Tauge

It is funny...I don't have a protractor, so my first few flights to Jool and Duna were totally eyeballing it. Both were rather successful, no quick save and no quickload just some luck and lots of thrusting away from Kerbol until capture. I don't do that now, because I use the mods now.

Well you can, just not easily. You can edit the persistence file...but I haven't looked at it much so I really can't give you any specifics on how or to do.

That is a protractor. They are used for determining angles. many people are holding them up to their screens to get a rough idea of the angle that the planets are at, and a rough idea of the location of their ejection burn. It's all very Kerbal.

Due to extreme server load, the patcher will sometimes lose connection during download. Keep trying again, be patient, and you'll get it eventually. It took be a few hours of trying the other night to download it.

I've only seen it in IVA so far.

Reached Duna and Jool Orbit last night, attempted Moho, didn't notice the eccentricity of the orbit, and missed by...too much. The Duna mission will be returning after a few flybys of Ike. The Jool mission will be one way. There was barely enough fuel for the mission to begin with, and with all the extra burns needed for Jool injection, there won't be enough fuel for a return trip. There might be enough for flybys of a few moons though. I don't think I'll be trying a landing of anything any time soon. I'd have to grab the docking mod and bring the lander with me. Then learn to do an orbital rendezvous. Right now, I'm just working on better timing of my launches, I've had to burn extra to reach both. I think tonight will be my first Eve and Moho trip.

We already know there won't be backwards compatibility between .17 and .16. But that doesn't mean I can't learn the lessons now that will help me later. Heck, I can't even build my interplanetary stage right now, it uses NERVA engines, but that doesn't mean I can't design a rocket that will be capable of putting 50 tonnes of mass into orbit (or less if I go for a less ambitious interplanetary design).

Many people are working on designs for their heavy lifters for interplanetary launches, I know I am. I've already got the interplanetary stage designed in my head, the only question is how do I get that mass safely into orbit. My biggest problem might be conceptual...I might be stuck in a design rut.

I know lighting is coming (Soonâ„¢), and I know there are mods for it for now. Remember we are in Alpha.

Imagine how low the thrust will have to be to balance out an ion engine though...the NERVA engine that Nova showed has 80(newtons? what is the unit of thrust they are using?) of force, and that was for balance reasons, for an ISP of 800s. If we get ISP in the neighborhood of 4000s, how low will the thrust have to be for balance? 4? 5?

I've heard discussion to the effect that they want to make the Kerbol system an analogue of the Sol system. But I don't recall actually seeing anything from the devs. In any event, I don't think much more planetary work will be done in .18, other than the polish that Nova mentioned that Moho needs. However, I don't think that even Squad really knows what they want in .18.

Congratulations. You've achieved your first stable orbit. It's very elliptical, but it's better than some of my initial attempts. For reentry, wait until you reach apoapsis, burn retrograde watch your periapsis fall, once it is less than 69km, you will be coming home (though at 69km it'll take FOREVER to return). You want your periapsis to be, optimally, no greater than...call it 50km, but since there's no reentry heat you don't have to worry too much about the return forces, so you can drop the periapsis as low as you want (I like 35km). Later you'll want to practice getting a nice circular orbit with minimal inclination, once you've got that down, you can start making Munar attempts. But that's all down the road, keep practicing achieving orbit...any orbit so that you can always get one. I'd also suggest hitting up youtube, there's a couple of really good videos that will help you get your orbits perfect.

I'm going to guess that it'll be Ike (moon of Duna) or Gilly ("moon" of Eve). The lower gravity and lack of atmosphere or both will make the landings easier...there is probably a problem with getting to them. Whether or not you want to try a direct approach or enter orbit around the parent and then translate to them. But that's orbital issues.

Just so you know, the mods prefer that you use spoiler tags if you have pictures. You might want to go through and edit your posts and place your pictures in some spoiler tags. Now, as for your rocket. Keep an eye on your apoapsis after you reach...oh we'll call it 30km. Remember that the atmosphere stops at 69100m. So if you get your apoapsis up to about 85km, you can shut off your engines, coast to apoapsis, light the engines again to pull up your periapsis up to something greater that 70km, and now you are in a stable orbit it might be elliptical, but...baby steps.

