Shrike42

The Interceptor Mk 3: Simple, agile, and ... currently out of gas on approach to the south pole, having gone roughly 2/3 around the planet in 24 minutes. Liftoff! Even though there's just two flaps, it can easily take off on half throttle, and climb to 10km before I go to 100%. First attempt at the run on descent from 68km apoapsis. managed 2303.5 m/s or something. That's the Interceptor Mk 2, which has roughly half the Intake Air. It ran out of gas and landed in the mountains. In the dark. ... Any landing you can walk away from! Final speed at time of running out of gas: 2306 m/s. Excuse me while I try to land it. The front-loading of intakes seemed to make it harder to steer (kept trying to nose up more viciously than the Mark 2, because I didn't mirror the intakes on the underside), but as has been shown by other brave pilots, I could certainly go faster if I'd done more intakespamming, probably getting up to 2320ish. Mechjeb probably could've gotten it closer to the limit, not suffered a few minor flameouts, been better able to push as hard as possible at each intake air level... But this is still satisfying. Oddly, this was easier than the .17 version, because of the reaction wheels and better ASAS. Not to mention the experience I got from that run played heavily into my design and flightplan.

KSARA (sara, whatever will be, will be) [hm, that's a remarkably Kerbal sentiment, there.]. Kerbol System Advanced Reconnaissance Apparatus.

Breaking 2280 with 4.00 Intake air and a ceiling of 38k. Even threw on some generators so that my reaction wheels wouldn't run out of power. Gotta beat at least 2300! After reviewing the super-high-end manned craft, I think I'll be happy with 'very fast craft that still looks like an airplane'. I'm quite pleased with the design as well, it's extraordinarily stable and glides nicely at all fuel levels. 2300 m/s reached...! Um, how do I get a mission log?

I was doing that, too. It felt a bit odd compared to the old machingbird attempts, like I was getting more leeway in keeping my engines running. I had been thinking it was just since I hadn't played much KSP and definitely not done much high-altitude flight for many months... Also, with the reaction wheels, a high-altitude flameout is much less of a charlie foxtrot. Just flameout one engine, reduce throttle, and the ASAS corrects the heading smoothly. But in any case, my first design is too heavy by far. Can't break 2260. Gonna rethink it, try to avoid my old biplane designs now that stability is much more easily achievable.

Wow, the field is much more spread out now. I might have a chance, especially with the improved ASAS, to get 3rd placeish.

jefmajor. He's the guy who got me to buy KSP. And the point is that he's NOT good at it, but he tries really hard and learns. It's amazing to watch his development, then make a mistake. He's also genuinely funny. Not always for the kiddies, though.

Lighter is better; Once you're in orbit, you can get anywhere with just a few LV-Ns and a good tank of gas. Your Drive core currently could probably make the grand tour without any problems, and have enough fuel to do it twice. Lose the external orange tanks and half of those very-nicely placed engines, to save weight and make it easier to get into orbit.

This should only be a problem in-atmosphere, so I suggest using parachutes. Make it so they deploy from an action group so you can reuse them. Kerbals in EVA can repack the parachutes if they're close enough, so this would let you land your craft like a rocket on worlds without an atmosphere, and drift gently down on worlds with an atmosphere.

There's two ways to do this, effectively. 1. Saving all flight data for each step of the physics engine for some amount of time. This would massively bloat memory usage. 2. Maintain detailed state information of all components such that the parts that exploded can be created and attached and figured into the previous physics steps. This is tricky, but far less bloaty, and would be a huge amount of effort to do properly. As said, f5, f9.

ASAS is overly aggressive, and can easily make a ship with a lot of control surfaces or vectoring engines shake. To fix: 1. Don't have a ton of winglets on your rockets. 2. With planes, keep your control surfaces close to the middle. 3. Set up a custom action group on your lifter to toggle the gimballing of your droptank engines, steering only by the middle engine. 4. Make sure your RCS is symmetric around the center of mass; if possible, use only the linear RCS ports to help limit the number of places that ASAS will try to use to 'help'.

