Wayfare

Maneuvering Jeb into that impossible position was a really clever bit of writing - well done, sir!

He didn't retract his ladder before ascent from the Mun and he didn't retract his landing gear either. That's just sloppy piloting, toes or no toes Seriously though, that was pretty cool. Makes me think back to how big a deal it was to land on the Mun for the first time, and how trivial it seems to do so now. Don't get discouraged, young Kerbonauts - some day you too will be able to do it with your hands tied behind your back!

Probably this little buggy I originally developed for the Munshine V Apollo-style Mun rocket: Weighs less than half a ton and comes in at just 12 parts. Its small profile has let me tuck these things into the nooks and crannies of all sorts of landers, giving the crew a quick and stable ride around their landing site. Here it is strapped to he side of a Mun lander: And I brought a couple of them to Duna too:

This. Your first orbit, your first return, your first Mun landing, your first rendezvous, your first docking, your first interplanetary transfer... Though honestly out of all the firsts I only really remember my first Mun landing. Sadly the screenshot has been lost in the sands of time. I just remember the lander (a big chute, ASAS, 3-man pod, decoupler, what we called a "full tank" in 0.15 and a poodle, along with legs and ladders) and the adrenalin rush of setting it down on the surface intact. Very few games have ever given me a physical rush. The previous one was EVE Online, when I killed my first carebear as a ninja, and before that I have to dig all the way to escaping off the Arcada in Space Quest. If a game can make your hands tremble you know you have a winner

Well thank you Rest assured though - I'm sure I speak for the entire Wayfare team when I say that we learned by doing and stealing learning. We just figured that while fuel economy and payload fraction are all fine and dandy, it's part count that really bottlenecks KSP right now. We were actually kind of surprised we were able to pull off our launcher designs without getting all pancake-ugly. In fact we were surprised some of our designs actually left the pad. But it all worked out in the end. Serial staging folks - keep the faith!

We went to space on rockets carved out of potatoes, uphill in the middle of winter and we liked it!

Before maneuver nodes existed, this sort of stuff happened a lot more to me. Often for the worse. But sometimes for the better. Yeah. I was totally shooting for Vall. I just eyeballed it and figured I'd use a bit of Laythe to get me there! *ahem*

I'm not a programmer but I know an elegant solution when I see one, and KSP has them in spades. This video gave me a lot of great insights in how the game works and how the devs have deftly maneuvered around many pitfalls so far. My favorite is probably the whole "move the universe around the ship" bit, though the way planets are rendered to ten different levels of accuracy (with those clever border verts) is really awesome too. Gave me a whole new appreciation for what I'm playing

Without Kethane, I've found that dedicated refueling depots are not really worth the hassle. After all, you're going to have to send tankers from Kerbin to restock the depot - might as well cut out the middle man and refuel your ships directly from the tanker. On the other hand, the tanker then effectively becomes a fuel depot so it's really a matter of semantics

While I appreciate the craftsmanship in your launchers - and cracking the fuel line/strut problems in Subassembly Manager was a real stroke of genius - I disagree with your assessment of asparagus staging and engine clusters. The Munshine launcher family uses inline staging and one-piece engines to achieve similar payload capacities and payload fractions (around 13% I believe) but with a lot less parts: They were built on the assumption that parts count is the major bottleneck in KSP designs right now, though they have exceeded our expectations in terms of fuel and mass efficiency. ...and yes, we need to re-release them with a sensible numbering convention. Right now they're numbered by the order in which they were designed, which is confusing

Non-aerodynamic re-entry - you will, one day, be missed.

Did someone say modules? Check out our MOdular Mission System (MOMS), twenty-one modules including launchers, propulsion, payload and support craft that can be arranged at will around a simple, functional ship's core. Have some pics while you're at it:

Before maneuver nodes, trajectories like this came down to sheer dumb luck steely-eyed missilemanship: Landing legs on a buggy? Well, they were there to keep the Kerbals on the ladders we used in lieu of seats:

I humbly submit the MOdular Mission System which includes all the parts needed to go anywhere and do anything (except landing on Tylo or returning from Eve). Self-landing surface base, rovers, crew shuttle, propulsion modules and fuel tanks built around a simple, functional core:

When the buggy has been detached, it has no control core so you'll need to put a Kerbal into one of the seats to operate it. To do this, just walk a Kerbal up close to the buggy and right-click one of the seats. Make sure you take off the brakes (press "B") before you start moving, because they have been activated when you detached the rover so it doesn't roll away from the lander.

