cubinator

I'm pitching something to NASA next month.

Wow, that's a whole Superheavy stage minus engines and grid fins? Very exciting.

Range not go

Chitin itself is indigestible. Luckily the freezing process is painless.

Bugs! I love alll the crunchy, crumbly things that get everywhere in space, like croutons and crackers...so maybe I should bring a lot of peanut butter to hold them together!

As you go up higher from a planet, you're getting less and less influence from its gravity well. So, you will have less energy staying in orbit. Consider that your low-orbit spacecraft orbits Kerbin within a couple hours, yet the Mun takes several days and Minmus takes even longer. The gravity well looks like this:

A clear Laythe dawn.

A little plane I made called Phoenix. It may not look like much, but it can get 5 Kerbals into Kerbin orbit and back all on its own! In this picture it had descended from a high orbit of Laythe, where I currently have a large space station.

Poking around with a mining ship. It needs that many solar panels to work at Jool. I didn't quite get it on top of the VAB, but if I set the gimbal lower I could. (This is necessary testing, we insisted to the insurance company!)

Phantom Moon CLOUD-ONE dropped closer to Jool as they made their way towards Laythe. The angles were read, the trajectories were calculated, and it was determined and double-checked that the station would not crash into any moons of Jool on its way down. As Laythe and Jool grew larger in the viewports, the crew of CLOUD-ONE communicated their impediment to Kerbin. The ISRU stage was lost. CLOUD-ONE had just enough fuel to enter orbit of Laythe, and then it would have to stay there indefinitely. The station could support the Kerbals there as long as it needed to, but new ships would have to be sent from Kerbin to support any more extended exploration of the Jool system, or indeed a return to Kerbin. Pol was a cursed moon, and no further attempts to exploit its resources would be made. The Kerbals back on Kerbin radioed back reassuringly that they would get to work right away on a fleet to support CLOUD-ONE at Jool. The station would pass in the shadow of Jool prior to its encounter with Laythe. All the Kerbals gathered to watch the sun set, something it hadn't done for the station in a long time. An eerie pink glow engulfed the station as light scattered through Jool's topmost clouds. Radio communication with Kerbin was interrupted as their home was obscured. And the orbit continued nominally. Until.... Out of the shadow the sun was born, but with it came along a void, which slowly engulfed the stars, then eventually the sun and Jool. A strange hiss overcame the radio arrays as the planet-sized anomaly moved toward the station. On Kerbin, no communication from the station could be heard. Patrick Kerman was eyeing the sky through a television on the roof of the VAB when he got a fright, suddenly finding Jool with a fourth moon at its side, a moon as big as Laythe or Tylo, in a perfect orbit between the two, a moon which had not been there yesterday. As more televisions turned to the green giant, a radio burst conjured a fifth moon as well, a large asteroid which made a "BOP" sound as it hit receivers on CLOUD-ONE. Now the station was on an intercept trajectory with this new world which had usurped Tylo as the Second Moon of Jool. The moon was approaching fast. As the sun finally rose over it, glinting mountains of ice reflected their distant host star. The station was mostly powerless to adjust its orbit away, and the Kerbals could only hope they were not about to crash into the ghostly moon. As they drew closer and closer, it became increasingly apparent that they were grazing the surface. The station was pitched into a horizontal attitude at full force in the hope that the miniscule reduction in vertical stretch would be enough to keep them from scraping the station across the frost at 1.3 kilometers per second. Why had this moon suddenly appeared out of nowhere? What could it mean? Did it come from Jool? Or was it a product of the universe trying to tell Kerbalkind some kind of message? None could tell.

Ok I gotta ask...I don't suppose there's an elevator in there yet, so do the workers ride up on the crane? Or do they have to take the stairs?

No, it doesn't help me, because it's off by default and I always want it to be on.

I don't think so. It might make it easy to get something we'd currently consider a "large" lander into orbit, which is something that approaches the limit of space exploration in KSP 1, but KSP 2 is a game where once you've done all that you have interstellar travel and proper interplanetary colonization to attempt. These goals are so far beyond what can normally be done in KSP 1 that I think engines like this that would be considered extremely overpowered in the first game will only be a stepping stone to what's possible in KSP 2. The challenge isn't in getting a single lander to a planet, it's moving a whole city there.

Lately I've been flying around in KSP1 scouting out the places I am going to colonize in KSP2.

BIG engine for BIG fast

I am definitely counting it as separate from regular runs, since it appears you could use it to generate unlimited thrust from any propulsive element.

