Gaarst

No worries mate. Necroing is alright when people actually contribute to the discussion, which you did. (Also seems like my locking request didn't go through, stupid mobile software)

I know right? Stupid Americans think they went to the Moon with their joke rockets, but deny Great Mother Russia's achievements

Yeah, I'm using a custom power setting with more or less everything at 100%. Since then I've updated to 1.1.3 and the performance increases seem to have solved the issue. This thread is almost a year old, so I'll ask for it to be locked. PS: love your avatar too!

Where in the OP is it written that it's not allowed without mods? Mods are strongly recommended because there is no trivial way to stage a rocket without pressing the space bar in stock, but if you managed to do it, the achievement is only greater.

Kerbals don't breathe. If they did you wouldn't be able to leave them in a capsule for dozens of years. Add whatever you want to your atmosphere.

If the Chinese went to Mars I'm pretty sure we'd have more than a single YouTube video to prove it.

Following communications, life support should indeed be the next logical step. But yeah, knowing Squad, we'll get localisation, bug fixes, more bugs, fire in the forums and a few rushed patches.

Read the stickied thread tagged "important" named "Missing addon threads." Why does no one ever read stickied threads?

Multiplayer has been suggested like a million times already (at the very least) and Squad once said they will add it some time. That's pretty much it. 1.1 was rumoured to be the Multiplayer update, so was 1.2. I haven't heard or read anything about 1.3 so far. It's on the top of many players' features wishlist (though at the very bottom of mine) but we all know how Squad likes to listen to the forums for suggestions...

9.8 is 9.81 rounded to the 1st decimal, which itself is 9.80665 rounded to the 2nd decimal. You usually don't need 5 decimal accuracy when planning a mission, hence the rounding.

The Zenit is powered by an RD-171 developed from the RD-170 which had enough gimbal to launch a rocket upside-down (something like 10°): it was built for Energia which is basically a (better) Space Shuttle with the SSMEs on the ET, so the whole thing had to launch sideways. Though the engines developed from the RD-170 (RD-171 and RD-180) have had their gimbals reduced a bit, it's still pretty big and allows for slightly asymmetrical launches (see the Atlas V family with its SRBs all over the place). I expect that an asymmetric Zenit would be powered by an updated RD-171 with a bit of additional gimbal to help stabilise it. The Merlin was never developed for asymmetrical configurations and I doubt it would work correctly. Long story short: your Falcon 9 Semi-Heavy will do a nice flip and that's pretty much it. Edit: BTW, if anyone found a source with the gimbal range of the Merlin engine, I'd be interested to see it, I couldn't find any.

Started the design process for my next big RSS space program. The objective is manned missions to Venus and Mars orbits (landings for later) with return. Even though I'm still pretty far away from reaching this stage RP-wise, I've had some ideas for a bit and have decided to start getting things done. The current plan involves a mothership that will remain in orbit for several missions. It will be powered by either electric or nuclear propulsion, still haven't made my choice: electric burn times are awful (in RSS even more so than stock) and the size of the LH2 tanks needed for nuclear is just insane. My first design is on the light side of things: under 100t, it can support manned missions to Mars and Venus orbits but barely more. It is powered by ion propulsion, and because Xe gas cannot be transferred between tanks, its tanks are single use and refueling operations are simply changing fuel tanks (I have no idea if it's actually doable in real time, but I like the idea of throwing tanks away as we go).It's an early design and doesn't include the latest and future improvements in terms of propulsion (more powerful engines are yet to be conceived), life support (right now I just have huge supplies tanks, with no recycling whatsoever) and general design. The following designs will be much larger, as they will need to support surface operations, so a lander and possibly base elements, but I still have time for that. Sceptre Alpha (prototype and yet to be properly named: Sceptre is the program name):

It depends on your docking skills. I used to barely use over a few units to dock things weighing a couple dozens of tons in LKO (used to since I now play RSS and have lost the habit of dealing with the stupidly strong LKO drift). Though if you want to dock something over 100t you might want to consider using Verniers: they have more thrust and you don't have to worry about monoprop.

The Wiki is either outdated or wrong (sometimes both). In short: no.

The runway is fine. If you can't manage to take off with KSP's super-OP jet engines, the problem is you.

Many people (including I) have always disagreed with this kind of marketing for KSP and wish it would appear more serious to people. Explosions are fun when you want them, but most of the time they are simply annoying when they ruin an actual space mission (the thing the game is actually about). I don't care that KSP is nominated in the "Boom Boom" category: it's nominated so it will get some recognition for that and that's always positive; but other categories fit the game so much better (the 5 more minutes one would be my personal favourite since I can actually relate to that). Anyway I don't have KSP on Steam so I guess I don't really care in the end. I play the game the way I want and shouldn't be paying attention to how KSP is sold.

SVE and EVE are the most advanced to my knowledge. Scatterer is also quite nice. Though you should be aware that the main limitation to good performance in KSP is CPU. Even with a 1070 you might only see minor performance improvements if your CPU is the same.

I think you got 2. messed up, but other than that I agree. GitHub > all.

Where do you live?

No mod elitism going on here, just making a point that while it is true that some mods make the game easier, others make it harder. Calling a large majority (according to most polls) of PC KSP players "not smart enough" is not justified. (Also I don't like being indirectly called an idiot)

Nice bait. Try orbiting anything in RSS and come back then.

Ion engines have very low thrust for KSP (it's actually literally thousands of times more powerful than real ion propulsion). They are mostly intended for very light probes or vessels which don't end up having days-long burns. Giving them more thrust would make them extremely overpowered, right now they are "balanced" (as balanced as a thing having 4200s of Isp can be).

It depends: do you get any better after you reach 1000 rep?

That'd pretty much be a new game. I'd love something in between KSP and Orbiter.