pvtnum11

Decided to tackle the new demo version with a Mun landing and return trip. I'd done it before, but since I finished building my desktop I figured I should record it and toss it up on Youtube. My two gripes with the current demo version is the lack of Ablative heat shield and the loss of the LV-909 Terrier engine. So in some ways, the demo version is harder than the current full release. So I guess that made it a nice challenge, since Mun landing and return trips in the full version are pretty much cake for me now. Shoutout to Anton Petrov of 'What Da Math' for inspiring me to get off my butt and attempt this. (a thousand pardons for the background child and coughing, I didn't edit the vid at all) 1.0 Demo round-trip Mun landing

Great Kraken, giver of Astrophysics, Celestial Mechanics and Mathematics, we hold these precepts to be noble, pure and true - that Mass divided by Thrust gives us the TWR, and that the TWR times the local gravity value gives us the Truth - if our brave Pilots can land our chariots of fire and worked metal onto the distant bodies that You have placed in the heavens for us to explore. The fool heeds not this precept and does not obey Your ordinances, which are inviolable and inmutable for all eternity (or until the Config is modified by Your hand). Great Kraken, grant us the ability to work the numbers and derive accurate data from the numbers. Give us the wisdom to forsee good engineering from shoddy work, and bless our works with skilled Pilots that can efficiently use our creations to improve Kerbal-kind's knowledge of Your heavens and the work of Your hands. Great Kraken, let not our path be led astray by bloated designs that affect our delta-v negatively, but quicken our minds to always build our creations light and nimble - for this is the simplest way to maximize delta-v, by keeping our payloads as light as we dare. But let us always strive to remember the safety of the brave crews that fly in our creations, and let us not send our fellow Kerbals to certain deaths. Great Kraken, we give You the praise for allowing us, Your humble servants, the opportunity to explore, catalog, obtain data and learn. We do these things in Your name. Akerb, and akerb.

Woe unto you, Son of Kerbal, for you have stirred up the anger of Kraken by committing the gravest of errors - NaN. For you have set it upon your heart to achieve a perfectly inclined orbit, when "pretty close" would have sufficed. Were you not pleased with 0.0 degrees? Pride shall be your undoing, that and the Crash shall come upon you and the entire universe, because you have done this great error and should not have done so. Kraken shall now deliver swift judgement to the Savefile and corrupt it, as it is tainted by NaN. Fear not, your essence and .config settings will be carried over to a new Savefile, and you shall, after a time, regain your position among the stars. But remember this thing, and repeat not the error of NaN, or you will be doomed to repeat this curse yet again.

Random blurb of text I dreamed up today: Holy Sacrament of the Delta-V "Know, Son of Kerbal, that this is true and tested, and blessed by the Kraken - Delta-V. You shall be diligent to learn the Sacrament. You shall do, and you shall understand." "Do this not, and your understanding of Rocketry will be dimmed, as if viewed through a marred glass. You shall be left adrift in the depths of space, the forsaken voids between SOI's, and you will be at the mercy of others." "Do this, and you will accomplish much. For who sets forth on a mission without first counting the cost? Only the fool. The fool says in his heart, "I have much booster, I can do this." The wise Engineer first considers Dry Mass and Wet Mass, then observes Specific Impulse. The Engineer applies the Natural Log, and achieves Truth - Delta-V. The Engineer is praised in KSC for exercising this great Sacrament, Administrators hold the Engineer in high regard and their name is listed in the Flight Manual for the Flight Crew to revere and trust in, for the Engineer has been wise to rightly divide the numbers and obtain a true and surefast performance figure." "Son of Kerbal, be as the Engineer."

I've made orbit with the original version. But I only stabbed 'record' well after the launch, and when I realized that I just maybe had pulled it off. https://youtu.be/n6puv3LW9QE

Yes, a 30-to-50 part increase would alleviate a bunch of problems, but would be sort of a band-aid. Not that I really mind the 30-part limit as it sits now, but I wouldn't mind seeing it resolved in a more sensible manner, either.

For fun, trap a Kerbal inside a bay while on EVA. If there's not enough room in the bay, they'll flop and twitch around, possibly leading to either broken parts or if you're really lucky, a Kraken summoning.

I think it needs an Alternator so it can generate electric power when running.

