Tw1

Remember the launch tower? I decided to land on it one day. Made a special vehicle, with precise RCS thrusters. Tens of them. Then I decided it was too slow. Courtesy of crewmainfest and Damned robotics: Party on the tower! On its invisible surface... They were going to watch every launch. Then I discovered they are considered to be "on the launchpad" and must be cleared before rockets are launched. So I made my own tower. The media tower is still there today.

Love the XKCD reference in the thread title. The "W's planet explorer 'Martin'" touched down on Duna without a problem. It even had rover-probes, developed in a rush before the launch window. Sadly, none of the rover-probes lasted more than a week. Controlling them with a radial mechjeb thing on the bottom turned out to be a bad idea. Landed a similar rocket on the Mun: It wasn't supposed to land pointing that way... But wondering if it could take of like that inspired a new line of vessels. I wanted to make somthing like this go further: (Aeropod "Dino" crew posing proudly after a successful test flight to another continent.) Unfortunately, I ended up with a fiery fountain: I did eventually get the funny looking thing to the Mun: After some failures: But after about a minute: After successfully launching small things with jet engines instead of boosters, I tried upscaling things. It didn't have the thrust to get up on its own, and I had no room for radial boosters, so: Basically.. it didn't work. But my abort system did though! I think that's enough for one post....

We must do this for science! Your zoom camera (great part btw) is on Jeb's vehicle, so I've just got to get him to stand in front.... "Stand here Jeb!" "Jeb?" ... Jeb is wandering off to climb one of Dres's hills...

I get the impression these stats might not necessarily mean that Bill is not smart. Intelligent people often do dumb things. "He may be dumb, but he's not stupid" He'll have a few advisors anyway, to check up on him. Jeb is happy to work with the less experienced kerbals, but Bill was always a team player. Bill for mayor!

The cool thing about a Kerbal cemetery, is rather than having R.I.P. on their graves, they just have R.I: Respsawn In! When a Kerbal dies, everyone misses him, but we know he will rise again. I believe in Jesus as my lord and savior, and it's a bit like that for me in real life. Friends and relatives die, but I know I will see them again in the new creation. Except for Kerbals, it's more of a cross between Doctor Who style regeneration, and coming back as a zombie. So rest in piece, brave Kerbalnauts. For you will rise again!

Most of the debris I want to keep have a command pod, or a mechjeb unit on them, so I save them as craft, rather than debris. Like my first Mun lander, which was a one- way trip. That, and the broken leg that made the fateful voyage one way are still there. I keep the persistent debris high, but do a clean up mission with a sunbeam laser armed drone when debris starts to lag a place up.

Is that done with indesign? It would be great if the Kerbals' Newspapers did end up looking like this. It has that great newspaperish character.

Wait, Jeb has a nose?

Get crewmanifest. Problem solved.

Mechjeb! At least for the telemetry and smart ASAS. Kerbal Alarm clock! know transfer window times and when you're approaching a maneuvering node, and have it stop for you! Protractor! Helps with burn and phase angles. KSPX! Some of these parts will be stock someday. Engineer redux! If you feel like reducing the guess work in ship design. Subassembly loader! Save sections of spaceship for later use. Like reliable landers and launchers. Mapsat! Locate anomalies, and map the worlds from orbit! Muon detector! Helps you find those anomalies (easter eggs). Ordan Industries Telescope! or Hubbazoot's zoom camera. Crewmanifest! Choose your Kerbals, add extras when on the pad, move them around the ship.. Damned robotics! Because you could do with a robot arm on your spaceship. Novapunch remix has some structural parts I find very useful. The super struts alone save time. If you're willing to jump decades ahead of current technology there is the ion engine pack with more powerful ion engines, and hybrid ion/chemical engines. (I personally think these need a new model.) That aught to get you going. Or clog up your computer and overload your brain...

I'd appreciate a part that can be used to blast disused stages to smithereens. Ideally, it would be tiny, and triggered in the staging sequence, but only actually go of once it's 500m away from your ship. As I use liquid boosters to give ion probes extra oomph when sending them to the depths of the solar system, I sometimes end up with interplanetary debris. That and my one man munar rescue rocket uses its second stage for the transfer burn, but the final stage for capture, sometimes leaving the disused second stage on a Kerbin escape trajectory. Most of the time, my transfer stage gets used for the deorbit burn, sometimes even for most of the landing. So it crashes and is destroyed. Except for when it isn't:

SAS units don't help turn the ship? I was so sure they did... Not when the SAS is actually on, of course. They aught to, that'd be handy. Real spaceships use reaction wheels.

