Zargg

I agree with the OP this is a good idea. Transmission protocols that correct data loss are pretty trivial, it just comes at the expense of needing more time (and energy) to ensure all the correct data is transmitted. I think the in-game penalty is not so much time, but having the energy. If your signal is so weak that you are re-transmitting over and over, you risk the chance of running out of energy and only getting the partial science at that point.

Somehow burning hard to land on Tylo was my first screenshot!! Obviously didn't worry about the screenshot button until I figured out orbital mechanics

As a general answer, in map mode you can bring up the information window and it will tell you the atmosphere height of the target (make sure you are focused on the planet). Anything above that should be fine!

OMG....thank you Snark!

Yea I admit, I'm a 1 Kerbal kind of person, no matter how long or far he has to travel. He must get lonely sometimes... But I do like the idea of some sort of multiplier for if you do a mission manned as opposed to a probe core. Doing the explore contracts with a probe and just leaving it there feels incomplete to me and shouldn't be worth as much as if you actually sent someone there to experience it. Then even more bonus multipliers when you bring the Kerbal back. Think of it like the moon landing, no one remembers the first satellite sent there, but everyone remembers Apollo 11!

Always check that you have the right crew in there! On numerous occasions I've been meaning to take an engineer, but due to reverting to VAB or whatever, Jeb ends up back in there, but his badSness doesn't fix solar panels

I think an easy way to visualize this is go in game and look at the orbit lines and look at how the velocity vector (speed AND direction) changes throughout this situation. First start with a beautiful 100kmx100km orbit around the Mun. Your velocity is always 100% horizontal to the Mun, even though gravity is pulling on you, so you don't have to do any 'work' to fight gravity. Then drop the PE down to just 10km and look at the velocity as you approach the Mun. At first, you're falling and gaining speed from gravity mostly in the vertical direction, right? But if you look specifically at the PE moment, what would you notice? You're velocity is 100% horizontal again without you doing any work! Your velocity vector has automatically had its vertical velocity nulled out just by the shape of the orbit! So you just dropped 90km in altitude, but didn't have to put any work into fighting gravity, so you got a free (as in vertical velocity) 90km drop in altitude. Of course the energy you gained is now built up as horizontal velocity, but that doesn't put you in any danger, and the whole point would be that if there was an atmosphere, drag/chutes would have a much longer time to bleed that off since you are starting again with 0 vertical velocity. As opposed to going straight down, where you would have gravity building up your vertical velocity for that whole 90km that you would have to cancel out in the few seconds you have before hitting the ground.

Yea just had both of these...EVAd in space and got back in and another Jeb was still floating outside! Also got rid of all my staging for some reason.

ah and for the display, in NVIDIA control panel, at the top you should have a pull down menu "3D Settings" that has one option, to show "PhysX visual indicator" or not. Flip it off.

Curious, in the NVIDIA control panel, under 'Configure Surround, PhysX', do you have PhysX settings set to CPU instead of auto? Not sure where you would control displaying the status though, I don't see any with a quick glance through the settings.

Yea I'd like steam achievements. Seems like it would be easy enough to convert some of the "world first" accomplishments to start with. Then add things like 100 hours of flight time, or 50 hours of EVA, 1000 launches, escape the kerbol system, etc.

Are you literally exploding Tank 1 using Engine 2 exhaust heat? I mean....I guess that works...but most people avoid exploding their craft on purpose lol. And I wouldn't be surprised if the deltaV loss from using the second stage with empty first stage still attached is greater than if you just have a decoupler to get rid of it.

Either completing all the Explore contracts, or when a new update comes out, whichever is first!

This is definitely an issue for me too hehe. Kind of stupid that you launch into orbit, set a maneuver node, and then have to go back to KSC to time warp forward to get really close to it and risk overshooting. On one hand, if you can do maximum timewarp at any time in KSC or with another craft, regardless of where all your crafts are, then why wouldn't you also be able to do it when piloting that specific craft, since it's all on rails anyway right? On the other hand, crafts entering and exiting atmospheres and SOIs during this have a very high chance of experiencing a kraken attack. Seems to me like time warp should only be limited when you are about to enter (or are in) an atmostphere, or if you have an SOI change. Being in low orbit around Gilly and not being able to go faster is super annoying!

landed my Kerbal on Duna, using my main chutes to land....quickly realized I didn't bring an engineer to re-pack them...time for a rescue!

Yea I've been thinking about attempting something like a remote controller app, but it's been so long since I've done serious programming it would probably take me quite a long time to do it, and not even sure how possible it would be. You would have a mod running on your KSP at home that acts as server, and your phone app is the client that can send commands, all of which would basically rely on mechjebs autopilot to perform all your maneuvers. The server mod would just report back to the app whether or not it was successful, so you'd be flying by the numbers, no visual queues during the maneuvers. For example, on the app you'd have a list of your saved ships, you could pick one and say launch. Your computer back home would load that ship onto the launch pad and just start mechjebs auto-launch function. After a few minutes when mechjeb has done it's magic, your app would receive a mission update that includes current info like a screenshot of your ship, delta v, orbit info, all that good stuff mechjeb already provides. Then you could select to do a transfer to the mun, so mechjeb back at your home machine just creates the node and executes like normal, after which you get a new mission status update, and so on and so forth. Obviously if something goes wrong with your ship, there wouldn't be much you could do about it until you get home and actually watch what is happening, but if you have something you know works, and assuming mechjeb auto pilot doesn't go haywire, I imagine you'd be able to do quite a bit.

This! Oh how I wish I could go to space... Also after playing so long and having the understanding of the physics and orbital mechanics makes playing feel like an art form. Like its so easy and natural now but it was hard to do at first that it is so satisfying to be able to do it. Now doing a mission easily is like painting a beautiful picture of space travel in my mind. You know, you set up that perfect maneuver node exactly like you want and say out loud "BEAUTIFUL!".

Not sure about other people, but I used to always have SAS on pre 1.0, but now I never have it on during ascent. It tends to overcompensate and throw my heading around, while leaving it off lets the atmosphere keep me pointed mostly prograde.

Congrats! Nothing quite like getting into orbit for the first time, most people think it is simple but it really does take a LOT to get up there. In general to change the height of a part of an orbit, you want to fire pro/retrograde at the opposite part of the orbit. So to raise your PE, you want to fire prograde when your ship is at AP. If you want to lower your PE , you would fire retrograde at AP. When your PE and AP start to swap places in the orbit, you're pretty much circular.

Landed and returned Kerbals from everywhere except Eve (landed but not returned), but technically the furthest I've gone was far enough out of the system at some number of Gigameters where the kraken would eat my ship if I tried to take control of it.

Hey everyone, I have no reason to post this, other than that I found it randomly and thought some people might enjoy browsing through it. Like the title says, it's the Space Shuttle Crew Ops Manual! https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/390651main_shuttle_crew_operations_manual.pdf

This page helped me a lot! it isn't specific to the most recent version so there are some things not covered, like having to upgrade buildings to get maneuver nodes. http://mykspcareer.com/faqs/starting/

This one, only because of the K-OS Blue Screen of Death!

Totally going to do this to get rid of parts I never use...

In need of more KSP!