n.b.z.

Question: Is it allowed to submit missions that were originally done for another challenge, if they also conform to the rules of this one? This thread is so utterly epic, I always want to do something for this challenge. Since I missed the opportunity of "Yay-my-first-spaceplane", and since there are so many people here that are WAY better than me with efficiency, I always think I should do something that is at least exceptionally, spectacularly silly. The ideas I've tried so far didn't really work. Most likely because they were too silly. But I've got one more profoundly bonkers idea up my sleeve, and already came very close to building a working design with it.

Thank you for this challenge! As a sandbox-only player, who isn't used to part count restrictions, I couldn't believe the framerate I was getting! I can not possibly compete in the department "lowest possible part count", and I'm not really good at efficient orbital mechanics either. So instead of trying for best economics, I decided to make full use of the 30 part "budget" allowed by the rules, and tried to make a vehicle that has enough delta-V margin to allow for sloppy maneuvering, is easy and relaxing to operate, and has carefree electrics. On a good day, you can even get it back home, where it shouldn't embarrass you too much if your neighbors spot it in the driveway. The delta-V margin came in handy, because I immediately botched the Minmus insertion burn. After a traditional plane change, it was already too late for a proper efficient burn, and I was too lazy to wait one orbit. So I hamfistwiggled the radial knob on the node to get some encounter at all, and did a few correction burns on the way. The "MMC-30P" also proved capable of a Mun return mission in an un-kerballed test flight. However, it's a bit less relaxing to set it onto the surface there, and the fuel does not allow for long cruise flight to the KSC in case the reentry lacks precision. Aerobraking was never tested. All 30 parts are visible without clipping, except for one light. To demonstrate ease of handling, the mission was flown by newly hired pilot Eillotte, who went to space for the very first time. Did it all by herself, and had a great Minmus vacation in blissful solitude.

That first image of the "three vehicles being assembled" album somehow looks like one giant Kerbal craft suffering a process of rapid discombobulation.

I generally do spaceflight in exactly the way it shouldn't be done. Real spaceflight revolves around numbers and calculations. My specific brand of insanity insists on crude rule-of-thumb cobbling together of usually overdesigned contraptions, made hopelessly inefficient by a combination of "convenience margins", useless parts slapped on for the looks, and a boneheaded tendency to make "multi-purpose" or "flexible" designs. I enjoy that KSP allows an intuitive approach, which in the real world would be utterly insane. Rules of thumbs are like "if it barely reaches orbit on Kerbin, it will comfortably reach orbit on Laythe", and similar drivel. Instead of actually learning anything, I'm training my gut feeling. I can build some wheeled vehicle, test drive it on Kerbin, and have a good feeling how it will behave on Minmus, or Duna. Smart people increase their knowledge by studying. I decrease my explosions by trial and error. All my designs, regardless of size, have the same delta-V entry on their data sheet: "probably sufficient". For ages I have told myself: "The NEXT mod will finally have to be KER, I need to know what I'm building!" ... then, comes go-look-for-mods-day (an event that occasionally just happens to me) I somehow get lost on the path to KER, get some sort of weird brain kraken, and suddenly find my game with not KER, but something called KOS installed in it. Before I even have the faintest idea what is happening, I have somehow suddenly spent days writing a KOS script that flies my Rapier based planes into orbit. Why? I don't know, and I also still don't know the delta-V of that thing... I'll tell you what a "transfer window" is. When Kerbals want to go someplace, they immediately get up from the desk, strap themselves into some scary vehicle, blast off and leave Kerbin's SOI. The "transfer window" is whatever kraken-cursed porthole they get to look out of for ages whilst waiting for an opportunity to try burning for the place they want to visit. Generally, I have 1000 unfinished things lying around, and barely get to actually fly stuff. Which is somewhat lame, as that's what I'm building all that stuff for. Only once, a long time ago, have I dropped a probe on Eve, to have a look at that hell myself. While that worked fine, just seeing how that probe behaved there scared me. Since then, I just pretend that the place doesn't exist, which has worked surprisingly well so far.

