Ruthgar

For the record, a mun equatorial orbit with a pe of 5 km, and ap of 5.1km is TOO DAMN LOW. Was messing around with a probe to see how low I could get it, and noticed than when the terrain alt is less the 500m things in orbit do get slightly affect by gravity, so I decided to try and move the probe to a slightly higher altitude............saw the terrain alt go below 100 said too myself "that's not good" right before I hit a mountain *edited* OK, 6.1km is wellllll, relatively safe, aside from if you have high blood pressure, cause if you have kerbal engineering installed, and have a pe/ap of 6/6.1km you will see this pass under you on an equalatorial orbit on the mun with double digits remaining on the terrain height yeah, when I saw that set the pe/ap to 6.5/6.6km, beautiful thing to watch tho. If you do nothing else tomorrow for the 45th anniversary, just send a probe to the mun on a low orbit, and just watch.

Yeah, forgot to share this little gem as to how I thought you might need to retrieve the lost astronaut If you look close enough, you can see........THE KLAW!!!! Yeah, really glad I had designed my rescue ship with an extra seat............ok, did anyone just get the idea of slapping an external seat onto their rescue craft and see if it works??

I've also noticed that my throttle acts funky at times (always on the planes) for some reason it doesn't always go/stay at full throttle when I set it at that. Wonder if my unupdated MJ mod is causing it.

The planting the flag thing, yeah I can see that needing to be changed, not so much the orbiter, considering that is how lots of scientific satellites are used in real life. Once their mission is complete, the satellite (or probe in the case of voyager) is then left sitting up there in space, and the scientists back here on earth come up with new ways to use them and they go get more funding to pay for their research and equipment/personel to use the abandoned satellite/probe. So the repeatable contracts for science are valid, have the first one pay a lot, just make the following ones pay less to represent the fact that you don't need to send another ship there. Now as far as the flag missions go, I think that it should be that each kerbal on the mission can only set 1 unique flag per orbital body, per mission (for the contract purpose only, just general purpose flags they can set as many times as possible provided they go back to the ship/pod for more flags) So, if you send up a 3 man lander, that means you should be able to do the flag mission 3 times, before you have to send new kerbals (each kerbal would represent a different company/nation figuratively) I'm actually thinking that when I complete most of the unique contracts that I can do without having to spam repeatables to install the life support/better than manned mods, start over and then set up permanent bases as that I see as being a more realistic way to do the repeatables. Think I might also do the kethane as well, never done that yet.

Needed a semi-reliable platform for the low atmosphere testing (10-30k). It's just a relatively simple plane design, though it does make you wonder how it doesn't land(crash) with a loud THUMP. So I named it the wonder thump. Here's the Mk1 and Mk2(final reliable design) Had tried the SRBs on the mk1 above because I had contracts for jet engine testing. Damn thing barely got off the ground, in fact it would sail off the end of the runway then sink slowly down until it had enough speed/lift to start climbing (lowest it went was 5 meters above the ocean) However, it could only reliably test below 15k. So bring out the mk2. As you can see this one works a lot better, and is able to get off the ground without falling off the edge of the runway first. Cleared out my whole in atmosphere contract list in one flight. (Gear, 2 types of chutes, 2nd basic jet engine test, separatron test and two separate rockomax engine tests) Total cost after recovery, about 1-2k (fuel) (total gained about 200-250k)

Been having some fun with the new update. Hm... need to make a little more clearance between my capsule door and the lander arms, keep getting bumped off when I go out for EVA reports Um, damn does my flight engineer actually say the horizontal speed is down to .019 milimeters/s? (actually had it down to .0025 at one point, but wasn't fast enough on the screenshot) Yeah....... Jeb's a little tired of just going somewhere and putting a flag down for work Here's my first ever attempt at landing back at KSC after going into orbit (never bothered before).........needs some work Now what should I do next.

