Oafman

Zylark, in your Mun station, what mod gives you the 3.75m cylindrical habitat part which you have attached to the NF command pod? tks

I use a Kensington ValuKeyboard Black (which I stole from work) and an Ativa AT-2134 Optical Mouse, featuring their exclusive unergonomic design, and unpredictable scroll wheel. I am a pro.

Its small size is a key factor. Full length rockets strapped to the back of spaceplanes look ugly; aerospikes look great.

Yes, reaching a lower orbit will save you fuel, but probably not all that much. If you're able to get the lander into a very low orbit with the fuel you have, then lowering the station's orbit might work. But if you can't even get the lander into any sort of orbit, then it doesn't matter where the station is, you won't be able to reach it, so you'll need to get an upgraded lander out there.

Like your teachers no doubt used to tell you, you're only cheating yourself.... Seriously, the game is more fun when you have missions that fail. Because then, those which succeed mean more to you. And also, you get to do fun rescue missions etc. The debug menu is useful for testing stuff or building silly things, but you'll enjoy the game more if you are disciplined about never using it for your saved games.

I had a go at this last night, without great results. First off, I had fullscreen issues. But they were easily fixed, by displaying only on external monitor. Next I started getting graphics crashes, when the external display fails briefly. I get these anyway from time to time, but it was every minute or two with OpenGL. I'm sure this is all because I have a terrible graphics card, and I read someone in this thread mention that OpenGL will not sit well with poor GPUs. Then I looked at the RAM. I use plenty of mods, and also ATM, and KSP normally runs at about 3GB. But the processes tab was showing that KSP was using only 1.5GB. Pretty impressive, and in line with what people have been saying in this thread. But then I clicked on the usage graph in task manager, and it was showing overall RAM usage of 4.5GB. I play KSP with nothing else running, so really it's just the OS using RAM. Overall I normally run at 4.5-5.0GB, the lion's share of which is KSP. There was nothing else open, or listed in processes, which could account for the 3GB not being used by the game - assuming the processes were giving me an accurate number. So basically, I was being told 2 completely different things by task manager. So I wasn't sure I was saving any RAM. And with the graphics issues, I was soon back to ksp.exe as usual. Still, good to know about this, and I'm glad it works for those with half decent graphics cards.

Just....can't.....resist....clicking.....infinite.....fuel........

You might not have unlocked decouplers yet. I can't remember which part of the science tree they're in, but you don't get them immediately. People have come up with some clever ways to simulate the effect of decouplers with starting parts, but if you're new to the game, then I would recommend you just get what science you can without building multi-stage ships, then unlock the decouplers and go for the Mun!

Such a great mod. I can now play KSP with the curtains open! And adding lights to ships never helped my part count; it's great to no longer need them.

Use a claw and time warp. Never fails

Right click on the decoupler and decouple. The previous stage will fall away and the next stage will activate.

Phenomenal

Also, for those who want to copy the show's architecture closely, I found this page which has images and descriptions of Pegasus and the various landers: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/spaceodyssey/pegasus.shtml You don't get to see them as clearly as you might want in the show, so these images and descriptions give a much better idea of what you need to copy than you get simply from watching it.

Was this always the case? I did this challenge a few months back, but just haven't got around to sorting through all the images yet. I read through the rules before that and don't remember seeing that these struts were prohibited (I went on to use loads!). But I could have easily missed it. Anyway, nvm, because I'm working on a much less strutty alternative... Well, we are on page 180, so most clever things have already been done. One of the downsides of running a popular challenge

As has been said, if something is too easy, you have plenty of options for making it harder. For example; build a 5m diameter spaceplane which can insert 3.75m station components into LKO

This show lends itself well to KSP imitation, because their mission is quite kerbal, being a grand tour with plenty of reckless risk taking along the way. For anyone who has not seen this, both 1 hour episodes are on youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rQIKhWlGH8 It's a bit over-dramatic at times, and sometimes feels a little out of date, although it is only 10 years old. But, it's good fun, and in terms of scientific accuracy, way better than most dramas or movies. So I think this is an excellent idea for an architecture challenge. The scoring looks good, my only very slight concern is that the scoring incentivises doing things differently from the show, losing points for refueling tankers in orbits around destination planets, and also for the Jool Aerobrake (quite a significant moment during their tour). But I get that these things make the mission easier, so should reflect negatively on the points total. One idea for an addition; perhaps extra points for life support mods? This being such a long mission, life support adds plenty of difficulty. So, after a fun few fours in the VAB, the ISV Pegasus is in LKO, awaiting crew for its epic voyage. The plan is to go for max points, though I may have to aerobrake at Jool if my low solar gravity assist causes me to hit the Joolian system at stupid speeds. We'll see. And I might end up having to send a fuel tanker or two out. Regardless, this is likely to take me ages, so don't expect an imminent report....

Danny has some fun with bouncy intakes on Youtube

The navball takes into account what direction your ship is pointing in, not your engines. And you can change this by having a probe core pointing 'backwards' and selecting 'Control from here' on that probe. If your ship is already in flight and you don't have such a probe core, then you can't really use maneuver nodes. But if you know you need to accelerate prograde, then you can just point retrograde and burn, and you'll go in the right direction.

Cubic octagonal struts?

I did that, and it ended up being 2000t in LKO before departure. It could have been way more efficient, but that would not be the kerbal way. I'll put up some pics when I get around to sorting through them.

Just use the field. You also get a free bit of acceleration from the slope off the runway

Landing on water is extremely difficult, but grass is possible. Try to unsure your vertical speed is low (ie you're not dropping too fast) as you get close to the ground. Then 'flare' the plane, by pulling up the nose; this will slow you down, and allow your rear landing gear to touch the ground first. When this happens you'll slow down quickly, and your nose will drop forward so your forward landing gear also touches the ground. Then you can tap the brake key to bring yourself to a halt. 100m/s is fine for airspeed just before you land. Your flare maneuver will reduce that a little, then the friction between your wheels and the ground will quickly slow you down. Just practice this a few times, and it will become second nature.

Still no takers? I still don't know whether or not this challenge was serious. Kerbal Hiking Program is unlikely to take off....

As has been said, plenty of well-positioned control surfaces will fix your issue. Make sure you right click on them (in the SPH or on the runway, but SPH is easier as it duplicates for symmetry) and select which things you want each one to control. So, a vertical control surface attached to a tailfin (a rudder) should only control yaw, not pitch or roll. While elevons on the back of your wings should be set to control pitch and roll, but not yaw. Setting this up correctly makes such a big difference to how your plane handles. And yeah, roll then pull up to turn, don't try to turn far by yawing.

Efficiency is anathema to Kerbal philosophy. Shame on any of you who strive for it.