Stelith61

Vall is awesome! For mining bases? It's between Laythe and Tylo, so it can fuel anything in orbit of either of those too. Much easier to get off of and break orbit as well. Exploration? If you had a good rover... man, some of those mountains would make good jumps. And those black-and-white rocks! Landing? It's quite obvious if you're gonna hit an obstacle, and it has the lowest gravity of the inner 3 moons. Laythe? Water is a pain and it's only attraction is the Oxygen. Tylo? Big and annoying. Can't say muchh about Bop and Pol becasue I have yet to venture there.

I say the aerospike. A single one of them is unusable (without part clipping) on an upper stage, and they aren't that efficient anymore, nor powerful enough to replace an LVT-30 (which weighs less) and they don't Gymbal. They suit a niche market - SSTO's, and only certain ones, there are better options than the aerospike. Ions are too underpowered to be of any use if you don't want 35 minute burns. The poodle however, is great. It's good for Shuttles around the LKO system. Poodle+Tank+3 Man Pod+RCS can go LKO-Mun-Minmus-LKO without refuelling. It also has the highest Gymbal range, 3.0 degrees. The big white radials? Great for skycranes! I've built an entire Minmus base using ships that went LKO-Minmus base landing on just those engines. Two of them gives a more delta/v on a ship than q poodle does, with space to have things underneath. You could say radial mounted Nervas, but man those things are huge. The ant? The ant can land small probes on Gilly, Ike, Minmus, Mun, Give probes enough d/v to do transfers around the joolian system, and fine tune geostationary or whateversynchronous orbits. ANY probe i deploy anywhere has this engine. unless of course, it's like kuiper-belt-orbiting, then I use an Ion for even finer tuning. The Oscar-B also gives a useful place to mount scientific equiptment or solar panels on Stayputnik orbiters.

I've gone all Scott Manley on this, making a calculator and doing the math manually before I can even get to a KSP-running computer. By the way, what're the orbits of Roche and the Expedition like?

If we include a heat shield, can we then aerobrake the Asteroid in kerbins aatmosphere? The extra weight would lower the rockets size.

A tree grows every time a kerbonaut dies. Hence 2/3rds the planet is covered in forests.

Basically a thread for anyone's witty captions, maybe the Devs could even whack more in the next update? I dunno! Lets get started anyway! -Depressiurizing Benzels -Remodulating phase conduits -Reading manual -Buying space groceries Got any funny ones? Shoot! If you can tell me where "depressiurizing benzels" comes from, you win a cookie

Seeing as I'm a little bored; I'll list them in detail. Boring, excruciating, detail. Kerbol: Moho: Eve: Hyperion II, Alaska II, VI. Perciei IV. Gilly: Proteus I, Takumi I Kerbin: Geostat II, Gladius Commsat, Sapphire Alpha. [Returned Capsules: Proteus II-M, Astro VII, VIII] Mun: [Flags: Athenia Hills, Spartica Cliffs, Artemia Depression, Amymone Flats] Minmus: Cosmos IV [Flags: Von Braun landing, Cochrane Cliffs, Zephram Hill] Duna: Hyperion I, III, XI, X. Alaska I, VII. Perceiei II. Vanguard (Ion Plane). Ruby Station. Ike: Takumi II, Proteus II, Perciei V Dres: Hyperion VI, VIII. Alaska III, V. Perciei III. Jool: Laythe: Hyugens II (On my laptop I also have a Rover on Vall, a Vall Lander, and a Tylo Orbiter) Eeloo: Alaska IV Welp, that's one way to burn 10 minutes.

Not to forget it would be much easier to get off of Vall, considering the lack of atmosphere and marginally lower gravity. I had plans for a huge multi-part-roving base, but balancing things built in the SPH on a Interplanetary stage is a pain and was uncontrollable by the time I got to do the Vall Transfer. We need more accurate COG/COT markers! I had 3 modules tested and ready to leave - Crewed Command Module, Solar Power Module and a Fuel module, along with a Rover Station I'd yet to finish lining up docking ports for. Then All I had to do when mining was implemented was send out Probes, Mining equipment and some crew. I also had plans to try and build a Laythe SSTO that could fly from Vall to Laythe, Land, And retur to the Vall Base/Vall Station. When On the Laythe, the crew could explore there, without having to mine the fuel there. Also, if you want to get to Jool without the hairy aerobraking in the thick atmosphere, you can use a reverse gravity assist to get into a high orbit, that would cross Tylo and possibly Laythe if done properly.