Not sure if you're replying to my earlier message about my mod save, but I've just gone ahead and started a new career anyways to try out the contract system. Getting warnings from the program about some of my mods so I won't be playing that career until I've gotten the updates for them.

Well, at least Jeb seems happy........then again when isn't he happy? What exactly is in those Kerbal snacks he eats anyways?

*sigh* nothing yet. Came home to find KSP was doing an auto-update (which I had meant to disable ) Well, here's hoping my modded career doesn't get broken, had just finished fueling my transport this morning before work and was ready to launch my lander w/probes attached for a trip to Jool.

I am part of that list myself gordon. Currently have 3 ships up in orbit, one with the assembler tug, one with one of the main engines and a few of the tanks, and one with 4 of the 6 ways and 2 more tank assemblies. My main reason for this post was because I can't unlock any of those 6 ways from each other. Ah well, guess I have a nice start to a station now.

Thanks everyone, and I apologize for the formatting. Literally wrote that minutes before leaving for work this morning, and didn't proofread it prior to posting.

Currently in the middle of sending up a bunch of parts with the intention of fabricating a reusable interplanetary transport, that I can reconfigure as needed (ie more/less engines&tanks) depending on the delta-v needed to get to/from whichever planet I'm going to. My intention is to use the parts that look like a block with a docking port on each side to facilitate this. My questions are as follows. 1. does each face of the block need to have a docking port added for it to work as such? 2. Can you mount this block to a rocket using a stack separator, then once it's at the rendevous point, dock the assembly tug to it, then blow the separator to release it from the rocket, and still have all 6 sides usable? 3. Also how strong would such an arrangement be without using the available mods to increase docking port connection strength (intended design will be a X shape with equal amts of engines at the center of the cross and at each of the arms of the cross and I'm trying to find out if assembling such a ship pieces by piece would hold up under thrust/maneuvering)

Um, not sure what your looking for there, as I've found the one minimus Anomaly, and it's not at those coords. What led you to look there?

done that once or twice myself. If I'm ever hauling a detachable stage still as I'm coming in, I always always make sure my command stage is pointed up, chutes released (if not always fully deployed) then I release the last section/sections

To make a really good kessler syndrome, you need to employ hyper editing to get the 'kessler bomb' into orbit. . . . . Here's mine after partial deployment ok, at this point had to go back to the space center and time warp a few hours as I was getting a lot of object lag. fast foward 4 hrs, and we're back after final deployment Look at the total debris field after deployment, and 5 hrs after launch and here's what it all looks like after 2 months of gametime Now I think the game can only handle tracking so many debris pieces, that thing had about 2k of parts, however the game is only tracking 232 pieces of debris, so either the game deleted more than a few pieces, or there's lot of debris up there, not being tracked. And now I believe this quote portrays how I felt when I thought about doing this. Preed "Goone......what is that?" Goone " I don't know...I built it in my sleep I filled it with gintoblack I put a button on it!!!! I want to push it, I want to push it!!!!!!!!!!!" Well, yeah, I pushed the button.

Depends on your definition of quit. Getting completely frustrated in a new ship design that you can't keep from self destructing, and then just saying that's it and stop playing for a few hours, or a day or few because you then have work and other stuff to do in real life, Yes I have. Just saying ok I'm bored of this game now, I quit, then wait a few months for new content to get put in before coming back? No never.

yeah, had posted this originally over in What did you do today thread, and decided to post a link to it here, and my current update to it (ie more fail) ok, finally got this thing to the point where it doesn't selfdestruct within a minute of takeoff(tested, and have some nice debris fields around kerbin because of it) and had just done the final touches to a few additional boosters (struts) when I realized that I had not mirrored the placement of the struts.......*sigh* reload the rocket again.

yeahhhh, having a few design flaws with my mega refueler, seems that it might be a little too heavy for the couplings to handle, first launch attempt, the refueling section somehow detacted from the transfer section (no pics) slight redesing of the coupling there, and 2nd launch attempt..............why did that fuselage adapter just turn 90 degrees. Here's a pic of the results while still in flight...or rather while the rest of it was still in flight. well, time to go inspect the launchpad and make sure it's clear still. *edited* attempted a second launch just so you could see what happened

