el_coyoto

Today, I had some fun on and around Iota (Galileo's Planet Pack) 10/10, would plunder again. EDIT : also found these in my screenshots folder

"Yay, we're not dead!" \o/ This cargo bay setup makes me chuckle a little bit every time I see it...

I've been working a bit more on the aerodynamics of my nuke SSTO and found a setup that handles reasonably well and had some fun with it : "Yay! We landed in one piece!" \o/

Love the mod, it's awesome!

Wow, thank TOTM for making me discover this, it is awesome! Awesome work @Cydonian Monk : I love the scenario (keeping ships from your older saves and finding a way to integrate them into a new campaign is an amazing idea), the storytelling is top notch and I love how you include geeky references/puns in your writing without making it too "gimmicky". Love it, thanks for all the hard work you've put into writing this awesome story!

My username had been "Wile E. Coyote" for a long time (me and my father loved that cartoon character), but I kept being bothered when playing Quake I with friends (that was during the previous millennium, I know) because the username length limitation of the game forced me to butcher it. Then I saw a "Simpons" episode where Bart tags "el barto" everywhere in Springfield, and no one realizes that's him. Next day, right before I joined our Quake game, I knew exactly which username I would use from now on...

Plenty of good answers above me, thought I'd add my 0.02. As said before, spaceplanes have a rather shallow reentry corridor because it's hard to fit aeroshields on them. To get my spaceplanes back to KSC : I try to use spaceplane parts only or parts that have a good max heat (2000k is NOT enough) Before re-entry, I set myself on the lowest orbit possible (70x70km) either through orbital maneuvering or prior aerobraking maneuvers Rule of thumb : anything with a PE < 30km gets back to Kerbin. My orbital parameters just after the deorbit burn are usually around 70kmx30km. Note that there probably are better re-entry profiles, but this one usually works fine for me. In high atmo : the most painful part of the trip because you keep heating and don't brake that much. Plus your orbital speed is still increasing. What I do is keeping a very high AoA, sometimes as high as 90° (ie nose up) to generate some drag. I also activate everything on the plane that generates drag : opened cargo bay, airbrakes, etc. Note that the airbrakes will overheat, but I've re-entered so many planes with opened cargo bays... Note that the belly of the plane is exposed to the airflow and this is why I use heat resistant parts (mk2). When the air gets denser (50km, 45 km when I feel lucky), I get back to a saner 45° AoA. The goal is to keep only the belly of the plane exposed to the airflow, while generating drag (lower your speed) and a bit of lift (reducing vertical speed and thus avoiding hitting the lower atmo too soon and too fast) Critical altitude is 30 km : atmo density is going to climb fast under 30 km. This is bad if you are coming too hot (I'm usually around 2000 m/s IIRC) because you'll get fried. But if you slowed down enough in high atmo, you'll be slowed quickly through high drag. Heat will go up as well, but since the atmosphere is getting thicker, convective cooling will start working again. It's a nervewracking moment... Once you're confident enough with your plane speed and handling (I usually wait until I'm under Mach 2), you can start all the "plane" stuff : leveling your wings, relighting your engines, lining up with the runway, etc. A cheesy trick I used for quite a long time was putting a radiator on the back of the plane. It's bad during ascent because of the drag, but during re-entry, it is protected from the airflow because of the 45° AoA attitude and can be deployed/activated to suck the heat from critical parts (usually the nose cone) and will dissipate it in the atmosphere. Not very realistic, I know. I guess the next step would be putting the radiator inside a cargo bay : shielded during ascent, exposed by the open cargo bay during re-entry (especially now that the flush radiators panels can turned on and off). Hope this helped!

I remember using these formulas a lot in my Orbiter days to compute the launch azimuth. Not sure how it translates to KSP + RSS though...

It had been a while since we decided to go to Duna, not because it's easy, but because the rest is harder. After a long series of launches, docking, refills and crew transfers, the Duna flotilla has been completed and 6 intrepid Kerbals have been sent to Duna! The flotilla includes an orbital science station/fuel depot, an Ike miner, two scanners probes, two unmanned rovers, 2 crewed landers/return vehicles and a mobile ground science station. The ejection burns have all been made, SOIs crossed, mid course corrections set up and now, everyone is on his merry way to Duna.

I advanced far enough to unlock RAPIERs in my 1.1.2 career and had fun making SSTOs today. I wanted to make a nice, easy to fly vanilla SSTO before adding more spaceplane parts. I also landed Jeb, Bill and Bob on the Mun, since Jeb hijacked the previous Minmus orbital science mission and landed the orbiter in the Great Flats. A better lifter, a few landing legs and Jeb is now a happy kerbal!

784 : Set SCE to AUX

I've heard a few Desert Sessions a few years ago when hanging out with friends, but never got the EPs and focused on their discography for some reason. As a Josh Homme fanboy, I should definitely get them now that I have run out of studio albums to listen to. Also, "Blues For The Red Sun" is the title of a chapter in Carl Sagan's awesome Cosmos (which I own and love). What a bunch of geeks they were...

