zarakon

Why is reaching orbit between destinations against the rules? Does it give some advantage that I haven't thought of? Seems like it would already be undesirable just because it would be inefficient.

Yeah, this is what I see a lot. An engine will "flame out" for an instant when one tank in a stack runs dry, creating the sound and sparks effects of a flame-out but with no noticeable drop in thrust. It doesn't happen all the time though, and I can't tell what determines whether it will happen or not

I actually tried to set up collisions once by launching a bunch of excessively wide objects into the same altitude orbit with Mechjeb, half of them normal and half retrograde. Even with autopilot, the small differences in their final orbits meant they ended up fairly far apart from each other. Then even if two did end up on a collision course, the large distance they move with each physics timestep means that they would be far more likely to just jump through/past each other than actually collide. I'm pretty surprised to see this many stories of accidental collisions when I couldn't even make it happen deliberately

Here's my entry Not really going for a top score, so I didn't bother with the long distance driving or the science packages, but I had fun doing this 30: base 10: 3-man mission 10: 2-man lander 20: 2-stage lander 0 : No asparagus 10: Escape tower (even used it many times during rocket testing!) 20: Lander stored behind CM 5 : Lander inside a fairing 10: Free return trajectory 10: Flawless landing 15: Munar roving vehicle 10: Docked CM and MM ascent stage in orbit 5 : Crashed empty MM ascent stage on Mun 3 : Planted a flag 5 : Splashed down on Kerbin 2 : Drove 100m 0 : No deaths Total: 165

I would like to see more direct adoption of great plugins. Things like DEADBEEF's improved Editor Tools, Subassembly Loader, Dynamic Warp...

It's always difficult to compare this type of thing. Yes, KSP requires much less delta-V. But KSP also has much less efficient parts. The engines in KSP have awful thrust:weight ratios compared to real engines, and a KSP fuel tank alone has a worse fuel:weight ratio than most entire rockets in the real world. These factors are evident in the difference in burn times. For example the second stage of the Saturn V burned for 6 minutes. In KSP you're unlikely to have an ascent stage last even 3 minutes.

there's a joke in here somewhere... possibly a few...

"No cheating" should be an assumed rule

Reasonable enough! Also, more power!

Johnno, any particular reason you're using a Skipper engine instead of the lighter, higher efficiency Poodle on your CM? Just curious if there's something I'm missing

Literally forever if you switch focus to something else. The game won't simulate air resistance for vessels that are not in focus ("on rails" as people commonly call it), so an orbit that passes through the atmosphere won't actually decay. How to prevent it? More restrictions. A 30km flight ceiling, or a 2000m/s speed limit would do it. A limit of no more than two intakes per engine would make it harder to orbit, but probably not impossible.

8.08

I will take this to the north pole of the Mun. That's where the serious rough terrain is!

Have you tried editing your exploding craft's altitude in the save file?

A while ago, I might have said "Just launch them at the sun!" But now KSP has taught me that launching something into the sun is much harder than it sounds

You would probably want to OC your CPU through your mainboard's BIOS. Unfortunately, your CPU is not fully unlocked for overclocking, as the "K" models (2500K, 2600K, etc) are. I'm not really familiar with the locked models, but I think they still allow you to bump up the turbo frequency by 400MHz, as long as your motherboard supports it, without messing with voltages or anything. Just look for a BIOS entry for changing the clock multiplier or the turbo multipliers.

1. Turn down your lighting and shadows. Lights on bases can cause tons of lag. 2. If you're using the medium-sized landing legs, those tend to cause this explode-on-load behavior regardless of framerate issues. It seems like they can get twisted or compressed if your craft is too heavy for them, and loading them in this state causes them to spring back with extreme violence. That may not be accurate, but it's what it's looked like when I've had this problem. A partial solution may be to modify your save file and nudge the altitude of your craft up a bit. This won't actually put your craft in the air since it's tagged as landed, but it can prevent it from loading partially underground or with the legs compressed. Worth trying even if you aren't using these legs, as it's possible that other parts may be capable of the same thing.

Oversights, mistakes, laziness, etc. I don't know about you guys, but I get plenty of failures based on those in KSP! Wrong symmetry when placing fuel lines, bad staging order, etc.

10:17

i almost had a quick time, but I overshot by about 6400km

I did one without quicksave I was also using the small black capsule, with just the tiny window The landing was actually the EASIEST part of the whole thing. Getting into a proper orbit, and then especially the Munar injection, are much harder without the map view. I had to do those parts a couple times normally, and write down the exact steps: At 10km, pitch to 40. At staging, pitch to 20. Cut throttle at 2030m/s. Coast to apoapsis. Burn to 2260m/s. Wait for Mun target marker to be at 30 below horizon. Burn prograde to 3090m/s. Landing is easy though. Just build your lander with a really wide stance so it won't tip over if you happen to land on a slope, and watch the radar altimeter.

Looks like Munbeast had the same idea as me.. improve the staging by putting them 1-by-1 on top. I managed to get a manned Mun landing, but not quite a return trip yet. Of course that would still be worth diddly for points. I could probably beat metaphor's score with this design though, if I had the mad maneuver node skills

Maybe the issue is that joint strength doesn't scale with the power or mass of the parts? So a connection between two little probe-size parts will be incredibly strong relative to those parts, but connections between large Rockomax fuel tanks or Mainsail engines is too weak to handle a gentle ascent or even standing on the launch pad without adding a bunch of struts. Bigger parts should have stronger built-in links between them.

Billy-Bobnard Kerman

I think pretty much anything you would make as a light glider would be capable of infinite flight, as long as it has control surfaces