Brought back about 3.5k in science from that one trip. Would have been more had I remembered to empty the goo and science pods while in freefall

Built a launch booster that was capable of carrying my current design of my primary use lander, getting it to Duna, and still have fuel onboard for the lander to dock with it (after it landed on Duna), fill all of it tanks, then undocked, and both the lander and transfer/refueling section flew to Ike idepently, lander went down to Ike, came back up, took the last bits of fuel from the refueler, then the lander went back to kerbin, and the refueler used it's RCS props to deorbit into Ike (don't like having 'dead' ships floating around if I can help it. Going to have to redesign my lander, as even though it has the fuel to transfer back to kerbin (it was designed to make multiple hops around minimus and mun without refueling) it currently only has 4 LV-909s as it's engines, which was able to get off Duna without aid, but burned a lot more fuel then it could have, also the transfer burn back to kerbin took 12-13 mins to complete (yes, my lander is VERY VERY heavy on fuel), because of the length of the burn needed, I actually used MJ to control it, that way I could just monitor the burn and not be stuck waiting on it (normally do all my burns manually). Really glad that my redesign (tweaking) of my normal lander for this Duna mission had me adding extra mono tanks to it, as it turns out that I had wasted nearly 1k of delta-v earlier by burning on the wrong direction to get a transfer to kerbin (screwed up my calculations, then followed MJ's suggestion (which somehow got a 3 maneuver stack in the queue, the transfer maneuver was #2 it turns out, turned out I had burned on #1) so rather then getting back to kerbin with 600-800 ms left for deorbiting had to spend almost 10 mins burning the RCS props to finish the braking into kerbin orbit, then deorbiting. Ah well, live and learn, and time to go take advantage of this Jool window coming up, first need to see if this idea for a fuel tank 'cube' I designed in my head, can A. be actually built in the VAB, B. Not blow it self up on the launchpad, and finally C. manage to make it into orbit using my heavy booster design. btw, here's a pic of the lander I used above the center tank on the top is there just to make it easier for docking, and yes those are advanced grabbing units being used as landing gear. They don't actually latch to the ground it seems, but even landing at angles the lander no longer tries to tip (only done a 20-30 degree touchdown with it, don't want to repeat Jeb's minimus landing on a 40-50 degree slope, and what was so damn amazing with that minimus landing IS THAT THE LANDER DIDN"T TRY TO TIP AT ALL EVEN WITH JUST USING NORMAL LANDING GEAR)

Nahhh, your not OCD just because you need to rotate parts in .25 degree increments. Trust me, I've worked in a career field for the last 2 decades where certain angles/turns get measured/executed to the .001 degree and smaller increments (can only remember a few settings where we had to have it within a +/- of .002)

Went exploring on the mun, found some science, and now on my 8th orbit of Kerbin using aerobraking to slow down as I have exactly 55m/s of delta v left *edited* Now on orbit #15 *2nd/final edit* Orbit #30 up to 7 mins of aerobraking in a 35 min orbit Orbit #31 never got back out of the atmosphere this time Orbit #32 Finally saw the plasma trails and set back down on kerbin. Impromptu test of minimal delta-v return after burning way too much going to 4 separate places on the Mun...Successful

