LameLefty

I hope not - I think it's great!

Unless you're using mods like docking cameras or something, it can be very hard. If you have each ship set the docking clamp of the OTHER ship as its rendezvous target, then it's possible to dock completely in the dark, just by making sure your velocity vectors of each ship always point toward the target (e.g., the other ship's docking clamp). I can't do it, personally. I put a set of lights around the docking clamps of all my ships and assign them to a custom action group. I've lately also started using the Aviation Lights mod to add standard aviation/naval station keeping red/green/white lights to my ships. They don't consume much power but sure do make it easier to keep a solid visualization of what's going on during the night side of each orbit.

Thanks folks, that's what I was afraid of. I need to include EVA handholds around my ships and stations now, I guess. (Have I mentioned, I REALLY hate EVAs?)

Awesome but it's shopped. Too bad though and it is amusing.

Is it possible (via mod or some command I'm unaware of) to move a crew member from one orbiting vehicle docked to another, WITHOUT EVA? I have come to the conclusion that I SUCK at EVA. The camera and movement controls are completely non-intuitive to me, the jetpack seems wildly overpowered for small inputs and I nearly tear my hair out every time I have to move crew members in space. It seems to me that docking clamps (especially the Clamp-O-Tron Senior) should be plenty large enough to have interior tunnels for connecting vehicles. And pretty much every real-world crewed spacecraft since the late 60's has had a connecting tunnel through the docking ports. So ... am I just missing something in the game about this, or are we really stuck climbing out of ships (without a tether no less) and jetting around hoping to make it to the other ship/station/whatever?

There's info regarding your kethane scans in the persistence file, which is part of your Save folder. The new version shouldn't change that, I don't think.

There's also a mod called (I think) Maneuver Nodes that gives you a GUI to change conics mode on the fly, along with text entry fields to fine-tune the delta-V of your planned burn along all three axes. For those of who who really like planning and executing orbital maneuvers, it's a great addition to the game. EDITED TO ADD: Here it is: Maneuver Node Improvement. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/42716-0-21-1-Maneuver-Node-Improvement-v1-2b?highlight=Maneuver+Node

Ditto! Good job on the docking and constructing your station. With regard to lights, I made it my practice very early on to ALWAYS include a ring of 3 lights around the docking ports of nearly everything I build, simply to make sure I can see the darn ships and target points when I'm rendezvousing. It's too hard to always make sure proximity operations (proxops) always occur in daylight. And to that end, I have found the Aviation Lights mod to be superb! I can add steady or periodically flashing red/green/white beacons to my vehicles, like real-world ships and aircraft. They don't consume much power but really make a huge difference in my personal "situational awareness" when I'm trying to get a handle on how things are pointed and lined up in the dark behind a planet or moon.

So today was another day of ‪#‎kerbalfail‬ and, using true Kerbal pluck and grit, grabbing success from the jaws of failure. I realized this morning that my first Münar station, orbited yesterday at such great cost in time and effort, was orbiting retrograde. D'oh! Well, kisht happens. Before addressing that issue, I emptied my kethane driller into my Münar orbiting refinery station and converted the kethane to fuel and oxidizer. I then practiced making skill with targeted landings on the Mün by putting my now-empty and fully-refueled kethane driller back on the surface at a new deposit and began filling up again. I then launched a three seat nuclear-powered rescue ship (with one seat left empty just in case) and rendezvoused with my retrograde-orbiting station. What to do, what to do? I could EVA poor Gus Kerman over to Rescue 2 and head home, then deorbit the station. But that would be a waste of good Kerbal scrap metal and space tape. Instead, I made my first-ever docking to a radial port on another vehicle, refueled my nuke stage and began an audacious, time consuming and delta-vEXPENSIVE 180º orbital plane change. That's right - I raised inclination to polar and right over the top back around to posigrade. I took a lot of separate long burns with that small NERVA engine, and it drained almost all of the fuel from the station's tank farm (for refueling visiting vehicles) but Münar Station Alpha is now in a ~110 km <1º equatorial orbit around the Mün where it belongs, and Gus can stay on duty. Best of all, my nuke stage is fully refueled with the last of the station gas and is ready to go home, do a Minmus flyby or whatever I decide tomorrow. My refinery ship will be getting another load of kethane tomorrow and when it's full, it will rendezvous with the station and begin refilling the station tank farm for visiting vessels. Once I have the station tank farm refilled, I will begin expanding the station with the radial ports.

