Ekku Zakku

It's alright XD when doing these sorts of things as a hobby, sometimes life gets in the way. I've been meaning to start on a programming project myself for the past few days, but I haven't been able to touch it yet =P

Yup! I was just trying to explain another way of how it's mainly the low atmosphere, but it is a series of combined things that makes it completely unrecoverable in the majority of situations. I'm sure in real life it's due to more physics being at play, but it's (possibly inadvertently) simulated quite well in KSP!

One thing I haven't seen mentioned in this thread (great thread to read btw), is that the jets at high altitude have really miniscule amounts of thrust. Despite this, dropping 1 kN or so of thrust off of one side still puts the plane in a flat spin. It just goes to show what little control surfaces and wings are able to do in such thin atmosphere. Airliners are made to be able to still fly a ways with only one engine, and when one does cut out mid-flight, the air is still reasonably thick enough to hold the plane forward, the engine doesn't usually cut out as abruptly as a flameout at high altitude, and the pilot has plenty of time to react and cut thrust, add rudder, etc. to keep the plane flying mostly straight and stable.

omg you have Thompgun too? nice XD Although I'm a bit sad that it's a randomly generated name, since I'm seeing "Thomp-" as a prefix of sorts in a lot of names in this thread; now I believe it's not a reference put in the game, as far as I can tell. Oh well, still gonna pull a Top Gun moment and have Thompgun buzz the tower!

Oh goodness, I just made a thread last night titled after the name of the Kerbal I discovered; Thompgun Kerman! Sounds too much like Top Gun for it to be a coincidence XD and with a tower to buzz in .21, what better name for a Kerbal? Lmao

This was quite an interesting find! Especially after an update that adds an actual tower to buzz XD anybody else come across any cool names like this?

I actually programmed a plugin once that calculated the apsides from only the velocity and altitude of the spacecraft, along with the physical properties of Kerbin (gravity and whatnot). It wasn't the most accurate thing in the world, but it helped me get into orbit several times in my IVA only space program lol (with no map view). Unfortunately I never bothered to fix it enough to go to the Mun with it, since that would have involved more programming to change the calculations to the Mun's properties when in the Mun's SOI. I might pick it back up in the future though, when the game is finally finished of course; that way I will have everything I need, and won't have to worry about saves breaking and having to do a ton of work all over again. One day I will visit every planet and moon in IVA only, with nothing but velocity, altitude, data (perhaps data that I find myself with probes perhaps) and calculations (done by myself or programed to be done by a computer) to guide me. That, barring all the other differences that KSP has from real life, will be as close to a real world space program and true astronaut experience as you could get I suppose. I think it would be very exciting to fly everywhere by hand, inside a crew capsule, not being able to leave it aside from EVA. TL;DR: I'm insane and should be put in a mental hospital.

I'm tired of seeing that on EVERY SINGLE CHALLENGE THREAD lately, especially ones that are well set up and quite doable in the first place. The guidelines (read, "not rules"!) for that are to prevent IMPOSSIBLE challenges. There's no need for every challenge thread OP to perform their challenge. Sure it's convenient and sets a bar for people to either beat or fall short of, but please just keep your "don't post challenges without trying it first!" suggestions to the threads that actually need it. On topic, will probably give my rocket a go again tomorrow, and if I get it to orbit, I will set it off on its maiden voyage. No guarantees though XD

Mechjeb is allowed, but counts towards a separate leaderboard. Also, why would that affect your decision to participate in a challenge? I participate in challenges with mods allowed yet still participate stock-only; I like the challenge.

New ASAS: "Yes captain, I'll happily adjust course for you! Oh no, no need to turn me off either! I'm here for your convenience!"

omg this could be really awesome XD and as a special mini game for getting Jeb to his rocket, you get to launch it as well! Follow the correct gravity turn/launch trajectory/w/e to make orbit. Idk, just thought that would be cool lol. I love the dodging/riding SRB ideas too XD

Lifting ~277 tonnes into orbit is pretty hard when your rocket keeps falling apart in different places every time, no matter HOW MUCH you strut it up. I'm still working on it though, and I should get it up into orbit today as well as do the Mun and Minmus. I don't know if I'll have time to do anything at Jool since idk how long it'll take me to get over this random unfair disassembly that my launch vehicle keeps doing... Edit: eh, I think I solved the launcher issues, but didn't bother to finally get the thing into orbit. I got distracted and ended up doing some other stuff, so tomorrow I will make a go for it. Fortunately, I did a test of my interplanetary stage, and it's got more than twice the Delta-V I need, so I might even be able to get a couple more stops in! Maybe Dres or Eeloo, always wanted to go to both of them lol.

