Tex_NL

Brilliant!

Please go back to my first post in this thread and read it. I already said that.

What part did you not understand? You're in orbit facing prograde. To de-orbit you'll have two options: If your engine is still burning you will need flip your ship to face retrograde. Flipping your ship requires input. DISQUALIFIED! With no engines burning wait half an a re-ignite your engine. DISQUALIFIED! And for both situations you WILL need parachutes and you can not trigger those at launch for obvious reasons. An orbit to surface continuous suicide burn???? Not a snowballs chance in hell!

100% agree. A good example would be something like Freelancer. It was released in 2003 and has long been abandoned by Microsoft and Digital Anvil. But the modding community is still very much alive. The current Discovery mod adds more content than the original game came with. But since the game is old and outdated the modders are very limited to what they can do. There are times that players are actually required to manually hack one or more game files to make things work. Getting that source code into the hands of the modding community might be beneficial. But for a game that is still being developed and has reached completion in name only (in my eyes KSP is STILL in beta), not so much. P.S. Yes. Before KSP I played Freelancer religiously. On the PTC server I was third in command of ZEN (Zoner Edgeworld Network). And quite possibly the richest player in all of Sirius. On the PTC forum I held the title Master Trader and even the server owner came to me to check his numbers when he had plans for a new trade/smuggle event.

This is really stretching the realm of possibilities. I agree in theory it IS possible but the margin of error are absolutely minimal. You forgot that engines produce electricity. As long as the regular launch engine is lit, the descent ion engine is too.

The bin is where you throw the lot when your device is about to die. No seriously. What the frag are you talking about?

And 1.2 a month before that so what's your point? I hope you will have to get used to it as it would mean development continues.

So you want people to pay and then open it up to everybody? Please answer me this: Why would I pay? If I wait for you to succeed I get it for free. If I wait for you to fail I still get free updates from Squad. So why would I pay? I get it for free either way. For the vast majority nothing will change. It will just be another dev team making weird and unexplainable decisions.

Without a mod like KOS or MJ this challenge is not within the realms of reasonable possibilities. From launch to orbit without any input (after the obvious lift-off) is possible with careful design. Returning from orbit to the surface is also possible. After the initial command to start the de-orbit process that is. From launch to orbit to landing is not. Somewhere in orbit you'll have to issue a command. Either to flip the ship around or to ignite an engine. The ONLY way to come close to this without a pilot mod is to ignite the de-orbit engine AT LAUNCH and have the main launch engine run dry once it reaches orbit. And to do this with only tier 3 tech? Let's summarize this challenge in just two letters: NO.

It still works like it always has. No reason not to use it anymore.

Holy Kerbol, mother of Jool. Why in the name of everything that is green are you linking to that thread? That's the release thread for 1.2. Since then there have been two more releases. Most notably 1.2.2 freaking YESTERDAY!

You might not be able to get rid of them completely but you can ignore them. Contract types that are ignored loose their relevance and will be displayed less in favour of contract types you do complete. To speed up the process go to ../GameData/Squad/Contracts/ and open Contracts.cfg. Search for the line that says AverageAvailableContracts = and increase its value to something in the order of 15 to 20. To REALLY speed up the process open your Persistent.cfg and search for the line PartTest = and reduce its value. Just be careful while editing your Persistent.cfg. A single typo can completely corrupt it.

Please take a second look at the OP's image. That pyramid is not the stock desert temple. It's the one from KerbalKonstructs.

And for all the mods to be updated.

And to proof once and for all KSP is not dead (yet); KSP 1.2.2 has been release just 16 hours ago.

Yes, the intercept would mean the MAV needs to be on an escape trajectory. And obviously it would not be designed to be a lot heavier than it needs to be. But it was never designed to be on an escape trajectory. All it needed to do is get into orbit and rendezvous with Hermes. It it's original configuration it would be too heavy to reach escape velocity. Removing all the unnecessary weight would increase the TWR and dV. The exact figures required might be off. I do not know all the details. But the theory behind it is sound.

Don't know how close but Starship Troopers IS based on the book by Robert Heinlein. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120201/

The real reason the ground forces in Starship Troopers are on foot and wear basic combat gear is purely cinematic. The director Paul Verhoeven originally planned to have them wear full body exoskeleton armour. However this would render all troopers identical and unrecognisable. In favour of acting the armour was dropped. But you're right. They should have been driving tanks and flying planes. The only moment actual infantry is justified is when they enter the tunnels. What really bugged me in this movie (pun intended) is how the infantry has to empty multiple clips of ammo to down a bug while in the lab the same bug is put down with just a few shots.

Just a word of advice: If you're planning on building a shuttle for your career play through in the hopes of saving , don't. There is nothing in KSP a shuttle can do that a simple and usually cheaper rocket can not. For role play and personal prestige shuttles can be fun. But they are not nearly as efficient as people think they are.

In KSP there are more ways to launch a shuttle than you can possibly imagine. And there are even more ways to screw it up. Browse the forum and google for designs and just give it a try like @Majorjim! said.

There is anime and there is anime. Obviously there is no scientific relevance in the likes of Pokemon so I won't even go into that. But there are plenty of more realistic sci-fi anime. Some of them get things very right, like PlanetES, while others get things still horrible wrong, like Cowboy Bebop or Space Battleship Yamato. The real difference between anime and life action is that anime is not limited by technology. If you can visualize and draw it you can film it. In life action you might not.

You could take a look at RealChute. I have no experience with this mod so it might not fit your goal. But looking at the description it offers all kinds of chutes and the options to change their behaviour.