Freds

41+

A long time ago (i i'm not playing ksp actually), i managed to land and return to Eve orbit a hybrid-spaceplane. Karbonite engines and fuel converters to keep the plane flying and refuel as it go through eve atmosphere. After landing, science collection, etc, i returned to orbit. The return was painful: Karbonite engines to go as fast and as high as possible, MK2 Expansion Sledgehammer to go much higher and faster (almost escaping atmosphere) and finally some small engine to archive a stable orbit. It was a hybrid spaceplane because it was a spaceplane in Eve, but parts was dropped as it became useless. In the end, only the cockpit, a small docking port, a pair of Twitch engines and a fuel tank reached orbit. Then a tug-ship towed it to the mothership, and then returned to Kerbin. Once in kerbin, a cargo spaceplane returned the spaceplane (or, what left of it...) and the kerbals back to kerbin. That mission was a big personal archivement, almost a week of planning and concept testing, especially in "how to enter Eve atmosphere".

I find it a tedious routine the mining/deliver around Kerbal. I have done it 2 or 3 times, then i just edited a part to "magically generates fuel" and installed into my 'kerbin space station'. Ships are refuelled there. Just need to imaginate that someone delivered the fuel when i was not there and it is ok. ISRU is very very very useful and essencial to the distant missions. Almost all of my Kerbaled missions to Jool use ISRU in a way or another. I usually land a large ISRU barge in Pol. When a ship in need of refuel arraives, the barge just take off, do the refuel mission and land again. Low gravity makes things easyer.

Just bought the DLC. It's time to play Kerbal Again! But first things first: I need to re-install all the mods! Especially whatever Ferram Aerospace Research mod compatible with 1.7.1.... ( I just hate stock aerodynamics, FAR is a must have in my opinion! )

I played 1974 Hours on Steam! Before buying it, i played i think 300 from a pirated version.... KSP Is the best space simulator ever developed, but, IMHO, is the mods that make it the best! !

KSP is a very bad game. It's the mods that make it a good game, but, there is a problem: After a while.... there is nothing left to do. We need something nice to do at the planets. Cave exploration? Artifact hunting? Some random lore? Dont know.... but after the challenge of reaching and landing is complete, there is nothing left to do. Why build rover if a touchdown and take off mission will yield the same results?

Shallow reentry with heat shields, or, the gliding plane. What i suggest is the installation of parachutes on front and back of the glider, so it can land even without a flat surface. (Bring it near to the destination as a parachute safe speed, open the parachute and watch it land smoothy).

SSTO are Cool, but, i think its almost useless. I use SSTO only for LKO. Lately i equiped my LKO SSTO with droptanks to increase range as a insurance againt piloting errors. (They still are SSTO if i remove the tanks) I use Space Planes (with drop tanks, they cant archive orbit without this) as crew and cargo transport for my HKO Space Station (700Km orbit). Specially designed vehicles for all other things. As a rule, all my planes designed for Kerbin operations has parachutes on the tail - it makes really easy to stop before the runway ends. I only use SSTO, with VTOL and Mining for Laythe. For EVE, planet that all my missions are non-return drone missions, a glider is nice to bring rover to a nice landing spot (its better than a ballistic landing, specially due to montains). Parachutes on front and back ensure a nice and safe landing.

FAR for 1.5.1? I think it's time to re-install Kerbal!!! Thanks!

1) No kerbal dies, no kerbal stranded (space stations does not count), no kerbal left behind. Of course something can go wrong, but, i try to minimize all risks to kerbals, even if it means a parachute landing in Eve surface..... and an almost impossible dangerous rescue mission... 2) Commnet, default signal oclusion, plasma blackout, Part G limit, part pressure limits, kerbal g force, extra ground stations.... 3) ALT F12 or Hyperedit only to solve a bug. 4) One (or more) space stations in Kerbal orbit with cheaty fuel generator - i'm more than capable to go to minmus, mine, refuel station, go back.... but it is very boring... lets just pretend that i contracted somebody else to do that for me.... 5) All mods are allowed, as long i think the game is fun and balanced.