Here are some of my first attempts: Highest altitude achieved: 287 m Highest speed achieved: 175 m/s After adding an SAS, battery, and nosecone to the previous design pictured, I achieved a new altitude of 514m. However, it still seems like the max speed is 175 m/s. I wonder what is causing this and if it is possible to go faster... Edit: now up to 533 m.

Putting out a line, I know someone will bite!

KSP 1.12 FIREWORK PROPULSION CHALLENGE Fireworks are here, and that means new parts and physics to exploit! Here's how this works: Every time a firework is launched, it exerts a recoil force on the firework launcher. This force is enough to propel itself into the air, along with a little bit of extra mass. You know what that means! We can use it to travel through the air. RULES 1. ONLY FIREWORKS MAY BE USED TO PROPEL YOUR CRAFT. Decouplers may be used, but their deploy force must be set to zero. 1a. If you would like to use decoupler force in your craft, you may do so. However, you must make a note of this and your run will be put in a separate category. KAL overclocking will also be placed in a separate category. 2. Post a screenshot of your post-flight results. These may be accessed by pressing F3 in game. You may also post a video or as many screenshots of your design as you'd like, but make sure to include that F3 menu! Note that this menu is often inaccurate in its velocity reading, so you should try to measure velocity in another way. CHALLENGERS Fastest recorded speed 1. @jimmymcgoochie220 m/s 2. @jimmymcgoochie188 m/s 3. @Stamp20 175 m/s 4. @cubinator175 m/s 5. @Sivako Aerospace~90 m/s Highest recorded altitude 1. @jimmymcgoochie1251 m 2. @jimmymcgoochie 1063 m (Over 1 kilometer!) 3. @Sivako Aerospace632 m (using 2x physwarp) 4. @Stamp20 565 m 5. @cubinator533 m Records with additional exploits: @Stamp20 5991 m, 412 m/s (KAL 1000 overclock exploit) @Stamp20Impacted the Mun using KAL 1000 overclock SPECIAL BADGES OF EXPLOSIVE CELEBRATORY HONOR FIRST FIREWORK-PROPELLED AIRPLANE @Klapaucius FIREWORK KERBAL CANNON @Klapaucius a whopping 20 meter flight! FIRST TO SPACE ON FIREWORKS: FIRST TO ORBIT KERBIN ON FIREWORKS: FIRST TO IMPACT THE MUN ON FIREWORKS: FIRST TO TOUCH THE MUN AND RETURN ON FIREWORKS:

Firework propulsion is DEFINITELY possible...now to see how far we can go!

Escape the Cursed Moon The miner probe was operating smoothly for a few hours - each time CLOUD-ONE orbited overhead, it received a radio signal that everything was a-ok. But then, one orbit, the signal suddenly went silent. The last telemetry it sent was an indication of loss of contact from the drills, followed by a sudden and immense vertical drop. Some of the Pol surface samples on the station emitted a new rattling sound, seemingly on their own, the moment this happened. Since Pol was so small, it would be possible to see what was transpiring on the surface through a television. Megvey Kerman aimed one at exactly the spot they had previously landed in, and found nothing. The surface was untouched, as if they had never landed a giant probe there in the first place. The ISRU unit had simply disappeared. But there was no ambiguity in the Kerbal's minds about what the data sent by the probe meant. The moon had opened up its maw and eaten the probe. Unanimously, the Kerbals of CLOUD-ONE decided it was time to leave this terrifying place and get as far away from it as possible. Little planning went in to the burn besides to get closer in to Jool - they would use an elliptical orbit to get an encounter with one of the other two moons. Probably Laythe, since it was nice and blue and, with no ISRU and dwindling fuel, the crew would need someplace to stay until new spacecraft could arrive from Kerbin, and Laythe had the best chance of letting them survive.

Hungry Moon As the drills began their autonomous operation, the Kerbals climbed back into Lander 2 and lifted off back towards CLOUD ONE. A faint hiss accompanied the rumble of the engines as the ship collided with a cloud of dust kicked up from the surface, possibly due to their own activities. The surface samples they'd brought up were as strange and eerie as the moon itself, and they made strange little popping noises after being shaken, almost as if to complain. Lander 2 docked to the station and the long wait for fuel began. A poke... Something is crawling on me. Above, they are above.... Something is biting me! Grrr... What does it taste like? It is metal... I will eat it... New pokers...Pokers from where? Keeerrrrrrrr.......

DPAI mod is something I always use when doing complex assemblies like this, it helps a lot correcting for inevitable misalignments.