Ultimate Steve

So, yeah! It's happening! An important note, I was originally going to do an entirely SRB grand tour, but since I'm playing on a pretty old laptop and I don't have an infinite amount of patience, I resorted to using Vernor engines to dock. However, I have strict rules about how I am going to use them, and I will try to use them as little as possible. They may only be used during a rendezvous. They may not be used on any lander. They may be used within 2.5km of the target vessel if you are going less than 10m/s relative to the target. They may be used outside 2.5km from the target for maneuvers of less than 0.5m/s. Related to refueling: In a normal KSP grand tour the vessel is refueled either by ISRU or by docking a vessel and transferring fuel. However, neither of these are possible with solid fuel, so for "refueling" I'm going to launch new stacks of SRB's to the mothership. If I could do it all at once I would, but that would most likely require a vessel in the 10k part range. So, no, it's not really a true 100% SRB grand tour, but it's pretty much as close as I can get without setting my computer on fire. Questions are welcome. More coming soon-ish. Enjoy!

That's a stock feature that comes with a flags. If you plant a flag and type something, then later approach it with a Kerbal and right click it, there will be an option to read the plaque (the text you typed).

Simulator

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?! It's been two years? Man, stuff is going by fast.

Huh, I didn't think they were actually building it, I thought it was just a concept for now. How close are they and how much of it have they built?

K, so... ===BACKSTORY=== A while back I developed an obsession with the history of my small town, most notably old buildings. Even my high school (built in the 1920's) is so huge and labrynthian that I'm constantly finding rooms I didn't know existed. I kept sneaking into places for a while (then I realized that the school has cameras everywhere, but fortunately (I hope) nobody ever bothers checking them unless something goes wrong). I knew the first school in my town was built in the 1850's. It was later expanded and the original wing was demolished a few decades later and the new part is old and collapsing, but still standing near the center of the town. My school's library had a book about the history of Tipton from about 120 years ago until now, and from that I learned a few things: 1. In 1880 that school was moved to a new one, the 1879 school (built in 79, occupied in 80). 2. In 1895 they built a bigger school next to the first one because they ran out of space. 3. They kept building more buildings around there to facilitate the extra students. 4. Then, in 1925, they built a new building, the current one, and expanded it a few times. 5. The important fact - the 1879 school looked badass as Jeb. That's not the best picture, but it's the best one I could find online. The other picture I saw in the book was much, much better than this one. I mean, WOAH! That's just COOL! WAAAAAAY better looking than our current school - and probably taller. So I tried to find it. And failed. Long story short, both of those buildings had been demolished sometime, I couldn't find out when. But - I found out where they were built - right next to the current school, where the practice field currently is. I heard from someone that you can see the foundations on a frosty day (as of yet unconfirmed). ANYWAY, now onto what happened today. My obsession with old buildings continued. I decided on a whim that I'd try to find the old abandoned insane asylum that I knew was outside of town somewhere. I had heard from my friends that they had been there before. Some research later, I hopped on my bike with a vague idea of where it was and set off. Before we go any further, I want to clarify that I am not a vandal and had no intention of vandalizing anything. At best I wanted to just see it with my own two eyes and maybe take a short peek inside. My ultimate goal (requiring multiple trips) would have been to make a map of the place (documenting it and stuff) so that when it finally is demolished it won't be completely forgotten. So I biked around for a bit, went down one road, turned around, and went down another road. I was about to give up and head home when I crested a hill and saw it - an old, four story brick building with smashed glass and untended trees. After checking that nobody was there, I went up the short driveway and noticed a small cemetery. There was also a gate to prevent vehicles from entering, but it only blocked the road and nothing else. There were no keep out signs, no private property signs, no fence, no nothing, so I decided it would be alright to get a bit closer. If I was breaking a serious law, it's not like I would be the only one who had. There was barely anything left of the windows of the place. I cautiously walked up the steps that led to the entryway, looking around at the magnificently eerie building in front of me. I got up to the door (no locks, all windows smashed) and stuck my head up to the broken window. I honestly don't remember what the entry room looked like, for the I heard someone. Then I heard a door slam really loudly and I jumped a little before speedwalking back down the stairs, boarding my bike and swiftly getting out of there. And then I went home and realized something. The building was only accessible via two roads, the highway, and the gravel road I had taken. The gravel was slippery, and not ideal for biking at all. The highway is obviously a no go for biking. And on the gravel road, there are actually quite a few farm houses. And there's really nothing to see out there except for the asylum. So if they see a guy on his bike on the road (it's actually a pretty long road) they know he's probably going to the asylum (and the stereotype is that we teens are all vandals that never do good), so on the way back I kept tensing up every time a car passed, or every time I passed a house until I got back into town. So, that's the interesting thing that happened today...

