Cydonian Monk

After touching the monolith, your Kerbals gain the ability to use old animal bones to wrench open the container of snacks.... It would be nice if dropping a science pod on an extra-Kerbal anomaly, such as the --redacted-- that's to the far south on the moon, would generate a large rush of science points. Or for whatever reason, visiting the --redacted-- on Bop unlocked some random biological tech.

Today? Well.... (Image lost.... ) (I needed a header image for the KSP part of my website. Not even Jeb was scared by this.)

Nice. I kind of suspected that after taking a closer look. Convincing enough! Same here, also when piloting in physics-warp. The SAS seems to ignore all changes then. (And the last thing I want to do in phys-warp is turn without SAS.)

I tried all of that, and even have a reserved action group for toggling reaction wheels. The old craft just seem to either have negative lift (or excess drag), or are now so sensitive they flip with the slightest touch. I have tighter tolerances on placement of Center of Mass vs Center of Lift now, so that helps somewhat. No trouble with the wheels part of it. My two standard rover designs are largely unchanged since early in .20.

Are the birddogs giving you as much trouble as my pre-.21 aircraft are giving me? I tried to fly one of my Betas (which was previously very stable and authoritative), and couldn't get off the ground. Same for everything I built previously - unpilotable. I've had to redesign everything. Glad to see the story continues. (Also: Where did you get the femkerbs from? Did you do the modeling work? Or did I just miss a post in the ocean of the Universe Replacer thread?)

The first docking after finishing my first large space station. Slid the crew transfer ship up to it, stopped opposite the docking port, spun the craft around 90° to face said docking port, and the magnets kicked right in. No RCS needed. That was when I realized I'd mastered docking, and had become one with the void.

I leave the forum sigs turned off, so I wasn't really aware how detailed these things are. I'm impressed! As for game accomplishments, I still haven't done much outside of Kerbin and her moons, but here are my service ribbons: (Removed)

Today I launched two probes to Minmus for use in the "Minmus Array for Long-Range Observation and Communication" (MALROC). I then realized I forget to include any sort of power generation... so I "corrected" their course and renamed them the "Really Useless High-velovity Radar Object Experiment." MALROC 3 and 4 also launched after a quick design tweak to install an RTG.

Trackball, keyboard, Logitech 3D Pro, occasional XBox 360 controller, scientific calculator, excel spreadsheet, a notepad and an ink pen.

Welcome. You've taken your first steps into a much larger addiction. The best hint I can give you for getting out of the atmosphere: Finesse and grace beat brute force. Use less, add less, and follow the "standard kerbal ascent profile" (straight up to 10km, pitch to 45 degrees until your Apoapsis is above 70km, then coast to Apoapsis and burn horizontally until orbital) until you learn how to improve it. If you continue to be stuck, take some screenshots of the craft you're having trouble with, upload them to imgur (or somewhere), and head over to the "Gameplay Questions" forum.

It really depend on where the center of mass will be as the first stage burns out. If I've got a heavy payload and a large first stage, I'll start the gravity turn much later to prevent "issues." But generally I turn 2° to 5° once clear of the tower, slow turn once above the troposphere to 45°, then turn from there based upon my chosen ascent profile (burn-coast-burn vs direct injection vs "we're doing what!?!"). [Edit: My "usual" orbit is 130km, which is my station orbit. That affects the launch profile a bit vs a 70km orbit.] I may just try a swig of your Munshine later to see how well it flies for me. And that launch efficiency exercise, too.

Today I built these: (OK, this week actually.) The door is inspired somewhat by PD's stock orbiter door. (Finally gave me the solution I couldn't work out on my own.) The rest are just the natural evolution of my spaceplane program. The X-27d (to the right) is... of questionable airworthiness, while the X-28 will take off under its own power. Both have "working" doors, and the capacity for 7 little green dudes. The door assembly on both locks "open," so you can timewarp while docked at your station of choice with the doors open without said doors wandering off. Not much room in the X-28's docking bay, but it's intended more as a crew ferry. Craft Files (100% stock): http://0div0.org/files/X-27d.craft http://0div0.org/files/X-28.craft The action groups are listed in the vehicle descriptions. There are still a few issues, such as random docking port weirdness and the occasional "door clipping through everything" bug. I'll update those craft files as I find fixes.

Thanks! I've not updated this yet for .21, so I'm not sure how well it flies at the moment. Plus some of the new stock parts /might/ make this easier (the smaller fuel tank, for example).

Welcome! KSP runs great for me on both Linux and OS-X, though the Linux version required some... work. (Moreso than normal as I don't use Debian-based distros at home.) Start here if you hit a snag: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24529-The-Linux-compatibility-thread!

This game has dredged up the science/engineering parts of my mind that I buried and repressed in order to stay sane in a programming job. ... It's forced me to relearn things I'd forgotten, and learn new things I never thought I'd need.

