Evanitis

CoL is prefered to be behing the CoM.

Nope, I meant the VAB building. It has nice helipads on top, begging for a landing. And lower crash tolerance than most wheels.

Circumnavigating kerbals play around with their expensive equipment before the refuel dropship arrives from orbit.

Ahh, indeed. Best of luck.

Sounds interesting, I might read it... later. Or one day. *forgets to bookmark*

That sounds interesting. Hope he'll assist, and not act as a spare part (or bio-fuel). The object behind you on the ground will be carried away by an ant colony. They'll worship it and make real-sized copies of it around from soil.

Asking on the KSP forum if you should try to become an astronaut? It's like asking on a vegan forum if you should eat beans or a steak. You should aim to drive a forklift instead. Or course become an astronaut. If G'th will be the first man to step on Planet 9, I'll boast to my grandchildren that I was the first to reply and encourage him on the KSP forum when he was in doubt.

Cool! Have you tested how big of a rocket can you tip down with it from the launchpad? You know... for Science.

An important point, yet to be noted in this thread. I have to admit that I logged many-many hours in KSP before I even touched a wing-part (if there were even wing-parts at that time). Visiting planets, building bases, playing around with mods... all by launching vertically. I'm pretty sure many other spaceplane-people share this notion. I probably wouldn't even think about taking a plane to orbit, if I didn't visit most stock-planets before even finding this forum.

Training sounds totally cool. Training for a specific mission would be nice... (mission type? How it's defined? Maybe by destination?) I can't really imagine training a kerbal for a specific craft... the exact composition of a vessel tends to change pretty quickly - a lot quicker that I imagine a training session would take. Though if that target craft is defined by... dunno, cockpit? Approximate mass? Horizontally or vertically launched? - something more general, it could be fun. I'm somehow not really fond of the A-B goals. I'm all in for any kind of aeronautic or astronomical realism that makes it's way into stock... But physiological and mental realism? Especially animosity between kerbals? I always envisioned them as they are above such things.. or at least who doesn't take such feelings too seriously, not enough to affect their performance. And retirement? It's still the same species that keeps grinning after they spend 40+ years alone on Eve, waiting for the rescue? Ok, grinning is one thing, but they were totally functional after such. I always loved that quality in them.

I also heard that the results can be re-processed for even more data if you move the lab. I was suggested that science from the same data can be gained again in different 'places' like landed on Mun, Mun orbit, Minmus orbit, etc. I never tested this, as I feel the lab provides too much sci, even without such extreme measures.

Very nice! Only those of us who struggled to do the same can appreciate how cool it is to actually succeed. If it gets too easy, do it again with the with the VAB.

A like minded fellow, welcome around! Stick around, chime in, post us some awesomeness you done! As I perceive, the most hot stuff around here is scientific discussion and pretty / amazing / explody / whacky pictures. I prefer the latter. My favorite thread of all times.

Redid the landing part of my STS Challenge submission, as the administration deemed that the craft ended up in too many different parts. The conditions were extreme, as I was carrying 42 tons of payload on the way down, but forgot my landing gears at home. I was really surprised that I managed to land in one piece at the end, though it required some serious out-of-the-box thinking.

YAY! I did it... with the original quicksave. And what a landing! Most fitting to the spirit of the craft and the mission. One trick of the water-landing is to let the high-tolerance parts touch water first, what slows down the vessel before the more sensitive bits splash with too much speed. I couldn't really do that with this design - both pair of wings are on the lower part of the Shuttle, not to mention that small tank on the nose*. I struggled a bit before I realized that the 'traditional' approach won't work, no matter how gently I fly. I had to think outside the box... and than the solution hit me. It was too simple. At this point it was only a few more tries to refine the descent profile to achieve the perfect water-landing: I still had to be really gentle. The rudder was actually in the ocean for like a minute before I could successfully descend with the rest of the plane. It still totally did worth the effort. *

I'm slightly offended in the name of decent human beings in horrible soul-crushing dead end jobs thousands of miles away from you.

Interplanetary duty on various surfaces. In case... you know.. someone wants a new flag planted. We keep relaying them crossword puzzles and sudokus it they have electricity.

Hmm... I really wonder what he'll vote..

I'm not telling what I do with the piece of paper. But I give three dollars and twenty cents to whomever posts next.

-5 (+)

Ahh, I also prefer to bring Kerbals. But if the core is there, I can bring scientists or engineers who has actual use. Or tourists if I don't need a trained kerbonaut for the task at hand. About the probe-cores... I can't check now, but maybe HECS and similar advanced models have more sophisticated autopilots, like a levelled pilot. I think the OCTO can only hold prograde and retrograde (maybe node too?). I never really cared, as I can just turn manually once the SAS is there. Though I know that OCTO has built-in reaction wheels. Some advanced options doesn't. It's a pretty fun fail when you realize the satellite you carried all the way can't turn at all. I remember a time when I had to manually (and very painfully) align a sophisticated scanner probe by a kerbal in EVA to the general direction where it could burn for a polar orbit. It worked, but barely. EDIT: Ahh, the advanced cores are also lighter. That doesn't matter much with proper kerballed heavy payloads, but can mean a considerable dV difference if it's a satellite with minimal mass.

It depends entirely of what you are refuelling to launch from there. But if you lack the supercomputer to not ever worry about part-count, I'll assume that you aren't planning to start interplanetary missions with huge payloads. For a few kerbals and some science equipment, maybe a lab I think even that two orange tanks should suffice. If you wanna' bring a few rovers too, hitch-hiker pods and whatnot, four tanks would still be overkill. Hint: don't expand the base until you need to. If you assemble something on orbit that you can't fill instantly, bring up an extra tank. After you loaded the interplanetary craft with it, you can still attach the empty or half-empty piece to the base. Though I generally don't use stations for that purpose. It's good to collect junk like remaining stages that still have some LF/O in them. Nothing is wasted, everything can be reused (and empty cans deorbited for economy). But if you get to the point when you want to refill the station you might as well just aim the target rocket with it.

-5 (+)

Absolutely beautiful. And that escape system... it looks very safe and (lacking a better adjective here) very kerbal at the same time.

I have faint memory of such mod (or was it just a cfg tweak?), but for the love of google I can't find it. Though there is the For Science mod. It kinda' automates the full process of doing experiments, up to transferring it to the pod, and resetting stuff if a scientist is aboard. I never used it before, so I can't tell if it works with the current version (but it most likely does). Though the last time I checked, it didn't have a neat config menu. If I read this right, you can disable all of it's functions besides eliminating the EVA warning. Umm. I'm lazy to test if it works as I suspect. But if you aren't, you could tell us the results.