MonkeyFuzz

I leave the WASD controls alone, however I have the translation controls bound to the number pad. They are: 8/5 Up/Down, 4/6 Left/Right; 7/9 Forward/Back.

Aaaaaand the hype train seems to have derailed at Download Station. KSP site hasn't let me start the download. /I can wait a bit longer.

Not just what was said above, but their real progress is when these updates are in the /scratchpad/ section. That seems to be where the Release Candidates go for final review, but even when they get there it might be hours or days yet before a true release to the public. /my best understanding.

Choo-choo! Here comes the hype-train to the tunnel! Chugga-chugga! Open wide!

Captain, the hype train cannah go any faster! She'll fly apart!

In stock KSP, I'll begin my turn at 10km to about 45*, then gradually tilt further as Apoapsis rises. By the time it's around 40km, I'm usually tilted towards 70-80* and once AP hits 50km, I tilt to the horizon. With FAR I'll begin my gravity turn by 0.5km and gradually tilt ever farther as my course indicator moves lower. By around 5km I'm near 45*. Since I end up hitting 1000m/s+ while still below 20-30km, the biggest worry has been my parachutes exploding due to excess heat (Deadly Reentry, of course). With that approach, the correcting final burn for orbit insertion is ~20m/s.

I'll make my radial burns prior to a SOI change to nudge the periapse to where I want it to be, usually at the minimum safe altitude above a body so I can make my orbital insertion burn requiring the least power possible thanks to the Oberth Effect.

I didn't see it picked apart by anyone, but several people have said that these video preview versions only get released to Scott Manley and the others only shortly before their release. In Manley's video he compares his parachute problem to a NASA test in Hawaii that happened "over the weekend". http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/28/nasa-launch-saucer-vehicle-parachute-hawaii-mars That test was on Saturday, June 28. It would seem he made this video before the end of that week, so by Friday, July 4. They probably got their copies a week-and-a-half ago.

It's been mentioned elsewhere by devs (sorry I don't have a link to cite with) that money, science, and reputation will be exchangeable between one another. I don't know what penalty or cost there will be (if any) in converting them.

That sounds like a solid plan, Rowsdower. Like everyone else, I'm happily looking forward to the release, whenever that might be.

For the last few months I've played with the Kerbal Engineering and Mission Control Extended mods. They make a good combination for career play as you have to pay money to launch each vehicle and get paid for completing contracts. If you do some math over the weight of your payload vs the cost of the launch/orbital insertion stages, you can figure a rough estimate on launch prices. Most of my launchers cost between $6.5k-$8k/ton of payload. Those are on flights that cost over $125k total, where pay offs are between $150-220k. Yesterday I managed to muster a relatively heavy lifter (~18t tons to LKO) that costs just over $5k/ton.

Early on (maybe around 0.13 or 0.14) my greatest achievement in terms of velocity was making a manned sun-dive. When nuclear thermal engines first came out I went on a interplanetary spree with testing their efficiency. I stranded a Kerbal on Duna and another on Moho. During an Apollo-style Mun mission I failed to realize that the ascent module's fuel had been drained through bad design. Launch off of the mun got me up a few hundred meters and the craft fell back to the surface. The lander's design was such that it carried two mini lander cans atop the ascent engine and tanks. When it crashed back into the surface it pancaked, destroying the engines and lower can. The upper can survived the crash, stranding the one living Kerbal.

With that restriction: a city, no. A village, yes!

I ran out of money in my career after my program botched three construction flights to my space station and having 3 missions to Duna fail to make Kerbin orbit.

From the video, Dr. White answers a question about particles being caught in the warp field. Large objects (stuff bigger than bits of radiation) would enter and exit the warp bubble, having had their exit position transposed by the effects of the field. My understanding of his answer for radiation caught in the field was that particles would not get caught for a substantial amount of time in it. As part of his warp equation, the field is adjusted in strength/size (this is supposed to reduce the amount of mass-energy required versus earlier equations that kept the warp field at a set intensity/thickness). Each time the field dips it would spill captured particles/radiation. I think.

I think the "trouble" with the hype and resulting delay is that Squad refuses (for better or worse) to release a defective product. Many, many game companies will set a release date, work their asses off to get make it, fall short, and either cut content or sacrifice quality to release on time. They could release a version that was bug-riddled and come back with updates to the patch in a few weeks. Other companies do that. Think of EA with the shoddy release of SimCity on schedule. It suffered for months afterwards in both quality and with public opinion. Of course the delay is inconvenient. I wish I was launching for an asteroid today, but I think this also positively points to the developers' efforts to release a good quality product. I am content to wait until the version is done. I'm still entirely satisfied with the money I paid for KSP. They do good work and they make sure it's done right, not fast.

