IncongruousGoat

A lot of people have suggested putting a statue of HarvesteR on the mountains to the west of the KSC. However... It seems much more fitting (to me at least) to put a monument on top of Eve's highest peak. You know, the one at -25.0159, -158.4558. After all, Eve is the hardest body to land and return from. The greatest challenge, so to speak. And is the greatest achievement not a fitting tribute to the man who started it all? Although the monument should probably not be RIGHT on top of the peak. I still need to be able to land there. Come to think of it, I remember there being a convenient cliff on that mountain. Perfect to a Rushmore-esque monument, as several others have suggested.

The longest I can recall was a couple 13 minutes in-game time, but 45 minutes real time burns during Jool 5 since the game was running at low FPS and I didn't want to risk kaploding my vessel with physics warp. This is what I get for designing vessels with hundreds of parts, asparagus-ed to hell and back, running on LV-Ns

I'm aware of how to embed Imgur albums. It wasn't functioning properly at the time of my post, is all. Perhaps the issue will resolve itself, given time. Perhaps that album specifically was problematic. Whatever the case, everything seems to have been fine in the end.

Hello everyone! I'm back with a new submission, this time for Topaz. Topaz was... hard. Very hard. I had to change more than a few things about how I go at the challenge, and I lost at least 100,000 funds to failed launches, especially towards the end. My Minmus lander flies like a brick due to aerodynamics and a slightly offset CoM. And, as anyone who has ever tried to fly a brick can tell you, bricks don't like to fly. I crashed more of those than I successfully launched, including one that I fried on re-entry due to running out of power during return. But! I succeeded. Here's the mission album: http://imgur.com/a/7P1eW Or rather, the link to it. For some bizarre reason, I can't seem to embed it properly. Ah well. This should do, even if it isn't quite as elegant.

I put off updating to patches since I got the game off the KSP website and I can't be bothered to manually move all the files around and update my one mod. I cannot build planes for the life of me. I've only built one SSTO, and it carried no payload and went into three flatspins upon descent. I'll revert saves like mad and even edit save files to make sure no Kerbal stays dead for long. I guess I just like them too much. On the flipside, I only use strictly uncrewed missions in Career mode, when I'm trying to be efficient and work under those part and mass limits. I never build landers that hold more than 1 Kerbal and the only time I brought more than 1 Kerbal (in a Mk. 1 command pod, no less) on an interplanetary mission was when I absolutely needed both Jeb and Bob to make everything work out properly.

A discovery noting about the Science Roller: The basic science roller lacks batteries, since it is made before they are available. But, for those wishing to make a more sophisticated one to clear the entire space center of science without the need for airplane parts, take note of the following: It is inadvisable to put your batteries beneath the radiators used to shield the science bay. Due to shifting of the radiator components at high velocities, batteries will become exposed and explode. Best find somewhere else, like the flat unused side of the bay to put your batteries.

Hello again! I decided to do this again, at Apatite this time. A warm-up, since I'm considering taking another crack at Topaz. Strategizing and observations of the possible in a lower difficulty have given me some ideas... The only mods I have installed are RealPlume stock configs and its dependencies. So, only visual/audio stuff. Anyway, here's the album Like @JAFO, I noticed some differences between 1.0.5 and 1.1. My Minmus lander flies like a brick in 1.1, while from what I remember it was fine in 1.0.5. This time around i had serious difficulties maintaining control. Also, I found my Mun flyby probe design to be significantly more reentry-kaplosion-prone in 1.1. Interesting to see that things changed in an update that didn't advertise itself as a physics engine change. Changes to Unity, I suppose. Or somesuch. I can't profess familiarity with the game's internal operation beyond what I know from reading the devnotes. And, as a point of curiosity, I decided to do all the math, such as there was (Basically one ideal thrust for 1.5 TWR calculation for Flea boosters) using a slide rule. And I can confirm they do indeed work. Slide rules are really cool.

I'm going to... err.. third what @regex said. The game gives you all the data you need to compute delta-V and TWR (although I would like the total mass in the engineer's report to go to the kilogram, for precision). Just get a pencil, some paper, a calculator, and a hefty serving of patience. For me, at least, a big part of the game is running the numbers, trying to come up with delta-V requirement estimates, and then running more numbers. It's all part of the design process, and part of rocket science. And what is KSP but a rocket science simulator? Other than a good way to create virtual explosions, of course.

