Ultimate Steve

Good point. Hmm, I know you can get oxygen on the Moon by electrolyzing water ice, but I'm not sure about nitrogen...

I just want a T-shirt that truthfully says "THIS T-SHIRT HAS BEEN IN SPACE." I'd pay $1000 for it, no joke.

Titled Land Craft

Untitled Space Craft

If I could go in time and tell my past self of all the fun I would have with this I would have gladly paid $300 for this game.

Two words: Old Moho.

Yeah... I cannot for the life of me remember my first Kerbin orbit. It was probably somewhere along the lines of a pod, a fl-t400, a terrier, an orange tank, a mainsailor skipper, and three RT-10's. But my first RO/RP-0 orbit... Sorry for the insanely huge image. The forum is breaking it if I shrink it. That is Mu 0, also known as Skybound V, which finally made orbit after several attempts. Looking back on it I'm like "WOAH, too many stages dude! Taking that middle stage out might even increase Delta-V!" But the feeling when I reached orbit and the camera view switched was just simply amazing.

Moho: Probably not, but it is periodically volcanic (see: 0.17 atmosphere) and may have a hot core. Eve: At some point. Duna: Past. Laythe: Yes. There is oxygen, that must have come from somewhere. Vall: Icy, probably has a subsurface ocean due to the proximity to Jool. Plus we've got that one easter egg... Bop: The Kraken. Pol: Those spikes look organic, like a fungus, but I don't know how they would have formed. Eeloo: If we go by OPM, than it once had a subsurface ocean because it orbited Sarnus but then got ejected.

During that same timeframe, another Martian will push for the instatement of a Martian Olympics and then proceed to win many medals because of the lack of participants...

Any time there is a sunrise at the same time as another celestial body rise. I would say my first manned landing on another moon, but my Minmus landing was tense (I almost kicked my lander over) rather than awesome. The Mun was slightly better... But I'd have to say watching sunset from Eve orbit shortly after completing my first ever Eve Ascent. That will forever remain one of the most amazing moments in KSP history for me.

Imagination. Put that name to good use. I built my own "Imagination" today (gigantic water rocket) only to have it fail in a non-spectacular way. Avenge the name!

I finally figured out who gave me my "Believe in Steve" T-shirt (my favorite shirt and a source of mystery: It showed up on my porch about a year ago). It was a family friend. I'm happy because I know, but I'm crying inside because I was hoping it was a girl...

Exactly what the title says, what do you think we will be doing from 2030 to 2100 (provided society survives intact until then)? My personal ideas are that the BFR will work but will be a few years late and by 2030 we will have had crews on Mars. By that time, other space agencies will either have changed focus to building other hardware or will have worked on developing their own reusable rockets. Somewhere in there (knock on wood) congress will give NASA the go-ahead to construct a spaceship in orbit powered by a nuclear thermal rocket (like Discovery in 2001: A Space Odyssey) which will be targeted at either a Venus flyby (as a test flight of sorts) or a mission to Jupiter. The modules will be launched on whatever big rocket is available at the time. Soon after, reusable rockets like the BFR (maybe 12m or 15m variants) will make jaunts out to Jupiter as well after refueling on Mars, but these will find their limits and for serious exploration of the outer planets. Discovery style ships will eventually make their way to Saturn and (longer term) Uranus or Neptune. By 2100 (optimistically) I think we will have landed people on some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and have sent at least manned flybys of Venus and Mercury. We will also have bases/cities/whatever you want to call them on Mars and the Moon. Somewhere at the end of the time period multiple countries will be seriously be considering (knocks on wood) a space elevator (which in my mind wouldn't actually get built for a hundred years, but by 2100 it will have gone from "impossible" to "possible with enough money."). So what do you all think?

I have made about five smaller pictures which show those rockets in detail but when I saved each one as well as the overall picture, the quality decreased massively. I will hopefully post a higher quality version after it's finished, which might be a while due to a bunch of other stuff happening right now.

For... reasons... I decided to design a lifter that is entirely solid fueled that can take 1200 tons into orbit. Initial tests are very promising.

I have played on 3 main computers since I started playing KSP. I have affectionately named them "The Brick," "The Potato," and "ULTRA MEGA FAST LUDICROUS SPEEEEEEEEEEEEED!" AKA George. Here is an inspiron 6000 series, the same model as The Brick: 1.5 gigahertz. A Pentium M processor. Released in 2005. 120GB hard drive. Heavy. Eight or so USB ports. And 1GB RAM. Good gravy, how did I even manage to run KSP on this? Yellow clock? What's a yellow clock? It's supposed to be red, right? I only ever ran 0.19 on it - and it was torture. A small suborbital flight could take 15 minutes... No wonder I got nothing done. Eventually I moved on to THE POTATO! I forget exactly what this one is called (Miracle I found a picture, actually) but I think it had 4GB of RAM and an i5 processor. It ran KSP better, but not well. I managed half-decent space stations with this. And now, for George. It's actually terrible for gaming, but because I'm used to even worse it feels insanely fast. BAM! 2.4 Gigahertz! 8 gigabytes of RAM! Nearly a terabyte of hard drive space! YEAH! ...I wish I had a gaming computer.

