mrclucks

Rendezvous in solar orbit is much much easier than in a planets orbit. First step is to just get into solar orbit. Then set a manuver bode ten or so minutes ahead and start tweaking your manuver node till you get a close encounter in a couple days or so. Then you want to have similar speeds and repeat previous step untill you get an encounter only a hundred or so km. At that point you'll want to match velocities and then burn straight at the target. Use RCS to move laterally if you need to. Eventually you'll see your target and just need to coast to your target. RCS on and using the ijkl keys are a lifesaver btw

According to Moore's law, we should be able to play it as is on phones in a couple years

Learning keyboard shortcuts will prevent you having to move your mouse as much. Pressing x with increase symmetry and shift x will reduce it. A couple other shortcuts are. Holding alt and clicking will duplicate that part and anything attached(excluding the root part), pressing r will switch between mirror and radial symmetry, although mirror has a max symmetry of 2. If you want a whole list you can easily Google a keyboard map for ksp

Continued my scansat and Kerbal construction time modded career( as well as the usual mods) that I started earlier in the week. Had to scrap a few missions due to vessels falling apart upon loading in the launch pad. Cancelled a 'recover from orbit' contract due to it being a small mkIV peice where my probe would just fly right the the middle no matter what. I then used that probe to recover a Kerbal from high retrograde orbit and had to burn nearly all my RCS ( I tend to make simple probes that run on RCS to recover things in LKO) before the one lucky engine had enough dv to match velocities. Last mission was to scan minmus as well as get delicious science. Got my intercept with a mostly polar orbit and then attempted to launch an identical vessel for the mun, but it just fell apart. After scan orbiting and landing on minmus I did some quick calculations and figured I should have enough to transfer to the mun, scan it, land, take off, and return back to kerbin. So I did just that and even completed an 'orbit the mun in a specific orbit' mission along the way, and the whole mission only took 116 days. duna probe is waiting for transfer window

This is why I use mechjeb. Being able to set up a manuver, click a button , and not have to worry about time warp or over burning is nice. Especially when you use minimal sas and it takes a few minutes to turn your rocket around. Same here. I'll be thinking of satellite and rocket designs while trying to fall asleep (I have trouble sleeping so thinking of things very specificly help my brain slow down and turn off, not to mention cuts the build time down a few minutes)

I always start with max science and funds to reduce the beginning grind. Then I'll plop a stayputnk on top of a SRB to quickly do the speed and altitude milestones. Other than that its basically useless due to not having any torque

While I don't use the isru I think it would be great to have a convertor half the size of the current one with a quarter of the efficiency/speed with half to a third of ec requirement and/or one a quarter of the size with an eighth efficiency/speed and a third to a quarter of the ec requirment. With that you could also add drills with similar size, efficiency, ec requirment and perhaps drill length (ie: the smallest ones would need to be almost touching the ground to drill). The detectors seem to be good where they're at considering that they're not very heavy and the ones you use for more precision tend to be small enough to 'hide' in any lander. On the opposite end of that spectrum, you could also have smaller convertors that operated much more efficiently and faster, but required more ec and had more heat output. I'm just spitballing here and only read about a quarter of the posts so I don't know if the isru system was touch on, but I'd probably start using it if it wasn't so bulky(especially for earlier missions)

The new parts and change in the whiplash and weesly look sweet. Does anyone know if aerodynamics were changes? What about weight, thrust and ISP?

I was like you. Using mechjeb instead of doing everything 'without cheating". Mechjeb does however mess up so I suggest you learn how to do everything yourself and then when you go back to mechjeb you'll be able to correct any mistakes you find. I do disagree with precision landing however. I find it almost pointless and extremely hard. Landings within a km or so should be good for almost everything you'd want to do

Are they playing the alpha for 1.1? Or just messing around with 1.0.4?

The only difference I've notice is the delay of version upgrade(which is only a few hours) ie: steam downloaded 1.03 when the forum was talking about 1.04, but I tried it a few hours later and got .4. As for the different versions, I always copy the vanilla version of the ksp folder so I can play a different version if I wish

you all disgust me! jk i'm just surprised that i'm the only who hasnt picked up another game

I've had KSP since December and i have pretty much been playing non stop since then, I literally have not played any other game at all. sure i'll get frustrated or sick of it every now and again, but thats when i go watch a movie or tv show i have downloaded. do any of you feel the same way or do you cheat on Jeb and Val with other games?