Hey, that thread of mine actually made it into someone's signature!

Nah, I just wrote that a liiiiiiittle too far past midnight.

I don't think there's a straightforward formula, but you've got a really draggy payload that changes diameters (KSP makes those have a really high drag for some reason). I'd suggest putting the payload in a fairing. And adding fins to the base. Even 4 AV-R8's will probably help a ton. As far as flipping is concerned, you want the mass as the front and the drag at the back. Here you have the mass at the back (can't really be helped) but you have the drag at the front (can be helped). EDIT: This was my 1500th post? Hey, I've got five dots now! Or did I get that at 1000? I don't remember...

This is the second attempt at the launch of Amos-6. 6/2 = 3. And we know what three means. No, it's not the illuminati. There are three leaves on a clover, down from SpaceX's four leaf clover patches. "Jeff" is four letters. "Who" is three letters. Put the two clovers together and you get 4 and 3. 4+3 = confirmed. 43 was a number I associated with a person. Jeff Who and that person are working together to make me give up on my dreams (she sort of has done that already) of going to orbital space so they can hire me as a pilot of their New Shepard suborbital rocket. But that would only make sense if they had a viable method of making sure Elon didn't own the suborbital launch market, especially with BFR suborbital flights. *GASP* Falocn Heavy is always 6 months away. BFR is always 6 years away. Zuma is 6 days away. AMOS 6 happened 12 months ago. 12 is 2*6. JEFF WHO OWNS A TIME MACHINE!!! And Zuma must be the codename for it! Nobody at SpaceX knows what Zuma was as it was locked inside the payload bay of the third X-37 which is what SpaceX is actually launching. Jeff conspired with Boeing and LockMart to launch the X-37 with Zuma inside to the interstellar asteroid (which is actually a monolith from 2001) in order to gather the power to prevent the universe by 6 billion years because that would not be norminal. However a separatist movement infiltrated SpaceX and began developing reusable fairings. They implanted a defect in the Zuma fairings to prevent it from launching in time to reach the asteroid! ELON = 4. JEFF = 4. ZUMA = 4. AMOS = 4. 4 IS INFINITE. 5 is 4. 3 is 5 is 4. 9 is 4. 12 is 6 is 3 is 5 is 4 IS INFINITE. JEFF IS ELON'S EVIL TWIN. Jeff had Zuma as a pet and Elon had Amos as a pet. And Mike is the deranged triplet. MIKE = 4. Mike the flat Earther who is launching himself on a steam rocket to prove the shape of the Earth. But that's five fours! 5 =/= 4! Which means that the Earth is not a sphere! It is 4.5 dimensions, because that's the average of 4 and 5. Length, Width, Depth, Nzetch, and Time. Time is 0.5 dimensions, that is why it can be manipulated by Elon, Jeff, and Mike's time machines because it is broken and incomplete. But John Insprucker to the rescue! JOHN = 4. NORMINAL = 8, but that doesn't matter. And I said four was infinite. And that's where Divergent comes in. FOUR = 4. 7 4's. 7 episodes of Star Wars. Where the force (4's) will awaken. 7 is one more than 6, which is the number of infinity stones in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The average is 6.5. 6.5-amos 6 = 0.5. 0.5 dimension = time. TIME = four. Don't you see? The time stone from the MCU was split into FOUR pieces, only one of which is actually still in the MCU. The other three pieces are in the time machines. The one for Amos was recovered and used in ZUMA. The second belongs to Mike who seeks to prove a 4.5 dimensional Earth. And the third piece? Zuma is going to launch on December 15, 2017, the same day Star Wars: The Last Jedi comes out. How do I know? The last Time Stone fragment is in Luke Skywalker's lightsaber. Which travelled in time to a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. And on December 15, there will be 8 Star Wars films. The average is now 7 (8 movies and 6 stones). That means, now 7 minus Amos-6 is 1. ON DECEMBER 15, Time will become 1 instead of 0.5. The four fragments of the time stone will recombine and Jeff Who will launch Zuma as a latch ditch attempt to control time but it will be defeated by Han Solo who is definitely not dead flying a Millenium Falcon strapped to a Falcon 9 resulting in a RUD similar to Amos-6, but invisible so it will not impact cadence. With time now 1 and not 0.5, it cannot be manipulated. Which is why Falcon Heavy will not by 6 months away anymore, it is finally free to launch and usher in a new era of space exploration. And Falcon Heavy has three cores. HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED AS THE PAYLOAD FOR FALCON HEAVY FLIGHT ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wait, this is the KSP forum, not /r/spacexmasterrace...

