Brainlord Mesomorph

Thanks for all the ideas guys, an SSTO Rocket Tanker sounds very interesting. Would save me a lot of money. interesting design challenge, too. Spaceplane tankers haven't worked for me because of the stock soup-o-sphere. Using multistage rockets though it looks like what accountants call "a wash" it costs basically the same no matter how you do it. (your lifting the same amount of rocket and the same amount of fuel either way) Off to the VAB!

oh, THAT explains it.

LOL I have more than enough opportunities for docking. My question is purely economic. infrastructure for refueling: My experience is that Orbital Gas Stations were a waste of money (all the fuel wasted trying to dock huge amounts of fuel). I do better with single use Fuel Tenders that go up, refuel a ship or two and then are deorbited and recovered. I tried a fuel-carrying spaceplane, It always burned more than half the fuel before it got there. (and took forever!) - - - Updated - - - I have both. The one in question is an overbuilt lander. But would wings mattter? SSTO is SSTO.

I have a vehicle that is fully capable of SSTO Kerbin. But of course, it uses all of its fuel to get there. And that’s not its mission. Its mission is interplanetary, and it must leave LKO fully fueled. So the question becomes what is cheaper: launching the vehicle under its own power and refueling in orbit? Or putting it on the top of a rocket, and hauling it to orbit fully fueled? I can see advantages both ways. It seems to me there should be an “economy of scale†for delivering large amounts of fuel to orbit and refueling several ships. On the other hand, given rocket staging, is might be cheaper to send several smaller payloads. Anyone have any insight? Any opinions? Anyone with any actual math? As always, AHA , TIA Brainlord

I will just Alt-F4 out of the game if something goes horribly wrong and I don't have a quicksave, and I don't want autosave to go off.

I go out of my way to ensure my Kerbals don't die. Like revert or reload. But I also like to own my mistakes. I love the Apollo 13 moments in this game. So I've killed a couple. but mostly I just get them stranded someplace (like in a spacesuit in Duna orbit for a year and a half) A third of the ships I deploy have "Rescue" in their name. Edit: Notice all the rescue plus marks in my ribbons. (also just launched a rescue mission to Moho. Bob's been working on his tan there for two years.)

I'm a coder for living, play games at night, and I often drift off to sleep thinking about some KSP design problem. Dreams often involve a combination database and spacecraft engineering in equal parts. The other night I recall, I had to hurry up and finish a spaceship for one of my clients! (yes as some said that's when KSP has you.)

Test and revert several times during construction. Then I pay for a full test flight, to LKO or the Moons if its a Lander. Edit: usually the one I pay for starts out a another test and revert, but it goes well and I decide to save that one. The Mun is littered with Landers and Rovers that didn't work, and flags showing where the rescue ships landed. I'm able to deorbit and recover most of my failures from LKO.

IMHO: combining FAR (or NEAR) and Real Solar System and a career game, would (should) give you exactly the same problems that Warner Von Braun actually had. And as you get closer to "simulation" and farther from "game" fun decreases. I do plan to eventually try that. I expect it to be challenging maybe not fun. Sims are good, they teach you things, but are less fun than games. again IMHO. edit: Also by "a real solar system" I didn't mean the Real Solar System mod, I meant a (hypothetical) N-Body simulator, that would surely crash your PC, and be no fun)

Fiction! AND I don't care! I’d been meaning to start a post, It’s an absolutely adorable kid-sized solar system! From the moons of Jool, you can see each and every one of the other moons of Jool. (can’t happen but is sooo cute!) and as has already been mentioned, the sun is too small, densities are all to high, orbits and alignments are all too perfect. But none of that matters! Because it is by far both the funnest, and (separately) the most educational game I ever played! EDIT: and of course a real solar system would both (A) crash your computer worse than KSP does now, and ( be no fun at all as we would all just be unable to solve all the exact same problems NASA, and Elon Musk, are currently unable to solve.

I've worked on this. I think it could be done, but you would need something on the scale of a Saturn V with wings. Balloon launch would also work (if stock had balloons) I think Jool Low Atmosphere Sample Return SHOULD be a challenge!

Spaceship one and White Knight

I use "dollars" (weird I know)

yes but I can read it.

LOL! I actually started to read that damn thing!

Oh, That's why they keep disappearing on me.

Normally I play career mode, but I launched sandbox mode to test something, and as I’m time warping to get to a particular launch window, I noticed one of those NKOs swing ridiculously close to Kerbin. I noted the date. My question is, now that the date is approaching in my career game, is that same NKO going to do the same thing again? Or are those unknown objects random from game to game? (obviously planets aren't random or those online launch window calculators wouldn't work)

I had a bug when .25 first came out. I cut a orbit insertion burn and looked at the map and my orbit was changing! I checked, all engines were off but I was still getting delta V from something or somewhere. ruined the orbit. had to quit out and reboot. never happened again.

I have 7,500,000! (going to spend it all sending a huge fleet to Jool!)

Yes, but reusable, and multipurpose saves money. It costs about half a million funds to build and loft a large interplanetary craft. After the 1st flight, I can send up a fresh crew and more fuel for 20,000. You don't build a new car every time you go out for coffee.

Big and futuristic. (as much as I can in stock) I try for 100% reusable, and multipurpose (which ends up being heavy and overbuilt.)

Seconds??!! My god, how long a number is that? Undoubtedly true to the game engine. A format converter could be written. Not a bad idea. But I was just looking for a simple date. A way to organize my departure schedule. I really don't think I'll be able to wrap my head around the difference between 10 billion and 12 trillion seconds. Maybe in my next build. Thanks

You're playing KSP for 1000 years?! (Interstellar mod?) True, it only works for the 1st Millennium. EDIT: you COULD use a 4 digit year. Then it fails in 10,000 years!

I have KSP in Steam and it forced the 0.25 update on me by itself. (a minor inconvenience) But I'm starting a huge mission, and I really don't want it force the new beta on me until I'm done. (and I wrap up this game) Anyone know how to keep Steam from doing that?

Been working in excel, (and access) and I needed a usable KSP date that could be sorted by the computer. So I did this: y001d102 (year 1 day 102) y005d008 (year 5 day 8) y098d012 (year 98 day 12) as long as you make each part a 3 digit number (use leading zeros) it works. Just thought I'd share. EDIT: fixed the year part,