Dweeb of Kerbin

I have had this happen, though Not often and I don't know for sure what causes it. In my experience, ships that are "wobbly" due to lots of docking ports and uneven mass are most prone to this. Also, every time I have had this happen it has been with a ship that was initially within draw distance but was moving out into the 10-15km range. I agree that if ships go on rails at 2k this does not make any sense, but what it often SEEMS like to me is that as the wobbly ship moves further away, something in the calculation gets simplified, leading to bigger wobbles and disaster. I've only had one ship that demonstrated this in a somewhat repeatable manner and I would need to time warp it out to a safe distance to prevent the spontaneous combustion.

Its a Kerbal Universe 'Total Existence Failure." Somewhere out there in a different part of the galaxy, somebody crossed the streams.

Here are two of the better ones I've come across recently: Laythe: Coordinates : 0, 8' 21" N / 162, 37', 33" W - Due to the way the two rotate, Jool is always at that point on the horizon if you land here. The Grand Canyon of the Mun: Coordinates: 0, 35' 11" N / 132, 24' 10" W - It is quite easy to find this visually from space, it looks like a big gash. Also its pretty easy to reach as it runs right along the equator.

I really like this feature too. It's much easier now to keep track of what the difference is between a bunch of variations on the same design now, or to look back and remember what design spawned what. I think the next step to make it really great would be for the description and maybe a thumbnail (fully zoomed out view, saved automatically) to load when you scrolled through ships on the selection ui.

You should still be able to save that one by manually transferring the fuel with the docking fuel transfer method. (@mrbond)

I also have yet to return from anywhere despite having gone to most of the planets. Many of the flights even have the fuel to return, I can just never bring myself to bring them back and remove the evidence. Save wipe might finally motivate me to bring a few back.

my understanding is that the stuff that makes this so difficult in real life is stuff that either we don't deal with at all or in very simplified form. (structural stability, zero room for error in the structure or most of the components, fuel has to flow perfectly, etc.) If the main difficulty was just the basic physics we might have been on the moon in the late 1800s

The calm headfirst approach is a nice touch. Very peaceful. In reply to the question about video capture, I use fraps on pc. If on Mac, I'm not sure what is best for games. There is a good capture program called snapz pro, but I,ve never tried it while running a full screen game.

I created a ship which had several hundred separatrons linked together, connected by six or so stages. The core of each stage was the flat circular core bodies. The top stage pointed in the opposite direction of the other stages and they all launched at once, so if you toggled it in orbit it created a BIG debris field. It was sort of a galactic shot gun.

I like the idea about using lights on the dark side to expose a shadow. You could also build the lights into the ship the kerbal EVAs from, or build a little custom EVA "suit" with just lights, a seat, and RCS. Another thing that would be great, is using the mod with the buran arms with cameras - I don't currently have them installed, but in my past experience, when you get near a craft that has them, they automatically show up in your view. So you could place on on the ground where you are going to pass and get a recording from the ground of your high speed encounter. Anyway, I took a go at passing under one of my structures on the mun. To be honest, I'm not sure if it was truly a clean pass underneath, or if the combination of the kerbal's tiny size and the ultra high speed meant that the game just didn't notice a collision - but the recording is below! The exciting stuff is about 3 minutes in.

It is time to gather your bravest and/or stupidest kerbals in order to make Felix Baumkerbal look like a sissy. The challenge: * Get a spacecraft into orbit around any body * Make your periapsis stupidly close to the body * EVA your kerbal, fly him as close as possible to touching the planet/moon without getting him killed and then return him safely to his vessel. * Post a video. (Photos ok if you absolutely can't do video but this challenge only shines with video proof) Rules: * This has to be an orbital or high-speed planet-pass, eva, not a landing etc. * Your vessel can have mods, but please nothing that makes this challenge really easy or meaningless. * Kerbal must get close enough to the surface of the planet or moon that you can clearly see his shadow on the ground. * Kerbal must return safely to his craft once the periapsis has passed. I will allow a few exceptions to this. For example, if you have two crafts in near identical orbits, one can be set low enough to crash and the kerbal can return to the second one. Kerbal must return to the craft within 4 minutes of the periapsis passing. * No debug menu The people will be the judge of who has the most badass Planetscrape. But, here are some general guidelines which will surely give you bonus rep: * Choosing a body with lots of altitude changes. * Length of hugging the ground without flinching. * Flying under an arch, under a cave, down a trench. * Near misses with other landmarks or with ground structures you have set up. * Somehow pulling this off on duna * Insane speed * Any other ways to make this more crazy that you can think of. Here is my starting attempt. I'm sure this will end up being pretty pedestrian compared to what some will end up pulling off:

While save breaking does kind of suck, even with the steam version (at least so far) if you copy the current main kerbal folder and name the pasted version something new, you will still be able to go into that folder and play the old version once the game has updated. I'm not great at letting things go, so I have a feeling I will be doing a lot of trial and error to see what I can move from the old version into the new one.

Not sure if this is in reference to mine or Coneshot's, but mine did not have any jet engines. I primarily used the spike engines because these behemoths do not take off super fast so I wanted something with good efficiency at all altitudes. Also, they are small while still being relatively powerful, so it is easy to include a lot of them. I also find them more stable than the really big engines. Finally, with mainsails and clustered engines, I find that the mainsails start overheating so easily that you need to run much of the launch at only about 80% power, which means you are basically throwing away the entire point of the mainsails. Using skippers instead I was able to keep the throttle at about 98% without any overheating explosions.