@Snark: I arrived home and made some tests. You are right. After some tests and part changes, i realized that i get lower mass and better efficient with monoprop only because i use MPR-5R Stratus Monopropelent from a mod (dont remember which mod added this). I apologize for the wrong information i was giving In the spoiler below there is a screenshot of my sattelite. Ignore the name "Untitled Space Craft", i was testing with different kind of engines and fuels. Its a simple antena + battery + probe + monoprotank, 4 solar panels and 2 scaled down MPR-5R. It was designed to be placed in low orbit and act as an relay between a rover (or something else) in the surface and another, bigger, relay sattelite connected to Kerbin, so, that 695m/s are more than enough for me. English is not my primary language, so i ask: If you see something wrong (grammatical error, syntax error, etc... ), please correct-me.

This is why i use monopropellant in my satellites - weight saving. Small vehicles have small engines, small engines means lower thrust, which require a lighter vessel to be efficient. I follow this rule: If it is small, very light and goes to the outer planets, monoprop. If it is small,very light and goes to the inner planets and will operate almost in the sunlight, xeon. In my playstyle, a vessel going to another planet usually has a probe core, big relay antenna , battery and solar panel installed in the orbital capture stage. This way, with only a small extra weight, when decoupled the 'disposable stage' turns into a relay sattelite. If it has another 3 or 4 tiny and lightweight sattelites attached, a planetary commnet to support land operations can easily created, with a only a little deltaV cost in the main vessel. If i will made a ship like the farmerben made, i wont be using xeon - 12T is too much for xeon or monoprop... A LVN will be perfect if high ISP is required.!

No pictures because i'm not at home, but, almost all my satellites use monopropellant based engines (not the puff, but other engines provided by mods). Monoprop is light, and can give a lot of deltaV without need of electricity, which is perfect for outer planets like Jool, Eeloo, Dres (who goes to Dres anyway?)....

MechJeb are nice for space piloting - i use smartASS all the time. For atmospheric flying i use AtmosphereAutopilot mod, it really helps piloting aircraft when using a Keyboard. Just remember to disable mechjeb smartASS (or any other mechjeb functions) when you enable the mod.

Another way is to change fuel priorities Instead of tank locking - this is better because fuel just get consumed in the right order, so there is no need manually unlock the tank while in flight and also eliminates the risk of a flameout due to fuel starvation while having fuel onboard.

Banned for ending a line without a ';' ;

This game needs something to do in the planets: Now, you just land, get science and takeoff... no motive to ever visit a planet again. I stopped playing KSP for some 6 months, restarted playing last week because i wanted to test some spaceplanes design and to try some skycrane and to test rover, but, no more well planned mission to Eeloo, Eve, etc - its just pointless. Once you arrive to Eeloo, land and return from Eve, and learnt how to repeat it , the big challenge is over, Eve is not difficult, Eeloo is just there... We need a new motive to go to the planets, and few rewarded by it. Things like random cave formations, with underground lakes, rock formations? Meteor impacts and active vulcanos with eruptions that, really, change terrain (Shattered Steel, a 1996 game, has terrain deformation! Why Kerbal Space program cant have?) Planetary weather, with dust storms, hurricanes, lighstorms...? Lifeforms on Laythe? Rescue civilian kerbals lost on Kerbin desert before a bug hurricane hits the area? Explore a cave to save lost kerbals? Intercept an AI aircraft to do something? So.. there is so much to add to make it fun again... Things can even be generated by a Seed system - so one can share some nice universe seed here in the forum (like people do in Oxygen not included) ... KSP is a unique game, with a perfect concept, and, while is focused on rockets and space, it can be expanded to anything! Mods are a proof that KSP is a 'framework to limiteless possibility', i think there is no other game with that characteristics, but Squad (and, now take 2) need to keep it fresh by adding new more things to do.

