MaxwellsDemon

I unabashedly love the Terrier for upper stages (and for getting largish landers down to and up off the Mun, too). If it's 1.25m and it's not at the launch site, it's rare I'm not using the Terrier...

Rats. "WalkAbout" 1.7.1 is for KSP 1.3 and does not appear to function correctly on my 1.3.1. I just wish it were as easy as hitting [Alt]-[W] or something like that and watching the Kerbal trundle along.

a-HA! Found it! It's a feature within 'WalkAbout'... see under "perpetual motion"

Did I dream it, or is there a mod that allows one to keep moving on a surface EVA without holding down the 'W' key and/or shift keys? Apparently not searching for the right thing when I try to search the forums... or maybe I dreamed it!

I sent Bervey Kerman (one of my "expendable pilots") on a suborbital hop aimed at planting a flag at the Crater Rim tracking station. She undershot a bit and had to swim about 15 km to shore, and now she has some mountain-climbing to do. Somewhat time-consuming, but she'll get there. Also, I redesigned the expansion modules for the "Hotep" station (Mir-analogue), put them on appropriate launchers, and started them into the (KCT) construction stream. The crew aboard the "Nedjkhert" station (Salyut-analogue) passed the 60-day mark, so they easily have the duration record. They will need to be resupplied in about 20 days; a "Hathor" module (Progress-analogue) is ready for launch at the appropriate time to keep them going.

Funny how often Tsiolkovsky's name comes up. (Amazing man.) In a similar vein, I'm reminded of the problem of how much water to carry into a desert. With horses, which need more water, you need more horses to carry more water for more horses... with camels, it's the same thing, only not quite so many as the horses. So, a camel has a higher Isp, so to speak. Being a bit goofy, but it does somewhat illustrate the point.

The ones I simply won't play without are MechJeb, Gravity Turn, and Kerbal Alarm Clock. I really dislike playing without Kerbal Construction Time as well, and I really like KIS/KAS. Most other mods are optional to varying degrees. I actually have my mods saved in "first priority, second priority, third priority" folders.

A: Isp (specific impulse) is the efficiency of the engine -- how long it will run on a given amount of fuel. Thrust is the total work done at any one time by an engine. You can have a very efficient, low-thrust engine (like an ion engine) or a high-thrust, inefficient engine (like most solid boosters). The gold standard, of course, would be to have both high Isp and high thrust, but in practice that's extremely difficult and engines are therefore optimized to emphasize one or the other. (That's in real life. KSP models that.) B: Can't help you there...don't have that mod!

And that person probably tore all their hair out when they saw that it appeared to be raining on the asteroid.

Look up Larry Niven's "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" sometime.

If it's fast and reliable, betcha it wasn't cheap to design and develop...

Stipulated. Especially since I'm doing that right now (don't tell the boss)...

Know what you mean. The tidbits that have been shared have rather piqued my interest. Trichotomy... i love it. On my cubicle is the classic "Triangle of Constraints": reliable, fast, and cheap: you may select two. If you want it reliable and fast, it won't be cheap; if you want it reliable and cheap, it won't be fast; and if you want it cheap and fast, it won't be reliable.

I wouldn't think so... my guess is that you'd be reflecting down unwanted wavelengths like ultraviolet which are a good thing for power but not so good on the skin.

Having the same problem here... have you found an answer?

Another update to the list. (I've decided not to get into the various US government publications (by Charles Sheldon et. al.), which, interesting as they are in a historiographical sense (what was known outside the USSR and when was it known), are not exactly page-turners. I like books I don't have a risk of injuring myself by falling asleep and falling over while trying to read them.) (Some of the NASA ones aren't as bad, but the Congressional research ones and the like are dreadful snooze-fests.)

Ever since I picked up that idea (from the forum, can't recall who gave me the idea, but I know I didn't come up with it myself) I do this regularly, justifying it as "improved avionics."

Or, perhaps, that in some cases it may have been accurate to begin with but some director or other with a weak grasp of physics messed it up for the sake of 'excitement.' I 100% agree with you (except for the fact I avoided seeing "The Core," and, based on your comments, I made a good decision to do so). A movie that is clearly fantasy (Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, etc.) doesn't raise my ire. The ones that are billed as 'realistic' have an obligation to adhere to that standard.

The trick is to "lead" the Mun, so you get into a retrograde orbit. That way, the Mun is (loosely speaking) slowing your ship down and slinging it back toward Kerbin. I've found it's very hard to do without MechJeb (though Streetwind's answer is interesting and I want to give it a try). With MechJeb, though, it's quite easy-- start with a Hohmann transfer to the Mun, and then do a fine-tune approach to target with a negative value (say, -200 km). Don't incline your orbit. It will take some trial and error to get it just the way you want it.

You know, talking about whether I ought to be using Vernors or not is really beside the point.

Began fulfilling a Minmus-orbit rescue contract by rendezvousing an older lander I'd left in orbit with the "wreck," and sending a "Horus" (Apollo-analogue capsule) out to meet with it. (In this campaign, once I've used a lander I don't dispose of it; I leave it parked in orbit for this sort of thing, and after one or two uses I land it at the site of my anticipated future base, in case there's anything that can be cannibalized from it or other use gotten out of it. No sense wasting it once I've spent the funds and effort to put it up there...) Continued putting together a line of standard launch vehicles, rated by lift to LKO capability, and launched a survey satellite toward Minmus with the higher-resolution ScanSat scanner. The second resident crew at the "Nedjkhert" (Salyut-type) station is approaching the midpoint of their anticipated 120-day stay, and report no problems; in fact, Haigen Kerman has floated the idea of an extended mission, though this will necessitate the dispatch of a resupply craft. It's under discussion. Plans for this weekend include planting flags at the Crater Rim and Harvester Massif tracking stations, some midcourse corrections for a number of interplanetary probes, and getting ready for the arrival of two "Anhur" probes at Duna.

I put the vernors on a booster to help steer it on the way to orbit-- not intending to use them at the same time as the monoprop RCS on the payload (in fact, trying to avoid that scenario).

"City" is a classic. The original Harlan Ellison went into issues of drug abuse also, but that was too "hot" for NBC at the time. But something of it still survives in the cordrazine references.

I like! I will give that a try.

As I mentioned earlier, I don't ding 'Trek' for inattention to scientific realism, because they seldom even try to be very close on it-- it's not really the intent to begin with. Roddenberry wanted it to be a recognizable future as a framework for telling stories, and that's about the extent of it. It's the ones that are billed as realistic (and aren't) that bug me. Interesting. Entirely coincidental, of course, since it wasn't something the writers "inventing" dilithium knew anything about, any more than Jonathan Swift "knew" that Mars had two moons.