For me it's also the first rendezvous. Which wasn't planned... Aawww sh*t, storytime. Skip this. Really. When I was new to KSP, I had great success with the "strategy" of taking my first Mun-landing-capable launch stack, which carried a crew of 3 Kerbals, and going to inreasingly more difficult bodies by adding more and more stuff to it. Bigger tanks, more stages. This had somehow worked fine for Minmus, Duna, Dres, Pol, and Bop, leading me to a false belief that this was the way to keep going. This approach fell apart with Vall. After successfully landing there, and having explored the place - I had developed a habit of always bringing 2 light rovers along - the three kerbonauts made orbit, and escaped the Jool system. It was at this point that I learned that if you only have 95% of the delta-V required to get back to Kerbin, and you thus make 95% of the required burn, this does NOT result in being in a place where you have "only 5% more to go" to get home. Instead, I inevitably found myself in some highly eccentric orbit around the sun. The last spent stage was separated off the capsule to do my first experiments in pushing capsules with RCS from space suits. This was leading nowhere. I realized that in order to get the three stranded Kerbals back, I needed to fly another craft there and do a rendezvous. Which I had never done, not even in Kerbin orbit. The capsule had no dock port, the guys would have to transfer by EVA. Since I'm a learning-by-doing guy, not really good at studying "in advance", I knew this was going to be a giant mess of trial and error. So my rescue ship consisted of the entire Jool-moon-landing stack minus crew and rovers, and I spent nearly all of its delta-V figuring out how to get to the crew. The moment when I first spotted the capsule, floating silently through space, was unbelieveable. The following image shows nothing more than an Mk1-2 pod with a battery, a probe core, and a chute, against a backdrop of nothing. Yet it was a breathtaking sight at the time it happened. The good news was, that the three Kerbals made it back to Kerbin alive. The bad news: I had wrongly concluded that I just didn't "add enough stuff" to the old stack for the Vall mission. I failed to understand that the approach of adding ever more stuff to that launch stack had reached its limit. So the next crew of three was sent out to explore another of Jool's moons, again with the same launch stack, which had again been greatly upgraded with A Whole Lot More Stuff™. They were in great spirits, and highly confident; the space program had never caused grief at this point, and the safe return of the three stranded Heroes Of Vall had instilled a belief that even severe problems could be solved and that there would always be a way to bring back Kerbals in distress. They were headed for Tylo. I am saddened to report that their mission failed in a way that tragically made any rescue effort pointless, as there were no longer any distressed Kerbals left to rescue. These brave pioneers were the first to reach Tylo, but also the first to vanish whilst touching a new world for the first time, and their spirits will remain on Tylo forever. Tylo, the unknown beast, had insisted that the first crew to touch its surface would do so while their instruments display a surface-relative velocity north of 800 m/s. During the descent, the crew had assumed for a while that Tylo was kidding - somehow fooling them, messing with them, pulling tricks on them. The scientific worth of their mission lay in their discovery of the most fundamental scientific fact about Tylo, reported shortly before their demise, in their very last radio transmission - a truth that every mission needs to take into account when going there: "Tylo is not joking - repeat - Tylo is NOT joking." Their sacrifice was not pointless, as it was finally recognized that the old historic Tons Of Stuff Stack had seen its last flight, and that for Tylo, a technical approach specific for that body was needed. Their memory was honored by an effort to land three Kerbals on Tylo and returning them safely to Kerbin, whilst presenting Tylo with a gesture of two middle fingers firmly held high, in the form of insisting that Tylo would be no exception to the rule of "always bringing 2 rovers along" with a crew of three. When the 800-m/s-impact happened, I had been enthusiatically addicted to KSP for about a month, making fast progress by playing it obsessively. But there was (and still is) SO much stuff I didn't know, and I didn't have the finesse or efficiency skills needed for Tylo. However, I knew this. And, I had seen a bunch of Whackjob's screenshots. This resulted in an epic, yet totally insane, undertaking of brute-forcing The Tylo Problem, which took up at least another full month of KSP obsession, and involved the destruction of the launch pad through the combined force and sheer awesomeness of no less than one hundred Mainsails at full throttle. But that's another story.