You're at maximum fuel efficiency when you burn prograde at periapsis; I'd suggest multiple smaller burns on multiple orbits, even though it's more tedious, because you can improve fuel economy that way, and have plenty of opportunities to correct your orbital inclination. Mechjeb does a 50/50 burn split around a manuver node (Note: I don't use MJ myself, this is just what I've heard here). If you do that with your periapsis, you'll likely have a much saner piloting experience doing 10 1 minute burns than 1 ten minute burn.

You're going to want to cruise at over 10k, I'd suggest 15k-18k, where your turbojets should work just fine on single or double intakes. To save weight, if you don't use the seats suggestion, the 1-man landercans should suffice, providing a small, lightweight container. As for 'set it and forget it' ASAS? I believe you can, since I seem to recall being able to walk away from my early machingbird challenges while they were in the air for up to 45 minutes. Something else that occurs to me: as you were saying that precise landing is a problem, perhaps you can use radial chutes to be more accurate (lower speed & altitude as you approach, nose up, kill engines, deploy chutes (action group, not stage, so you can deploy them again if needed) to halt forward velocity). With sufficient struts, you should be able to land the plane right-side up and ready to take off again. Something else to consider is the use of either a detachable rover with seats to cover the remaining distance, or having roverwheels on the plane itself to help it move over to the target zone.

In sandbox games, I started with dwarf fortress, and !!SCIENCE!! is still key to that community. In KSP, Kerbals are simply bad asses, and they have the distinct belief that "Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing". After that, it's all showmanship.

Get your wheels straight and flat.

Landed 50 Km from a big crater I wanted to investigate for anomalies (had , drove my rover away from the lander site (It's cool, it was made for it!) reached the crater, and then wound up going way too fast down the side of it, blowing up... Later, I learned that I had blown up just out of sight of the arch, confirmed by the upgraded rover. Oh, and then there was the base constructor rover I made that I landed in that SAME crater, just south of the arch. It tipped on its rear end, and couldn't be righted, even with careful ramming and lander-leg poking. Managed to get the other rover under it and use thrusters to push it up... over... And both rovers exploded.

Well, since there is no reason (in game) to have a base, your base just needs to be something that looks cool. You'll probably want to start simple, with a hitchhiker pod and some fuel tanks, adding rovers and more 'buildings' as you see fit. You can either try to make a big connected structure through docking, or simply try landing your buildings all in the same area. That can be challenging, so be sure to quicksave your flight before you try to land. What I'd suggest is that you go into the space plane hanger and make the buildings for your base as you'd want it to look on the ground, and then think about how you'd get it up into space and then back down onto the Mun safely. If you aren't sure how to make a heavy lifter, then you'll probably want to figure out asparagus staging. For heavy loads, you'll want to use mainsail engines, possibly using the skipper engine for circularizing. Lifters are extensively covered in various tutorials, and once you understand what's going on, you'll be pushing the wildest designs into space. Docking is another big topic that has been well-covered by others, but I'll try to give a quick summary: First, get something into orbit, and try to get the periapsis and apoapsis at about the same distance to make your orbit as circular as possible. I suggest a 160Km orbit, so you don't have to render Kerbin's surface. After that, get your second ship into orbit, select the thing you want to dock with, and try to get your periapsis aligned in both altitude and location (by burning at the periapsis of the first craft's orbit). Then get your ascending/descending nodes as close to zero as you can (by burning at the nodes). Then, since your apoapsis should be slightly higher or lower than that of the other craft, each time the two craft make a complete orbit, they'll get closer or further away from each other, like the hands on a clock. Once you're within ~10km (closer is better, but make sure you don't crash!), your navball should be set on 'target', which gives you the prograde and retrograde (green circle with a dot, green circle with an x) markers. What you want to do is burn retrograde when you're close, to slow the ships down relative to each other. When you've gotten that to near 0, you then look for the pink circle with a dot in it and burn towards that dot. That'll move you closer. Alternate burning retrograde with burning towards the ship you wish to dock with, and switch to RCS once you're within 150 meters. Make sure you drift on in as slow as you can! You'll need to line up the docking ports, and that can be very tricky. As to what rovers need: They need wheels, a control module/probe/seat, batteries, and some way of getting more power, either solar panels or reactors. You can add on other bits as well, sensors and such, but for now, just play around on Kerbin to see what works! Use struts to make sure everything is on nice and steady. Good luck!

