lost_in_space

I don't agree with this statement in the article: "Watching a rocket wobble, break up, and explode is almost as satisfying as watching one safely launch." I never find explosions satisfying. They make me angry I didn't do it right the first time. Ego? Perhaps.

[quote name='cephalo']So I was reading the news and came across this article about hypersonic flight. [URL]http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/24/aviation/spaceliner-mach-25/index.html[/URL] [/QUOTE] Going fast is easy. It's the slowing down that's tough. I notice they didn't touch on that part.

I never overshoot, except on purpose. You should be able to control this. Here is what I do: 1. Take off from KSP, angling east to get into a prograde kerbin orbin, lining up as close to the equator as possible. 2. Make a maneuver node so that you reach the mun's orbit, making sure the Mun Encounter occurs before crossing the Mun's orbital path. If you cross that line, you will get into a retrograde Munar orbit. To setup this maneuver node, fiddle with the icon by grabbing the white circle and pulling it around your current kerbin orbit path. Did you know you could do this? By adjusting the white circle and playing with prograde/retrograde, you should be able to setup a decent Mun encounter. It doesn't matter if the encounter occurs in front of, or behind, the Mun, as long as you don't cross the Mun's orbital line. 3. Fast forward to the mun encounter. 4. When you get your Munar vector line, setup a maneuver point to orbit the Mun by retrograding (slowing down). I set this point up in the middle of the line, at the Ap point. After executing this, you should have a decent prograde orbit around the Mun. 5. Retrograde accordingly to get down to 100K orbit. 6. Setup a maneuver node, retrograding to the spot desired on the Mun. I try to pick a spot clear of craters. I don't come straight down, but at a bit of an angle. The more angle you use, the more inaccurate your landing spot will be. 7. Hit the maneuver node and come down. With the weight of my ship, I fire my engines at 25K to slow down. I am pointing directly retrograde. 8. Nearing the surface, 3 of my fuel tanks inevitably run out, and I have to jettison them. This causes my ship to move a bit in another direction, so i have to use RCS to stabilize. I also have to take SAS off of retrograde and put it on stability assist, otherwise I'll be pointed at a bad angle. 9. Land. Sounds simple, but often isn't. Use RCS to stop moving laterally. Avoid craters. I use radiators, besides landing struts, for additional stabilization in case I land on an angled surface. This is what I do when I want to land on the Mun and do research, plant a flag, etc. I would not do this if trying to rescue someone. In my experience, it's too frustrating to try to hit that exact point on the mun without wasting a ton of fuel, inevitably not having enough to get back. Therefore, I use what I call a "space buggy". It is a ship that can also fly like a plane. It is a normal looking rocket with capsule/180 fuel tank/360 fuel tank/terrier engine. It has 6 LY-01 landing gears on the "underside" so it can take off and land like a plane. It also has 4 vernor engines on the underside that ease landing, along with the usual 2 sets of RCS on the 4 axis (top/bottom). I have a fuel depot orbiting the Mun. The space buggy is docked to the depot. Whenever I need to rescue someone on the surface, or perform temp/pressure scans on the surface, I send the buggy out. I can see the markers and a target far more easily with this ship than I could with a normal "upright" ship. I perform the tasks, and have enough fuel to make orbit again and rendezvous with the depot. After achieving Munar orbit, it is surprisingly easy to use only RCS to link back up with the depot. I had a crash on the Mun, stranding a kerbal, and spent two week trying to design the right ship to get him. I eventually used my original design, detailed above. I left the kerbal at the depot, in case I need to perform EVAs for future Munar missions. Conclusion: I believe you can perform your rescue with one ship, but it's going to be very frustrating. And the further they are from the equator, the worse it will be. Good luck!

Exactly. The enter key should perform the same function as hitting the OK button. This is a pretty significant UI mistake. Bottom line is, if you don't see the "quicksave" message at the bottom right, it didn't take.

So I have an MPL orbiting Kerbin. It's been up there for a while. 2 scientists (1 star) in the MPL, 1 pilot in the command module. I decided to change out the pilot for another scientist (1 star), so I send a ship up there to make the transfer. I then notice that the science rate did not increase. I took all kerbals out of all modules and put them back in again. I saw increase with kerbals placed into the MPL, but not in the command module. I thought it was all supposed to add up no matter where the kerbals were on the ship?!

This. Whenever someone mentions ads, it takes me several moments to realize what they're talking about. ------ Oops, sorry, I bit into it.

I completely understand. If I made a game, and someone else came along and made a vast improvement to one aspect, such as graphics, I would be a little embarrassed and a bit ticked off. I would at least come up with something to rival the mods and compete for the approval of my customers. It's a matter of pride in one's work and a desire to compete to be the best.

Your definition of lag may be vastly different from someone else's. My definition is any hesitancy whatsoever in interface commands. That said, I have lag with 60 part ships in the VAB. I hit a key and nothing happens for a half second. I have 32GB RAM and six core processor. You be the judge where the problem lies.

Try falling down a mountain on Kerbin. They die of carpet burn.

Congrats! What kind of Kerbin orbit were you able to get on the return trip with that fuel load?