I find it impossible to pick one favourite feature out of the many dumbstruckingly good things that shape this game. Since this is a thread devoted to saying nice things, I'll shamelessly pick my "top three" features, which I hope to get away with because it enables me to say more nice things. 3. I really like that "Sandbox" is an official game mode, and I don't have to complete a tech tree if that happens to be not my thing. 2. Maneuver nodes. This is an incredible accomplishment of user interface design. It is very difficult to make a highly complex, mathematical topic intuitively accessible to, basically, anyone who can playfully push a mouse across a desk while looking at a screen. In terms of providing non-experts with an understanding of a complex subject matter, maneuver nodes relate to the topic of orbital mechanics like Gapminder1 relates to data visualisation. The fact that the idea seems obvious once you have seen it actually serves as an indicator of how well it was done. 1. The game idea itself. I mean, come on, I get to play Aerospace-Lego, and have a whole physics-based solar system to throw my contraptions around in? How could I possibly resist? _______________________________________________ 1 Press "Play" button at bottom left. Currently doesn't seem to work with Firefox.

I agree that, outside of forum challenges or similar group activities with an agreed-upon set of rules, it is not possible to cheat in a single player game. Doesn't mean that I can't have my own little rules while playing in my own little sandbox. For example, in my world it's "impossible" to "simulate" anything on a celestial body using Hyperedit, if I haven't at least landed a probe there for real. A probe is "necessary" to get the data that's required for a simulation. However, I obviously don't get to yell at others for "cheating" if they break a rule that only exists in my head.

I don't have a submission, just some old thing that doesn't conform to the challenge rules. Posting it for inspiration - not only because it's taking the one-launch-station idea to a ridiculous level, but it shows a way to make something that's very big surprisingly aerodynamic. The Southern Cross Orbital Habitat had its own specialized launcher, and was made from 100% stock parts before we had fairings. Back then, folding the station into a fairing had no aero advantage, but that station could never have been launched in the "deployed" configuration for obvious structural reasons. P.S.: The station was decommissioned for its tendency to set my computer on fire. I could never determine the part count, because my computer usually melted before it could count that far.

I would guess that only the locking mechanism needs work. Otherwise, the legs seem fine as they are. Even more speculative: I guess they will work on their video link. That stream cutting out *seconds* before landing must have driven Musk no less bonkers than the rest of us...

Yep... that was a very kerbal way for a rocket to fail. "Yeah, that looks spot-on, velocity is fine, now I just need to.... erm... what... no... REALLY??"

A great idea, but it probably won't happen - mainly because SpaceX just couldn't afford to hire Whackjob.

No. Please. No! You're not trying to say, that the reason why I never saw any traces of the civilization that must have lasted for thousands of years to become a space-faring one.... all the old cities that are no longer to be seen.... all that farmland that has long since been reclaimed by nature.... oh. my. god.

"The human eye can only perceive 24 frames per second." "For 1.2 we're completely overhauling the UI, focussing primarily on optimal usability on smartwatches and smart-fingerrings." Seriously: wish you all a happy 2016!

gadgetilt v. - the process of righting a tipped surface vessel into its intended position and attitude, by using moveable parts that were most definitely not intended for this purpose swankareen v. - to accelerate along the entire length of the KSC runway in an impressively firespitting vehicle that is crazy loud, but will embarrassingly only take off after dropping off the end of the runway. If at all. Deadlefut n. - A landing leg that has become inoperative whilst in its extended position.

Your avatar was well-suited to demonstrate transparent images, and how shadows work with them. For demo purposes, it would have been even cooler to show Red Iron Crown's animated avatar, which also throws a proper shadow, but I would have needed another image or turn the whole big thing into an animated GIF. I plan to update this at some point, because of the various weird/unfinished things in the profile and search, but likely won't have the time before Christmas. As it is, the whole thing already basically consists of 1200 lines of high-grade, relentlessly militant procrastination...

The post backgrounds can be styled like this: /* article main box */ .ipsComment:not(.ipsBox_transparent):not(.ipsModerated) { background: #fafafa; } /* article author */ .ipsComment_author { background-color: #f2f6f8; } /* article status bar */ .ipsComment_meta:not(.ipsBox_transparent):not(.ipsModerated) { /* something */ } Or, if you don't like hexadecimal color values, like this: /* article main box */ .ipsComment:not(.ipsBox_transparent):not(.ipsModerated) { background: rgb(98%, 98%, 98%); } /* article author */ .ipsComment_author { background-color: rgb(95%, 96%, 97%); } ....where you have three values per color, in the order of RED, GREEN, BLUE. The higher the brighter, so the values in my example are very near to full white. These are the actual colors from the old forum, but they no longer make any sense. If applied to the default new forum style, there will be even less contrast than before, and the same happens when used with my old "nbzKontrast" style. The above style definitions will work when dropped into a new style file, which you can create yourself with the Stylish addon. If you want to play around with them in combination with any of my stuff, they need to be adapted a bit. To work with my old "nbzKontrast", the color for the author box needs to be written like this: background-color: rgb(95%, 96%, 97%) !important; And in the new blue style (this thread's topic), I made quite a last-minute mess of the box style definitions, and the post background needs to be adressed like this: .ipsBox:not(.ipsBox_transparent):not(.ipsModerated):not(.ipsWidget):not(.ipsWidget_vertical) { background: rgb(98%, 98%, 98%); } But if you want a light background, the new style isn't for you anyway, as most of the text is white...