The only time that Mods might reduce your fun is in challenges, or in showing off to the community. A good build is a good build, and there's no reason not to diversify parts for aesthetic or functional value. If the mod makes the game different but doesn't change the fundamental mechanics, no one is going to complain that you didn't calculate your TWR by hand. But if you have an engine that basically eliminates the concern of running out of fuel and try to show it off on an otherwise really amazing craft doing something difficult (Taking off from eve, for instance), you're going to get 'meh, anyone could do that'. Basically, use mods to enhance your experience, but be aware that using game-breaking mods/parts won't make stories and pictures that the community will enjoy as much as an ambitious failure. Unless you're VERY good at presentation.

Well, actually... As the arctic Ice cap has retreated, the Russians have been planting flags on the ocean floor to expand their territory for resource gathering and political purposes. And I'm pretty sure North Korea has claimed the moon and whatever else they can see as their own. The only current legitimate attempt at claiming areas for resources is from Planetary Resources, working on developing asteroid mining satellites.

The small i-beams can mount radially, and provide attachment points that are quite good for lengthening the wheelbase with girders.

I beg to differ. http://freerice.com Answer questions to provide rice to starving nations. http://fold.it/portal/ a protein folding game where anyone can work at helping scientists understand how proteins fold to create new treatments and understand diseases. Not to mention the psychological benefits of collaboration that games allow in ways unlike any other form of media.

In your defense... or something, I did make an attempt at it. Jeb will be in Thunderkerb 1, in geosynchronous orbit. Bill and bob will be the primary interplanetary rescue pilots, while Jeb designs cockamamie new rescue devices and gets himself stranded repeatedly. So that they can be tested.

If you can't land it at 1 m/s, you're probably not going to be able to land it at all. You'll just have to add legs to the next version. Also, might want to add more struts to the engines. I mean, you could try to land it on the side, but then you can't take off. So, to answer your question: You're either going to land it on the engines, or you aren't. I'd suggest redesigning the craft and trying again, since you can certainly make the trip successfully.

Well, given that vanilla KSP doesn't have any components that make a base something 'special', beyond, perhaps, a refuelling station, A base is pretty much whatever you can land in one area that can't take off again, and (generally) isn't intended to move from that location. Adding the Kethane Mod will give you a reason to land mining operation units in specific locations and go on surveying missions, as will the resources that will eventually be added to the main game. But basically, if you have a bunch of crashed command modules, you can call it a base if you like. Let your imagination determine the rest. They'll need fuel tanks to hold all the oxygen scrubbers, a place for the bathroom, a ping-pong table, a very long, narrow pool (Safely land an orange fuel tank and hook it up to the structure). Have a rover garage, a radio tower, a solar farm, an ion engine tanning bed, a 'beach resort' with all the little command chairs facing a pretty sight. Shower stations (tiny radial engines on girders. Try to land a huge dome habitation made of wing structures on top of a tower of hitchhiker modules. There's also base component mods and other plugins that will give the base meaning, but it's really all up to your imagination.

5... 4... 3... 2... 1... THUNDERKERBS ARE GO! Hm. Interesting idea, to have a specific set of rescue vehicles in geosynchronous orbit, ready to head out to any planet system and save stranded Kerbals, returning to the station for refuelling and dropoff. Rescue methods include landers and rovers, with special eve-specific unmanned drop vehicles that have the sole purpose of lifting kerbals out in command chairs. If that's possible. Fuel-tank drops, small rovers designed to get a lander leg under a tipped rocket and lever it up...

Can you edit the original post and switch it?