Bacterius

He's fossilized somewhere below the Mun's surface. He lithobraked pretty hard a few years ago (game time) and I have been passing time with a probe recently.

I just don't get why everyone is apparently justifying their use of Mechjeb in this thread. I mean, really? You play the game how you want to play it, if Mechjeb can enhance your KSP gaming sessions by skipping the boring parts, or perhaps you enjoy playing mission control and roleplaying, then go for it, what's the problem? If you don't like Mechjeb because you're more into the piloting aspect of the game and prefer to calculate and perform the burns yourself, then don't use it; again, what is the problem? Using an autopilot doesn't "take the experience" out of the game, it is what you make of it. And perhaps it is dumb from your perspective to "let the autopilot play for you", nobody knows what you play KSP for. But you know what's even dumber? Not using a mod simply because some faceless people on the internet say you shouldn't and that you should play the game this or that way. That is about as stupid as it gets, and I honestly feel sorry for people who let strangers think and act for them in this fashion.

How fast relative to what? Also, wrong section

Does New Zealand even have a space program? If it's anything like the rest, there probably isn't enough money to contract a launcher to make a single one-way trip to the ISS, so I guess nothing at all. Maybe repurpose it into a commercial suborbital flight agency, but that's too predictable. Nah, probably focus on research or astronomy or something, realistically other countries have the rest well in hand. I don't think I'm very proud of my country's space program, but then again, it isn't really my country - just the one I'm currently living in.

I'll just say this - it would be a memorable experience.

Ioncross randomly kills my kerbals when I timewarp, even when I've got enough life support modules to go the whole trip.

At least 57 boosters and 15+ stages for anything beyond suborbital. Quadruple these figures for interplanetary missions.

Haha, I love this, the middle panel just looks like it's saying "screw it, I don't need a plane"

An integral part of Kessler syndrome is that debris collide with one another and multiply at an exponential rate. KSP doesn't model that, so it's hard to get those really high debris densities where low orbit is basically permeated with tiny debris that erode your station over time, and the occasional paint fleck that drives a hole through the cockpit and kills everyone on board. In KSP it's just a big decoupler-sized debris that passes by at orbital speeds taking half your station with it if you are unlucky enough to collide with it (which is very rare, as you need near perfect orbit matching for the debris to intercept your station, so unless you are doing it deliberately or have somehow entered resonance with a debris, it almost never happens). And Gravity is nothing like real life. There aren't "killer debris clouds" in space that come back every orbit with perfect coherence, they average out to evenly permeate their orbits rather quickly, and the debris certainly were not thrown in near identical orbits to begin with.

Oh ok. I misread the rules as "at least 15km". Might want to disambiguate that.

--- redacted, does not meet the rules ---

Don't be so sure. It's well-known that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

I was able to get a science probe to intercept (and occasionally aerobrake into, for assist maneuvers) all of Jool's moons except Bop with only around 1.3k dV (starting right after Jool aerocapture). I'm not the best player so I imagine a skilled pilot could do all of them (including Bop) in maybe 800 dV, perhaps even less, by carefully using the moons to slingshot himself around the system. That was flyby only, no landings. (specifically, the probe had 3.6k dV to start with, spent 1.6k on part of the transfer and ejected from the system with 700 dV left in a failed attempt to transfer back to Kerbin)

Same here.

Curious, I thought Earth was habitable, don't quote me on that though.

Unless I've misunderstood what you describe, there won't be much left of the satellite after it "connects" with the orbital wall. But a couple debris might deorbit, with some luck...

The martingale only works if you have unlimited money. For any finite amount of cash it is a no-win system which gives you no edge in the long run. Use it all you want - you will eventually lose everything you won to that point.

There is one, sort of, but I wouldn't count on it slowing you down enough before impact

I would like them - or anyone else, reallly - to focus on cheaper, more accessible launches to LEO. Once we have infrastructure in place to send objects and people into orbit at a fraction of the current cost, private companies will start popping up doing all sorts of interesting things. But at the moment, it's just too expensive to send anything other than probes, satellites, Soyuz capsules, and the occasional interplanetary rover. In my opinion this should be the first step towards making space a part of everyone's daily life, which is important to promote a sense of modernity and progress and making space exploration relevant again other than as the object of nationalistic pride it currently appears to be. But what do I know

I rest my case.

Are you just trying to have the last word? The cost that matters is the cost to launch, not some "cost per unit of weight". Yes, launching anything which has mass to orbit has a cost, well done. But the question was about a specific guitar on a specific launch, not about some payload item on an arbitrary launch that just happened to be a guitar. You are not really saying anything relevant to the conversation, I'm sorry.

It's obvious what he meant is that because the rocket would have taken off with the exact same amount of fuel, cost the exact same amount of money to launch, and reached its target at exactly the same time, regardless of whether the guitar had been on board or not, from that perspective adding a guitar did not affect the cost of the launch (beyond the cost of purchasing the guitar in the first place, if you include that). Your argument is only valid if the rocket is designed to only take its current payload to orbit with exactly zero fuel left over. That doesn't happen, except perhaps if the rocket is considerably underutilized (which is not the case here). The rocket has a rated maximum payload and takes off with the same amount of fuel and resources no matter the size and weight of the payload.

Make that an easter egg. For instance, a neutron star only 10 km in diameter that's difficult to reach. Or something.

When you read this thread and consider posting a reply.

Damn it!