You mean like the "old" forum? I think that such a light background would probably fit better into my old CSS. In the new one, it would stand out too much with all the other dark blue stuff.

I made this picture. Seriously, there is more white in this image than anywhere else in my browser. This is a more extensive effort to re-style the forum than my last one. This time I inverted the whole thing to get light text on a dark background. The resulting CSS file now exposes most of the background and text colors to any interested reader, and I tried to structure and comment it reasonably well, so that modding it should be relatively easy. However, it's neither perfect nor really finished yet. Forum post CSS stylesheet

Whoa, that was quite some endeavour, which depleted my coffee reserves considerably. I have uploaded a new style sheet. It's not perfect, because it isn't even really finished yet, and probably has a number of weird bugs. But it DOES turn off the light, if I may say so myself. I made a new post about it here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/127797-made-a-new-forum-style-light-text-on-dark-background/

I made a new "user style" for this forum. This time, it uses light text on a dark background - an objective that required a much more extensive effort than my first forum style. As a consequence, the CSS file now exposes a massive amount of the text and background colors, and I've attempted to make it as accessible and easy to mod as I could. Please don't expect everything to be perfect - there is going to be a lot of stuff that I missed, and there are other areas that aren't really ready for primetime. I'm releasing it again on the basis of thinking that it's "good enough" for others to enjoy, or to use it as a starting point for making their own theme. Basically, it looks okay on the front page and the discussion forums, but the further you get into the "system" - to your profile, or the search - the more you will see things that are rather shoddy and unfinished. I guess I will improve this stuff over time. Also, feel free to find this whole thing terribly ugly - that's why I tried to make it easy to change it. I am (for now) not going to do anything about "broken" signatures. These often contain inline CSS, and while I could forcefully override the colors in most cases, this would force everyones signature text to have the same color(s), which seems more destructive than helpful to me. Any images that rely on a specific background color will look borked anyway. To use this for yourself, you will need the "Stylish" browser-plugin. This is available for free and you'll find it on userstyles.org, the same site that hosts my style file: https://userstyles.org/styles/121820/darkblue-ksp-forum

Have a bit of patience. "Eye floaters" sounds like something that sucks. You are for sure not the first who would prefer light text on a dark background, but your reason for it sort of takes the cake. I'm now working on something more extensive than my first style mod. Since this will need to invert basically everything, it's going to take a bit longer. I've gotten far enough along to think that I'll manage to pull it off. And if I choose ugly colors, others may use it as a template / blueprint for their own version. Watch this space.

No question about it - I could not live without Hyperedit, and have a KOS script that can fly some of my Rapier-based planes from standstill to circularization. (The only thing left for me to do during ascent is to grab another coffee. Again.) To get myself back on topic... I think it's worth pointing out that this statement... ...means that it is hugely important to avoid exposing open nodes to the air, unless that can't be avoided for some good reason.

Thanks! For some reason, I tend to stay very close to stock. I don't even know why, which is a bit alarming considering that this has kept me from using even KER!

Is my subjective impression correct that this works differently for drag and heating? While I think that panzer1b's explanation is entirely correct for drag, I have a gut feeling that "shielding" things behind other parts may work to protect from heating. I'm basing this on the fact that I have managed to fly externally mounted Gigantor XL's on spaceplanes, and return said planes from orbit to the KSC without ablating the XL's away. I seem to remember that this required some fiddling with their position.

Looking back, I'm actually glad we didn't have to encode non-ASCII characters in HTML entities, provide our own font renderer, or mail our posts to the mods on a floppy disk.