My first landing was only back in 0.19. I landed safely a few kilometers from on of the arches and put Bill outside in an EVA suit to explore. It was quite a long hike by foot but he made it. After an equally long hike back to the lander, he and Bob took off in the upper stage of their lander. Unfortunately, I lost track of my proper trajectory orientation on the way up to orbit. They ended up in a low but stable, highly inclined orbit around the Mün and awaited rescue. I quickly kludged together a rescue mission - a 1 Kebal capsule with a hitchhiker can underneath and plenty of fuel in the upper stage to rendezvous with the lander. Rendezvous was accomplished and a pair of nail-biting EVAs conducted to get Bill and Bob into the hitchhiker can for the ride home. All was going well until landing. The crack design team neglected to include landing legs or, frankly, enough parachutes. Landing was hard, the hitchhiker can exploded, and all that effort was for naught as Bill and Bob bought the proverbial Korn and Kow farm in the sky ... *sniff sniff* Fortunately, in a parallel universe, kerbals learned from this mistake and have never tried to land a hitchhiker can again.

The Space Shuttle would NEVER have reached 60 flights per year. There were never more than 3 launch pads (two at KSC, one at Vandenberg Air Force Base). 20 flights per year per pad would have cost HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars. The best "realistic" flight rate actually planned for, with all three pads up and running, was about 24 flights per. And that was a lot, compared to the reality. A big reason Challenger happened in the first place was the "Go Fever" that accompanied a rushed flight rate and pad/ground ops pacing, which led to decisions being made based on data points being ignored or downplayed. Challenger STS-51L was hardly the first mission to have SRB field joint damage; it was just the one that actually led to catastrophe. Similarly, Columbia was lost because managers again felt that the understood and could deal with the system behaving in ways it wasn't designed to (e.g., shedding foam debris at very high velocity, causing impact damage to thermal protection systems). STS-107 was not the first one to have TPS damage, just the first one to have CATASTROPHIC TPS damage. Source: Rogers Commission Report; CAIB Report.

Here's another real-world analog to a possible Tech Tree ... deep throttling for engines and variable ISP. For instance, most real rocket engines cannot be run at 5% or 10% throttle like you can in KSP. Actually most engines are not variably throttleable at all and if they can be throttled, they have specific set points (often only 1 set point). For instance, the newest American engine is the J-2X which is wrapping up testing currently. This hydrogen-oxygen ("hydrolox") engine has only 2 throttle points - 100% and 80%. The RS-25 (a/k/a "Space Shuttle Main Engine") is variably throttleable in 1% increments, but only between about 60% and 109% of rated thrust. So a real way to add a LOT of challenge for dedicated players would be to include "Engine Throttling" and "Deep Throttling" to the Tech Tree. Similarly, when engines are run at lower throttles, they produce lower pressure and temperature and thus tend to lose efficiency. So the ISP tends to be several seconds (and potentially much more - several TENS of seconds) of ISP when throttled down deeply. So variable ISP would be an important thing to add to the game.

I decided to pay around some more with kethane this week. I've mapped Kerbin (almost completely) and the Mün partially and so I decided to give mining a go. I built my first robotic kethane miner and managed to land it right smack in the middle of a deposit on the Mün, on the very first try (didn't even have to quicksave/quickload - yay, me). I managed to land on the 15º slope of a crater wall without tipping over or sliding, and then deployed the kethane drill. So now I've filled a 1,000 unit kethane tank. My next step will be to launch a refinery/fuel depot station into low Münar orbit, and then dock my miner to that for transfer of kethane and refueling. Fun stuff.

