JakeGrey

I'm interested, but I'd like a bit more information before I commit myself to anything. Here's a sample of my work.

EVA Parachutes. Guaranteed to reduce Kerbal body counts!

Depends how much weight you're trying to land. A drogue chute can bring a three-Kerbal capsule down in one piece on Kerbin, and the thinner air and the lower gravity probably even out a bit. Rover wheels have quite high impact tolerance too.

Probably not, I'm afraid. The CPU and RAM are probably alright but the onboard graphics chip is going to struggle.

Spaceplanes will bring you nothing but rage and frustration at this stage. Look up a few tutorials on orbital rendezvous and have your guy EVA across to another capsule.

Something else to consider is that FRAPS is kind of a resource hog and sometimes detrimental to stability; it's basically playing man-in-the-middle between your GPU and screen, only in software.

Landed an experimental Mun orbiter on Kerbin... in two pieces, both of which were recoverable. May need to reinforce the connections between the capsule and the SAS modules, although it did look pretty cool. Oh, and I found a monolith a couple of kilometres from the KSC. Anyone else noticed that?

I'm sure it's perfectly feasible in-engine, but I'm not sure how useful it'd be; the only place besides Kerbin where a petrol engine would work at all is Laythe, which hasn't got much in the way of landmass to cover anyway. A generator module, on the other hand...

With a GPU roughly equivalent to an Xbox plugged into it, yeah. I'm pretty sure an RPi could handle the graphics side, but the physics calcs? Well, maybe once we're in the beta phase and Squad are in a position to do some systematic optimisation.

This thread is not going to end well, I can feel it in my water... But anyhow, I'm sure it's theoretically possible to port KSP to iOS in the unlikely even that Apple ever release a tablet with enough junk in the trunk to handle the physics engine. Whether it would be any fun to play is a whole different question.

I dunno, actually. Some of MacCafferey's other writings hint at her being somewhat unhinged... Either way, I'm sure Scott has many fascinating anecdotes for anyone prepared to buy him enough drinks.

Your kerbals need to unionise.

Here's a demo video I found on YouTube: It looks pretty impressive, and definitely something to think about licensing.

Designing a serviceable jet aircraft that works in FAR and isn't excessively hard to fly, with a long-term view to exploring Duna and Laythe with UAVs.

I'm less impressed by the quality of the video footage than the fact you got that thing off the runway. And what happened in the second video? It sounded like you were running the engines on Jeb's moonshine!

Can't help but agree. You've put an amazing amount of thought into giving Kerbals a unique culture. And I wonder how Kerm trees would cope with the soil and atmosphere on Laythe, or Duna?

And yet they used to cry censorship whenever someone suggested that their entry on Goatse.cx did not actually need a copy of hello.jpg as the page illustration...

Here's what I play KSP on. Refurbished ex-lease machine that I think used to be someone's server, that particular seller's UK-only but I'm sure there's similar retailers offering similar prices Stateside. Cost me $120 more than your stated budget, but that was including a copy of Windows 7 Professional; you could probably negotiate a discount in exchange for it being delivered without an operating system, but unless you don't need or want to use any Windows-exclusive software at all you're probably going to have to bite the bullet and find the extra hundred in the end. Could it benefit from a better graphics card? Undoubtedly. But KSP's playable on moderate-to-high settings and you can always upgrade afterwards.

Good way to tide us over until Career Mode is implemented. Go for it.

Saying "please" might help. Just sayin'. It does sound like a good choice of music though.

There's a second method that will give similar results to togfox's suggestion but involves a bit less clicking. After setting up the Hohmann transfer, look for the Manouevre Planner setting called "fine-tune closest approach to target". Pick a suitable final periapsis -the default 100km is usually fine- and let it execute automatically. Warp until you enter the Mun's sphere of influence, then bring up the Manouevre Planner again and pick "circularise" and choose whatever altitude you want.

I had that problem as well. As soon as you enter the target body's SOI, select "circularise" in the Manouevre Planner and set it to take place at whatever altitude you need. 100km is plenty for landers, but fancy stuff like ISA MapSat survey probes need to be somewhat higher.

Just a minor one here, but now that we can launch unmanned capsules under remote guidance, maybe it'd be a good idea to have an option to add dummies to simulate the weight of one or more Kerbals and their gear?

Phase 1: Assrmble a large NERVA-engined transport vessel in near-Earth orbit. Put the transport into a long elliptical orbit that stops just short of the Moon's sphere of influence. Let it carry out a few orbits with dummy loads to fine-tune its performance. Phase 2: Dock several small tug-craft and a disassembled space station to the transporter as it swings by Earth, then have them undock near apoapsis and assemble the station in lunar orbit. Phase 3: Shuttle supplies, prefabricated habitat modules, ice-mining equipment and eventually colonists out via the transporter. Phase 4: Perfect and refine the techniques needed for a self-supporting colony off-world for a year or so, then start making preparations for landing on Mars.

Jeb's got you all beat: