[Signs You're In For a Short Flight]

610. When your liquid stage fails to fire... because you forgot to throttle up on the pad.

611. When your rocket tips smoothly into orbit... with ASAS on.

[Need help touching down on the Mun.]

Just do what I do, which is savescum. Savescum hard.

[An obvious first question....]

The penultimate stage usually consists of a fuel tank and rocket. I\'ve been strapping landing struts to the side of a fuel tank but, because of the circular shape, the struts are never quite even. It has a habit of toppling over and exploding... The only idea I have to fix this is to place the struts all around it..It wont be pretty but it could work.

Do you use the symmetry tool?

Use three landing legs. Because three points define a plane, all three legs should remain on the surface. Obviously that\'s only any good if your centre of gravity isn\'t so high it ends up falling over anyways

[Holy crap... Valley on Minmus!]

Fascinating? No. Minmus is a trial in patience and determination, and a strong argument for a height-to-ground display. My first attempt at landing never evoked such a fast change in display on my face before with a game. 'Doing good, just keep this little burn going and I should be just fine. Hmm, seeing some detail, wonder if OHMYGODAMILANDINGONEVEREST? ...nuts.'

That\'s why you\'ve got to aim for the ice lakes! They are absolutely flat and guaranteed to be at 0m. Minmus\' gravity is so low it barely costs anything to adjust your flight path.

[Stability problems with excessively huge rockets]

Do you really think something like that would be stable IRL?

[Helicopters!]

You not the first person to notice this:

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=12882.0

The craft file in there is suprisingly easy enough to steer

Ahaha, I didn\'t expect to be first but that one blows mine out the water. Ah, physics!

And keptin, that wasn\'t quite what I was looking for, but it was... certainly something =P

[Helicopters!]

Who needs stability, steerability or even fuel to remain airborne? Behold the weeqeewasUntitled Space Cr!

Unfortunately I can\'t show you how it flies... erratically, to say the least. But all I have to do is take off, keep Q held down, and it\'ll remain airborne indefinitely even without fuel. Depending on how careful you are, you can even make it gain height! This began as a lark, but I wonder how far it could be taken... is it possible to build one that remains stable? Is it possible to build one that gains height consistently? Is it possible to build one that is even somewhat steerable, even though it must spin constantly? I\'d be interested in seeing others\' designs!

[EU Rules You Can Resell Downloaded Games]

I then am worried that companies like valve will remove their Download Platforms from Europe.

There\'s no chance in Hell of that happening. It wouldn\'t be so much shooting themselves in the foot as swandiving on a mine.

[Straight shot at Minmus?]

Ignoring the fact he\'s doing it kind of weird, this guy

seems to have the right idea (skip to 1:02 and fullscreen).

[Strut symmetry]

Being able to have parts snap to angles is a great feature! However, it doesn\'t work well with struts. Placing the base of the strut is easy because it snaps to angles, but the other end of the strut, as far as I can tell, won\'t snap to anything so you are forced to to eyeball it. This is rubbish because I\'m very picky about my rockets being symmetrical, and so is physics. But am I wrong? Is there a way to persuade the ends of struts to snap to angles?

[Pitch and yaw]

OK, that\'s actually good to know, because as I said for whatever reason disabling it makes it so smooth and lovely. Or at least compared to count-the-frames land.

[Pitch and yaw]

I have another question which isn\'t actually anything to do with this one but I didn\'t really fancy making a new thread, especially since I\'m not sure where the right place for it would be!

What does 'simulate in background' do? Disabling it gives me a silky-smooth framerate but since I don\'t know what it\'s actually for I\'m a little wary still.

[Pitch and yaw]

The 'view' from the navball is effectively looking out the nose of your rocket.

Yes, I did wonder last night if that was the case. Next time I will keep my focus on the navball and try to imagine I\'m sitting in the cockpit.

[Pitch and yaw]

The problem is kind of self-perpetuating in that my understanding of how the navball moves in relation to the rocket and the ground is shockingly bad. I just can\'t seem to tie it all together in my mind at all. Are there any tips for this, or is it something that will come more easily with practice?

I also kind of wish the navball didn\'t default to having north pointing down, but I have no idea if north pointing up would actually be any better.

[Pitch and yaw]

I know that this doesn\'t bode at all well for my astronautical aspirations, but I cannot seem to get a grip on the basic rocket controls. More specifically, what are pitch and yaw relative to? What should I be looking at on the screen to determine which way the rocket will start tilting when I pres butan?