Johno

[quote name='CliftonM']I don't even know how to describe that...[/QUOTE] "Hold my beer and watch this!"

I have finally caught the bug (after a couple of years of playing KSP) - I've discovered the joy of making stock replicas of real aircraft! So far I've created an F-16 (which flies like a slug, but what the heck, it fires up to 2 missiles and drops 2 bombs), an A-10 (Not sure how to make it fly properly yet) and a B-52ish sort of thing, with 8 jet engines and a bomb bay full of nasty goodness. Watching bombs rain down from a bomb bay, I have to admit, gives one an amazing feeling.

Wow, you really ARE evil. How do you get fuel out of infants? How many babies does it take to fuel a rocket? ;-)

Okay, but what about the early game phase, when you can't build spaceplanes? What is the lowest-cost method of getting a Kerbal reliably into space (and safely down again!!!) when you only have, say, the first three or four tech levels?

Some men just want to watch the world burn. (Almost literally in this case)

So I was just finishing a mission landing on Minimus. Over 300 science - nothing like what some of you folks manage, but pretty good for me. Unfortunately I accidentally took too long to drop out of time acceleration, and the big three dug into the atmosphere at 100+. Kaboom. Annoying, but fixable. I held F12 . . . And that, children, is when I discovered the difference between quicksave and autosave. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Several months of career, gone, just like that!!!!

Working on my Bible College Masters. Hey, it didn't say we had to be doing stuff on KSP.

"I swear, boss, I DIDN'T press the red button. It wasn't me!"

So after approximately 100 attempts to get my massive, re-usable cargo ship into orbit, I finally arrived at the target (a piece of space junk that someone wants collected - go figure!). It was hugely difficult; it involved engineering challenges, especially getting this thing to fly without spinning around, judging the launch time just so to arrive at the target with enough fuel to manouvre to rendezvous; and when I get there I discover that the cargo bay is too small to grab the debris!!!!!!!

Extra-Kerbinestrial travel . . .

When you can remember the planets of the Kerbal solar system by heart but you're a little fuzzy on the real ones . . .

I have no axe to grind with Mechjeb. I used it back in one edition. Pretty good. But I have eventually figured out how to do a lot of what Mechjeb does with vanilla controls, so these days I can't be bothered installing it.

For the first time EVER, I have successfully landed a spaceplane from LKO onto the runway at the Spaceport! (Previously I'd managed landings on random islands or whatever, and even one on the same CONTINENT as the spaceport, but this was the first time I'd actually managed to land on the tarmac. She nosed down after landing, but no damage. And as they say, a good landing is any landing you can walk away from. )

A long way behind the rest of you, to be sure . . but for the first time EVER, I have successfully deployed a spaceplane to rescue a stranded Kerbonaut! Not an SSTO; it's a small, canard-delta vehicle which launches with the aid of a disposable rocket engine and 4 SRBs. But it does the job, and you get to recoup an awful lot of your costs for the mission.

Everyone else is like "So, today I got the last 8000 tonnes of my mining mission into Jool orbit, now just waiting on 300 crew members." I'm like "Hey, got something into orbit without shaking itself to bits."

A frustrating hour of trying to build a rocket around a Mun station left me realising that I don't understand how to build a launch vehicle for a big payload such that it doesn't want to fly backwards . . . .

I think I'm glad some people like farming. Some of them are actually real life farmers, and because of them the rest of us get to eat. Top job, folks.

It's something most other people have done repeatedly, I have no doubt . . but today, I managed my first Munar rescue!!! Valentina had gone to the Mun, attempting to one-up Jeb, who happened to be first on the rotation for landings. Well, the only way she could do that was to attempt a landing in the highlands (rather than in the equatorial crater region). Her attempt was successful, mostly . . in the old "Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing" kind of a way. However, in a landing that had Jeb screaming "GO FOR IT, KID!" from his console and everyone else squirming with embarrassment, Valentina's spacecraft toppled over and wound up nose-downwards in a valley. The Capcom was ordered to occasionally make encouraging remarks or give nonsensical orders for exploration, and Gene Kerman convened a tiger team. "Okay people, let's work the problem," he said. "What options do we have?" Bill piped up "Normally we simply declare the stranded spacecraft to be a permanent MunBase. I don't suppose we can do that?" Gene thought for a moment. "Not really," he said after a long pause. "She's carrying 420 Science, and she doesn't have a high-gain antenna. Much as it'd serve her right after that embarrassment of a landing ["It was AWESOME!" protested Jeb, but quietly], we can't leave that there. No, we have to rescue her." "What about using RCS to right the spacecraft?" Bob asked. "An excellent suggestion," said Gene, "Let down by two basic problems. Firstly, RCS isn't fitted to her spacecraft. And secondly, perhaps more importantly, WE HAVEN'T INVENTED RCS YET, BOB! No, we're going to need to rescue her. A precision landing will be needed, no more than half a kilometre from Valentina's current location." The VAB crew hurriedly cobbled together a rescue vehicle from spare parts. It had the lowest centre of gravity anyone had ever seen. It was duly sent to the Mun, and after a few false starts (involving staging problems, which fortunately turned out to be only in the simulator [*cough**revert**cough*]), the landing was attempted. Success! Only 300m from Moonraker 1A! Valentina jetpacked over, and despite slamming into the side of the rescue vehicle and flopping about another 200m, managed to board without further incident. Cutting a long story short, Valentina landed in the rescue vehicle less than 5km from the Launch Site. The science was unloaded, and Valentina was treated to a hero's welcome (from Jeb) and a dressing down (from Gene).

23: You don't understand why you're not catching up to the space station - you're going 15,000m/s, and it's only going 2000!

I had my first brush with the Kraken for Version 1.0.2! Apparently when you get into orbit, your ship turns into very viscous jelly. Who knew? (No pictures - I was too flabbergasted to take a screenie!)

Stack 'em, launch 'em, try to rescue the pilot.

Interesting, my experience is the reverse. The new realistic flight model is SO much easier to handle. I was previously a pretty terrible pilot; never mind landing spaceplanes from orbit, I was doing well to get them roughly into the area of the spaceport before popping the chutes and letting them float to the ground! With 1.0.2, I'm ACTUALLY ABLE TO FLY. Partly, I think, this is because I can now use the reflexes I've developed over years of using flight simulators (I used to have to countermand them).

spaceship!

It's worth remembering that, if the aerodynamics are more realistic, it SHOULD be difficult to get an SSTO into orbit. After all, there's a reason they don't get used in real life!

Then it falls to me to say Mutlu ANZAC günü, ve mutlu KSP günü! Avustralya İyi geceler. (çok az Türkçe konuşuyorum, ama güzel Türkçe konuşmak istiyorum!).