I think I might spend the rest of my day setting the bar high for this one. Gonna shoot for Tylo, Laythe, and Vall (those three combined will probably be easier to do than Eve, yet give the same points and don't have to add on two more bodies on top of it). Also might add on Bop and Pol while I'm in the Jool system, and Mun and Minmus are super easy too; I can mop those up in the Kerbin system no problem. Wish me luck! Edit: did the math, and it would be easier to go to Eve on both weight and Delta-V requirements (after comparing all of the respective landers), but doing a tour of the Jool system doesn't take much more and will end up paying off with a higher score as well, so I still think I'm making the right decision. Sneak peek at my Jool payload:

How about 400 tons? Because that's what I've been trying to flip over =P

You mean [noparse]? Just replace "img" with "noparse" and you can post BBCode tags no problem! BOLD! ITALICS!, see? Quite useful =3 [/noparse]

Ah I see XD I've still got a lot to learn in the programming field lol, but thanks for clarifying =3 learn something new every day~

It was oscillating due to physical time acceleration, not so much because of the Kraken. The deep space Kraken is pretty much fixed, there are no floating point errors left to destroy craft at ridiculous speeds or distances anymore; the only "Kraken" left is the one that randomly makes parts fall apart, and that can happen well within the Kerbol system. The maximum possible speed in KSP is limited to the number of digits the game's variable can handle for speed, and if the speed surpasses the capacity of that variable, there will either be an overflow error or the value for speed will jump to the opposite extreme value it can handle (your speed will either drop to 0 or go to the extreme negative speed possible, idk whether KSP uses a signed or unsigned variable for speed lol)

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25016-In-search-of-Ferdinand-Magellan/page5 The other guy who did it is also in that thread, he did it before me XD You can actually get a LOT of speed on the water (300+ m/s) if you use proper boat building techniques; there's hardly any friction in the water with the right parts, it's great stuff! It's actually impossible to circumnavigate completely by water, it's required that one travels across land at one point or another, so the boat needs to be amphibious as well. Although it is much faster to circumnavigate mostly by water rather than mostly by land; quite hard to keep up 150+ m/s over rolling hills and mountains XD

Oh. Ohoho. You guys think circumnavigating the Mun or Duna is a feat? Me and one other person circumnavigated KERBIN, by water even (mostly). It took me around 11-12 hours, and the other guy around 13+ I believe. I'd circumnavigate the Mun any day XD

Nope! Ekku Zakku emerges from nowhere! Didn't expect me, did you? XD Canopus

I went to Eve first, I liked the challenge and whatnot, plus Gilly is a fun little place XD I'm in the minority on that one. I've actually never sent a Kerbal to Duna, I've always thought it was too easy (at least relative to other planets), so I just kinda went for the hardest planet to land and return from instead lol. Although as of yesterday, I did send a mission to Duna (more as a test for the final version of the ship), but I haven't landed it yet, just got to Duna orbit. In order, I've gone to: (* means I have also returned) Gilly* Eve* Ike (landed a probe there once, was mostly a crash landing lol) Duna (maybe? I think I put a rover on Duna once...) Laythe (where I stopped my grand tour) and I also landed on Tylo, Duna, and Moho, but I didn't send the landers there, just edited them into orbit, landed them, and got them back into orbit as a test, so I don't count them of course.

Laythe is one of my least favorites actually XD it's so plain; the one thing about ocean worlds is that there's hardly any land features to enjoy! Also it's the place that stopped my grand tour mission in its tracks, since I had so much trouble landing there XD and I hate retrying so many times lol

Definitely Gilly for me; it's like (almost) zero-g without the negative things of floating around in space! Something to interact with, but keeps the fun of space at the same time =3

GENIUS!!!! Such a simple answer to the problem, yet we always seem to take the most complicated approach to these kinds of things XD

I think they should be allowed, but perhaps not to boost upwards at all. I do think they'd be far better than RCS to do the 180 flip.