Merinsan

I'll be launching a new lab to my Kerbin Science Station. Even though there is no science left around Kerbin - it will be fun.

I've in the past put lots of intakes (not clipping them though), but I don't anymore. I found that in order to get up really high you virtually have to use part clipping. Putting lots of intakes on a plane until it looks ridiculous doesn't give you much more altitude. I now tend to put 3 intakes per fuel reserve (1 ram and 2 radials), plus 2 on the central body. The most important thing to getting into orbit with the SSTO is the flight profile - and you don't need lots of air for that.

I suspect the reason we are not getting a straight answer is because they don't want to commit either way. Just 1 week ago, multiplayer was out of the question. Now it's a publicized goal. If at some point the game is complete, but still seems to be lacking something, they may well implement resource mining, but I don't think it's a priority.

I don't often use them, but when I am having trouble with a clean separation I will use them. Also, I've used them to deorbit the final stage before - works nicely, providing you get enough on there - otherwise you end up with a decaying orbital path which doesn't decay.

You should be grateful that you know the date! Normally we don't even get that.

I have a few times, Mostly on the Mun. I seem to recall putting a rover with said wheels on Duna or Eve in an old save. It's not too hard once you learn how to put huge payloads into orbit. The biggest payload I've done is about 6 orange tanks - a rover with giant wheels is nothing compared to that. My typical payloads are around 1 orange tank in weight. The biggest problem with these rovers though is landing them. I've come up with a number of crazy designs for that. The craziest was to land it upright and get it to fall down onto it's wheels. The best approach is to just load it with fuel, and make it so it can land itself, but it cuts back on crew space. The approach I often use for landing rovers is to put a rocket on top, with inline decouplers. Once it's landed, I decouple and fly the landing mechanism away to crash. You just need to make sure the COT is down low enough, or it becomes impossible to control.

I've already lost a lot of interest in KSP, due to nothing to do. Each update comes out I play, do the same thing I always do (set up stations, bases, and try the new feature). What I need is something to do once I get to planets, a reason to go there. Resources will be a big part of that reason. Another thing that I think is necessary is something random - ie random planets with random discoveries to be made. This gives you a reason to explore. It would be a shame if Squad finally finished development, patted themselves on the back and found that all players stopped playing after 2 weeks of playing with the last feature added. Multiplayer is going to do virtually nothing for me. I might be play a little with my son, but I'd rather not be playing with a stranger - after all I am the director of my space program. I honestly feel that multiplayer is being added because a vocal minority demanded it. The real challenge will be to make multiplayer add something that single player doesn't have. If Squad succeeds, then I may well enjoy it, but from my current perspective, I think it will be a bit of a waste of their effort. As of now, I will be turning to the dark side, and finally installing mods. I've been holding out for resources, but it looks like it is at least 1 year away now.

Quite easy to make a spaceplane now withowt airhogging. I've done one with about 4 intakes only. It's just a matter of piloting it correctly.

I did this myself when testing science. I sent a small ship from Kerbin to Moho, in pretty much a straight line. I actually had to adjust my course when I realized it took me straight through the sun. In my opinion, films like Gravity are much harder to accept, because they are not set in a highly advanced world. Star Wars on the other hand avoids most of these problems by setting the things is a galaxy far far away, thus we have no idea of their level of technology. Simply having to ability to manipulate gravity could mean you can simply ignore orbital mechanics, and explain a number of things. However, nothing will ever explain why lasers fire slower than the speed of light. I mean perhaps one day they'll find a way to slow down light, but why would you want your weapon to be slower?!

I use maths everyday. Unfortunately for you though, not for KSP. And Scott certainly would qualify as an expert. Good luck with the project.

That resource chart diagram was official. I saw it posted in another thread a couple of months back, and a developer posted a comment saying it's no longer relevant. Basically if resource mining is going ahead, it's going to be a lot simpler. Otherwise it's not going ahead. I still think it will appear, but some way down the road.

It's called Pareidolia. It's the same reason people see a face on Mars, Jesus in a piece of toast, faces in clouds, etc.

I approve of this station! Size is not important - as long as there are docking ports it can always get bigger! Sadly for myself, I have gone down a bad path building stations. I send up parts which are huge in an attempt to reduce part counts. I need to get back to the construction and launch smaller modules.

Not interested. 20 years ago in uni, my classmate was doing a research project on this stuff and it looked pointless then with a 2d display (with "3d" images). Besides, the mouse already provides more than 2 axis of control with the scroll wheel and mouse buttons. I can't imagine needing anymore control than what I already have.

I'm certain you can't. Multiport docking only works when they are 2 separate ships. It wont work if you are trying to dock to another part of the same ship, for the exact same reason that makes multiport docking hard - if the 2nd, 3rd etc port doesn't magnetize at the same time as the first, they wont dock with the ship, and they wont after the first one docks.

I always set my target and use the target indicator on the navball. The retrograde mark needs to be centered when you are facing up, so I burn to push it that way. Of course, it uses a lot of fuel.

Maybe I should update my post, but I am lazy. I mean for the current save (0.22). Plenty of Kerbals have made craters on Kerbin in prior saves, grinning manically up until the moment of impact. I'm quite sure at some point, someone is going to die - how else are we going to get the EVA reports in Jool atmosphere? I'm sure I'll be finding the Kraken there as well.

Sounds just like mine, although it was the structural part of a station. And it happened recently, like a week ago. My particular craft seems inherently unstable - I've managed to do the same thing with physical time acceleration a few times. Maybe I need to be sending smaller pieces up. I dread this happening to me. So far I've not lost a single Kerbal. I do have a few guys "manning" the depot around Moho, waiting for a fuel shipment, and a colony on eve, but no one dead/unreturnable.

I was building a station in orbit around the Mun. As I was approaching with the second part, for no reason it started wobbling. The wobbling got worse and worse until it broke apart. I think I looked at it the wrong way.

The biggest problem with this idea is that eventually you'll run out of science, so you are still limited. You can't keep collecting data forever - if you could, you'd be able to max out the current tree sitting on the launchpad.

I'll be honest, I've never deorbited a station. If I was going to, I'd be sending "escape" pods up just to get them home, before deorbiting.

I hope not. Given that about 80% of my launches involve something falling off/discovering I messed up staging/finding I forgot something important (fuel lines) this would become very frustrating.

My space program uses exactly the same naming convention.

When you think the Apollo missions were not ambitious enough - they should have been going for Mars.

When watching a movie with a spaceship in it you start planning how to build a replica in KSP, in your head, that can also fly - even when you know the physics are impossible.