Wanderfound

Awesome. You might enjoy some of these pics from a trip I took a few years ago: http://sailsofglory.org/album.php?albumid=247

Get yourself the RCS Build Aid mod. It's immensely helpful when designing aircraft. As well as making it simple to balance RCS (especially if you use linear thrusters instead of the four-way blocks), it also allows you to view fuelled vs unfuelled CoM at the same time and measure any torque induced by off-centre engine thrust.

* Click the resources tab in top right of screen; along with fuel and oxidiser, there's an entry for intake air. A bit of experimenting will let you work out how close you can run it to the edge. * Install a flight info mod like Kerbal Flight Data or Mechjeb. These can give you "air available" and "air required" figures. * Build with an odd number of engines, and when you're getting into flameout territory shut down everything except for the central engine. No more asymmetric flameouts.

I.T. to me is about as interesting as a spanner. Yes, it's a useful tool, and I'm very glad that they exist, but I have zero interest in learning the minutia of their internal workings. I spent way too much time in the past fighting with dodgy homebrew videocap and motion tracking software back in the rat labs. I can fiddle around with computers and get them to do what I want most of the time, but it's about as much fun as washing the dishes. I'm a bioscience guy; I like my complicated stuff to be wet and squishy.

Major weirdness: I've got a vertical-lift SSTO (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1374206&viewfull=1#post1374206) that I designed a few weeks ago. At the time I designed it, I had Hot Rockets installed (and FAR, so Ferram's engine nerf is in play). It launched just fine on air-breathers alone. Yesterday, I got sick of constant computer crashes, so I completely scrubbed KSP from my computer and reinstalled from scratch. Initially, I had FAR reinstalled, but not Hot Rockets. When I tried to take the SSTO for a spin, I found that it was no longer able to get off the ground without turning the oxidiser on. But when I reinstalled Hot Rockets, the SSTO went back to easy air-breathing liftoffs like it had been before. Is there some known interaction between Hot Rockets and FAR? My first suspicion was that HR was somehow reversing the the FAR nerf, but the kN thrust values look the same with or without HR. Any clues? Is it at all plausible for HR to be doing this? And if so, which version of the spacecraft is the "correct" one?

(quick search) Hmmn, seems like you're right. "Sol" is just Latin for "Sun"; hence "solar". It looks like the astro folks have shifted away from Latin faster than the biosciences crew. Where you will still see it used in the literature is as a term for a Martian day. See http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?as_q=mars+sol&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=any&as_sauthors=-sol&as_publication=&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5

Has anyone else had a play with the Porklifter yet? Ever since I scrubbed and reinstalled my game, it's been unable to get off the ground without switching the RAPIERs to closed cycle. It was never the quickest thing immediately off the pad, and you did have to let the engines spool up for ten seconds or so before releasing the launch clamps, but it did fly. I'm not sure if this means that something is wrong now, or that something was wrong before. Using FAR, of course. EDIT: after installing Hot Rockets (which I'd had pre-scrub, but hadn't reinstalled yet), it's back to launching easily. The kN values look the same either way, though. Weird. Still not sure which is the "correct" version.

Nope, 32. But it's a beaten-up old laptop that was never intended as a gaming machine, and I'm an extremely non-techie boy when it comes to I.T. (always had a tech support department on hand, so my traditional response to a computer problem was "hey, come fix this for me will you?").

I've been putting up with constant crashes (as in, several times per gaming session, without exception) for months. I've been installing and uninstalling mods and poring over error logs trying to find the culprit, with no success. I eventually decided that it was just the combination of my dodgy old laptop, KSP's Beta status and the nature of modding. But yesterday I finally got jack of it. Deleted KSP and all of my mods, then re-installed the game and my favourite mods from fresh downloads. Not a single crash since then, even though I added back in some optional things that I was sure had been causing crashes (Kerbpaint etc) and wound up the graphics settings higher than previously. Very much worth the effort.

"Sol" is more usual when you want to distinguish Earth-Sun from other stars. But, yeah: scientific nomenclature is a tool, not an objective reality. If the name doesn't aid in communication or understanding, there's no reason for it.

Actually, I've just remembered that I do have a big rocket handy. See https://www.dropbox.com/s/xu7b5nt56qwfwst/Monstro.craft?dl=0 for the craft file. It should hit orbit just around the time you lose the last ring of boosters, leaving both the payload and the core still fuelled up.

