EndOfTheEarth

My flight infrastructure is built around experience with a single nuclear tug design that I developed almost half a year ago for the sake of sending a probe to Eve. The tug was just overbuilt enough that if I replaced the lander probe with a docking port, then I could haul something the size of one of my normal Mun landers almost anywhere in the Kerbol system. So the plan is usually like this: 1) Rebuild the nuclear tug. Stare at it for a while and shift minor things like docking ports, monoprop, and RTGs around until I'm satisfied that everything is balanced, and that docking an emergency fuel mission to it would be easy. 2) Develop the lander. This usually involves comparing the gravity at my destination to the gravity of the Mun, and then making modifications to my Mun lander accordingly. Again, balance things and wonder how much weight can be omitted. 3) Launch 'em. Dock 'em. Refuel 'em as needed. I've only recently begun to deviate from this design, but that's only because I've been encountering more complex destinations, or unique opportunities. My recenty Gilly mission, for instance, I knew that hauling a massive lander would be unnecessary, so I integrated a crew cabin and landing legs into the tug:

RAPIER has a much higher fuel consumption rate than the LV-N. I would still stick with Nuclear for your interplanetary burns. If you need a lot of in-atmosphere oomph for a lander, the aerospike might be a better choice, as it has the same thrust as Rapier, but better ISP vac&atmo. Personally, my duna lander used four LV T45s and carried the three-man capsule to and from the surface with fuel to spare.

At the moment, there are only two sources of story material for KSP: the update trailers and the part descriptions. It is possible to determine a fair amount of story from the pieces we have. Here's what I've collected, assuming we use just the available fiction: The canon of KSP, summed up, is that, just like IRL (Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, etc.), there are a handful of component contractors: --Kerlington Model Rockets and Paper Products --C7 Aerospace Division --Jebadiah Kerman's Junkyard and Spaceship Parts Co. --Probodyne Inc. --STEADLER Engineering Corps --Rockomax Conglomerate --An unnamed contractor who built the original SAS and a few other things --O.M.B. Demolition Enterprises --FLOOYD Dynamics Research Labs --Dinkelstein Kerman's Construction Emporium --Moving Parts Experts Group --RÖKEA Inc. --Ionic Protonic Electronics --Zaltonic Electronics --RKEA Inc. --Clamp-o-Tron (unconfirmed, but suggested by a different piece) --Kerbal Motion LCC --Integrated Integrals --Experimental Engineering Group Based on the names, it sounds like we have everything from professional contractors to the equivalent of the local home improvement store. This, in conjunction with the planned funding and reputation systems suggest that Kerbals did not (and probably still don't) take the idea of a functional space program seriously, which meant that early-days KSC was low-budget experimental stuff that Jeb (who, as shown above, is one of the contractors) and others thought would be fun to try out. If Jeb actually IS a main contractor, then it is possible that Bill and Bob are as well, and that the initial idea of KSC's government was to try to stop the endeavor by killing the contractors at the start. Regardless of how successful they were, the kerbals managed some level of success in their program, which eventually led to a substantial industry following. Presumably, there are other companies or research groups out there that have a need for KSP's services, but we won't know about them until the contract part of Career mode is finished. Beyond this, we won't know for sure until more fiction is produced for Career mode.

I hope to get there eventually, but the big thing stopping me is that up until now the places I have targeted have had Mun-gravity or less (except Duna, but for that I had chutes to help) which means that I know that my landers are only guaranteed to work under those conditions. When I build a new lander, I like to test it under conditions similar to wherever I'm going (my Ike lander was tested on the Mun first, etc.) and so I've had difficulty developing a high-grav no-atmo lander for visiting places like Vall, Tylo, Moho, or Laythe.

Interstellar space ark?

After successful interplanetary ventures to Duna, Ike, and Bop, I have finally made time to travel to Gilly! Departing Kerbin Orbit with Refueler attached for bonus fuel: Arriving at Eve: First time I've actually used aerobreaking on an interplanetary mission: Beautiful purple and green sunset as aerobreaking completes: Arriving in Gilly orbit after lots of picky maneuvering: On an incline, but landed! Jeb planting a flag: Departing Gilly: More aerobreaking: Falling back towards Kerbin: Cushioning the landing: Made it (barely!): Crew standing outside their capsule:

Almost all my rockets use SRBs in conjunction with liquids for the first half-minute or so after launch. I find that it helps give my heavy lifters just enough extra kick to get off the ground.

Instead of going for a full docking the first time around, I launched one rocket that had docking ports on both the final ship and the upper stage below it. From there, once I had attained orbit, I decoupled the ship, turned around, and very carefully docked with one of the ports on the side of the upper stage. Once I had accomplished this, I undocked and then redocked to the second port on the other side of the upper stage. This made it so that before even attempting a full rendezvous, I already had close-in docking experience. From there, I launched two of the same ship I had just made, and, after watching Scott's piece on how the UI changes during docking, I managed to miss my target three times, but was able to dock without much trouble once I was in close enough. I still find it a bit hard but apparently I've been experienced/lucky enough that it hasn't prevented me from pulling off some decently complex interplanetary missions to Duna, Ike, and Bop.

Completed my fist sundiver probe which successfully collected and transmitted science from near the Sun, then conducted a short burn that is going to put the probe into interstellar space some time in the next 30 years or so, another first for me. Never thought I'd get close enough to see the texture with a ship...

