moogoob

Still playing around with that nuclear lander I copied from a Scott Manley video. Last we saw, Bill had been from Kerbin to Pol, then Bop, leaving flags everywhere. Next up was another place I've never landed a Kerbal - Vall! Yes, I use probes way too often. Vall is on the upper end of bodies that this lander can handle gravity-wise and it was a good thing I'd used as much fuel as I had by then as my TWR would have been too low otherwise - it was only a TWR of 1.6 on my attempt. Well, it went textbook. I use Mechjeb's suicide burn readout to guide my landing pass. With low TWR landers it's often best (and safest!) to land Apollo style, by using the spacecraft's rotation rather than throttle to affect your course down and/or bleed off horizontal velocity. The countdown can be used to help this - if it goes below zero, tile your spacecraft up to increase vertical speed, if it goes up, tilt horizontally. Works for me! So I still have about 1300 m/s left in the descent stage and 2400 or so in the centre tank... EDIT: Oh! And in an earlier launch of the same model lander, Bob visited the canyon on Dres. The list of crewed landing sites increases!

@5thHorseman has it right. The direction you approach the mun could allow you to do a free-return, if needed. The opposite direction wouldn't work - it would sling you out to Minmus or beyond.

Struts were the one biggest part that got me interested in KSP, that convinced me it was more than just a LOLSPLOSIONS toy. They are flexible and used for all sorts of things, cosmetic and functional.

That's a Baikerbananur.

I'm bored, so I launched an orange tank into LKO using nothing but Thuds. Well, there are two Twitches on the tank itself, but those are only for the last 65 or so m/s. There's 30 Thuds on the first stage and six under the fairing below the second stage.

While not 30fps, and of course with all the settings turned down I can get KSP running on my 2009-era Macbook Pro 13". It's not fantastic, but runs with only 4GB of ram (shared with the onboard video!) As to "very well", I concede that point. I wouldn't try to build any stations on my laptop, for example. EDIT: And I've been running Minecraft on it since the days when my total was only 1GB ram.

I was hoping the winky face was enough to avoid Poe's Law, but obviously not. Poe's Law: "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing." "Flat Earth" and "Moon Landing Denialism" being just as valid as fundamentalism in this example.

If by "moon" you mean soundstage, then yes we have.

These mini biomes are all going away as of 1.2, if the change notes are correct.

All these worlds are yours except Laythe. Attempt no landings there. (I've only landed there once, and it was a skycrane for delivering a rover.)

Maybe I will. However, I think I'll continue development of my new shuttle, the Pelican. The maiden flight was just too fun! ("Cannot deploy while stowed" error on the nose gear notwithstanding.)

Well, yesterday I tried to build an air-breathing SSTO, you know, the space plane kind. I just can't seem to make them work. Is it my piloting? My Engineering? Don't know. Today, I think I hit a realization - I'm just not a spaceplane person. I'm a shuttle person. This is what I just banged out in the last hour and a half: That's building in the SPH, aero testing (to see if it can actually fly ), moving to the VAB and performing a (successful) test flight with typical interplanetary probe payload. So maybe that's it. Shuttles and rockets are my thing, trying to take an SR71 to orbit just isn't.

( KSP + Terratech / SpaceEngine (No Man's Sky+Minecraft) ) Skyrim = 7

You have a poll for which pole to go to and one of you options isn't "Pol". Slightly disappointed.

40% building, 60% flying. While I like building, I tend to build like I shop: quickly, directly and with a purpose. Then I lose patience and launch the darn thing, often with stuff missing. Depends on what I'm doing though- sometimes the exercise is about doing something different in the editor and it becomes more 75%/25%.

Continued my mission in the nuclear lander I copied off Scott Manley. Last time we saw him, Bill had successfully flown from Kerbin and landed on Pol. Next, he sets his sights for another target - Bop. Using Mechjeb's advanced transfer doodad made it easy to get an intercept. I was aiming for the middle of a big white splotch, pretty much the closest thing to an interesting surface feature on the moon. And he landed! Where should he go off to next? He's still got 4080 m/s in the outer tanks (and another 2662 in the centre one to get home). I was thinking of attempting Gilly. Is that a foolish idea?

Recently Scott Manley did a video where he pulled off a Mun mission without instrumentation of any kind. To do so, he made a Mun lander with a nuclear engine and a ridiculous amount of delta-v. I rather liked the design, so I recreated it, and decided to see where over 7 km/s of delta v on the first stage alone could get me. I figured Pol and Bop at the very least, Ike as well if I have the gumption. So first step in my journey: Pol. Did a slingshot at Tylo saving me whole kilometers of precious fuel: Landing was uneventful, fun even. Bill planted his flag, and next time you will hopefully be seeing his smiling face from Bop.

That's exactly what I do with my small probe launchers. Give it a nice bump up above the stratosphere, then fire the nice, efficient little 909. But I like to make light payloads.

Sorry to Necro this... but I would be ALL for playing Kerbals in Civ 5. They would definitely be a Science victory civ. I mean, that victory has you constructing a spaceship part by part.

Didn't mean to be disparaging. Just reveling in the nostalgia myself and reminding myself about how far this game has come. For example, the unshielded 1x6 and 2x3 solar panels used to be retractable.

Ha! If you recall, the Stayputnik had reaction wheels then, and the Mammoth didn't get a name until 1.0

Well, inspired by this thread, here's my first intentional screenshot. I... have come a long, long way in rocket design since then. Look ma, no fairings! As well, the screenshot following this one depict the beginning of the ascent, complete with 10-15km 45 degree "gravity turn" like we all used to do in the soup-o-sphere.

The general consensus so far is that if you have a PC copy, and your PC is fast enough to play it without stuttering too much, you should probably use the PC version as there isn't anything that the console version can do that the PC one can't (yes, the PC version CAN use controllers - I use an Xbox 360 one myself), and several (mods and infinite* part count stand out to me) that the console version can't that the PC one can. *based on your RAM, of course

I've tried both this and tilting the rocket at launch, and I've found tilt + small amounts of thrust limiting to trim to be more controllable and reliable. YMMV, of course! I've not melted one of these since... 1.0.3? If you're melting them, you're probably going too fast. No, the main issue with these fins is that they offer very little drag. Which in some designs is just enough, but with an all sold first stage I'd use like 8 of them.

I think you meant to quote @Adelaar, the mod he used is KVV: Kronal Vessel Viewer. I have it installed myself - very cool!