Dem Wot Goz Ub

They are both of our work -- some of them (like the SSTO design) are mine; some of them (like the navball markings and the questions about center of mass vs center of lift) are his. It doesn't make his KSP work any less awesome -- the fact that he's looking at SSTOs at all is pretty impressive in my book.

I'm an elementary school teacher by trade. Several of my students play KSP, and know I do as well. One of them came to me after school for advice on making SSTOs.

The best engineered SSTO I've built yet, meaning it easily has enough fuel to rendezvous and dock at a 100x100 station. From there, I can gas it up and who knows where it'll go! The view taking off was spectacular. Circularized! And docked. Following a crew transfer (Jonory had been up there way too long), and landed back at KSC.

alt+> three times will make it a 2.5 minute burn. Just don't try to turn while you're doing it.

Halfway through hunting for the shark: Check it out! I'm in Laythe orbit now. Waiting until tomorrow to try to drop a can or two.

While I wasn't able to get a screenshot of a high temperature before poofing into the sun (the temperature seems to spike dramatically around 1325m, with craft annihilation around 1270, making screenshots like Coneshot's more a matter of luck than anything else), I did document some curious thermometer behavior under physics warp. The longer a craft is under physics warp, the higher its thermometer will creep, and after physics warp is turned off, the temperature will go back down. This is, I suspect, part of the reason for the surreal readings on that Jool thermometer in the first screenshot in the challenge. With physics warp on for only a few seconds. Physics warp disabled. Note that this is later in the flight, and actually significantly closer to the sun, though not close enough to detect the temperature spike. I suspect the best way to get a high temperature reading is to impact the sun at high physics warp repeatedly (f5-f9 ad infinitum) spamming the screenshot key while doing so; at 90,000 m/s surface velocity -- the rough speed of a sun impactor -- getting anything like a precise reading is more a matter of luck than anything else.

You make it all the way to Dres, you're not aborting the landing for a little hill like that.

Think I'm gonna try my hand at making one of these. But orky. Gots ta keep it orky.

While most flights are done under da banna of Dem Wot Goz Ub, all experimental and (let's be honest here) technically gifted designs fly the flag of Miskatonic Systems.

This is a prospector vehicle, designed to roam planets in any gravity / terrain type, pinpoint deposits spotted from space, and mine (relatively) small amounts. Its perfectly balanced empty, enabling it to be slotted in as a stage in any rocket, though its current flight plan involves free-falling the last fifty meters or so and crushing its insertion stage under its massive weight to slow it down upon hitting the ground. Nuffin orkier'n brakin wiv explosions!

Following recent theories by top astronomaz that "dat big blak fing on Dres mus be big if we'z seein it from ere", a ship was dispatched from KSC to figure out what, exactly, could put a crack like that in a planet. We still don't know, but it's pretty big.

I've become extremely talented at flying unstable ships without SAS/ASAS because I keep forgetting to put it on.

The Kethane mod, obviously. Aside from that, nothing's needed -- MechJeb makes it easier (too easy, in my opinion) to land on deposits, but that's just about it. I don't have problems landing on Kethane deposits without MJ, but it's not for inexperienced pilots.

Which is probably a good thing, as far as "going to space today" is concerned. If DWOG found out that Head Engineer Clippy Kerman was trying to reduce entropy to power our ships, we'd jail him for Contempt of Thermodynamics. Yew don' want ta know wot we duz ta Kerbz wot iz in Contempt a Termodinamikz.

What directory are the stock flags in?

My grandmother liked my mun landing screenshot. Nobody else cared.

When you refer to parallel parking as docking; eg "This spot is pretty small. I don't know if we'll have room to dock".

Here's a version of my flag without the cloth texture. Dis mun belongz to da orkz!

We'z makin it orky!

Both of them in space together. Now we feel the lag. Kids, don't try this at home.

Having mastered (somewhat) the art of docking, my roommate and I turned our attentions to creating ships in orbit -- specifically this ship, the IDA Frigate from Escape Velocity Nova. He focused more on making a true recreation, and while it lives in Kerbin orbit and probably won't go anywhere else, it's a beautifully spot-on recreation of the big thug of a combat hauler we both know and love, which he'll post farther down as soon as he gets it put together. I, on the other hand, decided to make a ship that could carry a base to Moho (my next project in the game). It's stable, seats two, has enough fuel capacity to go pretty much anywhere, and has few enough parts that it won't be a massive lagfest, even with cargo modules clipped to all of its side ports. The three component .craft files with launchers and a persistence file of the ship assembled in orbit can be found in this .rar file.

When I get home, I'll post you my Universal Probe System lander, which I've used to get a (smallish, unmanned) payload to almost every system and body in KSP -- though landing on Tylo was beyond its power, Moho wasn't particularly hard. The nice thing about Moho is it orbits fast as hell, so it's easy to get your intercept. From there, landing's a lot like the Mun -- it's a light planet with low gravity and no air.

Back again from the re-registration grave. Time to fill out my forum medals again.