Procedural parts sort of fixes it... It allows cones, spheres, filleted cylinders, and curved cones as shapes and you can customize the shape. Unfortunately it doesn't include anything super unique like the MK3 parts or cubes or stuff like that (but there's a few good reasons why cube tanks aren't used in real life).

Thanks! I'm working on a comparison of all of them that I have used in game. It's not done, but it's close:

That is true for 99% of Reddit. The SpaceX subreddit has extreme moderation protocols and almost everything that is off-topic, rude, or has already been said gets deleted. Probably half of everything I've posted over there has been deleted... But, yes, that guy could be making stuff up. We'll find out soon, I guess.

I was fooling around in RO, sandbox this time, and I thought to myself "I wonder if the WWII Germans could have launched something into orbit with the technology of the time." I set a few restrictions on myself. The only parts I could use were the A-4 parts (both engines, tank, cone, fin, avionics unit) with a very specific whitelist of other parts. I allowed myself procedural decouplers, a simple radial decoupler, struts (duh), fuel lines (not for actual crossfeed, some of the engines weren't receiving fuel when they should have been), launch clamps, procedural thrust plates, and procedural fuel tanks (because who wants 1000 small fuel tanks when you can make a big one!). After a major change of history, in spring 1945, the Wissenschaftliches Erddrehgerät 1 (literal translation: Scientific Earth Rotator) was rolled out to the launch pad to make history. The rocket used 61 A-4 engines and had a very low TWR coming off of the launch pad. The first stage had 24 engines with 16 on detachable boosters. After a short while, the first 8 boosters with 2 engines each detach. Due to the lack of ullage motors, the next stage's engines must be ignited right before the previous stage burns out. UI is showing here because the rocket was nearly tumbling out of control and I needed the navball. The next stage has 16 engines, 4 per booster. The core stage, with four more engines, is ignited later on, about halfway through the burn, to conserve Delta-V. Unfortunately, after booster jettison, there is next to no avionics on board. The rocket continues to hold the last command it was given. The final stage is just an ordinary A-4, except with 3x the fuel capacity. Once the mass of the rocket is below 20 tons, it is again controllable, and pitches downward below the horizon to accelerate horizontally and decrease its vertical velocity. And, engine cutoff! Did it make orbit, though? Yes it did. Barely. Unfortunately, due to the expense of the missile and the lack of battery power, no more are produced and the war ends in 1945 as usual. The Germans burnt all of the blueprints and covered up the launch dramatically so it was never heard from again. Some people still believe Sputnik was the first object to orbit the Earth... *Cue X-files theme*

EDIT: I'm stupid, didn't read the first part of the OP. Well, this will be a close one... First off, HarvestR and Moach, but really, those are given. Without them, there would be no KSP, no forums, none of this, which has constituted a great portion of my life. And @illectro (Scott Manley) because he was how I found out about KSP (the Goonstation video, if I'm not mistaken). The obvious ones being said, I'd have to say @max_creative. He was the one who supported Project Intrepid back when my writing skills were abysmally terrible.. I was about ready to call it quits when I had posted 6 chapters and gotten no responses. Thanks, buddy, because of you I've had an excuse to go to every planet and moon, Project Intrepid now has 39 chapters and counting (plus a cool prologue) and without Project Intrepid, I probably would not have written the vastly more successful Voyage: The Final Warning mission report. Following closely is @Just Jim for numerous reasons, including support of Voyage: The Final Warning. Closely behind that is @Kuzzter, who was part of the reason I first joined the forums. I would also like to thank him for the compliments he gave me on my "Final Countdown" KSP music video. He also played a very big role in the beginnings of Project Intrepid - The point in the Jool novel where the mothership was named "Intrepid" triggered me to remember an old project I had started on the older computer (named the Potato) called "Project Intrepid" which led to the start of my own mission report. And, really, everyone... It's just such a friendly forum. Thanks for accepting me. EDIT: I also must admit I copied Kuzzter's Eve mission in sandbox after it came out. The only difference is, somehow my Atmospheric dipper ended up working...

