Entropiated

I didn't take any pictures of this, but mine happened during SSTO testing. Bill and Jeb were in the cockpit of a plane made up mostly of Mk 2 parts. It flew really well going up and got to an 85km orbit with plenty of fuel to spare. While I was up in orbit, I decided to go back to the space center for something, then came back. This would be vital later on. So, I started the descent back through. I kept the nose up a fair bit to bleed of speed, but avoided making any drastic maneuvers at all. I made it down to about 25 km and was down to a temperature of less than 1500 degrees when, out of nowhere, it starts to pitch, and roll and yaw randomly. I'm in a total uncontrollable spin. I'm sure that the craft will disintegrate, but somehow it keeps together long enough to get me down below 20 km and 1000 m/s second, so re-entry is past the deadly stage, but still the plane will NOT stop tumbling. I hit escape to revert the flight... but it's greyed out. Darn it, I went back to the Space Center! So now I figure Bill and Jeb are both dead, and I start wondering what I'm going to write in the letters to their families. Except... well, I still have some fuel in the engines. Might as well see if that'll help. I spool up the Whiplash engines at about 15 km and while the tumbling doesn't stop, it does seem to slow down a bit. I try to get it straightened out, but it seems that the closer I get to level flight, the wobblier it gets. The most stable configuration is tail down. I fight it all the way down to 5 km and realize I might have enough fuel in the engines to stop me. I continue to struggle and struggle, watching Bill and Jeb's faces contort from fear. At under 100 m of altitude over the ocean, I'm travelling at under 10 m/s and still slowing. The tail touches the water at 1 m/s and the rest of the back end follows. It bobs up and down for a few moments, then crashes on it's side. That's when I get up with both arms over my head and do a victory lap around the house. BEST. LANDING. EVER. LOL

Thanks for the suggestion! It's possible that might work, but I don't use that mod at all. I'm actually running really light on mods. I only use KER, the Navyfish docking mod, Kerbal Alarm Clock and the Transfer Window mod. Even if your way works, I don't think it's right that you'd need to install mods to fulfill the terms of a contract, you know?

Sent Bob on a mission to Minmus. Had a contract for a fly-by for 110,000 credits, but turned it into a full fledged landing expedition. Visited 6 biomes + high altitude and low orbit science. Returned with 3311 science points and enough credits to upgrade my launch pad/contract center to the max while still turning a profit.

I don't use it. I avoid probes altogether until I unlock the probodyne OKTO.

Sent Valentina to the Mun to fulfill three contracts on a ship that cost me 17k credits to build. She gathered temperature readings and crew reports for 13 days, and in doing so earned the program about 800k credits. It was enough to upgrade my R&D facility to the 500 science level and my launch pad to unlimited weight/dimensions. Career mode is a lot of fun, in my opinion. Oh, I also stayed up way too late testing a new booster for interplanetary missions. Flies like a dream! Bob will use it to head to Minmus later today to fulfill a fly-by contract, then land and gather all the science he can fit into the capsule.

I like career mode, myself. Gives the game some structure, and it presents challenges that just aren't there for me in the sandbox mode. My only complaint so far, and this only happened to me yesterday, is about the impossible contracts that pop up. I've had DIFFICULT contracts come up before, but always found a way to complete them. But yesterday I got a contract to "Test a launch clamp while flying over Kerbin." Stupidly, I accepted it, thinking the moment of rocket launch would count as "flying." WRONG. As far as I can tell, this mission is impossible because you can't just attach launch clamps to your craft without them automatically being bolted to the ground. Eventually I had to drop the contract and just take the hit in funds and reputation. Word of caution to anybody playing career mode: do not accept this contract.

Was it really necessary to slag off those people who happen to enjoy career mode? Couldn't you have just said "Well, I tried it, but it's not for me!" (with more grammar errors in your version, obviously) and leave it at that? Instead, you have to insult me, and every other player who likes the dynamic of career mode, by insinuating that doing so means we are "newbs" who don't know how to have fun. Thanks a bunch.

I've arrived late to the party, but here's my two cents: Unless you're launching something very small and light, SRB's shouldn't be a stage unto themselves. As the name would imply, they are BOOSTERS. They should be used to help shoulder the load while still low down in the atmosphere. All of my launchers have SRBs (as many as 8) around a liquid fuel stack. Testing allows me to throttle back the SRBs so that my speed remains at or about 200 m/s while lower than 10,000 m. I've been playing with this setup since 0.90, and now that they've fixed the issues after the release of 1.0, I'm getting to orbit just as easy as I ever was.

Nothing too complicated. Just a lander to Minmus, the Mun (after sending up a resource scanning probe). Posted some pictures on FB if anybody cares to take a look (there are also pics going back to 0.90 as well). https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.443721135775988.1073741828.100004143155906&type=1&l=feed80d91a

This is where I am now. I use solid fuel boosters (kickbacks) as my main lifting force, and have tuned them to keep me at about 200 m/s in the lower atmosphere with my liquid engines at just under 2/3. Not only does this keep atmospheric effects from destroying my stuff, it also saves me fuel I can use later on.

It might be worth reporting it as a bug then, I suppose.

As others have said, I doubt that KSP has the wider appeal of a game like Minecraft. I know this from personal experience with both games. I like KSP because I have always dreamed of being an astronaut and have always been very keenly interested in all thing astronomical. Otherwise it's unlikely I'd be playing this game, or would have stuck through the steep learning curve needed to do more than blow things up for fun.

Ah, I would've thought that since the front end wants to tip over, putting fins up high would have created a bit more resistance to that unwanted movement. Thanks for the feedback!

My preference is to put separators/decouplers on their own stage. It means I have to peg the space bar a bit more, but I'm not worried about that too much. The only thing I add to the decoupler stages are sepratrons and/or chutes if I'm trying to recover the stuff.

Personally it doesn't much matter to me either way, but I will agree that when showing someone the game, the more time you spend in flight view the better. The map stuff tends to confuse them more than anything else. LOL

If you don't use it, what do you do to keep track of your fuel use, just keep switching back and forth between the map and the rocket?

Weird. As I said, I never had a problem with it in 0.9, so at SOME point it was working as intended. It's a relatively minor issue, but still inconvenient.

Yeah, I was thinking about that as a solution. Also, perhaps putting some fins farther towards the top would help as well.

I've noticed since 1.0 that when I click "Stage Only" on the Resource tab to keep track of my fuel level while in the map view, it still seems to show the fuel from all remaining stages as well as the current stage. In 0.9 it seemed to work fine, and was very useful for keeping track of when staging needed to happen. Anybody else notice this?

Thanks! I understood your point perfectly. I'm just still adjusting to 1.0.x. I was used to designing things a certain way in the Beta, and I'm going through some growing pains right now (which explains why Jeb and Bill are in Munar orbit needing rescue at this point... but I have a plan. LOL)

I'll try to gif it for you guys. I've since unlocked bigger parts and made a correspondingly bigger launcher that doesn't have this issue, so it's more about having a good laugh than anything else at this point! LOL

I don't know what it is about version 1.0.2, but Jeb is being an awful show-off! A rocket that worked just fine in version 1.0 now has this amusing (yeah, "amusing"... that's what it is) habit of flipping over ONCE when I jettison the SRBs around 8000 meters. I have tested it many times and it happens without fail. The SRBs fall away, then the rocket flips around its center of mass a single time, then resumes its stable flight as if nothing happened. I flew a lander to Minmus with this setup last night and the rest of the mission went off without a single problem. Oh Jeb, you so silly!