MaxwellsDemon

I'm getting that one a lot lately, too. Very irritating.

Kerbin Orbital Station I is complete and in operation! The "setup crew" is on its way home, stopping to pick up a couple of stranded Kerbals from LKO along the way, and the "run crew" is on the job. Also created a Progress analogue to supply the station... principally topping off fuel and monoprop tanks and delivering EVA/KAS type supplies.

Completed major construction of Kerbin Orbital Station I; two flights remain in the process, to bring up the crew and supplies and to top off the fuel tanks.

Thank you. I had noticed this with one of my craft-- fortunately the chutes involved were drogues rather than my main chutes, so the landing was good. I fixed the problem by moving the drogues a little farther from the cargo bay, but I didn't really understand why that worked.

Agreed. However, I do seem to default to certain combinations; and I really like the Poodle for a service module engine, partly because the light-colored pipe on it serves as a good orientation marker when I'm docking. Handy!

Assembled the first two major portions of my Kerbin orbital station, the core section and the science lab, along with a tug and an emergency return capsule. Three more launches and it'll be open for business. Launched a "Fungeye" infrared telescope toward a solar orbit pursuant to a contract, though it will take some time to get to the desired orbit.

Successfully landed a probe/rover in Duna's north polar region, while the 'mother ship' did a resource scan. Now that I know what I'm doing with the aerocapture and aerobraking, it went superbly smoothly, and I have enough leftover delta V to do a flyby of Ike as well. Also fixed the problem I was having in my kerballed lander's booster-- the TR-38-D decoupler just doesn't have enough "oomph" to decouple stage 3 from stage 2, for some reason (even when I added some Seperatrons firing retro to pull the empty stage 2 away). Replaced it with a smaller decoupler and strutted the joint; works smoothly now.

Tried to launch a mission to Minmus, but had a weird staging problem-- stage 2 refused to separate, even with the stage 3 engine firing. It's not the first time I've had issues with the TR-38-D decoupler, either. Weird. Had to abort to orbit, scoop up a few scraps of science so it wasn't a totally wasted trip, and then land again.

BA in Business Administration here, plus a number of classes on databases, etc. (I started on an MBA right after undergrad but discovered I was thoroughly sick of school by that point; ended up joining the Army instead. Never have picked the MBA back up; probably won't.)

My Asteroid Redirect mission was successful, turning an incoming asteroid aside into a low Kerbin orbit. I need to send up another booster to get it down to an acceptable inclination (it's currently at 25 degrees-- it started out at 95) and then I can use it as a test object for mining ideas. On the down side, though, KSC lost contact with the second Duna probe (i.e., I seem to have missed a KAC alarm and it presumably went blooey). Still have another probe inbound, but with different instrumentation, so I'm not going to get the total coverage I was hoping for. Darnit.

Well, when I wanted to send an orbiter/rover mission to Duna, I sent the first one I built around the Mun and back, and watched how the reentry vehicle behaved when I released it into Kerbin's upper atmosphere. I knew that I wasn't simulating the gravity correctly, but it turned out to be a reasonable test.

So, basically, if I ignore asteroids, they'll go away?

I mentioned on the "what did you do today" thread that I spotted an asteroid on collision course with Kerbin. I knocked together some asteroid-redirect thrusters, determined how to intercept the asteroid, and sent the interceptors on their way-- primary mission, redirect asteroid to avoid an impact, secondary mission lasso it and bring it into a convenient orbit. Kind of exciting, really. But I wondered-- I only recently figured out how to track asteroids. Out of curiosity, would it still have 'spawned' as an object on a collision course if I hadn't tracked it? (Presumably, it would hit somewhere far away from KSC and I might hear an unexplained "boom" or something and that would be it?) Or, by tracking it, did I in essence trigger the current situation? Not sure how big a coincidence it is that the second asteroid I track just happens to be on a collision course...