At first I subscribed to the whole "one world! Kerbals united!!" philisophy. Then the "Recovered Munar Footage" video happened.... The way the two green dudes bicker and shove, while a bit childish, made me think Kerbals tribalize and fight just like we do. Regardless, when I started conducting launches from KSC2 I felt I needed a second flag and a second country. (Because if it was one nation they'd just launch from the most efficient spot - KSC.) Thus were born the FSK, the CCHR, and the ISC. The "Free States of Kerbin" (formerly the "Free States of Central Kerbin") comprise most of the continent KSC is on, maybe with a few other member states elsewhere on the globe. The unoriginally-named "Kerbal Space Agency" administers their launch and extra-kerbin operations. (KSA) The "Commonwealth of Central Highland Republics" is a bit diverse and borderless, but more-or-less includes the continent KSC2 is on. (With lots of mountains and whatnot.) Operations are administered by the "Ministry of Space Administration." (MinSpa, or MSA) The "Independent Southern Coalition" is an ESA/EU-like group of states across the ocean east-southeast of KSC, with an as-of-yet unselected launch site somewhere around 10°S. The "Office Of Orbital Operations" (O4) runs their space program. Oh, and the "Monastic Order of Cydonia" is on/near what we now call K2. I guess they might be a bit like the Vatican City... surrounded entirely by the FSK. Their only space program is the "Athena Project," which involves moving the whole lot of them to Duna. That'll mostly be done from KSC. None of these were really "needed," but they help me track which launch came from where. I don't really have time or care to make any detailed backgrounds beyond that. I'd post the flags, too, but only the FSK flag is online at the moment (and is basically my forum avatar in black and white).

Site, because I like to symlink my saves and screenshot folders to Dropbox but not everything else (and Steam has meddled with my symlinks in the past). And because Steam doesn't like my flavour of Linux, and crashes every other heartbeat on OS-X. But the real answer is both.

It's not gone, and it's only clipped if you are using the lowest terrain detail settings. I launched something from there last night even.

My original 2-stage lander used an all-RCS powered ascent module with just the single-kerb lander can. (Sorry - don't have any photos of that online I can easilly link to.) My Apollo-44th lander, while less Apollo than Brotoro's, was conventional bi-propellent using the 4 radial motors and a mess of partially-clipped tanks on the roof. Shaky weird-physics stuff. (I've got an ascent gif, too, but it's big so here's a link instead: Apollo-17-Styled Ascent ) I no longer use either design, and have moved to a reusable single-stage lander. I was typically using the single-kerbal landers twice per trip anyway.

Being the slightly-off engineer that I am, I've tracked the launch mass of (nearly) everything I've sent skyward in my primary save since .20 came out. In a spreadsheet even. A few clicks and keystrokes later and I can say my average launch mass is: 73,724.75kg over 140 tracked launches. No idea about part count, but I use a bit of everything. If you know the average mass of all the parts combined, you could probably guesstimate from that (if you weight the math towards fuel tanks, of course).

Today I learned that landing on the edge of a mountain is a "Very Bad Thing ."

Satellites and probes get the AOTD (Acronym of the Day) unless they're going somewhere really special... like the next star system. (Ex: LKOP and TK-LX are both polar-orbit mapping satellites, LKO-N is a navmarker at 70km.) Early-game single-kerb'd craft are named after flightless birds or waterfowl, in one of two non-English languages depending on the launch-site and country of origin (Chicken and Duck are my two most common, which translate to Cearc and Lacha, or Kurczak and Kaczka). Late-game and station-building kerb'd craft are named after work-related words (mainly "work" or "cooperation"), again from the same two non-English languages. Stations vary in names. Haven't seen the need to build a base yet (aside from Jeb's Surfside Shack), so no idea what I'd name one. Lander names vary, though Fios/Cuairt were used for all of my early Mun and Minmus landings. Launch vehicles use bird names in English: songbirds for satellite-rated (ex: Wren, Lark) and raptors for kerb-rated (ex: Kestrel, Kite). Orbital and transfer stages are named after jays (with grackles thrown in for good measure). Universal heavy lift vehicles are named after sea/wading birds (pelican, heron). My SSTOs are still named X-[somenumber] as none of them have entered active use. They will eventually get unique names per craft. Reusable interplanetary craft and reusable landers get unique names depending on my mood.

I on occasion get the "Spinning Beach Ball of Death," which is basically the same. Most often when the Mun first enters draw distance.

Today Jeb flew to KSC2 and planted a flag. And from that flag grew a mighty tree. A tree that spits fire from its roots and has branches that reach to the very heavens themselves. Two more followed that first tree, and many more will follow them. The very mountains will tremble from the thunder spawned by that solitary flag.

K'lyeh. It's on the bottom of the ocean south of KSC.