magnemoe

Yes, I started to skip parachutes or more frecvently soft land an lander, the parachute is an fallback who include ditching the lander stage and just landing the pod.

The space program started with modified ballistic rockets, main focus in the beginning was military/ political and cost was not important. Later it was an lack of funding. Add that most who wanted to make something reusable went into the SSTO trap, an SSTO is very hard to make. SpaceX take this in small steps as its far safer. Some of the plans back in the early 50s reminds me of spacex however they though manned stages and shuttle type landings. You could not do grasshopper without modern control systems.

Had one strange issue during an Eve landing who confused the landing autopilot a lot. Ended up missing a lot and it would go worse if I did not disable it. Look at the speed calculation I did land from an 120 km orbit and it might be to low but anyway. Exiting Eve again it also behaved strange then trying to circulate, it was chasing the marker was unable to circulate. This was just the upper stage so it was agile.

Managed to do an Eve accent and ending up with in orbit with 1800m/s dV to spare. Test of the sample return mod. This is the lander it work as an airship in the atmosphere, however the propel and stuff makes moved center of mass. Did not notice during transfer with the heavy transfer stage who moved the trust far back, however the braking burn for landing got messed up. I could not collect rock just water and air, this reduced the cargo weight and saved fuel. Notice the impressive braking speed, mechjeb did not like this lander. The top part is some spare fuel and rcs for use during landing.

I did an unmanned mission to test out the sample return mod, by chance I landed within the view of the memorial.

LOL, as a teen I made an pipe bomb who behaved a lot like this rocket. Somebody had digged two 3 meter deep holes around 5 meters from each other on an field, this looked like an safe place to test the bomb. Place bomb in one hole, light fuse and jump down in the other. Unfortunately the hole for the fuse was to large and acted as an rocket engine spinning the bomb around. And yes it jumped up of the hole and down in our. Later we tried to make actual rockets but non performed as well as that bomb.

Use KAS to connect parts. In my first try I made one launchpad, one ore miner / lander and an smelter and workshop on an huge rover. Did also make an kethane miner and an huge fuel carrier rover. The fuel carrier was made on the launchpad, you could probably also make the kethane miner where if you have enough fuel to take it to an kethane deposit. My second try put the smelter and fuel below the launchpad, put the workshop on one side and balanced with an lander can and some stuff on the other side. The smelter is pretty hard to mount, use an probe core on it then an radial attachment node and loads of struts to mount the launchpad on it. Downside of this design is that its 120 ton and pretty hard to launch and handle. Might be an idea to make an lander with the ore drill, smelter and workshop, better make it as an rover so you can get within 50 meter of the launchpad. One important note, remember to connect fuel hoses from tanks on the launchpad to the launchpad body, else the constructed stuff can not use it during construction.

1 yes its pretty much an legit version of hyperedit, still overpowered but you can use it realistic, like having an mothership spawn probes, you might also add stuff who make it look like an real space dock. 2 an medium spacedock is 150 ton, the large one is 400. You might also use the spare part containers directly. I did on one ship. 3 work independently from EL, however the spare parts are not the same as rocketparts, you can also not launch modules with rocketparts from an EL launchpad as spare part are resources. This is an orion ship who went to Jool in 28 days, it carries 800 ton of spare parts. I suspect that using orbital construction breaks the orion so be careful with this.

Rovers and landers, specially the small probe ones and the rovers you put on landers.

They look correct, both Tylo, Laythe and Jool has an gravity a bit lower than Kerbin. Jool low gravity is probably as the upper atmosphere we can access is far from center. Tylo is very hard to land on as it has no atmosphere.

Smarter to just create an simple rover in WAB, drive it off the launchpad, exit them without ending flight and start the next one. Nice if you want to fill up ship with more crew or even if you want to evacuate an test or rescue ship before launching.

I had much of this issue then trying to land on Pol, used the same landers who worked well on Minmus, on Pol everything went well until final approach. It then started rotating the craft with engines burning. Was both normal rocket designs and pancake landers, suspected to high twr, but landed an huge kethane lander on nuclear engine only with the same issue. Its not an huge issue main reason to use mechjeb landing is to get close to the target and it don't happens for me on higher gravity worlds.