Maybe a different type of constraint for the VAB: You need Tier 2 VAB to play with 2.5-meter parts or any part that weighs more than a certain amount - say five tons a part. Y'know, overhead bridge crane weight handling limits or something. Tier 3 lets you use teh 3.75-meter parts and/or allows you to use any single part, regardless of mass.

I'm still trying to wrap my brain around how gravity turns are supposed to work now with the new aero - two to three minutes of nail-biting terror and wondering if I'm going to kill someone again. Only got about three years of bad habits to unlearn, amirite? Once out of atmo, everything is totally cool. I got better at making SSTO's after a bit, but they're still difficult and I prefer rockets mostly. SSTO's and spaceplanes are hella cool and those that make it look easy are hella cool as well.

Remember, this was purely in jest, and the overwhelming majority of these applied to me at one time. (some still do, lols)

I'm okay with it. It's pretty trivial to upgrade the VAB for that 255-part limit. No, I usually run into the 18-ton Launchpad limitation first, but the Pad is even easier to upgrade than the VAB. The new auto-compete contracts for certain records makes unlocking both VAB and the Pad almost a foregone conclusion after just a suborbital hop. It's a non-issue for my long-term plans.

Did a test stream using the Demo version. Managed to get to Mun and back. Filled the tech tree in no time (it's only something like five or six nodes total).

Definite top-ten. Maybe in the top five.

Note! This is purely for the sake of humor, and mostly built off *my* experiences early on in KSP. No offense intended. If you have examples to add, feel free, but NO MENTIONING ANY NAMES. Most of these can be fixed by some reading up on the forums, wiki articles, and just trial and error. You Might Be A Scrub In KSP If.... 1 Terms like Periapsis and Apoapsis confuse you. 2 You mix up Periapsis and Apoapsis on a regular basis. 3 You take the "Moar Boosters" thing literally. 4 Parachute deployment happens during launch quite often. 5 Half your part count is devoted to struts, because "Moar Struts" must be good advice. 6 Bigger = Better, right? 7 Units of speed and distance are frequently stated to be Imperial units, like feet, miles and so on. 8 Mun landings are nigh-impossible without heavy use of HUGE rocket parts, most of which are from mods. 9 The phrase "Rocket Equation" means nothing to you. 10 It doesn't matter if our spacecraft only draws a little bit of power for SAS usage, we need a TON of solar panels - they look good. 11 Career mode? Only if it's set to Easy and then tweaked to give me a huge amount of funds, rep and science to start. 12 Going to land on the Mun? Get into a 100km orbit (or was that 100 miles?) and then burn backwards until you stop. Fall all the way down for a landing - which usually needs a rescue mission. 13 You are in awe over folks that can pull off Mun landings without any mods at all. 14 You cannot fathom the act of pulling off a rendezvous or landing without Mechanical Jebediah. 15 The most complex rocket you made was specifically built to destroy the entire KSC facility in one launch, but you somehow can't manage a trip to Duna. 16 Spaceplanes and SSTO's run off of distilled witchcraft and arcane arts, and are to be avoided at all times. 17 Ooo, that makes a nice pic. (whips out cellphone) 18 "Guys, why can't my game run on [insert ten-year-old system here]?" 19 "Cool rocket, can I get the craft file?" 20 "Yeah, I've been to Duna once, so you could say that I'm somewhat of a KSP expert now." 21 "Check out my youtube vid that I recorded with a potato!" 22 (bonus) "Hey guys, check out this offer for some Raybans for 90% off!" Again, this is in jest and for a laugh. Most of these have applied to me at one time or another. Feel free to add your scrub-tastic noob moments below!

Scored a new microphone, so I tossed up a junky little plane and managed to shatter it mid-flight. The new aero model is FUN.

A variant of this: Beta - I like to use solar panels as dummy radiators for LV-N's, looks more realistic. 1.0 - I like to use *anything* as actual radiators for my LV-N's, as they have a habit of exploding.

It's probably been done by dozens of folks already, but here's my first three flights of an unmodded normal-difficulty Career in 1.0. I don't think I'm doing too shabby - not as radical as some of the experts, but competent enough that I don't look like a complete idiot. Mun flyby to follow.

I've managed to do up a Mun orbit contract in Career, hoping to nail that first landing on the next flight. First two flights were suborbital, third was LKO, fourth was Mun flyby on a free return trajectory, fifth was Mun orbit and back. Sixth should be landing.

Way back in 0.16, after trying out the 0.13 demo version.

