FlyingPete

The Kerbals are good fun, add some humour and set the 'realistic enough without taking itself too seriously' tone of the game nicely. However, I was attracted to the game by the notion of being able to build rockets much more easily than you can in Orbiter. Of course, this was back in the 0.13 demo, and all you saw of the Kerbals was the classic trio via IVA cameras. They've become a much more integral part of the game since then.

Launched my first proper spaceplane payload I had a probe contract come up, so rather than send it by rocket as I'd done before, I modified my SSTO slightly by simply replacing the passenger cabin and docking port with a cargo bay, and carried the probe inside it. There were a couple of small issues, such as the probe's probe core being mounted the wrong way up, and the two radial engines apparently being at a very slight angle which resulted in an uncontrolled rotation when firing. But the launch was successful, and Billy-Boblong returned safely for full launch vehicle recovery.

My rockets are mostly rocket-shaped anyway. Even if there are radially-mounted engines, the whole thing usually stages from the bottom up. The exception is SRBs- I often mount these radially to increase the launch TWR. They're jettisoned fairly early on though.

Moved my Kerbin space station into a higher 100km orbit- just over 70km was annoying when it came to planning a rendezvous. I used two SSTO aircraft as tractors to make the move. Was imagining Miles O'Kerman grumbling to himself during the operation that "this isn't a starship", before figuring out a way to do it anyway

In my old save, I built a station starting with a central core- basically a few structural fuselage parts with large docking ports at right angles. You can then bring up whatever modules you want. I'd bring up fuel tanks (which you can then refill when they become empty) crew quarters to hold Kerbonauts while they're waiting for the next Mun bus, solar power and lots of docking ports and you've got a basic station. Site the solar arrays away from any docking ports that you want to use to avoid accidental destruction. It's also quite useful to have a little RCS-powered tug you can use during station assembly and for docking heavy fuel tankers. If you use more than one type of docking port, having a couple of port adapters (I use the thinner 'dustbin lid' connector with a medium and large port either side) adds flexibility.

I like the look of the old sidebar ui. I reckon this should be the display you get while the VAB is at level 1.

No reason theoretically why an old analogue joystick shouldn't work well enough. Often a new joystick still relies on potentiometers to track position. The difference is that the conversion is done in the PC rather than in the joystick. Try it and see is the best approach

'Koins' makes me imagine Mario Kerman running around KSC collecting them

Depends what you fly. In the majority of planes with side-by-side seating, the pilot's seat is on the left, with the throttles in the middle.

I pretty much always leave the lab in orbit. For example, I have a station at Minmus that contains a lab. The lander detaches, does science in a couple of biomes, then returns to the station for refuelling/experiment processing. When I send a new crew/supply ship, the old crew brings all the data back to Kerbin in their own ship. Any duplicate data which can't be stored in the pod gets transmitted.

I'd say leave the 'original three' as they are- no changes. Adding a fourth Kerbal to the original crew just for the sake of having a female at the start doesn't seem right. Assuming the goal is for equality of the sexes, the applicant list should remain totally random- the code equivalent of throwing all the possible Kerbal names together and picking one. So no enforced 50:50 split or any such nonsense- you might get more female than male applicants, it might be the other way round. The point is, there's no prioritisation of one over the other.

I find that while this works well in atmospheric flight, in space and when flying rockets it gets annoying since you use pitch and yaw on their own most of the time. Just feels more intuitive to use the left stick to point the spacecraft in the right direction. The other benefit is that the roll axis remains available when doing translation during docking.

Kredits, Kash or Munney.

I have a 3rd-party PS3 gamepad that's PC compatible which I quite like to use. It gives you full control of all six control axes plus engines. My setup is this: Left stick: pitch, yaw Right stick: translate forward/back, roll d-pad: translate up/down, translate left/right. (Also assigned to rover wheel forward/backward, steering) L1: zero thrust (and brakes) L2: reduce thrust R1: full thrust R2: increase thrust X: SAS toggle Square: RCS toggle Triangle: Map view Circle: Stage Select: landing gear Start: lights With this setup, flying planes works well enough (pitch/yaw on one stick takes getting used to, but is certainly better than on separate sticks when in space). Docking is great as you can first align the docking ports using the left stick, hold with SAS, then perform the actual docking with control over all three axes plus roll to get the two craft orientated how you want them. Another approach would be to have a pair of 3-axis joysticks, though I don't think this would be as intuitive.

