corvustech

I think Minmus is probably the most responsible for my early-to-mid-game hilarious landing fails. Mun just pulverizes you, but Minmus goes all bounce-house-covered-in-oil.

Last night, I added a few parts mods. No godmoding, just a few aesthetics and realistic items. I also added Chatter (how did I live without it?) and one I'd forgotten about; TweakScale. TweakScale, I quickly discovered, now fixed a problem I was having where I had picked exactly the wrong tree options to continue to get enough science to operate comfortably within Kerbin's SOI. Scaling tanks up to fit a Rockmax adapter's big end and scaling the Swivel engine to fit, with a pod on top, managed to get into a suborbital-T enough to do a little testing. I'm going to take some gear out to the runway and figure up some factor-testing though; I'm concerned that the ability to scale engines may make scaled small engines more useful to me than unlocking larger ones if the output isn't competitive.

For me, it was probably my most horrifying KSP experience. Truly creepy. An asteroid of decent size was entering Kerbin's SOI and was traveling at a speed similar to Kerbin's relative to the sun. This meant it was only entering the SOI, but I would have significant margin for error on the intercept, as it'd be in town for a little while. Science had just been introduced, and I had a KLAW-equipped tri-engine vessel already at 200/200 around Kerbin. I couldn't ask for a better opportunity to capture my first asteroid than this. The crew in this case were three "hired" Kerbals. All white spacesuit types. The pros were on Minmus and couldn't be bothered. With KAS parts in the cans and plenty of fuel I started my approach. It wasn't long before the Trident vessel had a visual on the asteroid. I was excited. Thrilled, even. Then, there was darkness. I sat in darkness for a bit, unable to help the crew of this little ship. I wondered, as it was silent and all I could see was a navball that wasn't doing anything, what had occurred. Eventually I had to Alt-F4 to quit. I reloaded the game, and simply used Resume, but I did not end up where my manual quicksave had left me. Naturally, I went to mission control and found that the ship was quite close to the asteroid, and so I switched to it. Terror. Three little terrified faces with red lighting because of the suddenly depleted electricity, but rotating in light from the sun through the windows. Other than that, my view was black and I watched as the altitude descended from 999999999 to -1111111 and lower. At -7777777 I tried to Alt-F$ and reload the save again. The wiki said the Hell Kraken only struck EVA'ing Kerbals! How was this happening?!?!! When I reloaded, the asteroid was gone. So was the ship. And the crew. That Asteroid....was a Kraken Egg. Three brave Kerbals died so that the rest of Kerbin, apparently, could live.

Lately? Every single early game attempt to reach orbit that succeeds. The last of the fuel always goes while burning retrograde just enough for re-entry. A long while back, it was on Mun. I was running Kethane and Karbonite at the same time to see which was superior. Unfortunately, my Karbonite unit was consuming more power than it could store doing the fuel conversions, so I sent a satellite that wasn't much more than an OCTO with RCS glued on between an array of solar panels and a docking port on the top and bottom. I misjudged Mun's gravity and ended up floating it like a hovercraft, less than 100m from the ground, across a quarter of the Kerbinward face of Mun to reach the Karbonite unit. After what felt like hours of maneuvering with RCS trying to line up the final docking approach I ran out of monoprop...and landed on the top of the Karbonite mining drone just right to dock with it.

The graphics card (HD4000) is actually a component of the processor itself in this case. It does support Shader Model 3.0 which is the bare minimum. It's going to take a processor core and 512MB of your 3GB of RAM to function as a video card. That really means you'll have 2.5GB of usable RAM in the machine and the minimum spec is 3GB. Expect long load times and unplayable lag, especially since the next patch has some graphical improvements. If you can upgrade the RAM first, that could be a game changer for you in the literal sense.

Service Bays and Cargo Bays as ways to safely re-enter Kerbin with Kerbals that need rescue from orbit Space Elevators (Gilly doesn't count) Landing on Jool

Intel Core i5 3230M 2.6 GHz (3 MB Cache) 6 GB DDR3 1000 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive 15.6-Inch Screen Intel HD 4000 Graphics <------ Here's your big red flag. Windows 8, 5-hour battery life ATI or nVidia. Intel graphics = you french fried when you should have pizza'd, and you're gonna have a bad time. This is true of any 2.5D (i.e. not sprites) game.

My question is, when you screw up, can they still be counted as debris? I remember having creepy little uncontrollable dead-but-not-dead Kerbals on Mun after a fall off of a rover....

Select the crew from Kerbals whose last mission ended horribly, but they surivived. Crew of three that crashed on Mun and wrecked all the science modules, then needed rescue? Eve Prison Planet for you, failures! Glory to the Kerbin Empire!