Ian's List of KSP Version Comparisons - Beta vs 1.0... (tongue in cheek, this is supposed to be funny - purely my own opinions, or cherry-picked out of the community. Really, this is a gag post, chllax) On Aerodynamics: Beta - I like soupodynamics, nice and predictable. 1.0 - EVERYTHING I KNOW IS WRONG On Re-entry Beta - Porcupine landers straight from Minmus = no problem 1.0 - WHY IS MY POD FACING DOWN? CHUTES AREN'T ABLATIVE! On typical Career progression strategies Beta - first we do this, then this, then unlock this, and upgrade this and bam, you can do a profitable Mun trip only four flights in. 1.0 - I am going to murder whoever redid the gorram tech tree. On Planes Beta - I keep hearing about those poor sods with FAR ripping planes apart, sucks to be them. 1.0 - IT SUCKS TO BE ME On Ascent profiles into LKO Beta - 10km straight up, turn 45-degrees to the east, maintain that heading more or less until your Ap is out of atmo, done. So easy my kid can do it. 1.0 - Great, spun out *again*. On Contracts Beta - we need more mods that add contracts. 1.0 - Wow, they actually listened to us? Automatic world-record completions, woot! On the Demo version 0.18.3 - jeeze, this version is old, but hey, Mun landings are simple. 1.0 - Why aren't there any gimbaled engines...? Or articulating fins...? SPAM REACTION WHEELS EVERYWHERE On female Kerbals Beta - I hear this is supposed to be a thing soon. 1.0 - Haven't seen Jeb around lately, seems that he's been replaced by the new hotshot pilot... On mods Beta - Finally got my list of desired mods all sorted out and everything. Life is good. 1.0 - OMG WHY HASN'T [insert mod here] BEEN UPDATED YET On difficulty Beta - This game is starting to cater to filthy "Casuals". 1.0 - Okay, I know we wanted it harder, but THIS ISN'T WHAT WE MEANT On Version numbers Beta - Hey, we skipped 0.27, but cool, I guess... 1.0 - Hey, we REALLY skipped 0.95...! On Loading Times Beta - Jeeze, hurry up and load already. 1.0 - It's... it's done..? [angelic singing] Got additions? Post 'em up!

Stock Kerbal X. Took it to Mun and back.

I'm loving the update. Challenging again, and I'm liking that I have to relearn a lot of core skills I used to take for granted. The stuff that didn't change is still there, so at least it's not literally learning a brand new game (only about 20% of it).

When someone asks "how do I do [x]", and the first answer is "go watch a Scott Manley vid", the hairs on the back of my neck stand up - it seems like such a canned and lazy answer. I was booted from a Facebook KSP group over something completely unrelated to that KSP group (admin and I disagreed on something totally not KSP at all)... and I'm okay with that. I hate B9 for the huge and dizzying array of parts, but good golly the capsules in that pack are AWESOME. Although I do youtube stuff with the game for my own personal amusement, I kinda wish I had a larger subscription-base - but that's probably because I only just started to edit my stuff before uploading it. I've hit KSP-burnout twice. Might be hitting it now, but dang it, 1.0 is right around the corner...! Stay the course!

...you wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to bed until you've tried out that half-baked idea that woke you up in the first place. ...you consider yourself to be "quite skilled" at the game, however you probably are only average in the grand scheme of things. ...you try to devise some sort of "litmus test" in an attempt to accurately gauge a player's skill level. ...your friends try to get you into some totally awesome space combat game, but you spend *all* your time yelling at the screen about how "space doesn't work like that!" or "MOMENTUM, DANG IT!" or "What am I flying in, SOUP?" ...you've modded your game to the point of breaking it. ...you try to add things to the "you know you play too much KSP" list. ...you were "volentold" to be a subject matter expert in a group because you are quick to answer questions (whether you're correct or not is another matter, haha). ...you're finally at the point in which discussing MechJeb, and whether or not to use it, is no longer a "hot button" issue for you. ...you've taken a stab at editing the KSP Wiki. ...you write up "white papers" detailing some facet of your career progression, like a particular craft or details of a series of missions. ...you actually refer to that white paper for ideas on what to do next. ...that white paper has seen extensive editing as your career progresses. ...you get other people to buy you KSP merchandise. ...when your idea of a good date involves getting your wife to sit down with the game and try out a Mun-landing mission (and she totally did it). ...you have no idea what other games are about to release, since you're too busy with KSP in general to notice or care.