Yes, we're on the KSP forum, very few of us wouldn't want to! I even started working on a design for a 1 man suborbital rocket that with some effort could be built and launched by a small team of people who knew what they were doing. Deep in the part of my brain responsible for my hopes and dreams, I dreampt about actually building it... Unfortunately there are these pesky things called "laws" and "regulations" not to mention I'd probably blow myself up in the process, meaning my chances of going to space are probably higher if I don't build it...

I've finally had someone die. I'm honoring them @Geschosskopf style. So, this is the Sojourner 3, which is basically a small version of MOL. Unfortunately, it lacked the thrust to get to orbit so I aborted. Shortly after the abort was initiated the Mk1 pod spontaneously exploded, rendering Valentina dead. Bob bailed out after re-entry (no chutes any more) but he died upon impact. ^^^My pathetic excuse for a flag planting rover. EDIT: Wow, this whole "Sojourner" thing isn't working well... Only two of the six have actually reached orbit. Sojourner 2 doesn't really count, though, because I nixed the lab (to rescue a guy) and Sojourner 5 developed a fuel leak and couldn't charge its battery. S6 just exploded on ascent. EDIT2: I didn't intend to write any of this up, but just to give a brief summary of my career so far, Skybounds 1-7-ish were my manned rockets, some of which succeeded in getting to orbit, and later taking two astronauts briefly into Sonnah's SOI. Extra's 1-11 (?) were my unmanned rockets, which managed to orbit. Two of them managed to collide with Sonnah, one of them dipped into its atmosphere and then orbited the Mun. The last one in the series landed on the Mun. The Sojourner series (1-7) were designed to fly 2 people into orbit with 1.85m rockets along with a MOLE setup. Unfortunately, that program didn't work out so well. S1 failed and the LES worked. S2 got into orbit with 1 person for a rescue contract and succeeded but lacked the lab module (I took it out to save mass). S3 blew up on re-entry due to BARIS. S4 exploded, LES worked. S5 reached orbit (again, a rescue mission, but with the lab this time) but didn't have the right power systems to make the lab work (I got, like, 0.05 research time before I had to return to Kerbin). S6 exploded but the LES worked. S7 finally got into orbit with working solar panels, but the research was slow and I determined that it wasn't worth staying in orbit for two weeks for 10 science. In the time it took to get 10 science, an experiment and another part (I forget which) failed. So, no, unless I can get one far away I'm not going to go down that path. The Descender series are probes that land on other celestial bodies and have probe cores which use SAS. D1, the only one so far, landed on Aptur than orbited Eli. It would have landed on Eli, but the engine failed right before I was going to de-orbit. And if it wasn't 1:30 AM here, I'd be launching Explorer 1, designed to send a crew of 2 to Aptur. But I'm soooo tiredddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd ^^^Fell asleep with finger on the d key

Every single person on this forum. This is one of the most, if not the most welcoming online community I've ever been to. And mods. I'm just now getting into a New Horizons career and I'm hooked. EDIT: And the mods, as in the moderators. They're cool too.