Discovered an asteroid on a collision course with Kerbin! I designed and launched a flight of asteroid-redirect thrusters. It took some doing to figure out how to put them on a good intercept course, but they're on their way. (I presume the asteroid hitting Kerbin will have no practical game effect-- unless it happens to hit KSC-- but for RP purposes and also as an opportunity to pull an asteroid into a convenient orbit...) Probe #2 arrived at Duna and the planned aerobraking was a moderate success. It wasn't enough to slow the probe to the point of capture, but I calculate that it did save approximately 500 m/s of delta V in the process, which I will cheerfully expend elsewhere. Fiddled around with the "Cacteye" telescope some more. Still haven't quite got the hang of it.

Launched a "Cacteye" orbital telescope and was able to zoom in on the Mun. Now I just gotta figure out what else it can do...

Well said! I never see the point of mod-bashing. KSP was intentionally designed to be mod-friendly, and the developers are happy there's such an energetic modding community. To ignore that is to miss the point. I suppose you can play straight 'vanilla' if you really, really want to, but I think you're missing out on a lot of interesting stuff.

While waiting for my next probe to arrive at Duna's SOI, I fulfilled a Kerbal-and-capsule retrieval contract, again using a Klaw, but making sure to land on land this time (last time, I lost the retrieved item when I hit water). There was a spectacular explosion upon landing, but for the life of me, I can't see what exploded. All equipment and Kerbals recovered safely. But I think I need to take another look at the retrieval method, and maybe do it using some sort of cargo bay instead of carrying the thing externally, which appears to be rather iffy. Also redesigned and simplified my workhorse "Horus" Kerbin-orbit spacecraft.

I even started putting together something in PowerPoint to "sketch" ship ideas... but it was taking too long to do while "working" and took too much time away from real KSP when at home...

That's the catch with the "Grand Tour" alignments like the ones the Voyagers exploited. They're rare, and we were fortunate to be able to exploit the one that occurred in the 1970s-80s. Similarly, the New Horizons probe was fortunate in taking advantage of a time when Pluto is near the ecliptic. The lucky break isn't something you can always count on...

Fulfilled two contracts but failed a third at Minmus... I used a Klaw to bring home a piece of space junk orbiting Minmus, but it didn't survive a water landing. The second of my trio of Duna probes will arrive in Duna's SOI soon-- the goal is to get right what I got wrong on the first one (which, admittedly, was still a qualified success-- just not a complete one). If I nail this one, I can feel free to redirect the third probe to Ike, rather than Duna proper.

hm... interesting. I'll have to think about that. I was rather pleased with the way my Duna rover worked out, all except for the navball issue. Which is really an annoyance rather than a stopper; just wondered if there was a quick fix.

Okeydokey... sigh. Thanks for everyone's input; very helpful, even if it wasn't what I was hoping to hear!

hm. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that I inverted the rover in the VAB to put it on its carrier rocket? The intent was to use the rover's heat shield to pull double duty in aerobraking around Duna for the entire stack, rather than waste weight carrying a second heat shield... I've tried right-clicking on the RoveMate and selecting 'Control From Here,' but it doesn't change anything. I don't think there are any other parts on it that will take a 'control from here' if it's limited to cores and ports. So, my current trio of Duna rovers are just going to have to deal with the command peculiarities. When designing the next generation of rovers, do i need to add a probe core in addition to the RoveMate? Or a useless Clampotron Jr.?

The core is the 'RoveMate'... it's a little puzzling to me why it would be 'upward-facing' but I catch your drift. Which parts can 'point'? I've established that a solar panel and a BTDT scanner can't...

Something I've been puzzling over for a while and haven't figured out yet... When I have a rover with the external command seat and a Kerbal driving it, the navball functions as I'd expect it to. But with no seat and no Kerbal, the navball points up to the sky. I've tried to fiddle around with 'control from here' but haven't figure out the right combination to correct it... and if the navball is pointed at the sky, the MechJeb rover autopilot doesn't function correctly. How do I reorient the direction the rover's "looking"?