I like Bob. Sure, spaceflight makes him nervous, but under that frowning, screaming exterior lies a thirst for discovery equal and beyond that of his peers. He's the guy who screams, terrified, on a roller coaster, yet still decides to go again. (At least, I hope so, otherwise I'd feel guilty for taking him from his home in the space station, down to Kerbin and then blasting him away from there on a trip to a completely unexplored planet.) I like to think of Jeb as a former test pilot, Bill as a former engineer, and Bob as an ex-researcher. (Before they were astronauts that is.) That said, I'd vote for Bill. He's calm, sensible, though not unflappable. He would undertake sensible city planning options. Nothing too wasteful, stuff that does the job as good as possible. Inspite of that, he's still Kerbal enough to try a wild idea when convinced it might work. That said as well, none of them seem cut out for politics to me. Though they'd definitely be popular with the media...

What's this dapper creation? So suave... wait what? Introducing, The Cube!* Destroying debris in style! *More of a rectangular prism. Normally, I agree with Squad's no weapons stance. But this time, there was a job to be done! Until a structural failure lost me one of the wheels. A panel had broken loose, and the vehicle was immobile. I could've ended flight, but that would've left more debris. So I turned my heat ray inwards... Close enough. Clean up operations continued with a more practical machine. Much better. Kerbals woke up to much less laggy launchings. Now, all I need is to motivate myself to clean my room to the same extent... Also, I think I'll show my Mega Munar Load lifter, as the thread it appeared in was lost. How Kerbals get things out of their buildings, we'll never know. Here is one of its smaller siblings (customised for Minmus), taking of from the launchpad. That accent vehicle was designed before I learnt I could transfer vessels from the SPH to the VAB, and launched things like this vertically from the runway. It works well. This family of vehicles has been instrumental in the construction of my Mun base.

That was supposed to get into orbit. Opps. That tip would be white hot - cone = bad shape to re-enter with. One of the "Sons of Adam" (Adam was the probe that carried them there) Unmanned mini-rovers on its way down. I think that's Abel in the pic. Testing a vessel intended to return nine kerbals from the Mun base. These flame-proof parachutes are amazing. I worry if we'll be able to land without burning them of once heat is added.

Multiple satellite mapping? That'd make mapping Moho so much simpler!

At least my images are still all there on imagur. I get to use them all afresh!

Same here! Been playing since 0.18 Heard about the game on XKCD, and jumped at the idea. I'm now probably slightly too obsessed... I've always been a space nut, as long as I can remember. I was explaining aspects of black holes to my teachers in year six, and designing starwars style spacecraft in early year seven. I'm studying to become a landscape architect, but also have ambitions to write sci-fi. I love designing things, and games make it seem so easy, no drafting, model making, essays...

I've found the tricks to a good launch vehicle are keep it bigger at the bottom and be a stickler for symmetry and evenness. Reinforce everything with struts. A good side effect of using the heavy mainsail engines is they keep weigh nearer to the bottom. Longer tanks on lower stages might also help with that. I like to radially attach SAS units to central tanks, it helps to have control in case the rocket tips the wrong way. I tend to only use separatrons on side mounted tanks, angling them perpendicular to make sure the booster clears the other engines. My rule of thumb is they go half way between the radial decoupler and the engine. Lately, I've been building launch vehicles with the boosters arranged in a square formation, (radial decouplers at 90 degrees from each other) but simple circular arrangements have served me well previously. I once managed to launch a 100 ton payload. Each booster consisted of a jumbo tank, and a mainsail. The top had seven boosters, six radially placed around a centre one. This was asparagus staged. Below that were seven more boosters, with pipes to ensure fuel levels in each tank stayed equal. Around that were twelve more boosters, with fuel draining from their tanks to the ones in the centre. It needed so many struts, lagged a fair bit and was hard to control, but it got there. Just. It didn't help that the payload was asymmetrical, and required the whole rocket to be spun as it went up. And that the command pod was upside down. That payload had to burn its engines for a long time, and even reentered the atmosphere before it achieved orbit. But it made it, and then went to Duna, where it is waiting to carry my Kerbalnaughts home. But I'm never doing that again.

Introducing *drum roll* *fanfare* The Space Opera House! And orbital performing arts and sci-fi convention centre of prestige! It can host up to 100 Kerbals. (Probably.) (With shuttle modules docked) And it's got lots of windows! In a semi-synchronous orbit, it's only 2 hours away!* (*This is a theoretical minimum.) Staffed by a permanent crew of four. There are ladders on the surface to assist guests on EVA. Useful as no one's thought of bringing magnetic shoes yet. And it's shiny. The best place to watch a space opera.

So Awesome. The colours used in that version of Kerbin are beut. I so hope colours in the game could be this good someday.