Johnny Wishbone

I've told this story several times here before, but since its a cool story, I'll happily tell it again: Early in my KSP playing days, I was doing an Apollo style Mun landing. I was horribly inefficient in my landing and burned up way too much fuel. I knew I didn't have enough to even get my lander back into the lowest possible Mun orbit. So, I waited for the orbiting CSM to come around, and launched the lander into a high arcing trajectory that passed through the orbit of my CSM twice (once on the way up, once on the way down). I then switched to my CSM, and did a rendezvous with the lander at the "coming down" intersection, quickly docked them (less than 10k above the surface, and falling fast), and used the CSM engine to boost both craft back into a low Mun orbit. And I did it all on the first try (thanks more to luck than skill). That was the moment that I knew I could do anything in this game, and to this day is still my most proud accomplishment.

Sorry. Not following you. what is "protein chauvinism"? My reply was more to the point that since most people have generally limited knowledge and understanding of Lunar exploration, they probably don't know diddly squat about the Luna, Ranger, or Surveyor programmes. To most people, the "first moon landings" are the Apollo landings, which were done from an orbit. This is not to dismiss the achievements of the Luna, Ranger, and Surveyor programs.

Thats not true, unless by "first moon landings" you are referring to probes that were intended to impact the surface. All the manned Lunar landings (Apollo) were initiated from a Lunar orbit.

I found it amusing you had your mouse over the abort switch pretty much the entire launch. Have a little faith, man!

Best image we could get of it at my home. Cloudy and only a partial eclipse here. We're in the path of totality for the 2024 eclipse, so looking forward to that one. Plus, the kids will be old enough to appreciate it.

Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop. Not coincidentally, my forum name comes from a scene in the sequel, Beverly Hills Cop 2:

Stock parts only? If not, what mods are allowed? you really only have 11 parts to work with after the mandatory 3. with mods, it could be very easy. stock only could be more of a challenge.

I'm right there with you. I have no real interest in the 'mission' aspect of the DLC. My only interest is for the extra parts, and like you, only if those parts integrate well with the current stock set of parts. I'm waiting for this forum to do the usual 'blow up, burn, simmer down, accept, grumble, whine, and poodle' sequence of events after the DLC comes out before I'll put my money down for it. Edit: The forum filtered a slight curse word into "poodle" ? sigh.

Apparently, the Saturn V kit is a big hit and there are a lot of people who want one but are disappointed it is now "sold out". Well, if you are lucky to have a Lego store near you, they might be worth checking out. I stopped by one of the 2 Lego stores near me this morning (Sat July 22) and they still had 3 kits on the shelf: So, there is still hope if you want one of these awesome kits.

I really should do the YouTube series I've been thinking about for a while. Based on this thread and several other similar threads recently posted, I have a very strong suspicion that there are a lot of people out there that would be blown away by what you can do in a stock career without it being grindy, boring, or difficult. For what its worth, satellite contracts are the best source of easy funds. You can take several contracts, build one satellite that meets all requirements and do all the contracts in a single launch.

Are you sure? I thought it had actually been pulled from the xbox and ps stores, and what you see there is just a placeholder. Squad has already said that anyone who purchased the previous console version will be entitled to the new console version free of charge. I believe they even went as far as offering full refunds as well. So, its not like they're scamming anyone with it.

I hate playing my game, so I want it to play for me! I hate having to aim and shoot in Call of Battlefield, so I got an aimbot to aim for me! This game, much like actual spaceflight is nothing but following procedure. If you follow the procedure, every task is easy.

There were a couple key binding changes in 1.3. Another one that got me was the lights key. Originally, the "L" key turned on lights for both vessels and Kerbals on EVA. Then, they changed it to the "U" key a couple versions ago. Now, in 1.3, they split it up; the "U" key turns on lights for vessels, and Kerbals on EVA turn on their suit lights with "L". Its annoying as heck.

I still regret not getting the original Star Destroyer kit that came out back in 2002. The version out now is a pathetic imitation. I saw the original one in the Lego store at Downtown Disney back then and almost bought it, but 2 things kept me from doing so: 1) the $300 price tag was hard to justify back then (still hard to justify $300 on Lego today, but whatever) 2) I flew to Florida, and had no way of getting it back home except shipping it. The box was too big for my luggage, and I didn't want to go through the hassle of crating it up and shipping it and hoping it didn't get lost or stolen. I always figured I'd have time to pick it up at a later date. Unfortunately, I didn't realize back then that Lego would make so few of them and then NEVER make that kit again. Unopened kits are now going for upwards of $1500 on ebay. *sigh* http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/10030_Imperial_Star_Destroyer

SSTOs and reusables have been "hot" since 1.0 came out with all the changes to the aerodynamic model. Personally, they aren't my cup of tea, so I enjoy seeing fresh YouTube content that isn't all SSTOs and such. My idea for a YouTube LP series was to show that stock career doesn't have to be grindy and repetitive. There is a lot you can do early on in stock career with the limited parts and funds, and it doesn't require expert skill level at playing the game either. In my stock career games, I'm orbiting the Mun on my 3rd launch, and doing manned Mun landings by my 5th launch. And I'm also just taking the basic contracts and not wasting a lot of time part testing or doing tourist runs or biome hopping to grind science. You bring that up in your video, about early missions being similar and repetitive; it doesn't have to be that way.

