el_coyoto

I know, especially if you have to drop them at the same location to keep the craft symetrical...

Ah, well, hum, good luck... I build most of my rovers symmetrical on longitudinal axis and stage them horizontally to avoid these sorts of problem. Or maybe, you could add TWO of them to your lander/stage, attaching them to the side (and come up with a reliable way to decouple them) in 2x symmetry, making the craft symmetrical again ?

Plane changes are cheaper when done away from the center of the system. So, you should prefer the method that leaves you with an AN/DN node the farthest possible from Kerbol...

Well, that's a creative solution, for sure... Excellent idea!

Same here, I usually stick to rockets with a kind of early space program (more or less the "firsts" of the Space Race) until I unlock the landing gear and enough science instruments. Then I build research airplanes that I send all over Kerbin to gather science and do some sight seeing... (sorry for the examples planes using mods, I, hum, might be getting increasingly hooked to B9) At first, I was surprised to see the poor landing gear buried so deep in the tech tree, but it didn't really bother me as I am usually more interested in what lies outside Kerbin atmosphere. And strangely, the science cost of the landing gear pushed me to amortize it by building planes for !science!. And for fun to my surprise : I discovered how beautiful Kerbin is from the ground (or too close to it according to my usual standards lol). I guess the Kerbals have difficulties to grasp the concept of flying (and surviving it!) by relying on something else then pure thrust or parachutes, perhaps due to the apparent lack of birds on Kerbin and thus the impossibilty to do !science! on them and study how they do... Ah well, what else could we expect from a species that builds space centers before cities and discovered rocket engines before (rover) wheels...

Kerbal Joint-Reinforcement v1.0 Seems like a cool mod, but I haven't tried it for now. And, apart from editing the .craft file, I have no idea on how to remove all struts at once...

Kerbin has a quite different atmosphere than Earth which make it seem like pea soup at low altitude. (due I think to how drag is modeled in the game) This is why KSP rockets HAVE to vertical climb a bit before gravity turning, whereas Earth rockets gravity turn almost immediately. It's a trade-off between losing Delta-V to gravity (vertical climb) or losing it to air friction (gravity turning too low). Earth rockets are aerodynamic, so they don't lose too much dV because of air friction, compared to KSP rockets. Thus, for an optimal ascent profile, Earth rockets gravity turn much earlier to DV minimize losses to gravity. A bit off-topic, but one of the reasons I like the Kerbal Engineer mod so much is because it displays your terminal velocity and atmospheric efficiency. Hope this helped! EDIT : ninja'd 4 times lol EDIT : Cool video, I really have a soft spot for the Ariane 5 and its massive look!

This is a Whackjob booster. All craftsmanship is of the highest quality. It is studded with struts. This item menaces with spikes of engine clusters. On the item is an image of Whackjob striking a menacing pose. The Kerbals are making a plaintive gesture. Whackjob did it again! Can't wait to see where this will lead...

Awesome! What bothers me with MJ, KER and most addons is that they add behavior windows to display their stuff and this behavior does not really fit the game GUI aesthetics. I love mods, but I sometimes miss the clean look of a fresh KSP install... Providing data in IVA view is the solution to this problem and reinforces the immersion into the game. Can't wait to see what modders will do with your work : in my opnion, the only thing that KSP really lacked until now were MFDs as cool as those in found Orbiter Flight Simulator...

The Mun is hidden somewhere in this picture : can you spot it?

Well yes, it's a good thing to know, although I wasn't too worried about late game projects funding : in previous versions I tended to piggy back some of my bigger missions onto MC missions, like "Land a huge base (probe) on the Mun (with full sensors package). No need to return." to get at least some of my money back... I've just done a few missions with 0.36, and it did confirm my feeling that once the atmo package and gravioli detector have been researched, you have a pleasant freedom of choice in which paths you choose to progress in the game and in which order. For example, I tend to forget that there are some cool and sciency things to do on Kerbin, but thanks to you, I've just sent an unmanned airplane to the pole during a MC mission to do science and that was fun! Ok, it's 4 AM (sending a plane to the Pole takes time LOL) and I want my bed now, but once again, thank you for this really cool mod!

Hi malkuth! I just wanted to drop by to give to say that I enjoyed MC 0.35 on KSP 0.22 : the dual constraints of the KSP tech tree and money are nicely balanced and really make the game more enjoyable, turning it into a nice and smart puzzle game... At first, I found it rather hard to gather enough science to keep up with the MC mission constraints (some missions required all the science stuff early on) so I started focusing on the stayputnik core and science instruments in the tech tree. Then, I discovered the random missions and that I could basically get paid to do science, making it much easier to progress. For example, I estimate that a second unmanned landing in a different Munar biome should let me unlock the gravioli detector, which seems pretty well balanced and does not induce any feeling of grinding for now... I'm downloading the 0.36 update right now and I'm about to see how well my save file reacts to the upgrade... (*crossing fingers*) Thank you for your hard work!

My probe has a nice mohawk!

LOL you beat me to it... I think a Munbus and/or some nice resort base at KSC where they can relax before recovering them is the only solution though... (other than save file editing)

A good way to visualize ln(a) is seeing it as the area defined by the 1/x function between 0 and a : In other words, a sum of increasingly small quantities. It can be used to model certain types of diminishing returns. You can "feel" it in the delta v equation : when you double you fuel, your delta v does not increase as much. Hope this helps!