Back during .16 I had some pretty obscene designs for the sake of wanting to try out a mock interplanetary voyage. 30% were too heavy to get off the ground. 30% exploded on load, 35% tilted and exploded below 12km, and the 5% that made it to orbit barely had enough fuel left to make Minmus, much less an interplanetary burn.

A fireworks payload that we can attach to the top of a rocket and detonate at will. For New Years, you know.

Hi there. I used to do all my interplanetary transfers from solar orbit (I no longer do, because it wastes fuel). So the way to get to a planet from a solar orbit is like getting to the Mun from Kerbin orbit: 1) Select your destination planet as your destination by right clicking on the planet. 2) Use a maneuver node on some point in your orbit, and play with the prograde/retrograde sliders until your orbit overlaps the orbit of your target planet. 3) Slide the maneuver node around your orbit until you see a Sphere-of-Influence (SoI) intercept. 3b) If nowhere on your orbit results in an intercept, Time accelerate through one complete orbit of the sun, then repeat step 3. 4) Once you have that intercept, make your burn. You should evenly space the burn so that half of the burn takes place immediately before the node, and half takes place immediately after. If you begin buring at the node, you may not make it. This means doing math in you head (suggested burn time/2). If you cannot do the math in your head, then turn time acceleration down long before you ever reach the node, and do the math on paper or with a calculator. 5) After your burn, cancel the node, wait a few seconds, then plan an adjustment burn using another maneuver node a little further into your orbit. Play with all the sliders until you are close enough to the planet to that it is visibly curing the orbit. If you're headed back to Kerbin, try for a collision course. 6) Wait. 7) Once you enter the target planet's SOI, prepare a circulization burn as you would around the Mun or Minmus. If you're on a collision course for Kerbin, separate the capsule and let gravity do the rest. Do NOT deploy your chutes above 4000m unless landing in mountains, as this will be a high-G reentry. Again, this wastes fuel, and your ship will arrive at its destination with little or no fuel left for a powered landing. Unless you have a really good fuel tanker waiting in the wings, this is a one-way trip, or this is a probe, I'd abort and start over.

Unless you're running an Ion engine, you shouldn't need electricity to power them. If anything, the engines should be generating power. Your best bet it to transmit data WHILE doing your course-corrections. Also, as solar panels are very important, you should probably hit that research tier before you attempt interplanetary flight. It's relatively low on the list, and also opens up bigger batteries.

With the advent of Science, EVA reports have become an extremely important way of packing as much science as possible into the capsule for the return flight. However, 7/8 of the EVAs I've attempted result in the Kerbal falling off the ladder. I only do EVAs with the engines OFF, and while either orbiting or landed, as opposed to in atmosphere. I'm reasonably experienced, so I haven't actually lost any kerbals yet, but I'm overprotective of my crews I don't want to lose any of them off-structure in the near future. In real life space missions, astronauts wear tethers to prevent this sort of mishap, but since there aren't tethers in KSP, are there any design modifications or ship orientations that decrease the odds of a kerbal falling off the ladder the instant it gets out of the capsule?

Not the first time I've wondered this, but do the numbers follow a particular equation for science return value? It looks asymptotic to me.

I like to use the name RosKosmos, which is a play on Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency.

We know that they have trees, cacti, at least two species of grass (light and dark green), and I believe that one of the planet biographies mentions small insects getting into the telescopes. There's also whatever constitutes the 'food' from the Hitchhiker storage container, since I'm assuming that Kerbals don't eat rocks.

Generally yes, but within limits. For instance, I do: -Try to save my capsule during failed launches, if possible. -Equip my deep space vessels with extra docking ports in the event that I run out of fuel -Quicksave and retry until I get it right, or decide to turn around and go home. -Avoid one-way manned missions, or missions that I don't have the expertise to return from at the moment, like Eve or Tylo. -Send probes if I don't think Kerbals could safely pull it off. -Work to retrieve Kerbals stuck in the Kerbin system. I do not: -Develop elaborate escape systems. -Send manned rescue vehicles outside the Kerbin system.

A heavily cratered asteroid between Kerbin and Duna that rotates on two axes, such that getting there is easy, but the descent makes for unpredictable landing sites every time. Also, something with a ring around it.

Let's see...that was with the introduction of landing legs in .14, so if I recall correctly, it went something like: 1) Crashed 2) Crashed 3) Crashed Lander redesign (MUCH lower center of mass) 4) Crashed 5) Landed, but glitched on getting back into orbit. 6) Landed and returned. 7) Landed and returned.

For more videos and nine pages of existing discussion, including why the Russian range safetly couldn't abort it: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/38609-Major-Proton-launch-failure

Does anyone still have that .gif showing the Mun background falling over to show that it was staged on Duna?

1) Is it best done around a particular moon or Jool itself? 2) What altitude? By "best" I mean in terms of fuel efficiency.

UPDATE! My first tug got to Bop, where I rendezvoused with the lander craft, ditched the lander, and I attempted to get the crew capsule and tug back to Kerbin, but yet again I did not have enough fuel. So, instead, I sent the ship to a parking orbit around Tylo, as I figure that most ships that I've sent to Jool get stuck in Tylo's gravity well anyway. Since I'm sending up another Tug, should I: A) Do the rendezvous in Tylo orbit or Do the rendezvous in Jool orbit. The difference is that, this time, both ships have nuclear engines. Suggestions?