RocketPropelledGiraffe

Ok, showing Dres some love is a very fitting last activity for 1.0.4 I did not have a lot of time, so I just sent a small present. Of course a worthy present that features MOAR BOOSTERS, MOAR STRUTS, exremely overbuilt rockets and at least four Mainsail engines.

I might have one or two ideas two morally support poor Dres... Let's just see if I can find the time to do it. ... Well on the other hand: I can't help but like Ike...

Well, I am not really all that hyped, consider me the guy in the caboose... Anyway, I did not see any in-depth discussion about the updated heat model. Did they do this in any of the streams? I mean, in 1.0 we had a lot of heat and no radiators, in 1.0.4 we have a lot of radiators and no heat. Do we finally get reasonable heat with radiators in 1.0.5?

Well, what action makes sense depends on what you want to recreate, really. The tutorial mission tries to recreate some of the steps the real Apollo missions did, that means you have the Lunar transfer stage (stage 3) to leave Kerbin orbit and get to the Mun. In the real missions, the stage was sent on a collision course with the Moon, and the CSM did the retrograde burn to get into orbit. That's the reason why it was not possible to do the docking maneuver with the Lunar lander in Moon orbit - the CSM main engine had to be available to even get there. The reason why all the stages do not seem to fit together properly for their purpose and you still have all of stage 3 available in orbit is pretty simple, I think: The design in the wiki is based on the old aerodynamics in KSP, which required roughly 1000 m/s more Delta-v to get into orbit. That means the launch stages are overbuilt for the current game version. If you want to recreate an Apollo-like landing, stick with the purpose of each stage as listed (even though the real lander had a separate ascend stage). Otherwise, you can do and create whatever you like, of course.

The trailer is very nice actually, but where is the "Discover Explosions" entry...?

I never built a plane for atmospheric flight. I only once landed a returning spaceplane on the runway, because I just cannot figure out a way to deorbit and land close to KSC consistently.

Well, soldiers also have to be paid. They are more like slaves for science... Anyway, I agree with you - why would I ever send a manned mission anywhere when I have to do a lot of boring contracts just to pay the Kerbals. The result would be to only send probes in career, it's easier anyway and the science amount is still plenty to complete the tech tree. Does not sound like a very desirable result to me.

@duckling: Well, if the rocket falls apart and explodes the answer is not MOAR BOOSTERS. The answer is MOAR STRUTS, of course! On a more seroius note: Synergy, you got some good hints already. Do you already know how to get into orbit? The trick is to aim for the 2500 m/s speed horizontally - Going straight up very fast will only make you fall to the ground harder. That's why you want to pitch your rocket sideways at the start, as the other's mentioned. Let me just post two very instructive images for this from Randall Munroe: "Space is not like this: Space is like this: "

1. In stock, there is only the one ressource. I understand that this is a placeholder to give additional options to modders. 2. I think you can terminate the scanner immediately after the scan. I tend leave them there for style. 3. You don't have to actually be over the poles, just be in a polar orbit. This simulates that eventually the scanner will pass every pont on the body you are scanning to get the information, even though the in-game scan result is finished instantaneously.

Not sure if I understand correctly, but just a quick remark: After you switched to another vessel, your view is no longer focued on the planet. You have to focus view on the planet again and then you should get the overlay graphics available again.

Biome hopping on Eve is basically the only reason I would really like to have a stock propeller with electric motor. I don't care for non-space plane designs, but I think having something to move around on Eve would improve everyone's experience on the purple planet. At the moment the most interesting part is getting away from Eve, there is not much fun in staying there.

Geometry works vor any vectors, it has the same laws for distance vectors as well as velocity. This also goes for acceleration, which starts to play a role in landing due to the body's gravity, obviously. The landing in space is a complicated process with which we don't have day-to-day experience, and our intuition often does not give good results in such cases. Evene if there is no drag, there still is gravitational pull. You want to remember that you have to take all three things into account: distance traveled, velocity, and acceleration (due to gravity). In this sense "speed I am traveling" and "distance I am traveling" are not the same, but they are linked- you want to go down and slower, all the while you are accelarated towards the surface, which is not helping - so try to spend as little time being accelerated toward the surface as possible: Keep in mind, that you can hover in a gravitational field, not traveling any distance at all, but still spending a lot of delta-v vertically to fight the accelaration, which does not help at all for landing. You can never do such "useless" burns horizontally, all delta-v applied in this direction helps with your landing effort.

