Specialist290

Don't think it can be done with just one satellite, unfortunately. You could probably set up a small network of satellites so that at least one's always providing coverage to the dark side, though.

Welcome to the forums! Nicely done on the SSTO. It's definitely an achievement to be proud of. Care to share pictures? Feel free to take the forums at your own pace, and don't be afraid to ask questions if you need help. I also run a small project called the Drawing Board, where I attempt to gather useful tutorials into one handy reference spot; if you feel the need to look at anything in there, you can find it through the link in my signature, or in the Tutorials section of the forums. Hope this helps

Sounds like a very ambitious mission plan there. Here's hoping for the best.

Indeed, hopefully they'll make it out there at the next opportunity. Until then, hope the crew is taking a well-deserved vacation to "decompress."

I'll be looking forward to seeing what comes of this. I'm familiar with Nova's work as well, but I don't think he developed it much past the "proof of concept" stage, so hopefully this one will get a little more love

I'd certainly be in favor of it, personally. Wouldn't put a high priority on it, but it would certainly be a nifty feature, and I believe steerable parachutes were on the drawing board for some real-world spacecraft designs as far back as the 1960s.

Let's remember we're discussing the merits of this feature as a game mechanic, not religious beliefs or the validity of the actions of those who follow them.

Well, drat. My next guess probably would have been a mirror or a lens, but I didn't get there in time...

Always nice to see a new episode of this series come out.

Might the answer be "glass," perhaps?

I want the truth!

That seems rather sudden. Personally, I was looking forward to seeing what happens next...

Welcome to the forums, and don't be afraid to ask for help if it's needed. I maintain a small(ish) list of tutorials and useful tools called the Drawing Board, which is linked in my signature; feel free to browse around the materials linked there as well Also, as an avid player of Crusader Kings II (as well as KSP), I find your choice of ship names amusing.

Nicely done! A genuine "successful failure" -- glad to see your kerbonauts made it out safely, despite the fact that you didn't accomplish your original mission.

As austin said, welcome to the forums! Delta-v and TWR aren't actually that difficult to calculate on your own if you can understand high-school level algebra. Thrust-to-weight ratio can be done entirely by hand, as it's a simple case of division. Solving the rocket equation to get your delta-v is slightly more complicated because there's a natural logarithm to factor in, but it's nothing you couldn't handle without the help of a calculator. I personally would highly encourage you to delve into learning a bit more about them -- these three pages at Atomic Rockets got me off to a good start, and I'd also highly recommend this series of articles at MyKSPCareer.com -- but it's still quite possible to enjoy the game even if you choose to just go with the ol' tried-and-true method of "trial and error." As for mods: A few of the ones that might interest you would be Ferram Aerospace Research (overhauls the aerodynamic model to be more realistic than the stock one), Deadly Reentry (adds reentry heat and G-force effects that can actually damage your rocket), and Real Solar System (resizes the solar system to have planet and orbit sizes closer to our own). Hope this helps!

The important bit for the final approach is to pay attention to where the pink target marker and the yellow prograde velocity marker are in relation to one another. If you have the yellow marker centered on the pink marker, that means you're heading straight for your target. With a little practice, you can learn to "steer" the yellow marker around the navball to move in the direction you want.

According to the latest Developer Notes: At the very least, the tone seems to indicate that it's already implemented in one of the development builds, so it's entirely likely that we'll see it in 0.23, though I can't say anything for sure since I'm not a developer myself. Fingers crossed, of course

Welcome to the forums! Keep us posted on how those missions go. You might even want to start a thread for your exploits in the Mission Reports section of the forums, if you feel so inclined. Don't be afraid to ask any questions or check out tutorials if you need any help, as well; I maintain the Drawing Board, a list of tutorials that many users often find useful, which you can find at the link in my signature. Hope this helps, and enjoy!

Welcome to the forums! Some people will also suggest that "SSTO" stands for Single Stage To Ocean as well. I find that sort to be considerably easier to build than the other

I've always been a fan of spaceflight and science fiction, and I've always thought it would be cool to design and pilot my own rockets and send them to different planets. KSP is the sort of game that I've (almost literally) dreamed about playing ever since I was very young.

Welcome (back) to the forums!

Lord_Potato has it; the answer is indeed a book. (Toolofdarkness guessed it, too, but since he wasn't the first, Lord_Potato gets the next riddle.) Going over it line-by-line, as seems to be traditional: Books contain descriptions, and with a little imagination, you can use these descriptions to form a mental picture of whatever the book is describing. Like toolofdarkness noted, many authors who are now dead have written books to share their own thoughts and views on various subjects, yet their ideas are carried on by living disciples who continue to find inspiration from these books and further develop those ideas. Authors of fiction will often construct elaborate settings for their works in order to make their story seem more natural to the reader. And, of course, many of these books are written for children -- and some especially bright kids can even enjoy works written mainly for adults, too. You can "take out" knowledge from a book that you've read, but of course the words will still stay on the pages, ready to inform the next person who wishes to read the book as well. A book can be opened with your hands alone, but only those who know how to read -- and more specifically, how to read the particular language that a given book is written in -- can tell what the book actually says.

No, although they're often born from such.

Hmm... The first one is a handy companion for one, the second one holds many of them, and it often contains the third one, but none of them are quite what I'm asking for. Well, it's true that those would fit, although none of those things are quite what I had in mind. I probably need to refine this riddle to be a bit more specific, but I can't think of a good way to give more clues that won't give it away entirely. Hmm... It can be opened without tools, but only one who knows its secret can tell what it holds.

Cool. Alright then, the new riddle (no poetry, this time -- couldn't think of a good way to make it rhyme): It has neither eye nor lens, yet you can use it to see distant places. It has neither mouth nor voice, yet through it a dead man can speak to a living one. It can hold entire worlds, yet children can hold it in their hands. No matter how much you take out of it, it is always as full as it was when you opened it. What is it?