Thanks everyone. I haven't gone into the visuals mods yet, but I've got the USI suite and KAS/KIS and SCANsat all back to life. I've discovered flying aircraft is actually *easier* than it used to be, but rocketeering takes a good bit more work. "Moar Boosters" isn't always functional anymore, either. I had one design which kept burning up in the atmosphere trying to leave, going beyond the temp threshold for the Mk1 pod. I ended up fixing this by adding weight, using two adapters and one of the mid-size gray fuel tanks in place of the smaller tanks you get in the early game. Easily the first time I found it easier to get a ship up to orbit because I added weight, much less that weight being fuel.

I'm not sure if you did it, but back when Ion Engines were first brought out, I successfully made a TIE out of stock parts that actually used twin ion engines. It got up to a decent clip in deep space, but was the definition of "short range fighter". It was also a case study in how the series is total nonsense when it comes to trying to land on those wings.... Today, I got my first 1.0.x aircraft to take off, fly to the abandoned airfield, and land without turning the pilot into soylent green (it's made of Kerbals). This is a particularly big accomplishment, as it's also the first aircraft I've ever gotten to land on that airfield without parachutes. Or violence. I also perfected my early-game three-stage Kerbin Tourism Board-approved orbital shuttle. Granted, absolutely no snacks on board, but those little 1%'ers that want to go into orbit don't need more than a few minutes up there anyway. I can get them there and back reliably for under the price of the respective contracts, so I shamelessly saved myself from bankruptcy by going Space-X. My next goal is setting up Karbonite and other material mining and refining within KAS-fuelpipe range of the launchpad, to see if I can eliminate my dependency on OPEK (Organization of Petroleum Exchanging Kerbals) and their inflated prices. .

The other day I suddenly missed my days as a kerbonaut in beta. I decided it was time to return to Kerbin and see what had changed since things went live. Naturally, I did my usual. I installed all the USI mods and KAS and KAC and scansat and kicked off a new career. For fun, I didn't ready any patch notes. Since like, 0.8. First I noticed karbonite and KAS parts not where I thought they'd be. Maybe they unlock later. Wait...Val? There is a woman as crazy and suicidal as Jeb? Nice! Taking a screen shot using F12 I discovered simultaneously that aerodynamics now matter and that they can be tracked. This explained quickly why my usual early game orbiter barely broke atmosphere. I thought this was fine until Jeb discovered that those pretty re entry flames actually have meaning now. I checked tutorials after this. I used to be to Mun in a couple of launches and now I'm several flights in and still not orbiting. The tutorials I found seem out of date or insufficient. Any recommendations on mods and all of these physics surprises?

Today I learned that if you put a Station Science Cyclotron on top of a stack style rocket, you will not go to space.

Personally, I use them for mission hubs. A good station makes it easy to send a lander to and from a moon or planet, especially near low grav locations like Minumus. A space station is basically a starship without high-thrust propulsion (though RCS is nearly required due to docking spin). It's much less expensive to send a ship with fuel to use a lander that you've already got docked in space, than send a lander (and therefore need to use more fuel) with each flight. They also function as science stations; use up your science Jrs and goo cans, then fly to the station, get them refined and transmitted from the lab, then reset the experiments and go get more science. Finally, a ship or station permanently in orbit makes it much easier to complete Kerbal rescue missions. That's all just stock. If you use resources, Interstellar Lite, or Station Science mods then colonization of space has a purpose.

I think you just uncovered the origin of the Kraken(s). "Your rocket exists because we allow it, and it will end because we demand it."

I got Jeb to Minmus with so much extra fuel that I was able to descend entirely on the travel stage and use the lander's generous fuel (it was made for the Mun) to hop between Biomes for SCIENCE! I also experimented with using the high-thrust Karbonite engine I recently unlocked as a launch stage, but it burns through fuel at an unbelievable rate.

...you get that all-important money-printing science-gathering satellite into space, only to realize you forgot the solar panels. ...the white noise from a long burn late at night makes you fall asleep...so you wake up in deep, deep space with no fuel. ...you shrink down the text size of your browser to an almost unreadable scale just so your co-workers don't see you're posting on KSP forums ...you launch a solar orbit probe and discover only after you circularize that you forgot antennae.