Well, you would have about six hours for the transfer with absolutely nothing to do in-game. Plenty of time to watch Bob Ross, if guess...

No need to calculate yourself, just look up the requirement on a Delta-v map: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Cheat_sheet The way it works is you simply add all the values along the line between your starting point (Kerbin, most of the time) and your destination. Generously add a couple hundred as margin of error for inefficient (i.e. Kerbal-style) maneuvers and you will get there. For a return trip, you have to take most of the values twice, obviously.

As far as I understand any take off would be considered leaving Kerbin. That basically means no aeroplanes unless they crash-land? Maybe I will give this a try as an evening activity on my next business trip, let's see how far we can go on hard difficulty...

I think that is the major factor in the equation - if you want to improve performance, think CPU. You can often get better KSP performance if you disable CPU hyperthreading in the BIOS setup. KSP gains nothing from more CPU threads (at least not until the update), so it can help to dedicate a whole CPU core to perform the calculations, not just parts of it with hyperthreading.

Gravity assists in the Jool system are so much fun, try it! Make sure you have set CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT to 4-5, as StarHawk indicated. Just edit the value in the settings.cfg file with a text editor (backup first, if you are unsure!) Now just play around with the maneuver tool a bit, you do not have to actually do a burn to get the idea: Set a maneuver node close to your current location and focus on Jool. Try to set the maneuver as a close flyby around Jool and to get an encounter with Tylo, Laythe, or Vall immediately afterwards. In my experience there will usually be at least one of the inner moons set up to get an encounter without too much fiddeling. The trajectory after the moon encounter will show you how you will fly on after flying by the moon and getting back in Jool's SOI. Now play around a little bit (gently!) with your maneuver to experiment and see what happens: If your moon flyby is on the leading side, you will be slowed by the moon's gravity and, ideally, get into an elliptical but stable orbit around Jool. If your flyby is on the other side, the moon's gravity will increase your velocity and eject you from the Jool system. You will see that with very small adjustments to the maneuver you will get a huge change in your possible final Jool orbit.

I assume you want to see the profession of each Kerbal in a vessel after launch? Just go to the map mode and click the Kerbal icon under the craft information, when the vessel is in focus. It will show a list of all crew members, including the profession for everyone. Edit: Wow, double ninja...

You should check your values again and pay attention to the "atmospheric" setting in Kerbal Engineer. If it is activated it will calculate the delta-v based on the atmospheric density at sea level. If you use the "vacuum" engines like the 909, Poodle, or Nukes, which have very low atmospheric ISP, your atmospheric delta-v calculations will be far off the correct value for your ship in space.

Always consider gravity assists on Jool's moons be captured to a high Jool orbit. It will save you a lot of Delta-v, it is far less dangerous and more predictable than aerobreaking, plus it can also do the necessary inclination changes for cheap. Additionally: Bouncing about Jool's moons is one of the most enjoyable things in KSP, but maybe that's just me.

Correct, only the most valuable achievement applies, that means orbit for Kerbin and Sun, flight for Jool and planted flag for all others is the maximum you can get.

I did not do any detailed analysis, but it seems most of the heat is retained when the ship is not in focus. I had spaceships on an elliptical solar orbit which got a lot of heat and periaps (including temperature gauges showing) while I did my science experiments. I left the ship on rails and to do other things in my career game and returned to the rocket in apoapsis at about the distance of Kerbin orbit and the gauges were still on. It seems to me that there is basically no heat exchange on rails.

If he never used the keyboard to change the vessel orientation he's propably the winner in this one. Nevertheless, this challenge might even get me to actually try building and flying a craft without any attitude control use at all - propably on a smaller scale though. Edit: I completely agree with Hotaru's comment about autopilot mods.

... unless his two brain cells die of grinding-boredom while doing so...

As n0xiety said. Furthermore, the Gigantor solar panels are also retractable.