Sufficient Anonymity

I sent my Mun rover down a very steep hill... ...and somehow, it made it the bottom in one piece. It's lucky it worked, as I had landed a bit further from the biome border than I'd intended.

I'm a MechJeb user, personally, as I must admit I'm guilty of using it to automate a lot of my launches (as frankly, once I've flown a crew bus/tanker/sat/whatever into orbit once, I have no enjoyment in doing it over and over again, especially when assembling large interplanetary craft). I do something similar with the Mk2 B9 cockpit and RPM, as that gives you 5 screens (and the little green HUD-thingy) to play with. I use this layout on most of my ships, and it gives me loads of information - easily enough to fly things properly: [HUD] ....[Orbit][PFD][Resources] [Cameras] [Map] I just wish there was an option to only display certain MechJeb windows in the orbital map mode, as I tend to use things like the warp helper and maneuver node adjustment tools, and I need to call up the windows that I can hide in the cockpit, too.

To quote K3|Chris from a little while back "Nope, they don't have a back-side thus they're invisible from the inside."

The majority of my missions are on a pretty small scale - I'm a big fan of launching lots and lots of probes. Thus, for most of career, the only docking that gets done is for space stations (which tend to be little more than vanity projects). However, as I progress into late career (I use Interstellar), craft start to become vast - as such, they have to be launched in multiple sections. The drive stages tend to be SSTOs in their own right, so it's then a small matter of sending up a refueling craft and then the mission payload. I'm currently planning on sending a colonisation mission to Laythe that will require the following launches: Colony ship: 1 - drive stage (warp capable) 2 - colony/science module 3 - heat shield (purely aesthetic) 4 and 5 - fuel tanks Infrastructure tug: 6 - drive stage (warp capable) 7 - surface habitats 8 - airship This is the colony module I'll be using (minus the reactor unit on the bottom, which is integrated into the drive stage): The mission will enable two kerbals to live long-term on the surface of Laythe, and a further six in orbit. I'm still figuring out exactly how to bring them home from the surface, but it'll probably involve using this beast (she's warp capable, albeit a little slower than the vessels assembled in orbit):

Heh. I'm totally going to have to mess around with that this evening. Sorry, Jeb, t'was nice knowing you.

Non-stock, I know, but I'm a massive fan of the B9 S2 cockpit, especially if one uses the extended IVA and RPM - if you do that, it becomes an incredibly stylish way to move four kerbals around. If I had to pick a stock cockpit? The cupola wins hands-down.

I see nothing wrong with using RCS - there's no way my crew bus would get out of orbit without it once undocked from its booster.

Absolutely. I'll quite happily let it fly five of the same mapping satellite into orbit for me (SURF mode in SMARTASS is a godsend with SSTO ascents) but there's no way I let it dock for me. It's painful to watch all the shuffling about (though that can be improved if you start fiddling about with smart translation).

My mid-career SSTO. So far, it has just been used to pop mapping satellites and suchlike into LKO, but I want to have a play around with using it to launch some lightweight beamed power plasma engine-driven probes at some stage. That'll have to wait a while, as I'm not playing very much at the moment - my degree means a heck of a lot more to me than little spaceships.

They always end up being vanity projects, even in KSPI (though I haven't started playing with beamed power yet) - aside from the good haul I got from the instruments on board my Munar station, it only generates about 0.3 science per day. It still looks cool though.

I improved my cargo SSTO that I use in career... ...and then I upgraded my crew bus (apologies about the lack of pictures of the entire launcher - it's basically just a 2m ARM engine/tank combo with an X200-16 on top of that as a first stage, then the booster you see below is the second). I use the extended version of the S2 cockpit IVA, so the crew bus carries four, and the SSTO eight (though I need to add a docking port, which I stupidly forgot in the iteration shown at the top of this post).

I'm a MechJeb user. I care about designing crafts far more than I do about flying them. Sometimes I even justify this to myself thus "there's a skill in putting together a modular space program that MechJeb can fly all by itself."

Yeah, the source for my comment looks properly silly - so many nested tags - properly handy though.

Autonomous Mun Rover

I sent an unmanned rover over to the Mun. It's much more advanced than anything I've sent before - it'll drive round on autopilot mopping up a lot of the remaining science.

Use [noparse] [/noparse]eg [noparse] [/noparse] gives this: EDIT - for those wondering how I got those tags to show up without being parsed, I used [noparse][noparse][/noparse][/noparse]

I fixed my station's reactor module (now with doors for service access, and a reduced overall part count)... ...then I sent ScanSats to Mun and Minmus... ...and then went back to messing around with fighter jets.

Fixed my reactor issues:

Having realised that the reactor on my LKO station was unserviceable, I redesigned that module (now featuring an incredible innovation - doors that open). I'll launch it when I need a break from my degree.

Thankfully, as the problem station is sat in LKO, rather than out on Duna (I imagine that must have been a real "facepalm moment"), and there's no budgeting yet), it should be fairly straightforward for me to send up another reactor; the new design uses a cargo bay, not structural fairings, to hide all the unsightly gubbins.

I've got to say that I've always just used two size 16s rather than a single 32 (though now that we've got the large tanks with integrated engines as part of the ARM update, they're getting used a lot).

<rage> Realised the structural fairings I put the reactor block on my KSPI station in an effort to make it look more visually consistent with the stock and B9 parts makes it impossible to service the reactor as it requires EVA access to do that. </rage> Time to launch a redesigned reactor module. Expect more pictures later this weekend.

Today I put together a science station in KSPI... ...and then realised I'd forgotten an antenna.

Today I put together a science station in KSPI... ...and then realised I'd forgotten an antenna.

I do use it, though only in order to improve aesthetics where it will not impact on craft performance - to be honest, the things it allows me to do probably end up counting against the craft - a lot of my planes have I beams hidden inside them to get wings exactly where I want them to be. Take this jet for example - the blending of fuselage elements, intakes and wings is achieved with part clipping - it actually flies incredibly well, but on the other hand, it has a couple of tons of I beams in there to make it all fit, so has rubbish range.