Mister Dilsby

Another technique, just used to orbit my new asteroid miner/hauler: PROBLEM: Heavy load without a center attachment point. (Klaw is in the way) No place to put boosters. SOLUTION: Radially attach the lower stage(s) as needed, leaving the center blank, and tie it all together with struts. Keep symmetry, and use all other techniques for stability. This one could not gravity turn in low atmosphere. Went to 25km, turned east and burned. 4x nuclear motors in the main ship took over at 60km to finish orbit. ETA: This is my 500th post!

I really admire the perseverance--difficult driving/piloting I will deal with, but for losing progress due to glitchiness I haz not patience! Perhaps one should stay off of land entirely, except briefly to plant flags?

Good point, he can certainly do all that if he gets bored on the trip, though I think in the cramped quarters of the Mk3 cockpit he may not get away with it. In any case this is going to be a 'sometimes' treat for Bill, I don't want to have to do a "very special episode" later on where Lisa has to talk to Bill about his problem and how the whole crew cares for him etc. - - - Updated - - - We are indeed past that point, and still have an encounter with Duna! So, taking care of some various business in and around Kerbin and should be starting on the Interlude pages shortly.

Kerbstation Two completing its orbital burn. Once it's at 90x90km it will be ready to start receiving ore from Mimnus.

It'll be good to have you in the 'genre', Zentro--good luck with your mission!- - - Updated - - - That's the rest of it, yes! (though I was doing the Robert Shaw version, of course )You may hear that, or maybe something from Kilbert and Sullikerb's "Pirates of Minzance" before the story is done... ETA: I guess this page was the end of Ch2, will update accordingly later when I am back home with access to the main file.

Actually I love this, it adds some drama to the rescue! I send my rescue ships with a couple thousand more dV in the tank than I need for a straight Munshot and return. In a recent mission the stranded ship was in Mun orbit when I launched, but then got spat out to HKO again. I was watching carefully during transit, so I was able to burn to a parallel course when my rescue ship entered Mun SOI and then meet the target in HKO. Lots of fun, and what someone else called "paying the iron price" rather than the Kerbucks price to get a new crew member.

And we're off to Duna at last! And no, Bill cannot make more ethanol in Hummlebee's converter, as they are not carrying any ore. He'll have to do with tomato juice and club soda from the snacks compartment until they get to Duna. So, obviously we are going to skip ahead a bit to when things get interesting for these four again. However I am not going to timewarp right away as I have some things to do in this save during the flight to Duna. I have a couple of 'interlude' strips planned to tide you over... any requests? (i.e. questions you might have about the story and 'world') If not I'll just do my best to keep things moving along until the Hummlefly hits atmosphere!

Worth the wait--I may just 'steal' that ring. Beautiful, well done!

+rep, but maybe a picture of a plane WITH drop tanks in the cyan?

When we post craft and missions here, we are saying "look at my awesome space program!" Let's say that the elements of an awesome space program are building, planning, and piloting. First, building: there is no fully automated MJ equivalent--you either build your own ships or you download someone else's craft. Since everyone would agree that taking credit for someone else's craft is plagiarism, we only post awesome builds that we ourselves have made. Planning is similar; there are tools like KER and the online transfer window calculators, but they only do a small part of the job. Something big and rep-worthy like an orbital assembly or Grand Tour mission takes independent thought that no one else can do for you. So, we post our plans and can say "look at my awesome space program!" That leaves piloting. I think part of the trouble here is that MJ is so darn good at it; in a lot of cases we measure a human's piloting skill by how close (say, in ascent dV) he can come to MechJeb. For a human to be able to do what MJ does takes hours of practice, trial and a great deal of error. Take docking. For those that do it manually, how long did it take you to be able to plot a close rendezvous using maneuver nodes? How long after that to maneuver the ships in visual range, with the navball? How long after THAT to line the ports up, cancel relative velocity, and get that oh-so-satisfying 'click'? Anyone who has done all that is rightly proud of the achievement, and knows that every routine dock that comes afterward is only possible because of the hours spent doing the first one. If you're that kind of pilot, then a big part of your "look at my awesome space program!" will be the ships rescued from the brink of disaster, the tricky orbital assemblies, that Tylo landing you pulled off with not enough TWR and vapor left in the tank. We want to compare ourselves against each others' awesome space programs--and we can't compare our piloting to that of players who use MechJeb, because MechJeb does the piloting.

It's really perfectly consistent. I make no comment about whether KER, MJ or anything else is 'legit'. I'm merely saying that if you let the computer do it for you, you can't take any credit for having done it. I certainly don't expect anyone to be impressed that I know how much dV my ship has if KER told me the answer--though if I were doing those calcs in my head, while burning, I might be a little pleased with myself. Similarly, I'll applaud a pilot who can nail a dead-stick landing on the runway from orbit or dock to a ship with naught but a whiff of mono (or, none at all!) But if MJ does those things for you? Well, then bully for MJ. But I still might like the ships you designed, or the pictures you made of them. As to why that attitude persists, I think it's because for many flying is the raison d'être of the game and doing natural logarithms is not. In any case my snarky comments were in the spirit of "you're a filthy cheater for not using TAC!" "No, YOU'RE a filthy cheater for using time warp!" and were not intended to be a swipe at your gameplay or anyone else's. I should have considered how sensitive an issue this is and been less dogmatic. Peace?