General rule of thumb. If it's a few hours before sunrise or a few hours after sunset, is east or west (respectively), and is bright then there is a very good chance it is Venus.

Expecting logic from people, on the internet no less? You should know better.

Looks like extortionware is still alive and well. I remember when I was in college and was a bit...dumber. I was getting hit by them all the time. In time I learned how to protect myself, and even how to remove most of them. I had thought that they had gone extinct...looks like I was wrong.

Take the Mechjeb debate elsewhere, it's getting old seeing it appear every other thread. As for whether or not I'm a builder or a pilot. I'm kind of neither. Personally the fun is in the exploration. I probably won't try to build a rocket that is capable of getting a successful launch to one of Kerbin's other planets, the fun, at least for the first few weeks will be simple getting there. Putting things in various orbits around the different planets. Eventually I might do a "Manned" mission and orbit and return, and maybe just maybe I'll actually do a landing (probably a couple of unmanned one way trips), but that'll be far down the road.

Remember there isn't even a game yet. All there is was, is was the video and a few ideas. They could not afford to do this without kickstarter. PERIOD. The money is needed to make the game. I don't think many people realize how expensive it is to do anything. Salaries, utilities, licenses, VAs, Testers, loss of revenues from the lack of work on SMNC, etc. 900k to make a game of this size is quite impressive. EDIT: Are strike throughs not enabled on this board?

Actually, what happened was, the micrometeorite/sun shield was torn off during launch taking one of the solar panels with it. The other solar panel could not completely open due to part of the damaged sun shield wrapping around the remaining solar panel. This left the unprotected workshop in the sun causing the temperature to get...unsafe. Eventually NASA was able to get the panel partially open, giving them enough power to reorient the station to allow the temperature to drop some, but was still unsafe. When the Skylab 2 crew arrived, they attached a collapsible sun shield over Skylab, which brought the temperatures to more comfortable conditions. On their second walk, they were about to fully extend the solar array. So Skylab's issue wasn't due to an inability to cool the station, it was due to an inability to keep the station's living quarters out of direct sunlight.

I remember reading about this shortly after I first saw it posted. They knew that the flight would be passing Kennedy around the time that the launch would be happening. The pilot asked if everyone was ok with waiting to see if it would launch, they were. The plane is actually quite some distance from the launch site, it's difficult to estimate (especially with the cloud cover) but I'd put them somewhere between Deland and Lake George and Crescent Lake. The exclusion zone is primarily off the coast, and there are numerous safety measures to minimize danger to people on land during any launch. All launches are confirmed to have a kill switch (for lack of the correct term), operated by the Range Safety Officer (a US Air Force Officer), where the rocket is destroyed if something goes terribly wrong. The orbiters were never equipped with such devices, but the SRBs and the external tank are. During the Challenger disaster, after the SRBs had begun their out of control flight, the RSO chose destroy them both rather than allow them to pose a threat to land. Another interesting factoid, the RSO is not considered a flight controller. And I've gone rather off subject.... I was lucky to live in Melbourne, Fl during those last few flights and got to see them all, albeit from a much further distance than I would have liked.

Mechjeb's nice, but Kosmo-not's right. It can screw things up, and this is coming from someone who uses it on all his designs. The reason I ask your parking orbit is because if you're too low it's easy to accidentally slip into atmosphere, and then you're likely never make Mun. Remember the atmosphere ends at 69k. I usually use 75k (unless there is a reason in my design not to or I'm not using Mechjeb for the launch, then it's higher so I there's more room for mistakes), but anything from 75k (probably don't want to go much lower for safety sake) to 100k is a decent parking orbit.

The orbit you use before launching for Mun.

For Mun, wait for Munrise, point your rocket prograde and wait for the map to show a SOI change. Then just ride out to Mun. A similar method can be used to get to Minmus, but it requires a sharper eye to see it. Also, what altitude is your parking orbit?

I'm excited by the prospect. It looks like it will be a lot of fun, and they likely will be making their goal today, which will give them 2 more weeks to reach their stretch goals. I've noticed that Kickstarter projects typically get most of their moneya t the beginning, and end, especially if someone with a large following endorses it, (like what happened with the board game Ground Floor, and Tycho from Penny Arcade bringing it to his readers attention, they raised something like 40000 in the last 3 or 4 days and this was for a niche board game)