purpleivan

I'm fully expecting that I've just done something stupid, but my first attempt at using TWP in New Horizons is giving me what appears to be a completely incorrect maneuver. I set TWP to give me a burn from Aptur to Serran but the time for the burn is clearly far too early. To help show what I mean I've put a couple of screenshots of the instructions output from TWP in the map view. Any ideas appreciated.

Did this as part of the Old Control Tower Expedition challenge.

Proof of it working fine... sent up the first module of a space station around Kerbin and took a quick trip to Aptur.

Installed the New Horizons planetary pack this evening and took it for a quick spin and I'm liking what I'm seeing

Ah... that would be Kopernicus that I'm missing then (didn't notice it listed as a dependency). All working fine now... thanks.

There's probably a really simple reason for this but after installing New Horizons I'm only seeing the stock planetary system. Here's what I did. Downloaded the latest version of the mod v2.0.0 Created a copy of my game install and extracted the New_Horizons folder to the GameData folder in the copied install structure. Following this I ran the game from a new shortcut to the 64bit version of the game in the new folder structure. So far it's just the stock system that I'm seeing. Is there anything in addition to installing the mod that I need to do access the changed to the planetary system?

Interesting... looks like you're set for fuel. You might want to get the An-225 out as the challenge is for manned missions Looking forward to seeing what you get up to.

For straight forward news the BBC website is very good, but in my experience the "magazine" sections of the website including BBC future are often complete drivel.

Not a lot of work done for this, but a fun little title image for the Time for Plan B challenge.

The Eve Redux firing it's outboard engines to begin the descent to the surface.

Actually that makes more sense than my idea; landing the plane with the rocket in it, rather than dropping the thing on parachutes. I think I just had it suck in my mind "airdrop airdrop airdrop" As I can see the placing of a vehicle in Kerbin orbit being a lot more popular than say a mission to Eve, I've added an award of 10 Spirit of Exploration points for this. This would give your expedition 10 SOE + 1 TBC = 11 points and the first entry on the leaderboard. One question about your launch is did it take place from the pad and ramp (it looks like it was from the grass)? The rules of the challenge were that launchers must stand on the pad/ramp structure and not the grass (i.e. after launch, no contact is had with the grass, except for detached stages), however I've amended the rules to allow takeoff from the grass and added an x2 points multiplier for launches from the pad, due to the additional difficult of getting a vertical vehicle onto it. So congrats on being the first on the board and kicking off this challenge

What I ideally had in mind was dropping a rocket off of a ramp out of the back of a plane and have it parachute serenely down to a landing on the ISC pad ready for a launch. But the likelihood of that was pretty slim

The idea was to allow people to use as many launches as they wanted (mainly because the pad is so small) and assemble an exploration vehicle in orbit. Perhaps my rules could be simplified a bit, I was just trying to be thorough, although my rules might have ended up seeming like legalese. As for delivery method, my original plan was to fly the launch vehicle in on slung under an aircraft, but my winged piloting skills (and my winged construction skills) weren't up to it.

I post then manically edit for the next few minutes when I realise the state of what I've posted. Mainly the odd typo and grammatical mistake. But I do that for regular posts too.

Leaderboard 1: Foxster: 11 points 2: 3: 4: 5: The challenge Due to complaints from the new neighbours about the noise of orbital rocket launches from the KSC, the KSP has decided, they will now have to revive the facilities at the Inland Space Center (ISC) to act as the sole site for orbit and beyond launches So the the challenge is to launch the most impressive manned, single vehicle mission you can from Kerbin orbit, with all components of it (including fuel and crew) being launched from the ISC with all crew returning safely to Kerbin. The impressiveness of submissions being determined by a points system. The points system Spirit of Exploration: SOE points are awarded as follows. Stable orbit of Kerbin = 10 For landings on bodies other than Kerbin or being in a stable orbit of Kerbin (in a single vehicle) Minmus = 15 Mun = 20 Duna = 40 Dres = 50 Eeloo = 80 Moho = 90 Laythe = 120 Eve = 300 The Brave Crew: 1 TBC point for every kerbal landing on a body or for being in a stable orbit of Kerbin, who is returned safely home. Launch multiplier To allow for a takeoff from the grass the rule limiting entries to a launch from the pad has been removed and replace with an x2 multiplier for launches that are totally from the pad/ramp (i.e. after launch, no contact is had with the grass, except for detached stages) and x1 for a takeoff that makes use of the grass Points calculation The calculation of a submission score will be as follows. (SOE points + TBC points) x Launch multiplier = total score All points are cumulative, including those for Kerbin orbit Example: for an exploration that places 6 kerbals in a stable Kerbin orbit, followed by a landing on Minmus with 6 kerbals and Duna with a crew of 1 kerbal, then the score would be as follows; (10 + 6 the kerbin orbit points + 15 + 6 the Minmus landing points + 40 + 1 the Duna landing points) x 2 the launch multiplier = total score of 156 points The rules All vehicles including any that support the exploration vehicle must achieve orbit via a launch from the Inland Space Center. No launches from anywhere other than the ISC may achieve kerbin orbit (an AP and PE of greater than 70km) Launch as many vehicles as you like from the KSC that do not achieve Kerbin orbit Launch as many vehicles from the ISC as you like, for assembly of your exploration vehicle, fuel support etc. Mining for fuel is allowed on any body including Kerbin (so you can set up a mining camp at the ISC launch site) so long as it is done with equipment launched as part of the challenge entry Your submission must include an exploration vehicle that is the core of your expedition and enters orbit of all bodies that are counted for the points calculation. i.e. if you plan to fly to Duna and Dres you can't split you're vehicle up and send one part to each planet separately Once the exploration vehicle has entered the SOI of a body it can be separated into as many vehicles as you like, including landers Only one landing per body and stable orbit of Kerbin counts for the points calculation, but you can land as many vehicles as you like if it helps your exploration The re-use of SSTO vehicles is allowed Pics or it didn't happen. I want to see a good collection of images, showing key moments like launches, landing locations, plus map views of the interplanetary burns, the with the resources displayed. See the album of my mission below as an example, however as I was not flying this for the purpose of a proper challenge, it's a bit light on essential information (e.g. it doesn't include any images of the Map view showing burn information). Any other amusing or spectacular pics are appreciated... no extra points for these (well... if you manage to take one of tap dancing three headed aliens on Eve that's gotta be worth something I suppose), but they'll keep us entertained. Addons All visual or informational addons are allowed (including Kerbal Engineer) Mechjeb is only allowed for provision of information and not control of the vehicle (in other words fly it yourself) Stock parts only on all vehicles, with the exception of any that are purely aesthetic (e.g. SurfaceLights) Obviously no Hyperedit to be used in the mission, but use it as much as is needed for testing If you have any questions about the rules then let me know. I came up with the idea of this challenge when a few days ago I decided to attempt a landing on the Mun and a return to kerbin for Rinzer Kerman using the ISC, to coincide with the 47th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon. Here is the album for the mission that I flew, which if it had been an entry to the challenge would have been awarded 21 points (20 SOE plus 1 TBC) If you've not seen the Inland Space Center yet, be warned that the album below contains images of this location.