Considerably more easily than in stock; no soupmosphere drag to deal with. If you don't care about cost, then a KR-2L driven core surrounded by a few layers of asparagus or onion staged LFBs will fairly easily lift as much tonnage as you could want for any sensible purpose, and manage it with a fairly low part-count, too. This sort of design is highly scalable; you can keep adding or removing layers until you have the TWR and ÃŽâ€V you want. Just don't forget the nosecones, keep an eye on your CoM/CoL relationship, and make sure to do a proper gravity turn rather than a stock-aero style "hard right at 10,000m". You can do this much cheaper if you replace the LFBs with SRBs, but you'll need a lot of them. If you do care about cost, a not-ridiculously-huge spaceplane can manage about a 50 ton payload while still being easy to fly. If you're willing to go bigger and wrestle with something a bit aerodynamically unruly, you can triple that without too much trouble. For a demo of a heavy lift non-Whackjobbed SSTO spaceplane, see http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90337-Economic-Fuel-to-Oribit?p=1361984&viewfull=1#post1361984 That one is a tanker, but a similar design with a few tanks replaced with cargo bays will work just as well. For a heavy lift vertical SSTO, see http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1374206&viewfull=1#post1374206 I don't have an example of a rocket design ready to hand, but if you want I'll be happy to slap something together and send you the craft file so you can reverse-engineer it.

Remember that this is a serious physics simulation, not a game. If you're having fun, you're Doing It Wrong.

Not currently possible, but it will be when .25 is released. For now, EVA.

That's a fair call; it'd make a lousy dogfighter or aerobatics plane. It was built for the specialised purpose of taking bulk quantities of passengers or cargo to space at extreme speed, and that's what it's good at. Thanks for giving it another go. Glad you had fun

Meanwhile, I would prefer that they didn't. Explore planets, yes [1], colonise planets, no [2]. [1] So, yeah: lots more biomes, lots more Easter eggs, lots more diversity in planetary scenery. Planets are big, and also diverse (except for when they were designed by George Lucas). [2] Non self-sufficient research bases sure, but not large scale permanent colonies. Interplanetary colonisation is SF, and will continue to be so for at least the foreseeable future. See http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html for the basics of why (starts off discussing interstellar, gets on to interplanetary afterwards).

Bonus cred for Deadly Reentry? I can see a distinct possibility of burning up during ascent on this one.

Still flew just fine afterwards, though:

If I hadn't already sent maximum rep Porkjet's way after the SP+ -> Stock announcement, I would now be throwing more in that direction. Yay Porkjet. I may have to design another tribute plane...

Are you allowing the use of tweakables for thrust limiting? It'll be more challenging if you're obliged to use 'em fully fuelled at 100% thrust.

I'll have to strip some of mine down:

Ahem: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/plane-parachute-gives-near-disaster-a-soft-landing-20140510-zr8uc.html if you're curious about what's going on there.

Yup, congrats. :-) I'll get back to you on that, but it may have to wait a day; I've got a new doc to see tomorrow morning, so I need to try and get some sleep tonight.

That's part of it; see the assorted leaderboards in the first post. If you just want to set a time, that's fine; nothing more required. However, I'm planning on making an event of it, and I encourage anyone else who thinks it would be fun to do likewise. Spectators, grandstands, start/finish lines, parking lots, concession stalls, whatever. Go as simple or as elaborate as you feel like. Have a poke through the "breaking news" posts upthread to get an idea of the sort of vibe I'm hoping for. Extra credit if you post screenshots of your plane spinning out of control into the grandstands. I'm planning on having at least a hundred Kerbals in the audience, and I've got a fairly impressive finish line setup in the works. And, as mentioned upthread: Kerbpaint makes raceplanes look way cool, and I'd like a bit of diversity in the crowd. So, if you feel like nominating your team colours (Team Kerbodyne Racing has dibs on red and black), I'll see what I can do about making sure that a few of your supporters are represented in the grandstands and parking lot during the Team Kerbodyne heats. If you feel like returning the favour, go for it. No obligation, though; a bare time is fine if that's what you want to do. But, as you'll see from the leaderboards, I'm aiming for an event as well as a challenge.

It's like orbiting; you fall, but just continuously miss the ground.