Zephram Kerman

No worries! First of all, do what is fun. None of us sign your paychecks. Maybe just do a small chunk of the drive. I find it's easier to start something if I know I don't have to do the whole thing. Or, simply summon the eagles to fly them home.

Is that a balance problem, or did you land on a gooey spot? "EEK! The ground is eating my ship!" Actually, I think I can explain what's going on. An aircraft mechanic told me this recently while jacking a plane. The center of gravity is in front of the jack pads, but depending on the ballast, it could be close enough that a steep angle moves it behind. So they use a plumb bob and monitor the angle carefully. If the nose jack gets too far ahead of the others, it could... do this.

I've always just assumed (uh oh) that the crew would put on helmets and pump most of the cabin air into tanks before the door is opened. It remains a mystery to me how they know ahead of time that I was going to click EVA.

Dialogue, definitely. That little bit of RP adds a lot for me.

The way I look at things, everything needs to be in proportion. So if you add fuel to a launcher, you must also add more engine somewhere. For example, at launch, the Thrust to Weight Ratio (TWR) should be about 2:1. Once in orbit, for transfers, it's the opposite situation; you need high ISP engines but don't worry about thrust. But the important thing is to have fun getting a feel for what works, and watching the beautiful spirals in the meantime.

We will be watching your progress with great interest. My God! He's full of stars!

Welcome aboard! Peace and long life :|

Uh oh! I am sooooo going to Moho for #10.

I like to use a combination of wings, parachute, and thrusters to land. Makes things super easy. If you like the kethane turbine, that and the wings can cruise around to explore large areas and pick the perfect landing site. The DERP4 (Duna Environment Research Prototype mk4) probably has too many wings. After experimentation, I think it would have been fine with half that. But it sure was a joy to fly it around. Perfect for scouting colony sites or locating anomalies. Thanks to the generator, drill, and converter, it can refuel and continue to explore indefinitely. I'll make a better video of it... someday.

This is probably weeks too late, but you can disable the city lights without disabling the clouds. Just delete the /boulderco/citylights directory without touching /boulderco/clouds. This trick is mentioned in the mod thread, but with so many mods it'd be a full time job for you to keep up with all of them.

This is why I keep half a dozen named copies of quicksaves. If anything goes weird, I just backtrack to the last named quicksave, and carry on. This is also why I've gotten comfortable editing those files, because I often forget to follow my own advice.

Just a note to let you know I'm enjoying your whole program. It's obviously a lot of work; I don't know where you find the energy to select a parts pack, balance all the parts' values, tweak them to work together beautifully, and document the whole thing in a series of videos and slide shows. Have you seen any sunlight this week?

That's a good idea. Currently, I fly to a local deposit on the west coast. I don't want to install any more mods, or I would use hyperedit. But it would be so much simpler, more fun, and basically just "polished" to have a test site at KSC. But until then, those workarounds are not so bad.

Loved that bit about Rocko Kerman's gang and Rockomax. Good stuff on the transfer orbits too. My brain is still trying to untangle itself.

You can fix that by editing the output part.cfg file. Figure out where in the tech tree you want it to appear. Open another part from that node, then copy the appropriate line into your new part. The lines you want look like this: TechRequired = actuators entryCost = 5200

Mine are protected by F9. So I'm looking into further budget cuts for spacesuits.

Just in case you haven't already seen this: http://xkcd.com/1356/

What I do is weld all the "normal" parts (structural, fuel, etc.), then add the animated ones to the welded part.

Hey that's pretty cool. Kinda unstable without any tail surfaces, but it looks like maybe that's intentional. Very maneuverable that way, and could come in handy if you want to land vertically. By the way, Sam Hall made a mod to replace the inline cockpit internals, so that you can see out the window. Looks much better during IVA. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/44012-Mk2-Cockpit-Internals

That's because Google is spying on your internets! Also they have acquired several major producers of metal foil. A spokesperson for Google made the announcement yesterday, with the explanation "It will improve your Google AdWords experience."

A simpler way to describe the two effects is the journey of a skydiver. Guy jumps out of a perfectly good airplane. He falls through the air faster and faster, until achieving "terminal velocity". At that particular speed, the force of gravity equals the resistant force of aerodynamic drag. As air density increases, drag becomes greater, so terminal velocity decreases. So at first, the skydiver accelerates, but later slows down. (Hopefully completely, using a parachute.)

Cpt_nosh is correct, air density greatly affects your speed when traveling fast. But your original understanding is correct too; trading altitude for speed is the normal situation when flying slowly and efficiently. These two effects are always at work, but you will notice one or the other depending on airspeed.

Congratulations! That's two milestones, actually. Good work.

Also, Lahha made an Excel spreadsheet checklist for all the biomes and research of Kerbin and Mun. I modified it to include Minmus as well. My version is here, for a little while: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/78157466/forum%20posts/Science_Checklist.xls If you use too many of these tools, your game might just become too easy. I think biomes ought to require a bit of searching.

MechJeb can display "Current Biome" if you add it to a custom window. That's really handy when want to know the exact boundaries. So I made a custom window called "Stuff" with: Current Biome, True Altitude, and Suicide Burn Countdown. Very handy little gadget.