As another very long standing games dev (back to the 8 bit days) I second everything that Snark had to say. KSP is pretty much the worst possible case for ensuring a perfectly behaving game, what with it's reliance on a physics as the absolute core of the game, as well as user made content being thrown into the mix with that. Add to that the need to use a third party engine that's outside your control and that it's a PC game with all of the issues that can arise from the game running on a massive range of hardware as opposed to just consoles X,Y and Z. These factors alone would make it extremely difficult to ensure that all player experiences of the game are perfect (or even close to it), but when you add the fact that Squad is a pretty small developer; one which is smaller in total than a lot of bigger budget games' QA teams, then the fact that the game for the vast majority of the time, for most players, is a reliable and reasonably performing experience, is a small miracle. Again not a fan-boy (but definitely a fan) just a realist and someone who also does this for a living.

I have a small mining operation on Minmus, composed of a single mining base, with a small tanker that transfers fuel to and from the mining base and the larger vehicles that transfer the fuel up to an orbiting fuel station. With this I was deployed a similar fuel extraction and storage setup on Ike, without having to carry up anywhere near as much fuel from Kerbin as would normally be required. So far I've not made any further use of these facilities, but that's mainly due to me being busy with other things, both in KSP as was as outside of it. I've had one weird issue with my Minmus mining base when part of it exploded when I detached the claw of the little tanker vehicle from it. A bunch of fuel tanks as well as a couple of ore tanks decided they we bored of being part of a mining base and made a fairly short lived attempt to go into orbit. Fortunately the tanker had an ore tank on it, so I all was not lost. BTW... the transfer vehicle in the background is a small early version before the obvious occurred to me, that I should be moving fuel into orbit in much larger quantities. Here's the mining station I sent to Ike in orbit before I put it down on the surface. My operation is pretty small scale test one, but is still capable of producing useful amounts of fuel to supply large interplanetary vehicles.

There was a discussion here about the difference eyebrows make to kerbals. Here's a few I threw together to see what they might look like.

I might have missed something but the recent update to the Imgur website seems to have broken a number of features and made albums in particular, hard to work with. It used to be possible to remove images from an album as a group, but now it's one deletion at a time. The new rearranging images mechanism is horrible, only a few of the attempt I make at moving an image, results in the desired layout first time, due to the awkward way they move the image tiles around. Even the uploading of images has become worse, due to their being no feedback that the upload has been initiated for 10-20 seconds for a group of images, leaving a user in the dark as to whether the upload has been started or not. Then once you get an album together it doesn't render correctly here, with some horrible cropping to the current image and incomplete set of thumbnails... don't know if fixing that is something that requires a change to this website though. Overall the changes smack of someone having to justify their existence by making this unnecessary "upgrade" to the site.

I used this to launch an ever so slightly Apollo style mission to the Mun and back (only 1 in the crew though). But I did launch it on another rocket from the KSC first, parachuted it here, then drove to the pad before launching it. Video of the liftoff from the Inland Space Center.

I sent a (vaguely) mini Apollo 11 style mission to the Mun and back, but with a twist. I launched it on a rocket from the KSC, airdropped it to the inland space center, drove it to the pad... then launched it from there.

If you've not seen the Inland Space Center yet, be warned that this thread contain images and video of this location. To celebrate the 47th anniversary of those strange pink skinned creatures landing on their moon for the first time, the KSC decided to go for a bit of friendly one-upmanship, by launching a Mun return vehicle from the Inland Space Center. Nothing too strange about that. Well they wanted to do it the hard way, so decided to first launch it on a rocket from the KSC, then airdrop it at the the inland site, drive it to the pad there, before sending it up into space a 2nd time, this time on its way to Mun. Video of the liftoff from the Inland Space Center. BTW... am I the only one who feels that the Imgur site GUI update has simply broken the site (the album above took about 10 times longer to setup due to the changes on the site).

At least the explosions didn't happen when it was going backwards.

New addition in seat 3.

A last minute change allowed a couple members of the backup crew on board.