If you're using purely stock parts, there's your problem. They have bad mass ratios to balance them against the Kerbol system. Mods are really necessary to get anywhere in RSS/RO/RP-0. If not, then a word of encouragement: Once you get the hang of things, you begin to realize that it's not actually as difficult as it seemed. At one point I realized that you don't actually need a huge rocket to get into orbit. All of the rockets except the two on the left and T-1 are theoretically capable of reaching orbit, with SMALL-1 and SRMLV actually having done so. Part of me wonders how CloudOne woud compare to these... I'd add it on but I don't have any actual scales, the rockets are scaled using a common part that is later cropped out. If at first you don't succeed, than try again! All but two of the rockets below failed on their first launch. Yes, I really did stick a capsule and a chute on a V-2 rocket. Surprisingly, it worked... Those two were the only ones that didn't fail on their first flights! Of the ones that did fail, Spoicey Joe was an abort test (the abort system did work, so not a complete loss), I basically cancelled Kappa, I improved Melody (it's now my Soyuz-like rocket), I retired Sigma, and I'm close to retiring Illectro (I think). Here's all of them so far: The only ones not on that diagram are my early sounding rockets. The game crashed about halfway through the picture taking. The safety records on those were absolutely abysmal... Of the rockets up there, only 8 are active and 5 are dormant, out of a total of 29. Finished version coming soon-ish.

Okay, more RP-0 KVV views! Yesterday I did Mu, today I did my heavier rocket series, Gravity. There was also just plain Gravity I, but it only flew once and I couldn't open the craft file without the game crashing. The Gravity I series could originally take 30t to LEO (GI and GIA) but can now take 60t thanks to upgrades (GIB) and I might make a GIC depending on how things go. GII was only launched twice because it seemed like a good idea at the time (first ever hydrolox stage, reused hardware) but it could only take about 10t to orbit and the Mu series quickly surpassed that at lower cost (I think). Gravity III is my Saturn V analogue, sporting 5 F-1 engines on the first stage (but 4 of them are strap-ons). It is heavier than Saturn V but due to lower technology (first moon landing in 1963-ish if I recall correctly) it had a smaller capacity to orbit. Of the 12 built, 2 were test flights, 3 were manned lunar landings, 5 were used to build the lunar space station, and the last two will be used to finish the station. Gravity IV is basically a Gravity IB with a hydrolox core stage and 4 kerolox boosters instead of 2. It can get upwards of 90t into LEO. So far it has only flown four times, all for large interplanetary probes. Low quality comparison of Mu and Gravity: Again, I expected the height difference to be greater. EDIT: I got the Neutron family done. All of them so far:

Okay, more RP-0 KVV views! Yesterday I did Mu, today I did my heavier rocket series, Gravity. There was also just plain Gravity I, but it only flew once and I couldn't open the craft file without the game crashing. The Gravity I series could originally take 30t to LEO (GI and GIA) but can now take 60t thanks to upgrades (GIB) and I might make a GIC depending on how things go. GII was only launched twice because it seemed like a good idea at the time (first ever hydrolox stage, reused hardware) but it could only take about 10t to orbit and the Mu series quickly surpassed that at lower cost (I think). Gravity III is my Saturn V analogue, sporting 5 F-1 engines on the first stage (but 4 of them are strap-ons). It is heavier than Saturn V but due to lower technology (first moon landing in 1963-ish if I recall correctly) it had a smaller capacity to orbit. Of the 12 built, 2 were test flights, 3 were manned lunar landings, 5 were used to build the lunar space station, and the last two will be used to finish the station. Gravity IV is basically a Gravity IB with a hydrolox core stage and 4 kerolox boosters instead of 2. It can get upwards of 90t into LEO. So far it has only flown four times, all for large interplanetary probes. Low quality comparison of Mu and Gravity: Again, I expected the height difference to be greater. EDIT: Gah, wrong thread. The post before this was in the what did you do in KSP today thread, but technically this is still relevant to this thread so I'll leave it. Sorry.

On either my second or third Eve mission (orbit and atmospheric dip, no landing, basically a copycat of Kuzzter's Eve mission) I accidentally jettisoned the Gilly lander, out of fuel, on an escape trajectory from Eve, without fuel, because it was dead weight on the mothership. Unfortunately, there were still two Kerbals in there and I didn't notice until after the burn. I had to use the ships I had to rescue them, and it proved to be pretty difficult. Tied for first is my decision to de-orbit a massive mothership onto Eve for the purposes of advancing the storyline in one of my mission reports, Project Intrepid. It stranded ten (I think) Kerbals on Eve with no way of returning, but it provided an excuse for me to send a massive (3 or 4 motherships) rescue fleet to Eve (which hasn't made it there yet).