Death Engineering

"We still have a problem?!?" Several months ago I used a popular online auction site to bid on and win a small piece of the interior cloth from the Apollo 13 Lunar Module. This would have been left on the moon had the mission gone to plan, but those familiar with history or the Tom Hanks film may recall that as the crew approached Earth, they needed ballast from the LM to account for missing lunar material mass. The finger-nail sized piece of cloth that I had seen and attempted to acquire was among the bits that the crew saved from the LM moments before jettisoning their "lifeboat". Currently, this item has been lost in transit, sent on a journey requiring many things to come together in order to deliver it safely to its destination and much like during its original trip to the moon it "had a problem". I thought it somewhat fitting, ironic even, that this would happen; that an artifact from Apollo 13 would make it all the way to the moon and back despite overwhelming odds only to be lost by the posties. Despite several investigations through the USPS, the package remains on the dark side of the moon. I've just received word that the US Congressman's office where the package originated is now involved in the investigation and hopefully some progress will be made in recovering this tiny although fascinating piece of American history. I'll post updates as I get them...

FWIW, @magico13, I like the KCT simulations and use them over KRASH.

Did you 'finalize' the results before you left Munar orbit?

Silly question... is there a hotkey for TR?

This seems wise and "Big O" friendly.. what sayest you @ShotgunNinja ?

Out of those options, "A" seems like the best.

Is the PPD-15 Kerbal Safety Bubble working normally in 1.9.2? I cannot transfer crew into it even when inflated.

Does that differ from stock behaviour?

Make sure you have Claw's 'Stock Bug Fixes' installed. 1.1.x 'broke' lifting body mechanics which makes planes feel weird.

Unity is tightly integrated into the console release.. losing Unity will not likely be considered.

To be historically accurate, every katapult should be chopped into little pieces after the end of the challenge.

Get a motorcycle. Worked for me! Okay, being cereal now.. try adding these mods: Kerbalism, Kerbal Construction Time, Tourism and Station Science. These will add great depth to the career game without it becoming too painful.

This has been a KSP bug for as long as I can remember (started in 0.18) but seems worse in 1.1.2. I try to guess the perfect maneuver node by tweaking it blind from a known-good node. As you said, the intercept will occur even though it doesn't always show up.

@ShotgunNinja, the new Geiger counter looks great, but should I be able to 'Take Data' from this part? Maybe for Scientist-only? Thanks for a great mod!

Found the problem. Thank you @Claw, this fixed it: Update 1.1.2b.1: Added BodyLiftFix, which fixes broken body lift in 1.1.2.

Well I'm baffled then. Are you riding SAS on the way down? Just did this in a fresh install. Seconds from boom:

Has aero changed or perhaps drag on these parts changed? I used to be able to use this type of three-crew capsule in early career for tourism, etc. but it wont point shield-down in 1.1.x, but worked perfectly fine in 1.0.5

Can't quite reach the Mun yet as I don't have any batteries but I was able to launch a few sub orbital hops to other landing zones to get the Kerbin surface science and barely made it to 45 to get my first tier 4 node. Now, of course, funds are very tight so yeah.. hard is harder.

Played Kerbalism to the third Mun landing and wanted to start again in 1.1.1 but this time set difficulty to 'Hard'. Oops.. I don't think there is enough SCIENCE! on hard nerfing to get past the third tier. Anyone else tried playing with "Hard" levels set?

Win 10 and I'd gotten pretty used to loading up KSP once in the morning and having KSP running all day. I'd occasionally get a crash changing scenes, but with 1.1 we're crashing every hour or so. Not a fan of the NEW NAVBALL.. it's a tad big, and scaling down the UI makes the text almost unread-ably small. I could go on, but I won't. I love KSP and have been playing since 0.18 and I'm not going to back out now. This is the only game I play so maybe every game is constantly a border dispute between features and stability..?

Has this thing turned into a hot crashy mess or am I imagining it??

@ShotgunNinja fantastic and well-balanced mod. What you've done with retrievable/transmittable science and subtle things like where science can be acquired is excellent. And if I were you, I wouldn't worry too much about compatibility across every other mod until you're happy with the way yours works on its own. I just finished my first Mun landing and don't find the LS needs to be alarmingly massive or hard to deal with. This is a clean LS implementation as is; doesn't need to be more complex. Excellent KSP overhaul!

I like your Skylab. Good authentic look from stock.

Appreciate the offer. I may do that if the situation recurs on future playthroughs, but this career is under 1.0.5 so I'll let it go for now, being an older KSP. Thanks for the reply, tho!

You are correct, the clever designs and launch schedules is what this challenge is about. I can't do much about the slower PC's except offer this: http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-gamer-buying-guides/