Mephane

This is great news. I was worried that sending stuff would mean completely forfeiting large portions of the available science. I even started a new game in career mode where I brought back all experiment results to avoid what now turns out to be a moot problem, lol. Thanks for the heads-up.

Sure you can stage, using a method I like to call "explosive destructive staging", i.e. when one stage is burnt out, let the stage above that simply destroy the empty one below with its engine flames. Edit: Oh I see, the OP meant no damage to anything whatsoever, I inititally read it as "no damage to the capsule".

So far I assumed (never tested this) the reduction in science point yield due to transmission loss is completely lost. Do you mean that if, say, a sample is worth 100 points, but transmission only nets 40%, i.e. 40, the difference of 60 points remains in the science pool for that specific biome, instead of being lost forever?

My first flag on the Mun said "it's only a model".

How could I miss this video? Awesome changes incoming there!

This alone makes it impossible to reach c. Infinite mass translates into infinite kinetic energy, or if you want to approach it the other way round, infinite kinetic energy translates into infinite mass. I think what a lot of people don't realize about relativity, especially the famous equation e=mc², is that it has to be taken absolutely literally. Mass is energy, energy is mass. When something accelerates towards c, the very kinetic energy it thus gains itself is mass, which has to be accelerated, too. This leads us to the rocket equation on steroids, not only do you need exponentially more energy (i.e. fuel) to accelerate both the payload and all that additional fuel, but you also need to accelerate the mass of the kinetic energy itself.

No, he is right. Especially when the OP then claims to have quit trying because "I got bored". This is like coming here and saying "I am bored and lazy, now entertain me."

Even if the game engine could handle it (theoretically possible on modern hardware if you simulate fewer huge parts instead), it would never be stable and need constant adjustment not to collide with the planet. The same is true in reality, a ring around a gravitational mass is in a highly unstable positon (as is any solid Dyson Sphere, hence nowadays the more common notion is that of a huge swarm of individual satellites mostly enclosing a star, but orbiting each on their own).

Nice one! P.S.: is the Mainsail only used to quickly drain the oxidizer, or also to give it a stronger push towards the VAB?

Asteroids. I am so going to populate a future asteroid belt, trojan cloud etc. with probes, bases, ultra-slowly orbiting habitats.

Score: 2872 Pure stock. Solid fuel (sepatrons) only used to remove the parachute block afterwards. VAB: Descent: Score! Craft file: http://www./download/x56nt1chm33b1ho/Orange_Tank_April_Fools_Challenge.craft

I think it was meant in jest. With that size, other stuff is more likely to dock to it instead of the other way round.

Needs more struts.^^

That's the Kerbal spirit! May I use this as my new signature?

To be honest, I did not think of that, either. I always drive my rovers with A/SAS off and rover controls bound to numpad.

Okay, the big question is, is Mechjeb capable of automatically landing a craft like that, even when it has no probe body (maybe only possible since 0.21)? Because if the engine ignited, it seems very much like an automated powered descend...

As is my tradition after each major patch, I landed on the Mun. At the edge of a crater. Inside another crater. Did I mention the new craters are awesome? The rectangular thing halfway out of the image is the flag Jepediah planted. The floaty bit right above the landing leg is a solar cell, this demonstrates quite clearly how stuff generally floats off the surface of some fuel tanks.

I want to remind everyone of a simple fact: if attitude can be kept manually, a ship definitely has enough attitude control systems (gimbal+torque+rcs+control surface); if the same ship fails to fly straight with ASAS on, the ASAS is at fault, not the craft's design. So before you add more reaction weels and wings first try manually whether you can work against any possible imbalance or whatever it is making you drift off course. For example. if it pulls right on its own, yet pressing A manages to completely counteract that, it means the ship already has all it needs to fly straight.

If you had read at least part of these 30 pages, you'd have seen that there are people who claim it works fine, and people who claim otherwise. There may very well be a bug that applies only under specific conditions which none of us has any idea about. Trust me, sometimes bugs can be triggered by the most unrelated thing you would never think of, software is very complicated like that. The fact that so many experience it not to function properly (with "properly" being defined as the way it was described in the dev blog post I linked and quoted above*), it certainly is not an issue of all these people only doing something wrong with their rockets. *Come to think about the blog post again: there was so much rejoicing at the video demonstration. People would not have cheered if what had been shown were a replacement of the ASAS "attitude lock" with a mere "soft kill rotation" functionality.

Quote from the dev blog post, emphasis mine: Also check out the video posted in the blog post. It is clearly meant to keep a craft's attitude just like the old one, but now more smoothly, and allowing player input to override each axis individually, then keeping the new attitude, when the player releases control, as the new target attitude. The thing is, it appears to try to do exactly what is described, but fail to apply sufficient torque, using only a small fraction of what is available (thus the straightforward "moar reaction wheels" solution fails). My guess is a simple error in the calculation of the amount of torque it needs to apply, might just be a single comma in off by one place somewhere.

If you have to objects close to each other with the same speed and direction, they are in the same orbit. There is physically no way to have two craft stand still relative to each other for a moment without them being in the same orbit. Thus reaching the situation you described is exactly the same as matching orbits.

To the contrary. When their speed is reduced, their energy also is (physicists would rather word this the other way round though). What you are probably thinking of is impulse. Transfer of energy and transfer of impulse are two completely different beasts, and can go hand in hand or in opposite directions, depending on the situation.

Well energy can not be "used up", of course! It has to go somewhere, and the only place it has to, is the spaceship.

Woah, I did not know about this concept. This is totally something Kerbals would do. XD

All purchases get one piece of 100% authentic rocket debris* for free. *Only while supply lasts. Pickup by customer only.