I have not seen the movie. I asked a couple people at work how they liked it, and they loved it. Then I asked them if it had Ridley Scott trademarks ... you know, great pacing, great direction period, etc. Neither of them knew who Ridley Scott was. They had no idea who the director was. These are people who go to a lot of movies, who happen to be in their forties. Needless to say, I was dumbfounded. =D

It's interesting how quickly their temperature goes up when you do this.

I really like this one. It looks so alien. Great job!

I don't use them. I don't associate the word "thud" with anything good.

I just hope they make a working patcher this time. I've never bought a game before that had to be re-installed, with files copied over manually, whenever it was updated. I hope they make a patch that can handle all this automatically.

1. THIS. Fixing little things like this makes the experience a lot better for the user. Also, being able to get rid of all the "temperature gauges" and other markers for missions you haven't even accepted yet would be great. When I'm trying to get into an exact orbit when performing a rescue, I want all other objects turned off except me and the target ship. Everything else just gets in the way. 2. Going from orbit of the Mun to orbit of Kerbin, warping to the Mun Escape point and finding out all your ElectricCharge is gone (with SAS on). 3. Having your Contracts window open with the mission you want to complete expanded. All other missions are collapsed. As you go through the atmosphere and into space, all the other missions start expanding again. This is irritating. The contracts expand/collapse should only be under the control of the player, or at least make it a toggle in settings. Who knows, with all the different kinds of people in the world, someone probably likes it the way it is. 4. As stated by many in the past, the Reputation bar should be more intelligible, the numbers on the ruler should be bigger. 5. Using shift/control to control thrust often lags. I hit control to drop thrust and it keeps going. I have a fast machine, so that shouldn't be the problem. 6. The ambient sound effects at KSC should not abruptly stop. 7. When in the VAB, several parts cannot be right-clicked for information, such as nose cones. Several parts cannot be activated, such as the thermal control system. It would be nice if this were fixed. All parts should have some info when right-clicking, otherwise it feels incomplete. Sorry for the laundry list. Have no idea why I wrote all this up. I guess it's my programmer's instinct to document things. Everything else is great though. =D

Oaktree42 is pretty cool. He streams a lot of Skyrim, which always fascinates me.

After a bad day at work, I came to the forums and decided to look at the streaming KSPTV. I don't normally look at these shows. Anyway, I get in and see a guy, I assume is Aki, trying to land his ship on a planet that looks like a hunk of cheddar cheese. I've never seen the planet before. I've only been to Kerbin and the Mun. So, he's hurtling toward the planet and quickly tries to slow his craft down via staging with chutes. He programs all his data into some mod and waits for something to happen, but nothing happens. His lander separates from the main ship and seconds later, smashes into the ground. LOL. The look of bewilderment on his face was priceless and I got a good laugh out of it! I needed that. He seems like a nice guy, and I'm sure he's a great KSP player. I just happened to catch his broadcast at an unfortunate moment. Anyway, it was pretty funny. I'll check it out again sometime. =)

I would have agreed prior to 1.04, but not now. With 1.02, I never used heat shields. Just packed all my science stuff in a service bay and let that protect them. I tried to do that in 1.04 and all my experiments exploded. I always use heat shields now.

My advice to you is to forget the tutorials. Go right into the game, and learn yourself. In my experience, the tutorials are buggy and lead to much frustration.

I did a mission tonight to test the Launch Escape System. I designed a simple rocket with 4 90 unit fuel tanks and a Reliant engine. On top of that was the stack separator, pod, 2 parachutes, and the LES. At the appropriate altitude of 25K, I triggered the separator and then the LES. Nothing seemed to happen with the LES. I right-clicked and it said Flame-Out! Cause: SolidFuel deprived. SolidFuel = 0.00/30.00 What happened? The Kerbal wiki says this thing should burn for 5 seconds, but in the specs section it says 0.5 seconds. Is flameout normal with this contraption? I did have the thrust set pretty low at the time, so that could be it, but if so, where did the fuel go? Incidentally, the mission was a success.

I figured out how to land safely in v. 1.2. I was hesitant to download 1.4 because of all the stories I heard about how the atmosphere had changed and everything was blowing up for people. Well, a week ago I finally decided to just go ahead and upgrade, as there are supposed changes coming in the future, and I have to upgrade or be left behind. I got the latest version and my crafts have been fine coming back to Kerbin. I don't naturally set a steep decline of return, so I was not negatively affected by the change in atmostphere. In real life, ships use a shallow angle, so that's what I try to emulate. Last night I returned a capsule from the Mun. It consisted of a pod, reaction wheel, science jr., and service bay filled with stuff. I set Kerbin orbit Pe to 39K with Ap of 72K. Came down without any temp gauges popping up. Here's a problem I had: how do you get into a clockwise orbit of the Mun (anti-rotation). Solution: approach the Mun from the left side (in front of it). Took me a few times to figure this out.

18 days? The small force trying to hold out against the Aliens on Minmus won't last for 18 hours, pal! What are they supposed to do?!

After the adrenaline rush of launching is over, listen to this while in orbit for optimal pleasure: David Lange - Return of the Comet Here are just 3 tracks, but the whole album's great space music.