LordCurlyton

The first time is always the best time.

Would hiding behind a sufficiently large asteroid work?

I always assumed that they lived underground. Based on the sheer number of people needing rescuing from space, I figured they had to retreat to underground bunkers to survive all the falling rocket parts. It's got to be like a continuous orbital bombardment. Especially when a Kerbal decides to retrofire an engine to get that "sweet shot" of some major city without realizing they are reentering the atmosphere..

Well technically SSTO is Single Stage To Orbit, so rockets are definitely an option. I'm sure someone better than me has done it with ease. Though as being shown, rockets are really the way to go, even if you lay it flat on wheels.

I always took Eeloo to be Pluto, minus the Charon and all the other fun stuff we just found out about it. If I had to guess, I'd have said it would make some reference to the Red Dwarf books/TV wherein Earth became a garbage world and was "farted" into deep space due to a mishap and a titanic methane explosion. Obviously, its not exact, and I'm sure there's other SF analogues that might better fit, but as I view KSP to be a little tongue-in-cheek (I have no idea why! :-p) it would seem appropriate to make a passing Red Dwarf reference at least. Would be awesome to find a Warhammer 40k Space Hulk just floating in Deep Kerbol Space, though. *hinthint*

It seems to happen whenever the pre- and post- trajectories are very close relatively, and dragging can be a pain when you want something soon-ish on a Duna intercept that is 300 days away. Or even worse for longer trips.

Sorry was browsing this one and forgot to switch over *sheepish grin*

A problem I've seen: After firing a maneuver to get an encounter of, say, Duna, the resultant orbit will have three parts: the pre-encounter blue line section, the encounter with Duna (yellow-orange), and post-encounter (purple). Unless the post-encounter is wildly different from pre-encounter, I find myself unable to plot any more maneuvers on the pre-encounter part, no matter how far I zoom in. Is there any way to place a maneuver node pre-encounter once this situation arises, without resorting to mods?

Or just launch lots of satellites to ensure that there will always be somebody able to talk to somebody else around the whole coverage area? Its what I'd do to compensate for human error. Enough redundancy should ensure that basically it would be well beyond any reasonable time before coverage is <100%. I know, its not the "skill" method, but comm satellites are cheap relatively speaking. Admittedly, Remote Tech is on my "to do" list, not my "have done" one.

Heh maybe, but then there is always KSP The Sequel to hope for. And you do make a good point. For me, a career ends once I've unlocked the tech tree plus accomplished whatever personal objectives I've set for myself. Sometimes its as simple as 'Explore everything", sometimes its "make the biggest, most Kerbal rocket you can imagine, then see if it flies", sometimes its "International Kerbal Station". I've seen the extremely impressive setups others have done (interplanetary refueling stations, colonies, etc) but I lack that particular motivation to manage all of that. Would be a great thing to multiplayer in, I'd imagine. Especially when things go boom heh.

What do they do besides pack up chutes? I'm still not entirely sold on the resource mining unless something akin to an actual economy enters the game, and I think I've seen that they speed that up???? Considering I make do with a lot of unmanned missions I guess the question may be moot for me.

Then I must be pretty damn unlucky. I was wondering if it was a secret SQUAD plot to force me to have a female-centric corps, but they forgot to give me truly useful classes (other than packing chutes, I don't really have a use for engineers yet. But boy oh boy do I have the largest and bestest chute packing corps out there.). Extra scientists i could use to fill mobile labs, and pilots are always useful.

Or female for that matter? I've done quite a few rescues now and they are all female engineers. I'd like a little diversity in my kerbals but its so bloody expensive to hire one, and I could use a few more good scientists and pilots.

Eh for Duna I used to just have one big chute to do a good chunk of the slowing and then used an engine to control the descent and land softly. Probably will do the same when I get back there in 1.0.x

I used to always set my chutes to deploy at 250, then it wouldn't let me anymore in 1.0 but if I tried REALLLLLLY hard I could get the 50m choice (which I guess is useful only on Eve, if at all). tried it once on a probe, saw the results, learned quickly. FYI, 500 m is fine for anything, apparently the chutes have a built in surface radar that detects how far it is from the surface, not the sea level altimeter like we get.

For that matter, why does Kerbin only have have some foliage and the KSC (the apparent source of all Kerbals ever) for its life? I mean, not even a Kerbin whale equivalent to crash my rockets into!

That....is a lot of parts raining down. I can only imagine the collateral.

Its not that difficult to make a profit even on the early 2 tourist suborbital Kerbin ones. Its just not a large one but I can generally double the amount I spent to put them up there, especially if one decides they want to orbit Kerbin. They are mainly better to grind a bit of rep to unlock bigger, better missions (which is what i presume high rep does). The ones I like are the 3 or 4 kerbal tourist missions in kerbin SoI, as one Hitchhiker can will hold them all.

To be fair, that only applies once you start getting in-Kerbin SoI missions beyond "suborbital flight on Kerbin". Its very easy for me to rack up 300-400k on a 40k rocket to accomplish the various Mun/Minmus desires. Just cycle the ones that require you to land on the Mun. You can even include some of the Solar ones by popping just out of Kerbin's SoI. Its what I'm doing to farm cash now that I have the Hitchhiker capsule unlocked.

What would be nice now that I think of it would be to have an option to see CoM/CoL/CoT in game instead of just during construction. I think being able to see what is happening at the point of failure (flipping) would help immensely, especially if its not entirely obvious why a rocket which has gone straight as an arrow suddenly inverts. For me, it just seems I try to go too fast (above 250-275) with my rockets and it flips, but usually rights itself quickly as it slows down, allowing me to recover. I suspect the magical SAS may also have a hand.

I have noticed, oddly, that many of my rockets fly better without any sort of fins to assist in stability in atmosphere, which seems counter-intuitive to me. I dunno if its just me (probably) or what else, but it has been annoying at times. But I persevere. I'm by no means what I would call good at this in the first place, so when in doubt I presume myself as the source of failure.

I've come to the same conclusion, but sometimes it seems like I can launch the exact same rocket fine one time and then the next launch it flips in midair, which confuses me. I just attribute it to me going slightly further off prograde than I should compared to the last time. Still trying to figure out all the changes from pre-1.0.x, but having fun (mostly) doing so.

To be fair, its worth $40 IMO. Though, also to be fair, if I hadn't gotten it on one of the frequent Steam Early Access sales, I might not be willing to spring for $40 blindly. Even at the discounted price, it wasn't until I found Scott Manley's vids on it that I became convinced to buy it. Its one of those games that you need to see in action to become convinced.

I never said I was going to take said contract. That just caught my eye.

Just thinking of the dV required to make a suborbital trajectory to the Sun and then return makes my head hurt. Considering this is only early-mid game Career mode for me at the moment, that one just seems out of place. That's some master level stuff right there. All the other itineraries aren't all that bad and more in line with what I can do currently heh.