Yiiiisss, 'tallica and Kyuss are on HEAVILY featured on my playlists. "Stage III" from Wretch by Kyuss seems especially fitting, as it really reminds me of a *huge* booster slowly getting to orbit. I listen to different genres, but I generally put upbeat stuff when I play. I don't focus on space themed music on my KSP playlist, just stuff I really like, namely : Metallica, Kyuss, Queens Of The Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures, Sepultura/Soulfly Kavinsky, Carpenter Brut (totally hooked on this one, check it out if you like the Outrun genre), Daft Punk (the TRON Legacy OST is a master piece IMO), Télépopmusik, Bjork Gorillaz, Massive Attack, Beastie Boys, Morcheeba, Portisead (not so upbeat, but I really like 'Dummy') And a few others I can't remember right now

Did some nice progress on my 1.1 career and had some fun with a low tech probe on a munar free return trajectory and made a good use of an early Eve launch window today... Off to bed, it's late...

Career mode No One Left Behind : no one way missions, no long trips in mk1 pods, no long trips alone. Basically taking care of my kerbonauts. Before each launch : decide if it's a simulation or a real mission. If it's a simulation, reverts a-gogo are allowed, otherwise no reverts. Mild/aesthetic part clipping only No cheats : it kinda ruins the fun for me ("If I allow myself to cheat in 5 science to unlock a node, why not cheating the whole science tree?") Other than that, science hopping and contracts stacking are fine by me (although I tend to do it less and less as I feel that it breaks the fourth wall and reduces my fun...)

Keyboard + mouse when piloting rockets and landers, joystick used only for the throttle. Joystick when having fun with planes, but even then I prefer the keyboard during ascent and landing (once I'm aligned).

It's kinda for me hard to pick one favorite engine, because I tend to choose them using !!science!! for a given mission profile, payload and TWR. For example, I enjoy the raw power of the Mammoth, but will use it only when it makes sense (lofting bigS rockets to space). I love unlocking the Rapier, because I know that it will simplify construction of my spaceplanes, etc... Still, deep space engines like the LV-909, the Spark (although nerfed) or the NERVA hold a special place in my heart, because of they took my various space programs to many places. And back! (I rarely use the ion engine because of the additional planning they require, and when I do, it's mostly always on non critical missions, like scan sat probes)

I totally agree, but it's mainstream pop I can listen to... I stopped following new bands and trends once this "Nu Metal" thing hit and stuck to my old guy "not-so-metal-anymore" stuff (Sepultura/Soulfly, RATM, Snot, etc) ta-ta-ta-taaa ta-ta-ta-ta-taaa ta-ta-ta-taaa ta-ta-ta-ta-taaa ! And now, it's stuck in my head, thank you (not)

I like metal (Metallica mostly nowadays), electro (Daft Punk, Télépopmusik, Kavinsky, Gorillaz) and a bit of various stuff (Queens Of The Stone Age, Kyuss, etc) but these days I'm totally stuck on Carpenter Brut : I listen to him whenever I play Cities Skylines or KSP. The guy is known for his participation the Hotline Miami OSTs. He is usually classified as "Outrun" or "horror electro", but I don't know how to describe it better than "the perfect O.S.T for any 80's video game or movie" : I typically don't like 80's stuff (despite being 35, but too shiny, too loud, too kitsch), but his tracks have a perfect balance of light, quiet ambiance and dark, furious crescendos. Awesome youtube playlist with a few other "Outrun" tracks from other guys at the end : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYtVf0wvPpc&list=RDRYtVf0wvPpc His bandcamp page : https://carpenterbrut.bandcamp.com

Congrats on not turning your ExoDuna mission into an EndoDuna mission! Joke's not mine, ripped from a well known DJ/astronomer youtuber...

Yup, that would be really cool! What I usually do is putting a few small batteries around the port, using the green led bit as a low power light. No problem docking in the dark, and none of the framerate issues associated with lights. It feels a bit cheaty though...

Yup, that's it, I found the sentence I had in mind in the wiki : "A series of ports were added inside the rocket nozzle that were opened when the guidance systems called for engine cut-off. The reduction in pressure was so abrupt that the last burning fuel ejected itself and the flame was snuffed out." Thanks for the video link @GoSlash27, I'll check it out once I'm home.

I can't find the exact source, but an American nuclear missile used SRB all the way to space, and had to be stopped at a precise time for their trajectory to take them to the target. To solve the problem, engineers used "venting ports" at the base of the missile, which covers would be blown to redirect thrust to the "sides" of the booster, nullifying forward thrust at that moment. In fact, it worked so well that they were able to snuff the SRB in space like a candle... I'd be very happy if someone knew which missile it was, my google fu is weak this morning.

Yup, it's true that I was a bit succinct in describing its craziness, but that was my favorite "feature". Also, thanks for reminding me of the Sprint missile, another fine piece of Cold War engineering at its best!

I know Kerbals are kind of pacific and all, but my two most Whiskey Tango Foxtrot aircraft flying things are from the Age of Contraptions : 1. The Convair B-36 Peacemaker : a heavy bomber using 4 jets and 6 propellers in a pusher configuration (an arrangement described as "four burning, six turning"), because, y’know, we don’t trust no stinkin’ jets. Erratic reliability led to the wisecrack, "two turning, two burning, two joking (sic), and two smoking, with two engines not accounted for". The best is that this model was used to test an inflight nuclear reactor (NB-36H) : check the wiki, it’s awesome! 2. Project Pluto aka "The Flying Crowbar" is a doomsday weapon in the shape of nuclear ramjet cruise missile, using boosters to get to ramspeed. It was supposed to fly fast and low enough with an unshielded nuclear weapon to make it a deadly weapon (shockwaves, radiations and all that) even BEFORE releasing its nuclear payloads (yep, plural :D). Dr Strangelove would have been soooo happy. The engineer's son has an awesome site about it : http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html And wikipedia also provides quite a bunch of details : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto