Alephzorg

But I'd love to know. And I currently have a transfer stage on its way to Jool, carrying 5 small ion probes to be deployed in the Jool system, 1 for each moon. Because even though the job can be done with just 1, I'd like to have probes around all of them.

You are doomed, doooooooomed to play more KSP!

The beeping at the end was morse code for SOS. Not sure why it was used there.

Could a mod please edit the title to "Let's mourn our Kerbals together" please?

Let's gather here to mourn and remember our fallen heroes, those who gave their lives in the name of science, exploration and adventure (or more boosters). A space program is no small or easy feat. It's risky, exciting and dangerous. We might do our best to keep our crews safe and ensure they get back home... but sometimes the worst happen. It can be because we made a mistake, or the Kraken decided to strike that particular craft/mission. I'll start with the story of Edgee Kerman. He was part of the LR-Dragon Dres Mission with Dudfal and Hanfurt. Their goal was to reach Dres, land there and get back home. Landing had been tricky already, with a poorly designed ship, too high and with a narrow landing section. This lead to many "landing simulations" (read quicksaves/quickloads) until a flat terrain could be found. Having managed to land at the bottom of a crater, Hanfurt was the first to leave the ship to plant a flag. He named the place Castor Crater and claimed it in the name of science and kerbalkind. Edgee would be the next one to set foot outside the pod. And he decided to go explore the next-door crater. It took him almost half his jetpack fuel and he finished on foot to save some for the trip back, but he reached the bottom of that second crater and named it Pollux (not very original but whatever). He was 10km from the ship and the sun was setting down when he took off. At first, everything went fine. He passed the edge separating the 2 craters and commenced his descent. Unfortunately, with the sun now setting in his back, he was in the dark and couldn't tell how high above the ground he was. He could only tell how fast he was going down. He did his best, trying to keep it at about 10m/s... But all of a sudden, he impacted the ground and died instantly. Edgee Kerman, you were a true hero, as reckless as Jeb, and you will be missed.

I second Col. Kurtz here. I send Scansat probes to all the moons and planets I entend to send a lander to (manned or not). So far, I'm only missing Jool's moons. But with a ion engine, it should be possible to map them all with just 1 probe.

Congratulations on your rescue OP. I don't remember the first one. But the couple last ones have both been at Moho. Each time I go there, I manage to get the lander back in orbit but it's then stranded without enough delta/v to reach Kerbin (Eve yes though). So I end up having to send an automated ship to dock with and refuel my stranded ship so it can make it home. Moho hates me.

You are not alone in this. I do it on pictures and youtube videos.

You play stock and enjoy the game? Great! You like mods and they add to they way you play? Go ahead and download some more. As it has been said many times over all over this forum, there is no right way or wrong way to play a single player game. I used to add a lot of parts to my KSP but later realized I didn't use a 1/10th of them. Now, it's mostly visual enhancements and some information mods (Kerbal Alarm Clock and MechJeb mostly). And yes, cookies!

When nothing I do makes sense and my rockets just explode. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/MNyG-xu-7SQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Prospector probes and Scansat are great suggestions. My personal favorite is to use a rover probe. If you have the patience, it can travel great distances and be used to scout more than 1 area.

You know you're a noob in KSP when you forget to deploy your solar panels and you lose control of your ship. Been there, done that, and more recently that I'd like to admit.

Today I decided to explore a zone I spotted in my Scansat map of the Mün. It is roughly at 35°21'40"N and 76°40'30"W. The interesting part about this "bean from hell" is that it is at a negative altitude. The ship I sent there is resting at about -200m. Problem... when below "sea level" altitude, the camera switches to a vertical view and messes everything. Because I didn't anticipate this, I lost control of the ship and crashed it, softly. I didn't break anything but it is resting on the side with no way of taking off again. I tried to evacuate my crew by EVA, to fly them out of the crater so they could wait for a rescue. But as soon as they get out and let go of the pod, I lose control of them and they... float above the ground, sliding around, not responsive. If anyone has any suggestion as to how to save them, I'm all ears.

I just made a new Kraken inspired flag. Don't know if I'll actually use it in game.

I worked on my next long range ship. 3-men command pod and a hitchhiker for a crew of 3 should give them enough space for long travels. Fully fueled, it has about 9000m/s of d/v but the launcher can only handle it to a 80km high orbit when half fueled. I then have to fill in the tanks in orbit. I also worked on a new flag and I'm ashamed at my lack of skills. I basically just copy/paste elements and then try filters at random.

My vote is for Eeloo. With Dres, if anything goes bad, at least you can send a rescue mission that won't take years to get there. When you are on Eeloo, you can't count on anyone but yourself.

The loneliest mission was Bob's flight to Ike and back. Testing the then new Long Range Dragon ship (a nuclear engine powered ship), alone in a 3-men command pod, he decided to show Jeb that he too was made of the right stuff. And just like that, a test flight in Kerbin SOI became a mission to Ike. He successfully landed, did a bit of reconnaissance for future missions, and came back years later. At least he had enough room, alone in that command pod.

You could edit the poodle's cfg so as to keep it stock.

I experimented with [thread=55905]EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements[/thread] and [thread=65754]HotRockets! Particle FX Replacement[/thread] to pretty up my game. I was afraid my laptop would slow down so much as to make the game impossible to play but it's still fine. I also got rid of a few old and useless satellites while setting up a network around network. 3 satellites in geosynchronous orbits and 3 in polar orbits with 6h orbital periods.

That was a long time ago. We didn't have landing legs but it didn't matter because there was no Mun. You couldn't land on the dark side of Kerbin or you'd explode. But it was already incredibly fun to play and addictive. And I could make orbit (although not reliably) by the end of the first day.

Fingers crossed.

Same here. But given how long I've had the game, even taking the breaks into account, I'm probably close to the 1000h mark.

I used to map all the planets and moons with IsaMap Sat before sending a manned mission. Now that I switched to Scansat... I feel the need to start again!

I just didn't think of including it because I never used it myself. My bad. I do not endorse or support any product and/or method. I usually create a list of transfer windows alarms in Kerbal Alarm Clock and play with maneuver nodes when I get close to them to plan for my burns. Before that, I had printed sheets of transfer angles based on data from http://ksp.olex.biz/

Going from a planet to the next isn't always easy. And usually, the first question is "is it the right time to even try to transfer?". So there are tutorials, plugins, websites and so on to help us. But how do you do it?