Possibly. I was having issues earlier with some heat radiators exploding while the craft was still on the launchpad. But I doubt it. The only clipping I can think of is some Mk.1 fuselages, and I never had problems with it before. I'll try moving the .craft file to another save. If the problem persists then I'll just put it down to a corrupted .craft file and reassemble it as best I can from such subcomponents as I still have stored in the VAB.

It only happens with this ship specifically. Rebuilding the ship is out of the question, seeing as it has 625 parts. What do you mean by engine? Are you talking about the game engine or something in vehicle design?

KSP Version: 1.1.2.1260 (x64) What Happens: This: http://imgur.com/qQ2d0v2 progressing to this: http://imgur.com/pZQmhJn Or, in words, when I attempt to launch a specific vessel from the launchpad, instead of launching properly the game turns the vessel sideways, moves it away from the launchpad, locks the controls and camera, screws up every readout, and then once "physics" begins to run moves the vessel very rapidly upwards and sideways. Note that I was able to successfully launch a different vessel on the same install. Mods / Add-Ons: RealPlume stock configs Steps to Replicate: Launch this vessel from the launchpad and wait. Result: Game refuses to launch rocket normally Fixes/Workarounds: None that I have found so far Other Notes/Pictures/Log Files .craft file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/s6zopw11su39dyg/Wayfarer.craft?dl=0 Log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ohg9b4k9ta73f3u/output_log.txt?dl=0

It might be out of place as far as stock goes, but this is a mode we're talking about here. I like metric units for scientific purposes as much as the next guy, but to get a sense for what the numbers correspond to I have to convert to imperial to get a sense of scale. So, regardless of how much any one person might dislike Imperial measurements there's a portion of the community for which seeing units in °F would come in handy. My point is, we can argue °C vs °F all day, but that won't change the fact that such a mod as originally described would be useful. What would be really funny would be an option to see the temperature in Rankine. Now THAT would spark a long argument...

Mine came out of my attempt to come up with a random-sounding username for... TF2 of all things. Those days are long gone, but I kept on using the name and it sort of stuck. Kind of wish I hadn't picked something so... unusual... now, but what can you do. Re-branding is hard.

Hmmm... Isaac Asimov: Foundation trilogy Alan Dean Foster: Nor Crystal Tears David Brin: Sundiver, Startide Rising, and The Uplift War That's all I can think of right off the top of my head. Hopefully you like at least some of these.

Ah. Well, that scrubs my plan as far as submitting it here goes. I'll just post it in mission reports.

Could you provide a screenshot?

Hmmm... my plan involved making it to LKO in one piece (one launch) and then splitting up into 4 pieces that go off and do various things. Is that fine? There is only the one Kerbal getting flown around the system.

So... if I am doing a grand tour, does it have to follow the "interplanetary space in one piece" rule to be recognized here? Because my current mission profile has the ship split into 4 pieces at one point to make the delta-v work out reasonably. They do all launch as one big ship.

My intended use was for transfer stages that run on alternators, or chair landers running on probe cores. But that works too. Saving power on duplicate probes would useful for operations out at Jool, where sunlight, and therefore power, is limited. And yeah, I see no reason one probe core could not turn another one on or off.

Here's a thing that would be useful: An option to turn probe cores on and off. Turning a probe core off would make it stop consuming ElectricCharge. However, a pilot would have to board the vessel (or possibly an engineer from the exterior) to turn it back on and re-establish control. I don't know if anyone else would find this useful, or use it ever, but I would certainly use it all the time.

Heh. Yeah, Eve is... challenging. If you're still trying, a) good luck and b) try Vector and/or Aerospike engines.

Oh, and that too.

Rules... Always go for the more ambitious missions, and prioritize small, efficient design over big dumb boosters. Oh, and don't go to Eve unless absolutely necessary. That place is evil.

I use... neither! MechJeb because I'm not a fan of autopilots(and if I had one, I doubt I could resist the temptation to use it for everything), and KER because... I can't be bothered to install it and I really don't need it. The readouts aren't crucial to anything I do, and doing dV and TWR calculations by hand are all part of the process. This is rocket science, after all. No one said it had to be easy.

Screenshots are fine. When you're done, put them in an Imgur album and embed the album in the post you use to declare completion. Oh, and good luck with the challenge.