Great point. I always play with KER and love it, but I feel OK about that because before I found out about it I was doing all my dV calcs in Excel, and would frequently pause a mission and go plug in my current fuel numbers to see what I had left. So I wasn't doing guesswork anyway, KER just automated a task in-game that I was already automating out-of-game. OTOH I never use Mechjeb and cringe any time someone answers a Gameplay Question about how to pilot with "here's how you set MJ to give you whatever you want" -- piloting requires attention, skill and control, and if you're going to automate it why not just Hyperedit and deduct the fuel? But your game is YOUR game and your fun is YOUR fun. Just don't expect me to be impressed with your flying if you weren't the one who flew it.

They may not be much good for payloads anymore, but in V1.x my payloads don't really come from Kerbin anyway. Freighters carry loads of ore from the minty mines of Minmus to orbital stations, where they are converted into fuel and oxidant. Exploration vehicles, asteroid tugs and other capital ships travel from station to station and never land. What I do use SSTOs for is to ferry crew to and from stations in LKO. My best design is a LF-only (TRJ and nuclear) plane that gets to orbit in about 10 minutes of real time and can dead-stick the runway from orbit. The 'science' variant carries a full experimental suite, the 'transport' version seats six. Am considering scaling the design up to a "v90" style medium cargo hauler, for missions that require ore to be brought to the surface. So yeah, still useful, IF you use them in a realistic SSTO mission and are not expecting to be able to fly a single-seat fighter from Tatooine to Dagobah.

I was going to type a long response on this thread, but JHadden said it all for me. I'll only add, as a stock player I tend to only look at and comment on mission reports for stock-only builds, or at least builds that are harder than stock (e.g. life support). I want to see what others can do using the same parts as me, and I want to challenge myself to take the state of the art ever higher.

I guess my place of employment doesn't like your private server Will have a look from home later.

I'll drag something along then

Bugged wheels? Argh! I suppose if I do this challenge it will have to be in a hovercraft.

Not seeing images, and want to! Are you embedding from Imgur or other host using a direct link?

Using two of them (in side-mounted nacelles) as main propulsion for a ship that launches two-stage horizontal from Kerbin and is meant for extended surface/atmospheric operations and SSTO on Duna. Acceptable TWR and of course good Isp at any altitude. Also, they look nice. ETA: Not that it matters, but the above image is not canonical for my story. Note lack of Kerbfleet flag, this is sandbox

My condolences. If you're not above a bit of 'cheating' to restore order after an accident not your fault, you could always use edit your save file to recover the pilot, then make a 'fresh' lander in the VAB and use Hyperedit to put it in roughly the spot it was before Little Angel had a juicesplosion. And if you've learned nothing else from this, you should now know that you will never get any sympathy for this from anyone who does not play. Be glad (as am I) that your wife tolerates you "wasting" your time like this, when you could be watching reality TV instead. Psst, also, I have it on good authority that women do play KSP. Maybe not in your house, but there is a tween CAPCOM in mine who would certainly understand your pain.

I concur; and a larger 'Mk3' sized turboramjet too, please. As to the RAPIER's performance numbers, I admit I haven't used it yet in 1.x (my SSTO is a TRJ/nuke liquid-fuel-only design) but it seems balanced. RAPIER should always be worse than a rocket in vacuum, and worse than a straight jet in atmosphere.

You might try switching your engine gimbal off, if you have an engine that gimbals. The engine gimbal/thrust vector tends to 'fight' against aero control surfaces (fins) and reaction-wheel SAS. This goes double or triple for bendy rockets, as any or all of the aforementioned control methods will tend to produce an under-damped response to the bendy oscillations.

Nice "portage" there. You are very near the highest spot on Kerbin, which some call Mt. Keverest. Enjoy the sights!

Great point. If that happens, I'll blame Bill.

Uh oh, Val et al. had better watch it with their quasi-naval jargon, we have a real sailor aboard! (And thank you, Herr Shellhead, for your service!) - - - Updated - - - Honestly I feel a bit dim for not realizing it sooner. I plotted the transfer with Hummlebee still in LKO and set the alarm there, even though I always intended to transfer from the Minmus station. Of course if you're already that far from Kerbin you get SOME kind of head start!I was very lucky it worked out the way it did; right now Kerbin and Duna are lined up correctly, with Minmus radially outward from Kerbin. Basically I only need a little push prograde from Kerbin orbit and I eject parallel, just like you're supposed to. Not sure how well the trick would work if Minmus were on the "Eve" side of Kerbin rather than the Duna...I would have to wait for the right day of the 'minth' and hope the relative positons of Duna and Kerbin hadn't changed too much.