Why don't you come inn for aerobrake over the poles? at 3-4 the distance to the SOI, I adjust my path so it will get inn over the north pole, once I enter the SOI, I do fine adjustments for aerobrake to put me in an fitting approach, this will put you in an polar orbit, check the path from time to time as you warp towards target, circulate after aerobrake. This is no different from getting into equator orbit.

I always use the nodes, however for adjustment burns I often just use them to show directions and watch the distance in map mode. Did some blind burns then I got protractor and sent a lots of probes into interstelar space before I learned that I still needed nodes.

usually in one piece, they don't weight much. However I put down an planetary launchpad, you can put it land it on Minmus, Laythe or other places, mine for ore and convert to metal then rocket parts and launch ships like on the space center. It consist of the launchpad itself, an miner lander, an melter and rocket workshop who was an rover, however as I landed on an decent ore deposit I could just connect the parts with KAS. Base also consist of an huge living quarter with three home habitats around an tower with hitchhiker modules who was build on this launchpad and an huge fuel carrier to take fuel from the kethane miner to the launchpad.

You forgot the most important feature in KAS, you can use the cables to dock things. This is very nice for rovers and landers as its an serious pain to dock things on the ground. Simply dock the lander to the rover and transfer fuel, monopropelant and power. How can it be better, yes you have an connector port an kerbal can carry and place everywhere then plug in an cable so you can use it on craft without docking ports. Tap fuel from an upper stage with no docking ports. Power up an satellite you forgot to open the solar panels on. Someone even made an extension of this mod who let you place lots of small stock stuff like probe bodies, engines and tanks. You can take solar panels from an satellite and add to your ship, even build an rocket to take you back from Mun from the parts after the crash

One reason for achievements is to get an clue on the skill level of the player base, is the majority struggling with landing on Mun or is the majority busy building cities on Laythe. The forum is mostly for the hardcore fans and don't give good measurements.

Moving you mind into an machine would probably make you non human as you would not be human, you would not think the same way anymore. However just removing mortality would be an minor effect, far less than many other cultural changes.

Its the main issue, say you die and the mind is perfectly transferred into an clone. You would just wake up again so it would feel that it was yourself. Old issue with the star trek teleporters. Mine main issue is why they didn't just restored the sent copy if the landing crew died. Or more sinister, how about two guys wanted to same lady, one in beamed down at location, other is restored at ship and told the landing was canceled. Later the two ladies meet

Should be possible to look up how much is supplied to IIS. To save weight you would want to send a lot of dried or dehydrated food as you can reuse water. Growing food would mostly be for getting fresh vegetables.

Yes, no part clipping and an better drag model. You can still get far by opening and closing intakes.

I did an test brake from 1000 km/s with an orion on Eve, because of the dense atmosphere it was no problem stopping, however the 7000 g did damage on my ship. the ship and pod surviced but the radial engines and fuel tanks fell of without me noticing it. this also took away my monopropelant and the torque modules so I was unable to turn the ship.

Yes if you use more than 360 liter of fuel the LV-N give more dV, if you use 90 or below the small orange radial engines are best. for 180 liter the 909 is best. And yes the larger moded nerva engines is an must as it reduces part count a lot, also realistic as an nerva engine would have decent twr.

An bussard ramjet would be very hard to build. First you must be able to do H2 fusion. Now an normal fusion engine itself should be able to reach this speed. An laser boosted solar sail would be nice for an small probe.

Very impressive, note that you 7-800 m/s by letting the first stage continue eastward instead of boosting back at once after separation however I did not think this was doable. I also made an reusable launcher in 0.19 however I had to select who part to control. two boosters who was dropped before gravity turn, main stage who landed on the continent to the east and an upper stage who returned to spaceport so it was more like an reusable falcon heavy. As I used novapunch 5 meter tanks and engines this could carry a lot of cargo.