FlyingPete

You can also do this while you're in the hangar or VAB. The open/closed state then carries over to launch.

...not the druids you're looking for.

So what's to become of the two unintended settlers now? A rescue mission or supplies for a more permanent base? Camping by the wreckage of your ship would get old quickly

If it's detected and recognised by the PC, I can't see that there would be any issues with KSP. I use a PS3-type controller which gives good control. My basic setup uses left stick for pitch/yaw, d-pad for translate up/down/left/right, right stick for roll and translate forward/back. Works great for docking You can use the trigger buttons for engine control.

It's good for longer missions as you can afford to carry less fuel from Kerbin. This makes the overall spacecraft smaller. Something like an exploration of Jool's moons comes to mind. Basically, you need the mass of the mining equipment to be offset by the reduction in fuel requirements. Another idea that comes to mind is to bolt some engines and a fuel refinery to an asteroid and go off exploring the system with it

One of the best ideas I've seen for a vertical TSTO spaceplane used a drop tank mounted ahead of the plane. That way, you CoL is behind the CoM at launch and you can actually fly the thing without flipping over. The CoT stays in line throughout so there's no issues with off-axis thrust. It's also slightly more mass-efficient as you use the same engine (mounted on the spaceplane) for the whole launch. When the tank is empty, you dump it and complete the orbital insertion on the plane's internal fuel supply. The only complication is that you have to avoid crashing into the tank you just jettisoned, but strategic use of sepratrons can deal with that. I guess if you added a probe core and some parachutes to the tank you could recover it as well.

You'll notice this whenever you're on an airliner. Even though you're rolled by up to about 30 degrees in a turn, your sense of 'down' is still directly towards the floor. Too little rudder input, and the plane slips into the turn ('down' shifts towards the lower wing), too much rudder, and you skid out of the turn. Neither are very efficient. One thing that's quite useful is if you're going for a runway landing and are off-target, you can keep the nose pointed at 90 degrees (or 270) with the rudder input, while rolling the plane left or right to slip sideways in order to line up.

Engineers get to put their feet up in the passenger cabin and play HSP until they need to go and fix something

Have the drilling rig on wheels, with landing legs too that will slightly lift the wheels off the ground when deployed. Mount a docking port to the top. Your return ship should have legs (made from girders etc) that will allow the drill rig to drive under it, and a docking port on the underside. When the return ship lands, drive underneath and align the docking ports. Extend the landing gear to lift the docking ports into contact and transfer the ore or fuel.

I like spaceplanes as crew shuttles between ground and an orbiting space station- other spacecraft can handle things from there. There's little practical benefit to making a space plane that can go directly to e.g. Duna. They're also useful for lifting small payloads such as probes and satellites into LKO, where the probe's own engines can take it the rest of the way. Outside of Kerbin, jet-propelled planes are a good way to explore Laythe, and planes with other means of propulsion have their uses on Eve and Duna.

I've made a start on an asteroid cruiser design. It turned out to be fairly simple to get this main section into orbit. From front to back: Mk3 cockpit, passenger module, science lab (in cargo bay) ore storage and processing (in cargo bay) liquid fuel tank, LFO tank/adapter, nuke engine (x4) The dual docking ports on each side will allow addition of Mk2-sized side pods containing smaller cargo bays, some more tank space, a couple more engines and docking ports for the mining shuttles (yet to be designed). Then it's off to colonise space! http://imgur.com/a/lasOr

Now 1.0 has been upon us for a while, and hopefully all the major features are reasonably stable. I'm working my way through a science mode game which has its own challenge, but I figure it's time to do a large project in sandbox mode, just to see if it can be done. I like the engineering challenge of coming up with equipment that works. Been looking forward to resource mining for some time so would be good to get that operational. Pre-1.0, I've been to Duna a couple of times, Jool and Eve (one-way). Never been to Dres, Moho or Eeloo as they don't seem too interesting (no moons or anything) Here's some options I've considered so far: - Exploration of Jool's moons. Bit of a ripoff of Brotoro's Long Term Laythe, but should be able to make it mostly self-sufficient with a good mining operation. - Colonise Eve: Would have to be a colony as realistically they're not coming back. An orbital outpost running missions to Gilly is also a possibility. - A surface base on Ike, with excursions to Duna to do some exploring there. - Asteroid Nomads: Assemble a large mothership that goes cruising between asteroids, with a couple of attached 'landers' that can pillage them for ore. Hope the Kerbals like zero-g. - Something else?

Rhymes with fez....

I've been using a ps3-type gamepad recently. Left analog stick gets pitch and yaw, and right stick does roll. It makes more sense that way round for flying rockets, and its acceptable for planes. Translation is controlled by the D-pad for up/down/left/right, and by the other axis on the right analog stick for forward/back. For throttle control I use the L1, L2, R1 and R2 buttons. If find it works quite nicely for docking as you can get the ports aligned, hold the orientation using SAS, then use the translation controls for the approach while still having roll control to hand for cases where this matters.

