Bluejayek

I call this the Megameter array. 5 ships (which I fancy as radio telescopes) each orbiting at 5 million meters from kerbin, forming an array of radio telescopes 10 megameters wide. (See http://www.vlba.nrao.edu/) I will begin work on the Gigameter array shortly.

Wear dark sunglasses?

Why do you want to get rid of the stars?

186 MILLION miles per second. Also, imperial units are the cause of all human problems. Never, ever, ever use them again, and if you live in the US fill your member of congress\' mailbox with mail telling them to change to imperial untill it falls down and explodes.

This is definately doable... What I have done to attempt to simulate it is a double munar mission. Fly to the mun, land, return to kerbin, land, Back to the mun, land, return to kerbin, land. I figure the extra two landings makes up for the lack of the transfer orbit. I will try what you suggest.

Screenshot hotkey is F1. These will go into your KSP/screenshots folder and you can take as many as you want. As per the return, you might be suprised at how little it takes. If you are on the antiorbital side of the mun, lifting off at 500m/s will drop you to a periapsis within kerbals atmosphere, at which point you only need a whisper of fuel to slow to a safe landing, or alternatively a parachute.

Updates are theoretically on a 1 month cycle. In practise, once you factor in testing time, the time it takes them to sort out all the bugs that they accidentally release, its more like every month and a half or two months. Next one is due out ina couple weeks. BUY THE GAME!! Landing on minimus is fun.

Some really suspenseful music for landings would be cool. Best of luck on your project.

From your statements, I assume the problem is landing, not getting there. It is best to have a small craft for the landing stage, as the maximum velocity you can touch down at without destroying your craft scales with your mass. If you try to land a monster rocket, you probably have to get the speed below 0.5m/s without exploding, while a small rocket with say 1 engine and 1 tank you could go closer to 8m/s or so. You also really need to use landing struts. The more landing struts, the less force each of them has to take, and the harder you can touch down. Overdoing it is a bad idea though, as they do have mass. I like to use 4 placed by the symmetry tool on my small designs, and 12 or so on larger designs. When you come in for landing it is best to kill horizontal velocity early so you don\'t have to worry about it on the final descent. Watch the green circle with x retrograde marker on your navball and burn on it until it is exactly vertical. Then, all you have to do is slow down. I am told that RCS thrusters help for this, but I personally think that people only use RCS thrusters because they are wimps, and adding them is just a waste of mass. Personal preference however, they may help for your first landing. A final tip is to try to choose a landing site near the center of a large crater rather then near the edges, as this area will tend to be much flatter, and easier to land. Hope this helps. PS Can you post a craft file or screenshots?

Ahem. If at first it doesnt work, ADD MOAR BOOSTERS! 290.8m/s. I suppose I\'m technically not all stock, using the fpspod mod, but all that does is tell me altitude and fps.

Simpler the better. Start with the simplest poissible orbiter (Currently I believe it is pod, 1/2 tank, full tank, lander engine, although engine with 1 full tank MIGHT be able to make it.) and tack on more outer stages as the mission demands.

Realistic? Yes. Fun? No. How would you like it if you go all the way to the mun, fly back, and your parachute malfunctions. Oops. Or you fly to the mun, then launch for minimus, and a landing leg fails.

I never have liked the decoupler right before the command pod, and landing with parachute only. I find its better to take out the decoupler (saving significant weight), and landing on your last stage using parachute and the last wisps of fuel. To each his own though. Nice lander.

RCS is for wimps. Recently I\'ve been doing all my landings on full manual mode without RCS, no ASAS. Mainly because the designs I\'m using don\'t have the payload capacity to carry the ASAS or RCS tanks...

Some sort of docking UI I believe. Distance and relative velocity (with direction). The velocity in particular will be awesome. It can acually be fairly hard to tell what direction something is moving in 3d on a 2d screen... On a related note, when does KSP add support for 3d monitors?

Nice stuff

Sounds more like it got stuck in the mud.

Constructing ships in space should definately be added. That being said, if we can launch \'empty\' tanks, the fuel depot thing can still be useful without construction in space. You launch a ship with empty tanks into orbit, use other smaller ships to fuel it. Then, you can use ships that don\'t have the engine power to take off with full tanks, launch them with empties, fill up at the fuel depot, and continue on.

There are a number of random contact glitches. For example, when I landed with one of my ships, I actually appeared to be sitting about half a meter off the surface.

There was a 'Largest re-entry g force' challenge at one point that you may find interesting to see the largest reentry speeds. I hit around 6000m/s.

You can land on the liquid fuel engines, but you cant on the aerospike.... At least that I know of. Also the aerospike is 2.5 mass rather then 2 mass for the LFE, that can make a large difference depending on the design. I would say it might be more efficient to use the aerospikes on outer stages and the LFE on inner stages.

Hardly. Mun and minimus both have tiny surface gravities and no atmosphere so that the delta V to lift off of them is small. To more accurately simulate a flight to another planet, try doing a double munar return with a single ship. That is Kerbin - Mun landing - Kerbin landing - Mun landing - Kerbin landing. This would give a better idea of the delta V it would take to say do a kermars return mission. So far I have only been able to get to a crashland on the Mun on the second launch off kerbin, but I am getting there. To the OP. Minimus is in orbit around kerbin as can be seen by its orbital path on the mpa view.

Over 9000 points for pure style. Well done, and welcome to KSP!

The most amusing part about this is that the sea is full of floating broken spaceplane parts that are all made out of metal...

I managed 180m/s. I am trying using reverse mounted ramjets to slow down. Trouble so far is that I cant click deactivate fuel flow fast enough.