After having my space program entirely reset by what I now call the Glue Kraken (nothing undocks again, EVER) I added more mods. B9 Aerospace had to be cut, sadly, as when installed alongside Interstellar Lite or Karbonite I started getting a memory leak with that mod installed. My new goal in the short term? Blow through getting someone on the moon and back and all the other startup missions. Jeb took a quick hop up to space to grab some science and unlock contracts (I got tired of using RT-10s as decouplers) and his reward was to get an orbiter with some style. It's a pity KerbPaint is an incomplete project. Protip Squad: Add a colorable alpha to the models. Does this ship oddly make anyone else remember Wing Commander fondly? After this flight, a few satellites were tossed up for SCIENCE! as well as getting some early-game ore, Karb, and kethane scanning started in Kerbin's SoI. By the time I unlock drills I should know where to drill. With that done, I set out to do something I've never done before: Get Jeb to the Mun without stranding him on it on the first try. I know for a Mun trip this might be slightly overkill, but I was also experimenting with that middle stage as a small mid-stage lifter and I was making sure I had more than enough fuel to get there and back. I always run out of gas on the Mun trying not to faceplant into it. I actually nailed the flight and next thing I know I've got a fantastic landing spot right next to a crater and on the day side of the Mun to boot! Jeb got a nice view over the nearby crater. So far, no problems, which means they were overdue. True to form, the problem that arose jeopardized the entire idea of the mission: this landing point is at the precise location Not Facing Kerbin N x Not Facing Kerbin E. This is known as "limbo" on a tidally locked mess like the Mun. It took all of my remaining fuel to reach Kerbin's orbit, and much of my RCS fuel used as emergency thrust to reach Kerbin. Fortunately, this worked, and for the first time, Jeb was both the first one to the Mun AND the first one back!

Today i had to reinstall altogether, which means tonight its installing one mod at a time until i find what killed the universe.

Failed to rescue Jeb from Mun. Since it was a start over game Anyway, I've downloaded Interstellar, EPL, updated Kethane and Karbonite, infernal robotics, and painter to a usb stick to add and try tonight.

A probe with monoprop,rcs, and small LiF thrusters can do it if you can reach the port. If not you may have to klaw it.

Since my KSP decided that docking needed to stop working forever in one Career, I started another one. Experience helps. This guy nailed all of the initial contracts in one flight, then used the last of the fuel to de-orbit: Then followed it with a successful Munar "landing" on the next ship, thanks to the Science! (i.e. the newbie-style "I stranded Jeb on the Mun" style lander):

Today, I had to abandon days and days of gameplay and start my career mode over because mysteriously, all of my space stations, ships, and new constructions failed to obey the undock command. ON ALL OF MY SAVES. I nominate this to be the Glue Kraken.

What started as a maintenance day ended in white-knuckled piloting over the Mun and laughable tragedy snatched from the jaws of unprecedented (for me) victory. In my Career game, Kethane(K) and Karbonite(KA) are having a "format war" and Karbonite scored some clear victories. After seeing how Munar gravity presented trouble for the extremely heavy prototype mining barge for Kethane, the even heavier Karbonite barge headed over to my Minmus station, docked, and refueled. Here we see Jeb clearing the debris of the now spent fuel tank. Ho Hum. The KA barge then successfully landed and started siphoning up the Karbonite. With a full load of 8900 KA, four LV-Ns were very slow to lift the barge back to orbit, even in vacuum! Meanwhile, on the Mun... It doesn't take long to see what's wrong with this picture: While much smaller than the KA barge, the K barge doesn't have enough fuel to meet up with the orbital refinery. On the (moronic) assumption that K can transfer like Monoprop (KA can), I came up with a bold plan. I would send a probe with a processing module attached and *MAKE* fuel. This would mean docking with the top of an imbalanced lander in Munar gravity, requiring a precision de-orbit and a lot of RCS. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED. Hold the jokes on this ship's appearance until you hear the extra funny bit; the batteries were running out. The panels were on the probe itself. I blew the fairings off and resolved both issues. Arrival to Mun from there was uneventful and I had the fuel to get into a prime position; I got an orbital drop window and was in a perfect spot to attempt the insane. I ran out of the tiny bit of fuel on the probe 2km from the target and had to do the rest drone-style with RCS only. The photos speak for themselves. NAILED IT!....then I discovered the K needed fuel lines to reach the fuel tanks. Worse, after tearing off solar panels and moving my KAS pipes to try to rectify it, I discovered it won't use KAS pipes. With a fortune in Kethane and no way to get it to orbit, the krew of the Replete must wait until I come up with a better idea than to call them a munar colony and be done with it.

LV-N fairings on a triple stack adapter. I got one jammed on staging in orbit, locking a gimbal and causing turning on thrust. I fixed it by slamming a Kerbal into it over and over. Also, separatrons on command modules make for winning escape pods .