You're welcome, I'm glad you like it

The 48-7S made the 0.21 version of the Munshine V possible. Its lighter weight and lower fuel requirement compared to a rack of 24-77s caused a trickle-down effect of mass reduction compared to the 0.20. This allowed a lighter CSM, which in turn allowed the use of a Skipper on the third stage because the second and first now had so much less payload mass to lift off of Kerbin's surface. The FL-T100 tanks helped a lot too, of course.

This is the first implementation of science so it's likely bare-bones. Using generic "science points" with degrading rewards as you repeat experiments is a pretty solid base. Things like geography, interlocking research (how would this Dunian ice cap sample behave if I threw in some equatorial Evian ocean fluid in zero G?) and manned experiments can be built on that relatively easily. The latter becomes especially interesting if they require an X amount of time spent when life support is implemented...

Yeah I do think TWR figures into this significantly. My heavier launchers require a more gentle gravity turn than the lighter ones. Even so I feel a little tip somewhere well below 10km can do wonders for most launchers. Vertical speed only gets you out of atmo - it's horizontal speed that gets you into orbit.

Wait, so the specimen container lets us expose Kerbin wildlife to outer space? I can taste the discussions already! Player #1: "I refuse to use the Specimen Container, no animal experiments in my KSP thank you!" Player #2: "I just flew a probe with eleventyfive Specimen Containers into the Sun! Burn, vermin!"

Yeah you guys are probably right. The Munshines are currently numbered in the order they were developed, which makes sense from a historical perspective but doesn't really translate to practical usability very well. I'll sit down soon and re-label them, probably using the MOMS convention of marking them with payload mass and parts count. It'd make for a neater picture too

Good luck! Also note that we've just expanded the Munshine family with three new lifters - two light ones and a massive 100-ton monster at a mere 144 parts

I played around with some RCS scooters that are way too much fun in a low-gravity environment.

Thanks, that's encouraging Did you fly the .20 or the .21 version? The latter is a lot more forgiving during launch because the new small fuel tanks allowed me to build a much lighter payload. So apart from Van Disaster I'm not seeing anyone initiating their gravity turns below 10km. I really recommend it folks - that little five degree nudge at 5000m makes a lot of difference!

So I've been wondering about gravity turns lately. Ever since I watched and (YouTube videos) struggle with the launch profile of my Munshine V Apollo-style Mun rocket, and reading comments by others who have had difficulty getting Munshine launchers to perform as advertised, it's struck me that there seems to exist a strong tendency to do inefficient gravity turns during launch.When I started playing in 0.16 common wisdom held that you launched straight up, turned to 45 degrees around 20km, then kept this heading until your apoapsis hit the desired orbital altitude and circularized there. Today the usual method seems the same, except you turn over at 11km. But when I launch, I begin my turn gently at 5000 meters or so, just 5 degrees to the east. I then take it in steps by the speed my rocket builds up, going halfway to the 45-degree marker at 250-300m/s, then to 45 degees at 500-600m/ms, halfway from there to horizontal at 800-900 m/s and flat out around 1200m/s. This saves an amount of launcher fuel you wouldn't believe! Plus it makes launch a slightly more hands-on approach, which is good because let's face it, after a few hundred launches they all start to look the same. Now I'm thinking that this may have to do with the way I design launchers. Serial staging means you have a fairly wide range to thrust-to-weight ratio as you drain fuel from each stage. The Munshine V goes from something like 1.2 to 3+ on the first stage. Putting a lot of that high-end TWR into horizontal velocity makes sense, atmosphere be damned. Asparagus launchers, of course, maintain a far more even TWR throughout the flight and this may affect the ideal launch profile. What's your basic launch profile and what are your thoughts?