Lheim

Yeah, the changes you're making are usually pretty minor. Even if they're huge, and even if you're approaching your target in a way that would send you into the drink without intervention.. well, sure, okay, but you're going to be matching velocity vectors with the target when you approach, right? You maneuver yourself into the same position, same direction and speed of movement - you end up in the same orbit automatically.

If you're significantly behind or in front, you have to change your orbit to get closer. The key thing: higher orbits move slower, lower orbits move faster. To catch up to an object ahead of you, drop below it; to let an object catch up to you, go above. Let's say it's behind you and you want it to catch up. Select it as a target, draw a maneuver to thrust prograde, and get a good bit above it. Depending on how far behind you it is, you may be able to get an intercept immediately sometime up ahead - or you may just want to go 20-50 kilometers higher and go around a few orbits as it creeps up a little closer each time. Let's say you've gone around a couple times and it's gotten close enough that you have a maneuver you can do that will bring you within a couple kilometers: fair enough, execute it. As you're approaching, switch the velocity read-out to target-relative mode. You can, when you get close, burn full retrograde (relative to target, remember), to still yourself.. then just a bit prograde towards them, and slowly approach and then slow down again. Or you can manage it without the intermediate stop - you will find you can trim the position of your retrograde vector overtop theirs as you approach with off-angled thrusts. It's a bit difficult to describe, but basically any off-angled thrusts you do will 'push' the retograde vector, so you can use that to fine tune your approach. With timing, you can reduce speed to zero just as you glide in alongside. Edit: video series that helped me learn:

OP, sorry - the question is a little fuzzily phrased. Okay, noobed up: Planets (and little space ships orbiting planets) don't act like above. Objects further out move WAY slower and take way longer to make a complete orbit. Just a quick reference: Earth is one AU from the sun, and takes one year to orbit it, with an orbital velocity of 29.8 km/s. Pluto is 40 AU out, and it's orbit takes 248 years, with an orbital velocity of 4.6 km/s.

An object that's closer to the planet it's orbiting has to move faster tangentially to avoid slamming into the planet - say it's only 50 klicks up, and only has that far to 'fall' before it might hit the surface. To get round the curve of the body, it has to motor much faster than something significantly higher up. Also, gravity does a weird thing: it decreases inversely to the square of the distance. An object a hundred times further out would feel 1/10000th the gravity pull. So if it did move as fast at that height.. it would just plain darn escape.

It's one of my small pet peeves. I can certainly see the justification for a physical science experiment returning much less if you just transmit analysis versus bringing back the whole kit.. And for eva reports and crew reports - just simple audio, of course you're not gonna care if it's transmitted or 'brought back'. But there's stuff like the thermometer and the gravity detector that also would provide sheer transmittable data, and shouldn't suffer loss for not being brought back. My ideal compromise would be to allow full transmission on eva report, crew report, thermometer, gravity detector, and leave the mat science bay and mystery goo as is. Barometer I can see going either way; might be collecting atmosphere samples. It would at least make probes more useful. Plus at least one more part: a camera for probes to be able to do 'crew reports'

Poor quality screen shot, but hyper-masculine none the less!

The zip gets unzipped into Kerbal Space Program/Gamedata - it'll create the /Chatterer directory and everything else under that by itself. The Sounds/AAE folder would go directly inside the chatterer directory as well. Be careful with the zips, though, as they'll have their own directory structure. It's meant to help, meant to automatically make sure the files go into the right directories, but if you unzip it into the wrong 'base' directory, it creates those directories where they're not suppose to go, yes? The .cs is the code for the plugin. Unless you're a modder it's pretty much irrelevant to you.

Yeah, the combination of the light weight of the thing with it's power means it's often better to cluster a few of the little 30kn engines than use a heavier larger one.

Yeah, I can definitely confirm the chart was posted by a developer as a model of what the resource system might be like. I believe they later mentioned, though, that it was probably too complex. Whatever the resource/mining system ends up as being, I'm eager to see it. There's something about kethane that is both awkward to use (scanning!) and too simple.

There's something about the silhouette of the strange one that seems kinda.. motorcyclish, to me. Kerbal pulling 'Easy Rider'.

Docking ports can break, but they're pretty darn sturdy. You need a lot of force. For simulating independent control.. well, it's always possible to deactivate certain engines.