... when your girlfriend, otherwise insensitive to the beauty of orbital mechanics, lifter designs or space in general, stares at your screen and says "Are you sure this is going to fly?" Since then, she learnt that anything can fly if you strap enough boosters...

The Draidun F-42 Research Aircraft and its crew taking some rest under the pale Arctic sun. This was my first plane equipped with a atmospheric sensor package and this flight helped Drydun Kerman and his team gather data and clues about the Kerbin atmosphere. More pics.

All right, I'll try to be patient then... And the integration of !!science!! in this AAR will be well worth the wait I guess... Cheers!

Now, that would be fun! < XKCD fanboy mode> Randall posts on the KSP forums would surely be very ... interesting. I would be very curious to see how Randall Munroe plays KSP. Or see him interact with Scott Manley or Danny... < /XKCD fanboy mode> EDIT : to keep up with the long chain of people introduced to KSP thanks to a certain webcomic "of romance, sarcasm, math, and language", it's also the 'ADD' strip that led me to type 3 innocent looking letters in google...

Well, I remember the first time I tested a 1st stage return àla SpaceX. I had an asparagus lift that brought the 1st stage and the payload to LKO with enough fuel remaining in the 1st for a de-orbit burn and (hopefully) a soft touch down at KSC. During the test, I noticed that the 1st stage lacked attitude control : no RCS and no torque apart from the 1st stage probe. "No problem, I'll just turn the whole stack retrograde before decoupling the 1st stage to save time, what could go wrong?" Things then escalated quickly and happened just like in a Danny video : Decouple the 1st stage, hold retrograde then mess around with a maneuvre node to compute the burn from LKO to KSC Burn for de-orbit at full thrust with the powerful engine mounted on the 1st stage *Spidey sense tingling* "I'm so stupi..." KER-BOOM! I still remember this incident because the 1st stage had time to pick up a lot of speed relative to the payload in a very short time (Mainsails FTW!), so the collision was ... well unexpected. I just had the time to realize how stupid I was before the 1st stage plowed into the payload at ~300 m/s relative speed, and I couldn't stop laughing at my own stupidity. The whole payload got crushed, leaving only a few random bits of landing legs and antennas and the 1st stage only lost 1 fuel tank. Awesome... Conclusion : "Ramming always works!"

Strange, I've had troubles with the lil' cubic connectors in the past and switched to tail connectors for this kind of tricks because they seemed WAY more stable on my rockets and felt less cheaty (they have a mass). I don't use part clipping in this instance and simply grab them, rotate so they are correctly aligned and place them. I don't even strut them to the booster. Rocksteady stable... I used "Editor Extensions" and vertical snap in this case, but I've already used tail connectors without vertical snap and no problems. The only precaution I take is strutting every fuel tank to the tank below to make the booster very stiff. It might be your problem : too much thrust and the fuel tanks start "dancing around" because of the high thrust+low stiffness if not strutted, thus messing around with the tail connector. I had a similar problem yesterday when I worked on the "1000 m/s left in the central booster left when in LKO" and the added thrust required me to add struts to the tank on which the connector+engines were connected to avoid engine wobble...

Ooops, didn't parse the tech tree description properly. Tricky but doable, and this is a nice "green" solution... I wonder, maybe a few struts between your lander fuels tanks and the stage below could help? (The symmetry mode difference between each stage might make this easier said than done though...) Does the rocket wobble a lot before breaking? Did you try to disable gimbaling on some of your Skippers? I got home and took a picture of the cheap trick that I use when I don't have access to Mainsails : Central core : 1 Skipper + 4 LV-30. Each booster : 1 Skipper + 1 LV-30 The LV-30 are not gimbaled, so the rocket flies straight without messing around with the trust vectoring setup. The lander itself is light (35 tons, much less than in my memories lol), but the central booster is lifted in 80x80 LKO with a sizable delta-v reserve (~400 m/s if i remember correctly). (And I should really stop posting about my rockets while at work, because it seems that I have a bad memory and really overestimate their performance. ) Now, back to the game, and let's see how much more fuel I can lift with a few more strategically placed LV-30... Good luck and I hope this helped a bit...

I don't have pictures right now, but I have a career heavy lifter that compensates the lack of Mainsails by using Skippers and LV-30 strapped to the booster with a tail connector (to avoid clipping). It is an asparagus set-up, with a central booster using a Skipper and 4 LV-30 and the booster "stalk" pairs have 1 Skipper and anywhere between 1 and 3 LV-30 to optimize the Delta V / TWR ratio. It boosts a 80 tons Duna atomic lander to LKO while keeping ~1000 m/s in the central booster for shorter ejection burns. I only use 2 asymmetrical "stalk" booster pairs, but I'm already happy with the performance of my launch vehicle so I don't feel the need to add a 3rd booster pair. I did tests in 0.21 on heavy payloads and came to the conclusion that Mainsails can be replaced by the "Skipper + LV-30" combo without losing too much lifting capability : Mainsail-based rockets simply use more fuel (less ISP) and have less parts. I'll try to post pictures when I get home, because I don't know if the above explanation is clear enough...

LOL Yeah, some of them flew across the ocean on the back of an Acme Inc. rocket named "USS Chuck JONES"! Also, your thread got me to finally install Kethane after 2 weeks of messing around with B9 and LLL in KSP on my brand new computer. And motivated me to try to design a Duna airplane...

KSP Weekly brought me here and I read it all in one go. Awesome job at balancing story-telling and the "engineering" of your mission. Thanks a lot for your hard work!