You'll want to use Kerbal Engineer Redux. It adds one, maybe two, parts which just give you information. In the VAB or SPH it will display the ISP, delta v, and burn times for all the stages. Once you launch, you have no access to the stats unless you have added one of the parts to you craft, or unless you have an engineer on board. There are sub menus for orbit, surface and vessel as well as two other menus(heat and rendezvous) which a beginner shouldn't worry about yet. Installing it is extremely simple. You take the Kerbal Engineer folder and copy it over to the game data folder in the Kerbal space program folder. Make sure you are actually placing that folder and not a folder inside a folder which has the Kerbal Engineer Redux folder. It is very minimal and doesn't effect your fps or loading time much but provides a ton of information

After you place the satellite and complete the contract, you can move it somewhere else. So you can place your satellite and then go to nun or minmus and get science there to return to kerbin. If you have an antenna you can transmit any science back to kerbin

unless i am launching a satellite with a kerbal, i always hide one of the 300km always on antenna in the body somewhere(its a surface attachment so its usually between nodes). try and get atleast a keosynchronous constellation up a soon as possible so you can send satellites up with without having to worry about not having a connection

When I launch something huge I'll have a more efficient stage directly underneath which is usually for completing orbit or transferring and then build bigger stages on the side(usually in big enough that it will cover the payload as well) and have them feed fuel into the underneath stage. If I don't have enough dv or twr I'll just continue building outwards with fuel pumping inwards

Launch and circulize your rocket, taking note of your targets position before launch and after. Then just revert and time warp untill your target is where you'll end up circulizing. You may not get it perfect but after a few times you should be pretty close

Stagerecovery is an excellent mod if you want to recover stages that are ending up in kerbin atmosphere. It calculates if it could be recovered from a combination of parachutes and powered landing methods. Parachutes don't need to be deployed or even set for the right altitude for that stage to be recovered but do have to be able to safety land it. Powered landing needs to have either a kerbol or a probe core with electricity and enough dv and twr to be able to safety touch down. This mod is great since you don't need to worry about actually doing anything once it comes of of your main stage. There is one mod that jumps back in time and allows you to fly it back for landing but I cannot recall the name (Scott manly featured it in a video so that would be the first place I'd look for it)

Side tip/psa: if you evad and can't get back in, go back to the tracking station and recover the vessel first then the Kerbal. Ksp has a habit of deleting ships with tasty science if you recover the Kerbal first

I may be taking this wrong but everyone needs to stop complaining. We have a very good product that is a bit buggy, but we are also able to do almost anything we can think of. Although I have only been around since .90, I've only seen a complete game that has just gotten better and smaller (file size wise) along with new features. Not saying there isn't anything I couldn't complain about, but is there any game that literally has no complaints? The devs are continuing to work on the game and will continue for quite a while. So shut up, sit down, and enjoy what we have while other people continue making it better at no cost to us

You can play it safe and get a periapsis of 60km while burning retrograde the whole time you're in the atmosphere. After the first pass you should not have to orbit too many times before you slow down enough to properly reenter, and then just burn retrograde when you really start to flame up. While making the additional aerobrake passes, try to pass through the atmosphere with the most surface space facing retrograde so you can slow down quicker. You could also go more risky and get a periapsis at 40-45km and burn retrograde once you reach 70km. If you're facing retrograde and your engine and tank blow up, I believe that it shouldn't cause any more damage and you're ablator should start doing its job(can anyone verify?)

Can't give you numbers, but a great way to test it out is to send a rocket to the mun and circulize at the same altitude as your station will be, then just use a maneuver node to figure out how much dv will be needed. I believe any periapsis should start you decaying your orbit except for maybe one just below 70km that last for a second or two. Also depends how hardy your craft is and if it has airbrakes or if it is not very aerodynamic. I usually build my return vehicles pretty hardy with only a heat shield to guard from reentry heat and aim for a periapsis of 30km, but you could go for one at 50-60 if you're sending a pancake in and not have to make a billion orbits to return.

As long as you have a stage that has a ~1 twr, you'll be able to more or less maintain velocity and probably even accelerate. You'd need srbs to push through the first 10-15 km, but that's why we have srbs. Your rocket can have a wide fat front, as long as the bottom is just bigger. Use that and make sure you have an engine that can gimbal and/or RCS(but if you have to use up alot of monoprop, then you should consider redesign) along with some big enough fins to make sure the more draggy ends face retrograde. You should also consider doing a less than perfect gravity turn if you're not tight on dv and have trouble getting your angle at 45 degrees when you're at 15km. Space is much much more forgiving with aerodynamics than kerbin is since there is none. If you use up some of your payloads fuel, you can always refuel in orbit via a docking port or the klaw (the klaw is our master! The klaw chooses who will go and who will stay). Back to your original problem of tanks bping into and exploding, if you have the tanks positioned with its CoM near or right on the decoupler, then it should just slide right off. You should be able to see its CoM by selecting the decoupler as the root part and emptying the tanks, and moving the tank vertically till it sitting fairly close to the decoupler(havnt actually done that before, but I've gotten pretty good at eyeballing it due to my refusal to work with sepertrons). If you're willing to install a mod, space y have two decoupler that have sepertrons built in so that when you decouple, it will basically shoot the tanks out, but balancing can be a problem if it's far from the CoM.

You can klaw them and deorbit if they could be profitable or, as I like to do, you can just delete them in the tracking station since they're usually just a cheap part