Vortex421

Everyone gives weather forecasters grief when they mess up a forecast, but a lot of forecasters use computer modeling of the atmosphere. You have to make certain assumptions about how the atmosphere works at a small level, because the amount of computing power increases exponentially as you get more granular in detail. (Former meteorology student here. )

Carrying on from here: Science Station "Minmus One" is now in a (relatively) stable orbit over Minmus. The station has some fuel on board to refuel ships and landers and the science lab is fully staffed and ready to go. Unfortunately, the lander/courier ship that I launched was based on an old combination design akin to the Apollo mission... except that the command module had no engine to begin with, which meant that it wasn't going to work. The lander module went down and back, but I realized I had not equipped it with all the necessary instruments, or lights for that matter. Landing on the dark side of Minmus was a very interesting challenge. The lander ran out of RCS while on final docking. Incredibly, I managed to use the main engine to dock up. Following all of the above points I went back and redesigned the lander/courier combination. The lander now has more RCS fuel and lights and a few other things and the courier now has an actual engine. Upon loading the game just now, the command module on the station went flying into space... o.O Structural failure somehow, yet I left it last night perfectly fine. Not sure what's happened but now I need to start designing a clean-up and rescue mission it seems...

Now that I've refined my launcher and lander techniques and designs a bit, I'm working on creating a science station over Minmus from which science projects can be sent up from the surface, cleaned by the lab, and sent back. All the data is stored in a courier ship that makes a run back and forth from Kerbal. If this design works properly, I can use it to prepare similar expeditions to the further reaches of the known solar system. (I also have to do some lander design work... it's taking time because I'm in career mode)

I suggest reading the "Honor Harrington" series by David Weber and most of Ben Bova's books. The earlier Harrington books do a very good job of describing just how combat in space could look in the future - velocity, turnover, etc. are all important and the weaponry used is either missiles with payloads of nukes/explosives/laser systems or railguns. There is also the issue of communications lag. Ben Bova, especially in the Asteroid Wars series, does another good job of painting both what this sort of warfare might look like as well as give an interesting scenario for just such a setting - several nations with tensions amongst each other.