I keep forgetting that Dres is there. I guess I'm still thinking by Terran standards- big gas giant comes after rocky red place.

I may have to commandeer this vessel for my Eve colony

I've had a Mun lander run out of RCS fuel within 10m of the orbital station. Bob just collected all the science and abandoned ship, completing the rendezvous by jetpack. I eventually retrieved the lander with a resupply ship. I'm no stranger to sending the crew to get out and push too.

In practice, no. Though there's nothing theoretically stopping you using compressed air. I like the idea of an electric or nuclear steam rocket. Such a space-kettle would technically be a monopropellant thruster. I guess the ISP would depend on the pressure you could generate.

You can get into orbit with just jets and RCS thrusters in some cases. The trick is to keep your climb slow so you can build up speed in the atmosphere. You want to have a suborbital trajectory of something like 90km x 40km when the jets die. Then you coast to apoapsis and circularize with your rockets/monoprop engines/ions.

Monopropellant engines (the O-10 engine) respond to normal throttle controls but consume monopropellant. They also don't care about fuel tank placement- they will draw from any onboard supply with no need for connecting fuel lines. The vernor engine is essentially the opposite. AFAIK they need to be connected to a tank with fuel in it (or a fuel line connecting to a tank with fuel) The actual usefulness of the monoprop engine is fairly restricted. For general rocketry, it's almost always more efficient to use liquid fuel due to the higher ISP. I've found a couple of exceptions though. -Orbital SSTO aircraft: Here you're using jet engines most of the way, then using another propulsion system to nudge the plane into orbit. Here it can be convenient to use monopropellant, since then you can use a single fuel type for both orbital maneuvers and docking. Simplifies the craft and makes it smaller. -Small landers (for Minmus etc): Here the monoprop capacity in the command pods comes in useful, tipping the balance slightly in favour of monopropellant in some cases. Particularly as the 24-77 engines which you'd typically use on a small landing vehicle are not that efficient. -Space station emergency escape pods: Same idea here- all you need is a command pod, docking port and a couple of engines. You can use it for a launch abort system too- assign the action group to shut down all engines on the lifter, separate the command pod and fire the monoprop engines attached to it. -Orbital assembly tugs: The sort of 'tractor' with lots of RCS thrust which you use to move space station parts etc around. Having a couple of main engines can be useful and is slightly more efficient than the RCS quads when used for thrust.

It always feels slightly wrong when planning this sort of rendezvous, since you have to establish yourself on a Kerbin-impact trajectory as well. Jeb apparently had no fear though, completed another risky mission, and Kerbkind is saved from almost certain doom. Great work!

I think there's enough in the current Kerbol system that we can compare to in our Solar system- the third planet is small and rocky, has a large moon and is inhabited by intelligent(?) life. The fourth is smaller and red in colour, the fifth is a gas giant with several moons etc. But then, Earth isn't inhabited by cartoonish little green men, there's no ocean moon around our largest gas giant, and no second Terran moon that's apparently made of mint ice cream etc. So it's quite clearly not analogous to the Solar system, but with several similarities. How it should be IMO.

Stupid Kerbals make good test pilots

I explore Minmus with a science lab in orbit and a reusable lander with 2 of each experiment. That way, you can bring science from a biome to the station, process and transmit one set to get some science now, and send the rest back later when refuelling/rotating crews. Gets the maximum science and is quite efficient. You can take this approach with the Mun as well but it doesn't make quite as much of a difference due to the closer proximity to Kerbin. Now that there's biomes everywhere, it's certainly worth it for Duna and the Jool system.

This is the way forward I think. You'd need enough dV to intercept the asteroid, and a swarm of radially- attached probe core-girder-claw-parachute 'harpoons' that would all grab hold of the asteroid. With just one claw you'd most likely tear something off when the chutes open