My first docking was more of a capture. Back around 0.12-0.13 I'd had a flight stranded in Kerbin orbit without a parachute. Without having individual Kerbals that I could EVA to a rescue ship, the only resolution was to develop and launch a capture and retrieval craft. This craft was manned (as all ships were in the day). It used several structural pieces to create a circular platform that then extended up making a cage. At the end of the structure was a set of lander legs so attached as to create a closeable entrance. Launch went fine. Interception took time to refine. This was were the whole notion of orbital interception has to be figured out. There were lots of crazy burns, but eventually I made a close approach. RCS fine-tuned the effort. I was thrilled to see the stranded capsule slowly glide into the capture bay. The landing legs closed and all was good. I turned the craft to make my de-orbit burn and brought the periapse on down. Then I realized my first mistake. I time warped, before I'd understood the notion that craft were put on rails during time warp. I'd never moved anything close to each other before and to my consternation, I saw the captured capsule DRIFT THROUGH THE WALLS OF THE CAPTURE BAY! I quickly turned off time warp, not fully understanding what the hell I was seeing. The ensemble stayed intact through re-entry (back before those lovely plasma effects were added). Parachute deployment was the second trouble. Deploying the chutes, the drogue stage went fine. Everything slowed, somewhat as they should. Then when full deployment happened and the capture craft decelerated hard, the carried capsule punched through the lander legs, careened away, and smashed into the ocean, killing all aboard. It was perhaps the most crushing outcome I've had, at least in the early game. Yet, I suspected that my technique had merit, so I launched a new craft to be deliberately placed in orbit and refined the capture ship, moving the parachutes about so that the legs would be the sky-ward facing section of the vehicle. After another full mission of rendezvous, capture, and re-entry, the parachute phase went perfectly. The two "docked" ships landed safely, demonstrating a first for my space program (and earning many groans from my friends for the overly complicated effort and time invested.) /Unfortunately, I don't have the pictures from then on this computer otherwise I'd illustrate the endeavor. //My ongoing lack of understanding about time warp physics led to later failed efforts at assembling a space station by using landing legs to grapple vehicles together.

Very nicely done.

Adding my voice to the chorus, I really did enjoy a video of the game devs talking about the processes that they have gone through, the kinds of issues that they have had, the sorts of crazy bugs and issues they've encountered in programming, and how that ties back into creating a space simulation. I know next to nothing about programming, yet the discussion between Felipe, Chad, and Scott were excellent. I'd gladly watch another 40 minutes of discussion.

My greatest achievement in general terms was a manned landing on Duna and return in 0.22. What I would hold up as truly being the greatest was my first Mun landing back in 0.12 when the whole experience was still very new and I was managing to push a skill boundary with sweaty palms.

A friend and I started a competitive career-mode multiplayer match which turned into a race to a manned fly-by of the Mun. Both of our first shots failed, with mine disintegrating when starting the second stage and his making a successful fly-by but running out of fuel with a high Kerbin orbit, forever stranded. My second shot made a good fly-by with periapsis of the Mun at 17km and a good return trajectory after departing the Mun. That returned with 240+ science and a ticker-tape parade. His next flight was a rescue mission of the stranded Kerbal which also failed.

I'll do this occasionally just before reentry to fling the capsule away from its service module. Other than crude tossings of parts, I haven't tried to actually alter orbits based on rotation and detachment.

Absolutely I leave stuff in orbit. Until the collection of flotsam turns into a performance drain, which I've only really noticed for collections of debris around the launch center, I enjoy them as indicators of time and effort given.

When playing in Sandbox, escape towers are a critical part of nearly all my manned Mercury/Gemini/Apollo-style launchers. Unmanned flights get to enjoy the rolling of the dice. It typically takes several shakedown flights (read unmanned with a probe core at the controls) to get the Apollo-type launcher sufficiently strutted. What's bugged me is that it's much harder getting to the tech relevant to escape towers in the Career Mode tech tree. Separatrons don't strike me as being high-technology.

John FX, if I made that kind of landing, zipping along at 200m above the Mun's surface, it'd be the biggest nailbiter landing for me since my first Mun landing in 0.12. I usually burn off my orbital velocity between 4-10km. I know it turns into a huge amount of gravity drag and a long drop to burn off fuel, but I don't trust the terrain to not have a mountain come up over the Munar horizon and smack me at 200m/s.