magnemoe

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.

The bulkheads was watertight up to an some height, this is common also on modern passenger ships, hard to build otherwise. Any ship is very vulnerable to glancing hits who create long rifts in the hull. Yes titanic had weak rivets who made this issue worse. Sound plausible, it would not taken out so many bulkheads so the ship would not have sunken.

This is an kethane miner who is in regular use, landed everywhere except Jool and Eve, weight is around 150 ton, currently using an slightly larger one. However I tired to land this. 1500 ton. cargo was 1200 ton of rocket parts for Minmus. With this result Amazingly both the crew and cargo survived but it was an pretty messy landing.

So they will not backup parachutes on the pod? Depending on design you don't need to be that high for parachutes to work, yes if engines dies 50 meter over ground you are toast but this would be an pretty unlikely failure.

Somebody said that they mainly use the fuel reserve to land, extra fuel if something goes wrong like losing an engine. Add that it don't cost so much to land, rocket is only moving at terminal speed perhaps 400 km/h. Main downside of parachutes is that the landing is harder and you get an horizontal speed unless its perfectly calm and this will topple the rocket.

One weird issue regarding Pol, tried to land two landers on it with totally different design. Both started to rotate fast shortly after starting final decent. Had an simelar experience with an lander on Minmus but thought it was because the engines was above the center of mass as all other landers works well on it.

I tested this, 400 m/s isp is more than enough to land with in KSP. this does not have to be much fuel as you stage is almost empty. I found it far more expensive to return to launchpad from 15 km attitude with an 10 km gravity turn, however I saw some burn plans for the reusable first stage so its probably that I'm an bad pilot and used to long time turning, you want to cancel the horizontal moment as fast as possible and reverse it. Anyway they plan an new launch center in Texas, this would make the return to launchpad unneeded. Yes probably more as second stage is smaller and only have on engine, future plans is to also make the upper stage reusable, this will be harder as it has to survive an reentry burn. This will also give a great flexibility, you can use an reusable second stage for light loads and an light one time use if you need to lift something heavy.

KSP don't have achievements, Skyrim has steam achievements and come with an editor making it trivial to make overpowered items.

Wings act as stabilizers and will help. never tried winged rockets but you might want to try an jet powered fist stage probably with some rockets to help you get speed and attitude, then you fly the thing as an plane until you reach 20 km. This might be an good idea for an SSTO should potensialy be able to lift more stuff than most planes as you are more free in designing,

Yet another rescue mission however on an kind of different scale. Finally doing aerobrake around Laythe after creating an kethane miner and docked it to the mothership(the four orange tanks to the left). Used the kethane miner as tug to get the mothership Jool express into Laythe orbit. Some complications, Jool express weight close to 2000 ton, its an orion nuclear pulse rocket with an cargo of 800 ton spare parts for orbital construction, 18 kerbals to put up an base on both Laythe and Pol. Some problems first two of the chemical engines fall off because of metal fatigue. Yes it uses mainsails for precision movement, then the orion engine failed after getting into orbit around Jool. So after going to Jool in 30 days, I used 4 to get an minimum power intercept with Laythe. The ting was horible to rotate and had ion engine like twr. Currently setting up infrastructure to mine on Pol to produce more infrastructure.

Sound plausible, ammonia would probably help life to. The volcanic activity probably produce lot of the heat on Laythe. So no life you could see, however an sample mission become an high priority.