Specialist290

Very nice stuff. Looks quite impressionistic, which is a personal favorite style of mine.

One thing I've found that helps with placing panels edge-on is to turn off the angle snap. Otherwise, the game tries to do silly things with them. Another thing that helps is experimenting with the QWEASD rotational controls in the VAB, if you don't know about them already (and holding down "Shift" for fine-tuning). My own designs tend to be a bit minimalist: (Had a small accident while landing the "box" rover. It's a long story.)

The "skipping back into space" concern exists in real life because most capsules only have a limited amount of time that their life support systems will keep the crew alive. The capsule itself would eventually return to Earth; it's just that, by the time it did, the crew would likely have been smothered by its own carbon dioxide (or starved, or dehydrated, or... well, let's just say it's not a pretty picture). In KSP that's not as much of a concern, unless you're playing with other mods like Ioncross Crew Support.

If you're only trying to get that last bit into orbit (the capsule with the LV-N), you've got way more rocket than you really need. If you're trying to get something much larger into orbit, I'd advise launching each part separately with a smaller rocket, then assembling them in orbit. For that matter, your payload itself might be much larger and more inefficient than you really need to complete the mission. Once you're above the atmosphere and in a stable orbit, your engine's fuel efficiency (ISP) matters much more than its raw thrust, and the exact amount of fuel is less important than the mass ratio (i.e. the number you get when you divide the mass of the whole thing with full fuel tanks by its mass when empty). Both of those work together to determine your craft's "delta-v potential." There's an awesome website that explains exactly how that works in layman's terms. tl;dr: Your problem might be that you just have Too Much Rocket.

Thanks for the link! I'll take a better look at it later tonight, when my unlimited bandwidth kicks in, but it looks like it might be quite useful.

Nicely done, and congratulations! Docking really is one of the harder skills the game throws at you. Glad you stuck with it.

Nicely done! It's always fun to read mission reports like these. Some day I should go through that backlog of screenshots I've got and write up one myself.

Nicely done! From what reading I've done on the subject, there's usually a series of tracking stations on the ground that monitor the craft's trajectory and take readings relayed by the craft's instruments. They also typically cross-check their data by asking the astronauts to give the readings on the cockpit instruments as well if it's a manned mission.

Indeed. There's that whole "Public discussion of moderator actions" thing. Which is why this thread is now about this man's music (and his afro):

I think what Nova's trying to say is that: Yes, it's a technical problem, but it's one that's more trouble to solve than would really merit the effort. EDIT: Crossposted with the man himself.

I have to agree with Tristavius there. The problem isn't so much one of the information not being available, it's more a high "signal-to-noise" ratio, especially from people who take other's knowledge of technical jargon for granted. EDIT: And Eric S. makes a good point as well, which I think ties in with mine. Those who grasp these things intuitively are less likely to catch the bits that other people's brains get snagged on and try to smooth them out.

On a related note: What happens when you have something landed on the surface of one planet, then another body clips through it coming from "under" the lander? Has anyone investigated that?

Nice! Added to the list. Glad to hear it! I'll keep an eye out for other quality tutorials I can scrounge up. Maybe this thread will even spur some of the more knowledgeable users who hang out around here to write a few.

One frame a second? All the way to orbit? That is dedication, right there. I'd say this calls for nothing less than a full-on party.

No problem It's good to a series that specializes in one area, especially for teaching more advanced concepts and tricks to players who already know what they're doing generally but are looking for new ways to get even better.

Looks quite useful. I've gone ahead and added this series to my little list, assuming you don't mind.

Not exactly the best example to use: Sheldon is basically a textbook Insufferable Genius whose teaching methods are defeated as much by his own social awkwardness as by Penny's ignorance. He honestly does suck at teaching. EDIT: Thanks! Looks like it'll be a great addition to the list.

Thanks for the vote of confidence! Added a few new tutorials to the list. I won't post every time I do this, since I might get in trouble for doing things like double-posting, but since it's a new thread I want to keep it close to the top.

It's funny that you're posting this now; the same sort of thought (from a different forum) inspired me to try to compile links to different tutorials into a single thread over in the "How-To" section. Unfortunately, it seems like the Great Forum Kraken ate most of the more recent tutorials, many of which haven't been replaced.

Nicely done. Hope to see what the crew discovers at Jool. Also:

Welcome to the forums! So are you going to use Stimpy's rule set for the campaign, or do you have your own worked out? If the latter, feel free to share details.

I'm going to interpret "non-fiction fiction" as meaning "realistic fiction." In general, anything by Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, or Arthur C. Clarke. They've written tons of quite well-researched science fiction, and they don't skimp out on creating good stories and relateable characters, either.

Obviously, the artist wanted to paint this awesome marble right in front of his face, and just filled in the panorama in the background from his imagination.

One suggestion: If you're only uploading still images, uploading them to Youtube videos is a horribly inefficient way to do it. I'd recommend finding a good image hosting website instead and uploading your screenshots to them. I use Photobucket, but Imgur is another popular choice around here.

I've got a few recommendations I could give, but first: Would you prefer fiction, or non-fiction?