It would be nice if there was a way to buy expansions for the runway, expanding to the plateau behind KSC (the light green part). Or, better yet, allow the construction of other bases in other areas in Kerbin.

I Almost don't use those big wings for spaceplanes, only for regular airplanes, but, when i use it, i fill them with fuel. If you want to put a space plane into orbit, and don't mind with SSTO, just attach drop tanks to the wings. You can go to orbit using only droptank's fuel, and use internal fuel for space.

Depends on the mission and the vehicle. This is my guideline to heat shields. Being heat shields always the bottom part of a non-return probe, is just natural its use as 'landing legs' (why install landing legs if one can just crash the heatshield and, sometimes, watch an explosion?? ) For returnable landers, i use as above, but the lander has landing legs. Heat shields are dropped during ascention staging. For Curiosity style rover landing, heatshield ejection is mandatory. For aerobreaking , ejection is mandatory when there is no other aerobreaking planned. For spaceplanes and SSTOs, there is a no-heatshield policy. For landerplanes (landerplane is a 'spaceplanes' designed just to land, without return - nice for carry bigrovers or permament research bases), heatshield is usefull as a safety measure during initial stages of reentry - just remember to pack a bunch of solid rocket separators on its detach. My landerplanes also ejects the engines and glides to the intended land point. The remaining fuel are used for energy generation.

Career with 'play your way' mod - I like the "missions" thing, and i think kerbals should be payed by doing science. So, Play your way is perfect for me.

A few years ago i was both a teacher and the "guy who blocks the internet access" in a computer school. Ultrasurf is not difficult to block if firewall + proxy is configured correctly. At that time, it was very simple to block ultrasurf - and almost all equivalent softwares - using iptables + ipset + squid. I simply set iptables to drop all packet to the internet, allowing web access only throught a non-transparent proxy (squid 3), with ssl interception (so it can filter ssl connections - i have installed a root certificate in all school computers). IPset + php was used in a custom web application used by teachers to allow temporarially firewall bypasses, so, the firewall doesn't interfere on class. No student was able to bypass that kind of blocking - I don't know if it works today because i changed jobs and never worked with internet filter again.

You should find a new job! Preferentially one with better wage and without internet filter!

I dont have too much to add to what is already been told above, but here is 2 pictures of a cargo ssto , inspired in the skylon project. 40T to orbit. It flies very nice when loaded, but, it needs very careful piloting when it comes back into the atmosphere unloaded. I used it 2 ou 3 times, but because i need spaceplanes that can reach 700km, i switched to spaceplane with droptank design.

Almost all my missions inside eve atmosphere are one way only, with probes due to my "no kerbal dies, no kerbal are left behind" policy. The only manned mission to EVE that i had done was with a spaceplane equipped with karbonite turbines and collectors so it can fly in the atmosphere, and normal LF+O engines plus droptanks to get back to orbit. Due to the karbonite, navigating in eve atmosphere was easy, i even landed near ocean level. Getting back was the great challenge: The karbonite engines can lift you to +/- 20000M at mach 1 (maximum speed of karbonite turbines), after that, you need to burn LFO. I used 2 'Sledgehammer' Air-Augmented Ramrocket from MK2 Expansio mod to get the necessary boost inside atmosphere (that engine, once supersonic, is very powerful) To get to orbit it was designed to drop everything that is possible - when ascending, the karbonite kit and science instruments was dropped when the LFO droptanks emptied, the craft has 0 monoprop, the only "dead weight" part left was 1 docking port in the lower part of the plane and 1 in the tail, because i wanted to bring it back to Kerbin. Even with this mods, the plane barely reached orbit (+/- 120Km ). I dont have any photos of the craft described, but i have these photos of one test prototypes with karbonite engines that i made to test how a craft handles in Eve atmosphere, passing from low atmo to high atmo, etc.