Agreed, but that's not always possible, especially if one or the other object's orbit isn't precisely circular and you have a pair of close approaches to work with; and sometimes the process takes you into orbital night because of Kerbin's small scale. In any case, that's why EVERY ship I design for docking has a ring of three lights right around the docking port, and now also has a set of red and green beacon lights from the Aviation Lights mod. In the real world, docking and berthing spacecraft have and use lights. Kerbals should too.

Oh. Em. Gee. Those are priceless (and very ambitious!). They made me laugh out loud. Well done, sir!

Today I decided to land a probe rover on Minmus - the patience required by the low gravity always stopped me from doing it before but tonight, what the heck ...

MacBook Pro Core i7, but only 2.0 GHz (which hurts in a single-core game like this, since Unity can't use all four cores). A faster CPU would makes things a lot better. Still a blast though, and still having fun.

The delta-v requirements to change the inclination of an orbit vary significantly with orbital height. Doing the burn at a very high apoapsis is a LOT cheaper, fuel-wise, than doing it at a low orbital altitude.

That's something else to wonder about and contemplate: reliability. Will career mode include realistic reliability stats for newly-unlocked parts?

I have one or two unmanned, crashed lander test designs on the Mun, and I did have a polar orbiting satellite around Kerbin as a proof-of-concept. I "ended mission" from the Space Center last night and orbited a replacement polar orbiting kethane sensor platform. Since .21, I haven't killed any Kerbals and I'm trying very hard not to start (hence the use of probes and remote-controlled ships to test designs).

Ditto landing on the inside wall of a crater on the dark side of the Mun without a good set of floodlights on your lander. The result wasn't as bad as it could've been but it broke the lander pretty badly; destroyed one of the legs, one of the engines and tanks entirely and all of the solar arrays. Oops. Fortunately I had quicksaved before I initiated the descent. On the second try I realized I was on a serious slope as soon as I cut power. I was able to lift off immediately and hover around looking for a better spot to land; Neil Armstrong would be proud. I got the lander down safely but used so much fuel I couldn't return home. I sent Gus out on EVA to plant the flag and as soon as he got back inside, we managed to limp up to a low Munar orbit and await rescue. This evening at 8:50 pm CDT, the crew of Mun-7 arrived home safe and sound. The crew of Rescue 1 returned safely 20 minutes later.

Actually, the "contact light" was a signal connected to a probe that extended 6 feet (I think) below the legs of the LEM. Once that light came on, the probe had touched the surface. But in any case, yes, a contact light or something similar would be great. I have been playing KSP again this weekend after a couple month break so my intincts and reflexes are rusty. I rebounded off the surface and screwed up more than one practice landing today - broke the lander real good too, but fortunately I had quicksaved before PDI and also, it was a remote controlled ship. When it was on the ground, it looked a lot like the "Mun or Bust!" ship though! After I got it down, I went to go land on the far side today, thinking I was hot stuff and ready to land in the dark. Of course, I had the wrong low power lights on the bottom of my lander but tried it anyway. Ended up on a slope and began sliding down hill, fast. I hit the throttle and took off again really fast and managed to come down on a much more gentle slope, but all that used up so much fuel that I don't have enough gas to get home. I planted a flag and made a plaque, then limped up into a low Munar orbit. My rescue ship is heading their way as we speak.

Today's plaque reads, "We Came In Pieces For All Kerbalkind"

Yeah, I saw that mod last night when I went looking for some pad lighting. I plan on installing it later today and retrofitting my favorite ship models.

Thanks for all the suggestions. It never even occurred to me to put lights on the launch supports. And the self-deploying light vehicles are a cool approach too. I'll experiment and see which I like best. On the other hand, I really do think some basic lighting features would add immensely to the game's technical accuracy and help visual appeal without making it too "un-Kerbal-ish." Navigation strobes and red/green lights should be standard parts in the game (I mean, it's danged hard to see your own ship on the back side the Mün!), and runway lighting, pad floods, even a red beacon on the top of the water tower should all be part of the base game. Just my tuppence of course. Anyway, thanks all.