"We choose to go to the Mun, not because it is easy, but because the other things are too hard"

I would go for a station in Mun orbit to do the actual fuel refining. Have mining landers go to the surface and drill for ore, then bring it back to the station for processing. That way you can make a large station with lots of solar arrays for power, and enough tanks that you don't run out of storage. The simplest in terms of hardware would be to send your interplanetary ships directly to the Mun station and refuel there. You can either launch directly from the Mun station, or alternatively launch into an elliptical Kerbin orbit with a low periapsis. This way you can maximise the Oberth effect by making a small burn at low altitude. This does however slightly complicate things for planning the maneuver- the Mun has to be in the right position, and you have two SoI changes to consider (Mun>Kerbin, Kerbin>Kerbol). Slightly simpler in practical terms might be to have a second fuel dump station in a high Kerbin orbit, and send the interplanetary ship there. You'd need a couple of fuel tankers to bring fuel from the Mun station down to the fuel dump. To go interplanetary from here, it would again be efficient to make a retrograde burn first, before making a second low-altitude burn into a Kerbin escape trajectory. With this approach you could also have a second mining operation on Minmus and bring fuel from there too.

Both methods can be used. Basically you're using the momentum change of the reaction wheel to impart an equal momentum to the spacecraft. You can have a wheel that's nominally stationary, and just start/stop it to rotate the spacecraft, or you can have a wheel that's spinning and just change its speed. A static wheel driven by a stepper motor is good for a very precise aiming of e.g. a telescope, whereas a running wheel is simpler. In practice the speed of the wheel will gradually increase to compensate for things like gravity gradient torque, and this built-up rotation eventually has to be cancelled out using RCS or similar. In KSP, I'll happily use them where they're sensible- spamming reaction wheels instead of building a more stable craft feels cheaty to me. But for basic control, or 'gyro stabilisation' on a rover they're fine.

Theoretically there's experiment results coded into the game for Jool's surface. I guess there has to be in case the game ever looks for it, so presumably you can get the occasional nonsensical contract come up. The only thing to beat that one though would be "Plant a flag on the Sun"

The admin building finally becomes useful in the 'late game' phase when you've discovered everything. Convert the extra science into funds and/or reputation as required

"Permission to jettison science officer?" looking forward to more of this

I got bored of the new career mode last time I tried it. Far too many space tourists who wanted to go to orbit (never mind that I'd only just made orbit at this point) and weren't paying enough to cover the launch costs. Plus a bunch of part-testing contracts that didn't make any sense. No amount of declining contracts made sensible ones turn up. Now going back to science mode

It was more a case of design convergence (apart from the engine cluster on the 2nd stage- that was intentional) and finding what worked to launch the payload. The size of the Munar Module meant a 3.75m launcher was needed. With the revised aero model in 1.0, I'll probably be making more use of these parts- in previous versions I tended to just mount several 2.5m stacks side by side.

I was experimenting with the stock fairings in 1.0, and, since I've never found a need for the 3.75m parts before now either, decided to have a go at an Apollo-style mission. The Munar Module is a little bit over-fuelled, plus I forgot to add RCS (these will be fixed for future missions) but I got the craft to work. Next job is a Skylab analogue launched on the same booster.

I've had an early career mode save going, and got to the point of suborbital flight (basically a sounding rocket that clears the atmosphere). Trouble is, then the space tourist contracts started coming in, to the extent that there were very few meaningful science contracts, or part testing ones that were profitable. Managed to get Val into orbit, and suddenly everyone on Kerbin wants to go into space for peanuts- it's just as silly as everyone in the Soviet Union expecting to be taken into space straight after Gagarin's flight. Decline the tourist contract and another one pops up straight away. There are no contracts that give science available, so no part upgrades to be had in order to reach the Mun, plus there's nothing available to make money from, so I can't go off exploring and get science/new parts that way. IME, space tourists break career mode. What would be nice is a button in mission control to 'decline all contracts of this type'.

So I've been experimenting in sandbox mode to get the hang of the resource mining feature. The method I'm using so far is to place a station in orbit of Minmus with a couple of ISRU converters, tanks for fuel and ore, and plenty of power. A drill-equipped lander then goes to the surface, digs until its tanks are full, then hauls the ore back to orbit for conversion. I guess the other approach would be to have the ISRU converters on the surface as a permanent base. You could then either drill directly below the base, or send mining rovers out to collect the ore. Only the finished fuel would then get shipped back to orbit. In the Jool system, there's a third possible option. Assuming the colony is based on Laythe, you could have a processing/fuel dump station in orbit of Laythe, and having mining ships bring the raw ore back from Bop or Pol. You could either do this with the lander, or have a separate ship to go between moons. Anyone found any specific advantage to either method?