It's just the way the docking code works - to attach two ships, your ships end up as part of a single craft file. So far as I understand it even mods like KAS (Kerbal attachment system) use the same method. But you can certainly check that mod out. If the issue is just not wanting fuel to flow automatically between the two, you can right click on the docking port and disable crossfeed.

One of the arguments I recall centered around the MMO Tera's 'elin' race. The argument went that no, of course they weren't just almost naked ten year girls with cat ears. That's just a dirty mind thinking that! They're forest spirits. To which I reply.. well, okay. Where's my race of bear spirits that look like hairy oiled half naked men? What, that seems .. sexual? Dirty mind! I cast shame on you! The people who are saying the kerbals are genderless are pretty much in the same ilk - I say if it looks like a guy, is named like a guy, and occupies a traditionally male occupation, it's a guy, not a forest spirit, no matter the spin you try to put on it. We need female kerbals.. and that image on the faked up voyager plaque is exactly right. Female without being sexual.

The entire thread here reminds me why most game players would make terrible game designers. If half the suggestions in this thread were implemented, you'd end up tediously restocking a space station with 'science supplies' every five minutes, and time warping until the tech tree was completed .. or sitting there just like you have to watch your kethane sats scan manually, cuz it's based on 'real minutes played'. Is that gameplay? No, definitely not. Neither is save-file editing. The idea for active, user-engaging science that encourages exploration of the solar system is exactly what a good game designer would come up with. This is a case of wait and see. Wait and see until the multi-transmission scumming is fixed. Wait and see till resources like money is implemented.

"Missing in action" is just a polite euphemism..

It's very much a game in progress. The science system itself was released just weeks ago, and there's a lot of features to go. The tutorials are very basic, but from the developer's standpoint I can't see the use of working them up when even basic features of the ship editor are slotted for a revamp. The best resource right now is youtube.. but it's an awesome resource!

Seriously, why not drive it somewhere?

When you don't have the dialogue open, there's just a little green icon situated by default at the bottom of your screen.

The 'inclined plane wrapped helically' thing is a line from 'Big Bang Theory' Leonard: What would you be if you were fastened by an inclined plane wrapped helically around an axis? Sheldon: I'd be.. screwed! Leonard: Exactly.

Videos can help enormously; I wasn't shy in watching instructional stuff when I first started playing. Believe me, it's hard enough wrapping your head around orbital mechanics in general.. trying to work out from scratch how to rendezvous and dock (for instance) is a whole other added layer of madness. Before I studied a video on docking, I tried for like an hour and a half solid.. a few hints got me down to 15 minutes for my first complete dock. Still felt a huge accomplishment.

I could be wrong; I haven't used protractor in a while. But I believe it uses a kind of 'count down' approach to angles. That is, protractor tells you how many degrees OFF the correct phase angle for launch you are - ie, zero is launch time.

Yeah, don't let him die. When you reach the peek of your orbit work out which way you're moving, hit R, face that way, and then 'w' till your periapsis is at least 80-100,000. Leave him a bit of jetpack fuel to climb into the new ship. Then get a ship up into orbit with plenty of fuel - it looks a polar orbit? Just face north while ascending, if he comes in from the south and loops up north at least. Get it into a parking orbit of about the same periapsis. Select Jeb as your target. Burn at periapsis until you get a roughly close intercept - 5-10 kilometers. When he starts getting close to you, turn your navball to 'target' mode. From then on it's a matter of matching vectors .. basically, you can use off-angle thrusts to 'pull' your prograde vector towards the pink marker that represents him, or 'push' the retrograde marker towards his own pink retrograde marker. Since he's coming round faster you're probably going to be pushing your retro marker onto his - and then keeping it there, slowing down gradually relative to him as he gets nearer to you.

Try to launch it as the centerpiece, with other tanks/engines attached via the truss-like radial decouplers - six or eight of them, with fuel feeding either directly or asparagus-style to the central tank.

Geostationary is way too high to be efficient, and it really doesn't help you get intercepts easier. If you just fly up to the right height from the surface you won't be moving near fast enough to be in orbit, and you'll have exactly the same issues you would at an 80 or 100k orbit while needing more fuel to get up there.

Absolutely! I recently got this, and it adds something indefinably cool to doing missions.