Well, either you've got a broken instrument, or the kerbals have discovered cold fusion

ok, so I've got a few launch windows to Duna/Eve/etc... all coming up in a few weeks of my current career save. I don't currently have enough science to send off manned missions that have a hope of returning from anything but the moons, and even then it might get iffy, however.... current tech levels are enough for me to send a bunch of satellites out to get some science from these worlds transmitted back, and their moons. So I spent an hour or so getting multiple missions up into orbit, and getting the final one launched. Now my current first stage lifter has a MINOR problem, the central engine likes to overheat to the point of exploding. Not a problem, so long as I keep track of it. However I'm in a bit of a rush in RL, so I send this thing up into the first window I have for kerbin orbit (currently have 5 probe missions all in equalatoral orbit, 99.9% perfect of better on their orbits, 2 missions actually have a 1-1.5km variance in their orbital distance, but were on the opposite ends of the planet initially. Like I said, I launched into the first available launch window, everything is going fine and I go to full power so I can finish circulizing my orbit. Check the map real quick and see that one or two of the probes are about to get in the way of this new one, however if I keep the engines running, no problem. Unfortunately in this excitement, I forgot something...specifically the engine running at 100%.......BOOOM!!!! and there goes the main engine on the booster for probe #6. Crap switch out of map view quick eject the fuel tank and start the next engine burning....and probe 6 is out of the path of probe 3......unfortunately the fuel tank I just ejected wasn't. Probe 3 has just lost three of it's solar panels, and half of it's engines/tanks all of which are now flying free into a slightly ascending orbit. Now remember the two probes that I had orbiting within 1-1.5km orbital distance....well the lower one was Probe 3....and look one piece of Probe 3 has just ascended into the orbit of Probe 2.......CRAP. So yeah, instead of having 6 probe missions in stable equalatoral orbits, I now have 3, and about 4 dozen pieces in unstable orbits.....so, I see that I can actually still revert this flight and avoid all this crap. So I decide to do a quicksave so that I can go ahead and reload this later on this week when I really have time to play with this orbital mess, and revert my flight. Now the quicksave is renamed and I will try to relaunch probe #6 another day...Yeah, I did get into space today, but did not get my intended missions out of orbit today. And actually looking forward to this weekend where I can play around with my mini-kessler syndrome currently covering 90-140km orbits roughly. Though that is an idea for a challenge. Send a bunch of LARGE vessels that aside from the boosters are just large masses of parts and varied strength decouplers. Send up say 5-10 of these things into equalatoral orbits and then set off the decouplers, some with the ship oriented towards the poles, some with the ship oriented along the equator, and some vertically. Anyone else think that would be a nice multipart challenge. Challenge 1, Get ships safely into orbit. Challenge 2 Get a mission to the Mun and Minimus (can be separate missions). Challenge 3 Set up a space station in a survivable orbit. Challenge 4 use tugs from the station to clean up/dispose of the debris (you must either bring it back to the station or deorbit it to 'vaporize' the debris from mission control, and the tugs, unless crippled beyond repair/capabality to return to station, can not be deorbited to clear the debris) to a point where you have safe windows in equalatoral orbit again (or manage to clean up at least a third of the debris) Final challenge would be to remove ALL of the debris from your orbits (both from the 'accident' and from your launches) Anyone else think that might be a fun challenge?

Bob 'Duke' managed to get his rover traveling a nice 52m/s, or just over 180km/hr. Course he did this traveling to the bottom of a Mun crater, and managed to blow all 8 tires, but managed to stop it upright, with all solar panels intact thanks to the rcs props. Quick tire repair and he was on his way again, however the walls of the crater proved to be too steep for him to get the rover out. So after managing to travel 38km from the lander he abandoned the rover, used his eva jets to get out of the crater and to a large flat area, and called Jeb in the lander to come pick him up. Jeb and Bill then flew the lander 1km off the surface of the Mun at horizontal speeds that topped 200m/s, successfully landed 200 meters from Bob, picked him up, and then returned to Kerbin. There was a moment of panic during the flight to pick up Bob, when they realised that the lander was not generating any power and the batteries were down to a charge of 80-90 (from 720) thanks to the lights and SAS being on, AND a solar eclipse happening during the entire flight thanks to Kerbin. Current lander has LV-909s for engines, which you know does not generate power, hence the reason why they were so low on power (and the lights had been on for about 20-30 mins during the eclipse already). Didn't notice the eclipse as there was still plenty of light to see with.