16 when you get your private pilot certificate. For all other aircraft you can solo at 16, and get your private pilot certificate at 17. There is also no specific time requirement for student solo flight in a glider or balloon - or even powered aircraft. If the instructor (I am a flight instructor) feels you are ready after only 5 hours of training, then you could fly solo with only that amount of time. Sometimes it may take 20 or 30 hours before I feel a student is ready to fly solo. Minimum time for a private certificate is higher (minimum of 40 hours - 35 if done through a certain training program).

If KER is 'cheating' then a spreadsheet is 'cheating.' After all KER is just a built in spreadsheet - at least for the VAB.

As stated earlier, they are caused/generated by ignorance or lack of education. That's not a flaw, that's just not gathering enough knowledge.

If the human brain had a complete inability to avoid logical fallacies, no one would have been able to define and describe logical fallacies. And since we have identified and defined them...

I have KAC, KER, and MJ. KER is pretty much a must have for building. I'm not going to sit down with pencil and paper and do all the math to figure out TWR and dV. You guys who do that, are just using pencil and paper right? I mean, a calculator would be cheating, wouldn't it? KAC, yeah, I can build a node with 0dV and then warp manually to it, but why? I mostly use it for this. MJ, when I have a 20 minute burn (or more), I really don't want to baby sit a ship just to make sure it doesn't drift off course while I go make dinner, or play with the dog, or get a bowl of ice cream....mmmmm, ice cream.....

Keep in mind that the above posts are only true when you have no movement. When you touch down, there will always be some movement - especially with slopes. If you cut your engines when the higher legs touch, there will be some rotation as the lower legs settle - and this assumes you have 0 horizontal movement when touching down. And if you keep a little bit of thrust in as you set down the lower legs, that thrust will translate into horizontal movement - and then rotational as well. So what looks workable in the VAB my not be workable in action. Calculating it isn't that hard if you know your horizontal vector, COM, and frictional coefficient of the surface.

I'm late to the party on this thread, but since it's about 2001 I figure I'm coming in somewhere on the trip to Jupiter, but here's how I sum up 2001: Opening scene: probably one of my favorite scenes from any movie ever. The next 90ish minutes, you don't even have to watch the movie - you miss nothing until HAL starts losing it. Go do yard work, take a nap, play with the kids. Whoa, I found LSD! OK, the LSD wore off... Whoa, giant orbiting fetus!!!! I guess the LSD didn't wear off. That movie could be gutted down to an hour and it would lose absolutely nothing. Drama? What drama? Suspense? Not really. Most of the movie seemed more like dabbling in special effects. Hey, check this out, we can make it look like a pen is floating, should we put it in the movie? Of course we should put it in the movie! If we're going back to 1968 movies, I will take Planet of the Apes every day, all day, and on my death bed over 2001: A Steaming Pile. If not for the opening scene, and HAL I would probably put it as the absolute worst "big" movie ever.

Deorbit from Gilly, and use a powered gravity assist from an Eve Periapsis of 95km or so?

Lots of cursing. I was unaware that you had to turn SAS *on* to get the rocket to 'listen'

True, but this was asked by someone who "inexplicably doesn't get it." I'm a flight instructor, and I don't teach my students shortcuts until they know why things work. That's a recipe for disaster. Now, in KSP no one is going to die - well no one organic - if you use shortcuts, but I guess I just fall back on making sure people have a grasp of the basics, before saying "hey you can do it this way instead" with pretty much everything.

Videos are easier to follow than text and diagrams. You can always make a Scott Manley is wrong video - if you dare. I still do rendezvous the Manley way - and I don't even use RCS anymore. The amount of fuel used is miniscule, there's really no *need* to combine the two.

This is all one needs to know. Follow his instructions EXACTLY, and it all becomes easy. It doesn't matter if you are in orbit around Kerbin, Kerbol, Jool, Minmus, anywhere....it works. Watch it like 3-4 times, and your rendezvous problems should be over.

I can never get under 3kdV for my orbital burn to Moho.

I was going to start a similar thread, but, I'm actually landing and coming back. What I've found is it is nearly impossible to get an encounter with a single burn from Kerbin using Kerbal Alarm Clock or MechJeb. So, what I've found the lowest dV to be for me is wait until Kerbin's orbital plane and Moho's orbital plane intersect to do the transfer burn. I can get plane alignment (within 25-50dV) on my ejection burn and put my periapsis to run tangent to Moho's orbit. When I reach my periapsis around the sun, I bring the apoapsis down a bit inside of Eve's orbit and and wait to get a close approach, I burn at the apoapsis to get an encounter, and then do a bi-elliptical circularization around Moho. Returning to Kerbin always seems easier, for some reason.

Absolutely. Rep'd.

What I would like to see is the option to choose Sandbox, Career the way it currently is, and Career with contracts/funds.

Yes to the green, and you can return to Kerbin in the lander, or the mother ship. I returned in my lander. No to the red.

What I did with your craft was aerobrake a couple times, but still keeping a fairly eccentric orbit and then decoupled the orbiter from the lander. Keeping the apoapsis relatively high, it takes very little to move the periapsis for either craft. Maybe 5dV to move the periapsis to 100km on the orbiter, and less than 5dV to tweak the landing spot. Turn landing guidance and predicted landings on with MechJeb, tweak at apoapsis and wait till the final 1000m to deploy chutes. (Don't enable the autoland though). Circularize the orbiter on its own with another aerobrake after the landing using the landing guidance. You can circularize for less than 50dV.

Well done. I didn't think it was going to make it. You could have went even lighter. I downloaded your craft file and still had around 1/2 tanks in the ones that jettison on the Eve descent. (I only intercepted Eve, and didn't make a plane adjustment.)

No. I still get science, and my tech tree is complete. What does your persistence file say on the TITLE=