Pyotor Gagarin

Who needs closed cycle? Just look at Project Pluto

I'll give it a shot: 40 parts (counting the struts). I reached escape, but not by much. I'd be willing to bet that some of the real pros could reach solar escape with some more careful designing/flying;) The engines were all aerospikes.

Wikipedia has a decent overview of the "vacuum airship" idea. The main problem is that structural integrity to resist implosion weighs a lot more than the small amount of lighter-than-air gas it would take to provide the same support from the inside. It's one of those cool ideas that has just never been practical in reality:|

Is it mostly a structural failure problem? For "telescoping anomalies", I've found that careful placement of a few struts can make a big difference. Try looking at the flight report window after a breakup and see which area failed first. Then try to use struts, or a completely different configuration to relieve some of the pressure on that part of the design. It also helps to keep your acceleration down. Try to stay under two gees for the really big designs. Here's a picture of the struts on my standard heavy lifter: (I might be overdoing it). If you're still having problems after awhile, maybe you can post a picture and people can tear it apar- *ahem* analyze it for you.

It's worth noting, that even though long-winged space gliders may not be fashionable anymore, inflatable ballutes, and even "space blimps" may still see the light of day. Gentle reentry is definitely a possibility.

If you want to make a departure burn into an inclined solar orbit, I think the best parking orbit would be a full-on polar orbit directly over Kerbin's terminator. Picking the right ejection angle would let you add a normal or anti-normal component to your post-escape orbit around the sun. If you can do this at the right phase angle AND at one of the co-planar nodes, then you could theoretically make a single-burn transfer to moho. (Note that online phase angle calculators based on circular orbits can be pretty far off when dealing with an eccentric orbit like Moho's.) Personally, I find it's easier just to bite the bullet and make the course correction at one of the nodes. Hope that's somewhat helpful!

The best way I'm aware of is to switch back to the main ship using the tracking station, and EVA each kerbal individually. Hope that helps. [Edit]: See below

I believe this was a thing back in the Werner Von Braun days. The idea then was to have large wings to give the spacecraft a very low ballistic coefficient just like you're talking about. I think the consensus was that the mass cost of the extra wing area was more than you would save on thermal protection. There's still going to be a LOT of energy to dissipate, so "slow-baking" your ship may not be preferable to a quick reentry burn.

I can't believe I'm the first person who gets to reply! I'm a longtime fan of your site, and I'm so happy to see that you like KSP as well. Kerbal space program has regular middle-school kids throwing around terms like "Delta-V", and "Oberth Effect" for the first time, and one can only hope that it sparks some careers in aerospace, (and maybe science fiction too). I'll take this opportunity to say thanks for building and maintaining the Atomic Rockets site. The Kerbal forums can only benefit from having you aboard! Happy Launching Pyotor

Your age and wisdom will be a valuable addition to the forum sir. Welcome!

"JUMP SHOTS" I did a series of pictures to show the different gravities. I screen-capped at the apex of each jump, with landers nearby for scale. (Still haven't done Eve though... I want to bring them back alive) Moho: Gilly: Mun: Minmus: Duna: Ike: Dres: Laythe: Vall: Tylo: Bop: Pol: Eeloo:

Neil Armstrong. He always seemed to keep his cool and focus on the job at hand.

This RObbaz . . . he is well known here. You are among friends.

ASAS will use every relevant part of the ship to STOP rotation whenever it is turned on. SAS is a set of reaction wheels that enable turning without using RCS propellant. Capsules and probe-cores come with their own reaction wheels, but generally the ones in the SAS module are more powerful. So if you want to rotate your ship you'll want to disengage the ASAS temporarily by hitting "T", or holding down "F", and then turn it back on when you're finished to hold the ship in its new direction. I don't know whether turning off ASAS turns off SAS with it or not; in my experience, it doesn't seem to. hope that helps

kurtjmac, thewinterowl

Hello friend. May your parachutes hold strong, and your landing gear never break.

Definitely return only. For me, the idea of returning home from exotic places is inherent to the beauty of exploration. Established colonies, with a full spectrum of society, can be allowed to grow beyond their immediate return capacity; but even then, return should be possible for people who want it.

I ran into that movie by chance and loved it! The Janky-ness of all of the space technology is very kerbal-esque. Also, if you like hard SF anime, be sure to check out Planetes.

You know you're addicted when a calculator, protractor, and notebook become essential gaming tools.

I say head for the planets! building stations is cool n' stuff, but when you explore, you're always doing and seeing new things. Just my opinion though. Happy launching. P.S. I don't use mods myself, but I don't have any strong feelings about them.

Just to be clear, you need to alt-rclick on BOTH of the tanks involved in the transfer. They should both be showing their fuel levels when you initiate the transfer. If that's what you're already doing then there's definitely some problem. Good luck!

Second question first: I believe that engines consider all connected parts to be a "whole ship"; and they will draw from the farthest tank first, unless cross-feed (or the tank itself) has been disabled. First question: Lining up multiple parallel tanks can be surprisingly difficult sometimes. You might try making one tank with struts and all, and THEN turning on quad symmetry to get four identical sides. Or you could use the alt key to replicate identical sections. hope that helps!

[noparse] Your image link [/noparse]

Some of my favs

I like the idea of covering the whole ship with ladders, but I wanted to try to come up with something different. Here's what I tried: Apparently, when you switch flights, objects re-spawn with a random orientation. This attempt, therefore, was doomed. I wanted to eliminate flight-switching altogether, so I tried adapting my debris grabber to function as a "personnel recovery basket". Jeb was able to float through the legs of the grabber system with little or no collision detection. This attempt was also doomed. At any rate, thanks(and +1) to BustedEarLobes for a genuinely interesting challenge:)