zarakon

Actually you do have it. Look at your mechjeb reading. Your navball is in Surface mode!

I had my Mk2 on the launchpad ready to go last night... then I fell asleep. Got to 946 before I ran out of land and 1015 after that

599.5 m/s when it couldn't keep itself on the surface any longer I'll post more pics later

edit: oops, double post

Yeah, I'd be interested to see if you can actually launch a Kerbal any significant distance with that, other that straight upward I've tried launching kerbals on ladders and chairs using separators before, but it never worked at all, they just fell off immediately. Launching a cockpit you can get some good height, but these separator monstrosities are super finicky. It would be tough to get a non-vertical setup that doesn't just explode upon loading

I'll try to make a suicidally fast Minmus rover tonight, but may not be within the time limit

New challenge: Get a Kerbal from the surface of Minmus into a low Kerbin orbit (Ap below 250km) using only the EVA jetpack

Infiniglider challenge complete The final image is what happened when I turned on SAS Working on the next challenge now. It will involve Minmus!

My original version of this thread was running exactly one year ago

Thanks for the answers, I think I've got most of it now There's one last thing about transmitting that isn't clear. Example: I don't know the exact numbers, but let's say an experiment gives 25 for returning it the first time, and a total of 30 after returning it several times. Maybe it gives just 3 for the second return. Transmitting it the first time gives 10. If I transmit once then return once, what do I end up with? The transmit gives 10, but does that permanently rob me of 15 points? Does the return then give only 3? Or would the return give something in between like 18, and I would still be eventually able to get the full 30?

I remember someone posting a long time ago about a bug/"feature" in the game engine that makes everything unbalanced, regardless of how perfectly symmetrical you make it. I think it had something to do with joint strength or stresses differing slightly depending on where in the part tree they were. When one side gets processed, it hasn't gotten to the other side yet, and when it gets to the other side, the existence of the first one changes things slightly. Normally it just creates tiny imbalances like rovers or planes tending to turn or roll slightly to one side, but he had come up with some extreme examples where one side or a plane appeared to be much heavier than than the other, even though it should have been symmetrical. That was a long time ago though, so it may or may not still be applicable

I looked around a bit, but none of the guides or tutorials or the wiki really got into enough detail to understand a couple of things. 1. When I return a materials study or surface sample, I don't get the full value. Why not? What do I have to do to get the full green bar? 2. How exactly does storing and transferring results between a command pod and a Kerbal work? If I have a Mun lander capable of landing in several biomes, is there a way to actually return all of those samples and reports with just one pod, or do I need to add another pod for each biome I want to visit? If I have one thermometer and one command pod, does that mean I can return up to two biome results, or can I get more? Can a Kerbal on a chair or ladder return more results than one in a pod? 3. If I use the science lab to repeatedly process, transmit, and reset an experiment (such as goo or materials), what percentage of the total science value can I end up with? If it's less than 100% can I still get the rest of the value by returning the same results afterward, or does transmitting screw me over in the long run?

I imagine half of it is made of random fees and taxes

I'm trying it too Researching everything on Kerbin takes so much time for so little reward... I've finally gotten a craft that can make orbit. I always used the turbojet engines before, so doing this with the basic ones is a lot harder. Next step is to get a polar orbit to finish up the orbital EVA reports. My current version should have plenty of fuel for that. With a couple modifications (moar boosters) I should be able to take this thing to orbit the Mun, and hopefully that will get me enough science that I don't have to resort to landing all around Kerbin again for temperature data.

Everyone who's capable of using a mouse and keyboard You don't have to be able to run complex missions to other planets in order to get something out of the game. You don't even need to be able to reach orbit. Someone, especially a little kid, can get plenty out of the game by just slapping parts together to see how well they fly before exploding. Then of course there are all sorts of silly contraptions you can build and antics you can perform just on Kerbin's surface.

I once did a Mun landing and return using just IVA view with the Mk1 capsule, with just the tiny window to look out of, and no map view IVA camera doesn't really make things much harder, aside from making it tough to find a nice landing spot. I just used wide landing gear and a prayer. It's the lack of map view that's the real hard mode. Without that, it's hard to even know if you're on a Mun intercept or if you'll fly right past it Has anyone ever done an interplanetary mission with no map?

The best advice I have for using ion engines: Look up the DynamicWarp mod. Combined with normal physics warp you can burn at 8x or 16x speed

1. It lets you slow down time. Very useful for seeing exactly how something is failing, or doing some tricky piloting, or just watching awesome slow-mo explosions 2. The normal in-game physics timewarp works by increasing the amount of time passed per physics step. Your PC does the same amount of work, but there is some distortion in the physics calculations when it's done this way. With Dynamic Warp, it instead just makes your PC perform the normal calculations more often. This lets you speed up time without distorting physics, which is great for flying planes long-distance or for doing simple routine launches. Using the two in combination lets you reach higher than normal warp speeds, which is very nice for long ion drive burns.

Well, probably not an actual landing, but any partial test of the reusability systems? I know a couple launches ago they tried to do a powered descent over the ocean

Anyone know whether they'll be doing a first-stage landing test with this one?

The second stage burned twice. First to reach parking orbit, then after coasting to the equator it was restarted to boost to GTO Isn't 50k miles twice as high as it should be? I guess that does make the inclination change cheaper for the satellite, even if it does have to then spend a bit extra to lower the apogee

It's watching me...

I think it's just based on the type of science. A crew report is 100% because it's just words, everything can be covered in a transmission. Physical experiments are worth less when transmitted, because they'd be more valuable when actually returned for study

Yeah, seems to me like solar panels should be an earlier option. Being able to only generate power with the engine seems unintuitive - if I was new to the game, I probably wouldn't understand what was going on

Generally "beta" means feature-complete, just polishing and fixing bugs. But in an open development scheme like this, I don't think either term really applies.