Great man, Love it! Have you thought about exploring Vall at all?

Hack it into a fuel tank, see what happens. Probably hilarity.

I usually try to make sure I keep everyone alive. The only death I've had during an actual mission so far (excluding the early days of KSP-ing, where many brave Kerbonauts died) has been when I was over-exited with the jetpack on Gilly, and slammed poor Calbro into the ground. Any mission where I might lack the required fuel to do it, I quicksave after gaining escape velocity from Kerbin, so I could abort if I fail later. Simulations, all simulations. Did this yesterday with yet another failed Dres mission. Sent em to the Mun. I also have an abort protocol for my launcher. Abort key disbles the engines, and because staging is screwy, I then have to decouple the pod manually. Rise to AP then hit chutes. Kerbals saved.

Around 40. 55 if you include my testing save. My oldest flights still running are my early Hyperion probes to Duna and Eve, along with the only remaining Cosmos probe, Cosmos VII, Landed on Minmus. They are around 34-35 years old.

Took me 3 days to work out the throttle. I got into orbit relatively soon, but I sucked at actual rocket building so all my rockets sucked. Simultaneously over AND underbuilt. I got better.

For an upper stage at 40+km you only need a 0.9TWR, But for lower stages I usually use about 1.3 or 1.5.

It's about 5 km wide at the top if i remember correctly. I measured it at one point (very inaccurately). The lower areas are barely 400m, if even 200m.

I considered this, but if you aren't waiting for a phase angle a trip - one way - to Dres takes 6km/s of delta v. The inclination change alone is 850m/s or so, maybe closer to 900m/s. The canyon is flat bit, steep bit, flat bit, steep bit, in steps. I did intense exploration of that place. In terms of how powerful the ships need to be, if i remember it's smaller than Mun, but still way to large for RCS landers. Rovers get minimal grip, and a rover that could do 20-30 m/s on kerbin can only manage a max of about 5-10m/s. My first (and only, I wanna do an Eve ascent now..) Manned mission there abandoned the Landing stage and orbiting stage of the mission plan, and just flew by. I would have no delta/v left in the ship to return after orbital insertion. Despite all this, however, I have 2 landers, a rover, a Geosynch Probe and a low orbit probe there. I don't reccomend it for manned missions, Jool ends up easier to travel to because of its low inclination and large gravity well, along with aero-braking allowing a low delta/v entry, or a tylo gravity assist allowing you to leave/enter the Joolian system easily.

I did that in 0.18.4. Ladders, Sepratrons, and small hardpoints. And a parachute.

Wings on duna are basically completely useless for anything other than little ion gliders. A stable glide path is nearly 200m/s.

It changed for me. A professional used to be someone who could Dock. Then someone who could go to Duna and back. Then someone with a huge space station. Someone who could lift 50 tons to orbit. 60. 70. Someone with a moon base. Someone who's done an Eve return mission. You cant just split people into pros/not pros. I for one, have not made a spaceplane SSTO. I have however, got 2 bigass rocket ones.

No kerbals have been lost since the early days, for me. Except for on the gilly mission. The ships seconf-in-command got a little jetpack-happy and slammed into gilly with enough force to die.

Partway between a purist and a pilot. Maybe a little engineer in me.

I want something with a Miranda Style geology. Prefferably around the next gas giant maybe?

EVA'd to and from Gilly's surface.

He'd probably get slung off by wind resistance. Ever tried eva-ing when flying a plane? It's almost never ends well (in my experience). Unless, of course, you are special agent Kirrim. But: New personal best! 2184.4m/s. Mach 6.42. Just short of the next best. [Manned][stock][Mach 6 Club] http://imgur.com/BSenBM6,lzTkrc8#0 High res I'm getting good at these gliding landings. Identical craft, but with 2 more intakes and struts. Because re-entry effects on struts look awesome.

Unless you have something like a quad-core cpu and an amazing pc, don't try to use FFSplit. My computer can run 200part ships at reasonable graphics settings (although not 550 part ones at lowest settings), but FFSplit is way too intensive. Even with 240p video.