Overview: Launch the most massive single stage rocket to orbit that you can build. "Massive" in this case will be judged by remaining tonnage of the object once it is in orbit. In other words, it does not matter how much it weighs on launch. Rules: Absolutely no falling or detaching parts of any kind (parts that CAN detach are ok as long as they don't) Stock only Jets are allowed but bonus points for not using them. Object must attain stable orbit around Kerbin Bonus points for designs that don't eat your computer like mine does. Post as much evidence as you can. Here is my attempt so far. 530 tons left in orbit. Also, as you can see, my design has a couple of odd features, including landing gear and a nuclear engine pointing the wrong way. My original goal was to make this a MSSTM (Massive single stage to (land on) mun) challenge, but I can't quite get enough spare fuel up to make that work yet. But it is something to get thinking on. :-)

I've been doing some experimenting with using jet engines for the first stage of my rockets and am wondering why I never really see this discussed. Is it just considered too unrealistic? Obviously you do see it discussed in terms of planes, but I am referring more to using jets as the first stage of rocket designs. For example, here is what I was just toying with. Keep in mind that the jet stage in these rockets is just the tiny part down at the bottom: The jets are able to lift this not tiny payload to 21,000 feet meters with just this tank before you need to decouple. By contrast, the mainsail with the same fuel tank lifts the same payload to only around 400 meters before you run out on that stage. Also, although their is clearly a bit of clipping going on in this design, I actually did not need to turn clipping off to create it.

This thread is for posting the tallest stock structure you've ever landed on another body. Below is my best thus far "the great tripod." It was launched mainly in one go, then received some extra fuel and engines in orbit before heading to the mun. My goal was to land it right next to the armstrong memorial, but targeting of the landing zone proved very difficult due to the large mass and low thrust. Ended up landing about 30km away. Obviously the buran cams aren't stock but all the actual engine/fuel/phsyics stuff was. I have preliminarily built a second version with a docking clamp on the top - the idea building I could keep sending small additions to keep adding height. But that structure hasn't gone anywhere yet.

I messed around with this as well and my verdict was a tie fighter does not really work, however a Tie Interceptor shape does. It's certainly not an exemplary plane, but it works fine.

This is my first boat which I landed on another planet (Laythe) In transit: It's hard to say whats it ultimate top speed is, but the safest it can do safely is mid ~20m/s.

We start by putting a probe which does nothing in orbit. Then we crash into the mun, throw things wildly into space, and eventually graduate to actually landing on something. (In my case I was able to land successfully on eve before I actually mastered landing on bodies without atmosphere) Then comes docking and space stations. There are two paths to go from there. Either do everything you've already done more and more efficiently and perfectly, or try to do something that is just crazy. This thread is dedicated to your first mission that attempted to do the later. Mine was the KSS Nautilus: My goal was an interplanetary cruiser which could deliver a very large payload to laythe and then return and continue operation more or less still in one piece. Here is a prototype of the vessel with mainsail engines. This flight was for testing to make sure the basic craft was controllable. The final vessel replaced these with three nuclear engines and six emergency small engines for more thrust. Here is a second prototype launching - the final included many MORE BOOSTERS on the first stage as well as more fuel on the actual vessel in an effort to reduce the amount of refueling the vessel would need before embarking: Here is the final launch: Despite my efforts the Nautilus did require two visits from refueling barges. Unfortunately, my design for the refueling barge was pretty terrible and a nightmare for precise docking. Meanwhile, back on Kerbin, testing begins on the biggest payload for the Nautilus - a Laythe naval exploration craft. Here is the Nautilus finally fully kitted out - Two additional arm extensions were launched as a single vessel. Once at destination one of these will serve as a jool system exploration probe, and the other is an emergency rescue vehicle/possible return craft. Also, as you can see, two landers are connected - one for water and one for land. We pass the mun on the way out of town: Once the Nautilus has used up a bunch of fuel I move the fuel from the arms to the main body, undock the arms and then re dock the probes. I drop the axillary engines as well as a few other bits. However, the voyage is taking more fuel than I had estimated and I am starting to wish I had made some other parts removable as well. Other issues are starting to emerge as well - the vehicle begins to spin if I use full thrust, so I am having to burn only the three main engines at low power. The main burn takes a large part of a real-life full day and I have to let it running while I do other things. Finally approaching jool. If I want any chance of preserving enough fuel to make going back home an option, I am going to have to rely almost exclusively on aerobraking from here on out. My extremely low thrust to weight ratio makes this almost a necessity anyway. Almost forgot to bring the solar panels back in during the aerobrake at jool. Approaching Laythe: I had to dip all the way down to about 24000 m to be captured at Laythe. Safely in orbit, Jeremiah gets out for a photo op. He doesn't look as excited as he should. Aerobraking is used after this to further tighten up the orbit. Disaster almost strikes as the "Nautilus Nautical" discovers a malfunction after undocking. For some reason because the craft is below the engines (side hanging engines) the game is thinking they should be delivering zero thrust. Luckily, this part is attached via a docking clamp and not a decoupler - so I am able to very carefully, undock and reconnect the Nautical on the other side. Goodbye Nautilus: Landing! After landing, the back floats pop off, making the vehicle point upwards and making it less likely to capsize when under full power. Next, the traditional lander pops down on an island near the water craft. In theory this vehicle will return both the pilot and the commander of the naval craft back to the Nautilus. Also, on the vehicles belly rest three of the "worlds smallest rover" . They are just the smallest probe base with a solar panel on each side. They roll around nicely. Another photo op: The Jool system explorer detaches. It ends up lucking into a nice path where it is almost automatically transferred from Val to Tylo. So, that's where the mission is at the moment. I'm currently having to decide if I want to try to return the entire Nautilus home (I think it has just BARELY enough fuel to make it, if I siphon the fuel off of the emergency vehicle and what is left from the system explorer) - Or do I send only a few crew back on the rescue vehicle, leaving one or two kerbals with a long wait for fresh supplies.