I too have toyed with the idea of doing a YouTube "Lets Play" on stock KSP career. My rationale for this wouldn't be to grub for views or money, but to offer another point of view or way of doing things. It seems like a lot of new players come to the forums looking for help or advice, and the standard response is "Look up Scott Manley on YouTube." While I think Scott is a great resource, I know that when I first started playing the game years ago and I was told to go look at his videos, sometimes they just didn't click for me. For certain concepts, I had to search around YouTube looking for other players and see their suggestions and advice before finding one that did click. So, having more points of view can be helpful, even if its already been done to death. I guarantee, my start to stock career is very different from the usual, and seeing that might be beneficial to other players. As for feedback on the OP video: get a better mic. Sound quality was definitely an issue for me. The content of your video was solid, though a bit "sloppy" for my tastes; ie: launching your first vehicle with the parachute deployed in the same stage as the booster, and just ignoring it because "it shouldn't really matter; normally it should be alright." I cringed at that. Failure to check your staging before launch is a critical oversight that leads to the unplanned disassembly of many spacecraft, and sets a bad precedent for the noobs. Good luck with the video series!

Feel free to post pics of your build in this thread, if you'd like.

This was...unexpected. I'm glad my thread was liked and appreciated enough to get a few views, let alone a TOTM. I'm speechless. Thanks!

LOL Because that excuse worked so well for this guy:

Sure. But the point of this topic is the use of maneuver nodes specifically for the OIB. It just seems so pointless to me; a waste of time. But apparently there are some reasons why people use them for that specific purpose, and thats why I asked.

This is true, and I get your point. For me, because I understand the navball, I know how to adjust my heading to compensate for any changes in my apoapsis during the burn (again, it isn't a very hard thing to do). I routinely get near perfect circular orbits (apsis within 100m of each other) by eye simply by reading the navball. For less experienced players, I understand this could be a tough thing to do, but I would expect more experienced players to be able to "freehand" it like I do. That said, your point is valid. Since I'm a stock player, I've never used MechJeb or played under the rules of RSS/RO. So these reasons would not have occurred to me. Thanks.

So, before anyone gets their neck in a knot about this, I'm not passing judgement. I find this interesting and I'm asking because I'm curious. Lately, I've been watching a lot of KSP YouTube videos, both older ones and newer ones. One thing I keep seeing is people launching ships into a sub-orbital trajectory, coasting to apoapsis, and then doing an orbit insertion burn (aka circularization burn). That's pretty standard and not interesting. But what I do find curious and interesting is the number of people (especially very experienced players) that take the time to put up a maneuver node while coasting to apoapsis, and actually plan out their orbit insertion burn. I find this curious because, to me, its totally unnecessary. When you get near or at your apoapsis, just burn prograde until your periapsis gets high enough to put you in orbit or you get it to whatever height you want. There is no need for a maneuver node, yet I see players (even people like Scott Manley) do this time and time again. Why? The best analogy I can come up with is getting into your car to go to your best friend's house and asking your sat-nav to give you directions and plot you a route there. You know how to get there; you don't need directions! Plotting a maneuver for something as simple as a prograde burn to raise your periapsis to a desired height seems very pointless to me and yet I see players do it all the time. So, I'm curious to know why? Is it really that much of a habit? Are people that dependent on maneuver nodes? The only time I use a maneuver node is to plot a transfer to another celestial body. Everything else, I use the navball and fly by eye. Its really not that hard once you understand the navball and the information it is presenting to you. Again, I'm not trying to be judgemental. If this is something you do, that's fine with me. I'm just curious.

I have an amusing story about SETI@home: Back in the early 2000s, I worked at a large university on the east coast. We were in the process of retiring a Sun E10k computer (basically a Cray supercomputer that could be hardware partitioned into multiple, independent servers) and I had a weekend to play with it before we got rid of it. So I took all the CPU boards, memory, I/O boards, etc and combined them into a single, large server. I don't remember the exact specs, but i think it had something like 48 processors and over 100GB of RAM (not very impressive today, but back then, holy crap!). I installed a base version of Solaris 8 OS on it, gave it an IP, and then downloaded and installed SETI@home on it. I created an account and fired it up on Friday afternoon. Came back Monday morning to find it had chewed through so many work packages that my brand new account had jumped into the top 10 on the leaderboard! I shut it down after that and sadly helped dismantle it and send it back to Sun as part of our trade-in for a newer E15k computer. Good times.

B.S. Computer Science, Michigan State University, 1998. Christ, it's been almost 20 years since college. Where the hell did 20 years go?

For those of you who care, I have a build thread (including pictures) over in "The Lounge"