Update: My Sonnah Impactor sort of accidentally became a Mun orbiter. Unfortunately it doesn't have enough EC left to transmit science.

Yeah, I'm really feeling the science grind. I have the tech to get places, but I don't have the tech to return and until recently I didn't have the antennas necessary to transmit. Currently launching another (#3) Sonnah impact probe. Maybe I'll actually be able to transmit science this time... After that I'm going for an Aptur flyby (once I unlock probes that have SAS).

Okay, so, good news, nobody has died (yet) except for one dude killed in training by an event card. My first few missions had several problems. Then BARIS went silent for about 5 missions and now it's devoured both of my attempts at a Sonnah entry probe. And the one I didn't integrate went farther than the one I did integrate... EDIT: Extra 6 just exploded as well. :p. EDIT: Alright, the second stage engine just exploded three flights in a row. Something's up here.

I've just now started the career, I went with New Horizons plus a lot of the suggestions shown here. My computer is handling it decently. Note to self, install DSEV. Also, yay! I managed to do three flights so far without killing anyone! But on the third flight all 8 of my fuel tanks failed at once...

I've actually done this, to a certain extent. It was a design for a 1 man orbital rocket (not particularly useful). I got it mostly done except for the engines. I did get as far as making a 1:10 scale model, though. Currently sitting in my basement. I was going to hang it from the ceiling of my bedroom but it is about four inches shorter than the length of my room... And falling apart...

Agreed. If by some stroke of luck I'm travelling to Mars 20 years from now, I'll have a copy (or five) of KSP with me.

I tried that (without testflight, though). It was painfully slow but I managed to push through and I got to the point where I had a station comparable to the ISS in LEO and a station comparable to Mir in LLO. I was about to begin a manned Mars mission but I lost interest at that point (too slow. If I get a better computer I will try again). It's a Dell Inspiron 5547 with an intel i5 @1.7GHz and 8GB RAM. Not the best machine for KSP, but waaaay better than the other two computers I've played KSP on.

Thank you both. I had completely forgotten about New Horizons and it looks really, really cool. I will probably end up using that one. If the doubling of planets doesn't bring my laptop to its knees. I'm particularly interested in MOLE, I can see that being useful early career... By the looks of it, though, I may turn off BARIS after a while. This could get interesting.

The full clip is about 40 minutes long and I had to launch four of those (although the last three had half of the parts). It felt like a day, though. The first one is over a thousand parts. And I have to launch a few dozen more (although they will be more optimized) if I wish to complete the mission.

Upon closer inspection that does seem like a real possibility, I certainly hope that is the case.

Began editing a new KSP video. However, when editing, my editing software couldn't handle the rate at which the video had to be sped up... So look at the following launch. Seems like a pretty normal launch, right? That video is sped up by forty times. The. Lag. Is. Real.

So, I was reading @Geschosskopf's "Alternis Kerbol Travelling Circus" and it got me inspired to start a new modded career. There will be a few givens, I will be using BARIS and a planet pack. The planet pack and the rest of the mods are up to you because I am finding myself unable to choose. The planet pack must not have the stock planets (at least not without changes). I'm considering either Alternis or GPP, but I'm open to other suggestions (but they must be career compatible). The other stuff (part packs, science mods, etc.) is mainly what I'm here for. I don't want my save to become too bogged down with parts that the game is unplayable. Any mod suggestions?