J4CKAL2014

Completed my first manned mission to Jool yesterday after 2 day working in it. Lasted almost 23 years but all Kerbals returned safely don't have the heart to de-orbit the spacecraft that took them there, though

If it was, I would demand the same fuel efficiency

Well that's true, I normally try and take more fuel than I'm gonna need. And as for the overweighred orbiters, fair point. I was kinda frustrated that I haven't been able to make a serial-stage-only Mun/Minmus vehicle, but considering the amount of weight they have to get up there I suppose it isn't all that surprising. Guaranteed that people have managed it though, I probably just lack the engineering skill

Yeah that is true. That said, the XX is comprised of 4 engines, so the S-I has a lot more power per engine AND more of them

Now THAT is KSP dedication. Good job sir!

I think that, if the Kerbal system was scaled to the same size as our solar system, the stock rockets and fuel tank sizes wouldn't be sufficient for anything other than the simplest of orbital tasks. Even rocket engines like the Griffon XX - the biggest and most powerful rocket engine in the KW Rocketry mod has a thrust of 4,900 kN - has a thrust which is over 6 times less than that of the Saturn V's first stage, so you'd have to make gigantic rockets just to get stuff into orbit. Kerbin's universe seems to be well balanced when compared to the tech you have available. If the rockets available were more powerful (i.e. as powerful as stuff we have IRL) then sure, the Kerbin System would be ridiculously small.

Burrowing through the top of Jool's mid-lower atmosphere (the lowest I got was around 118,000m) doing almost 9,500m/s in a 65-tonne spacecraft with 5 Kerbals on board and the Deadly Reentry Continued mod installed, praying that I would lose enough delta V to slow myself into a Jool orbit and that Odyssey III would survive the areaobrake. Words cannot express how relieved I felt that I'd added a 6.25m inflatable heat shield to the nose of the craft "just in case" even so, was possibly the hairiest 5 minutes of my time in KSP (while this was technically not a "close call" - this wasn't an accident, it was in my flight plan - it was definitely very hair-raising!)

Running out of fuel as I was trying to correct an orbital error, not having enough delta V to correct it and ending up on a sub-orbital trajectnirory with no heat shield on the craft and Deadly Reentry Continued installed. Parachutes overheated and exploded on the descent through the atmosphere. Amazingly, the pod (this pod was the Taurus 3.75m pod, can hold 7 Kerbals, can highly recommend the mod) survived the descent. Its fitted with powerful booster rockets that give you about 3 seconds of power (presumably designed for ensuring a powered decoupling from a spacecraft when preparing for reentry), but I hadn't used them, so I waited until I was about to hit the water, fired the rockets and slowed my descent to about 10m/s, then fell into the ocean, hitting the water at about 20m/s. Crew survived

Was attempting to dock a manned craft with an observation station I had around the moon, set up a Hohmann transfer and went for time acceleration. Unfortunately, I hadn't realised that the orbit of my station was so low that my renedevous trajectory...sort of...went through the moon. Next thing I know, my ship is 6km above the moon coming in at 600m/s. Tried desperately to brake with the engines and sort of succeeded - only hit the Mun doing 400m/s! Command capsule exploded, as did the rest of the craft, and I thought Seanfred and Billy-Bobbrett were goners...until the command capsule magically reappeared intact flying away from the surface at around 420m/s about 2 seconds later! :@

Ah ok, well it was to be expected it sort of depends what 0.24 is like, I suppose

Agreed. I find rockets way easier to use. As for pricing, I would imagine that jets would be favoured, mainly from a logic standpoint. Chemical rocket engines employ jet technology + other stuff (as in: they normally use a combustion turbine to drive the pumps which mixes the fuel and oxidizer. I'm sure many people on here can explain it much better, I'm not an engineer!) So from that point of view, rockets + their fuel consumption will = more monies (which sucks for me cos I don't use jets much :/)

If you want marker lights, I think B9 Aerospace would be your best option right now (afaik that mod includes them)

Obviously it won't be long before the 0.24 update comes out and that may actually prove a problem for those of us with (lots of) mods: Are we gonna have to reinstall all of these mods which will hopefully be updated to be compatible with 0.24? (and its likely that quite a few won't be) I'm just asking because I didn't start installing mods until 0.23.5 so it would be interesting to hear what people who have been modding the game for longer have experienced with previous updates

I'd love to be able to just place flags wherever you want on the stuff you build in the VAB/hangar and alter the size. Editing would be nice for that too but maybe that's asking for too much. Only other small thing I can think of would be a cryogenic sleep module for Kerbals so I wouldn't feel guilty about having them stuck in a spacecraft for 6 years (although I did add a storage container and ladders so they wander around!)...and that's just to Duna and back!!

Yeah fair enough. My main point was that that sort of thing can't happen in a democracy cos of the way it's structured, so this is an advantage of an alternate system. As for the popularity test thing, you've hit the nail on the head much better than I did Anyway, it all sucks. Kerbin is far superior