SpacemanSpiffy

I've been playing somewhat casually since the middle of last year so I might go so far as to call myself a "seasoned noob" I'm seasoned in that I'm comfortable doing some of the trickier things such as docking, powered landings, rendezvous, and transfers, all without MechJeb assistance... though I'll admit I used MJ as a learning tool early on. I'm noobish in that still make silly mistakes such as forgetting to open solar panels on probes before time warping, hitting the ground at 50 m/s while trying to kill horizontal velocity when landing, remembering to add RCS tanks to my ship but forgetting to add thrusters, and I still have a dickens of a time making space planes that don't totally flip out on re-entry. ... and then I'll have my brilliantly stupid moments like the time I sent an orbital probe to Duna to gather science, tried dipping into the atmosphere a bit to get a barometer reading, caught a little too much atmospheric friction, and ended up soft-landing a probe that wasn't designed to be landed

I'm quite pleased to see someone besides myself remembers the Independence War series Independence War was awesome due to it's relatively hard sci-fi approach to the science in the game: That lovely Newtonian physics model, though you could enable a computer assist that would make your ship fly more like something out of Star Wars, albeit justified by the computer's gratuitous use of an RCS analogue Primary weapons were particle beam accelerators, the beams from which would properly attenuate over distance While you could travel between destinations using your impulse drive, it would take forever taking into consideration the realistic distances between celestial objects... and I think the game would actually let you do this The LDS (Linear Displacement System) drive principles at least sound plausible in that it allows your ship to attain velocities at large fractions of the speed of light by moving the ship an infinitesimally small distance in an inertia-less jump a great number of times per second... though the physics exploit that allows this is hand waved But where it really relates to Kerbal is that in the first game (Independence War I) there's a cheat code that will let you to break away from your current mission and go sandbox, allowing you to explore a region of space many light years in diameter without any fuel concerns (well maybe that part is decidedly un-Kerbal). The first thing I did was jump to the Sol system to visit each planet for an up-close inspection Let's ride this bus 'till the wheels fall off!

In my old sandbox game I have kethane probes orbiting every major body in the solar system system, a refueling station in Kerbin orbit, another refueling station in Joolian orbit, and a nuke driven interplanetary ship taking Jeb and company on an exploratory tour of the moons of Jool. In my new 0.23.5 career game, I have a dinky science station with attached lander orbiting Mun... and that's about it

Got distracted by Saturn, seeing is good tonight and I think I can make out Titan! Anyways, moon is a nice ruddy red now... kind of looks Mars in a way... or is it Duna?

I'm in the San Diego area, in my back yard with my trusty (if dinky) 2.5" scope, perfect viewing conditions too. The moon is about 50% obscured at this point and its noticably darker already compared to the full moon's illumination just 30 minutes ago. Time to bring on the blood! EDIT: I can see the western limb already taking on a red hue through my scope, it wont be long now.

I just recently updated to 0.23.5 and decided to restart my career game... I'm one of those odd birds that likes the early game where you have a limited selection of parts to achieve your objectives. Anyways, my Jeb is currently in a "scientific" lander docked to a refueling station in orbit around the Mun, his job is to make drops to the surface to gather up science wherever available. It sounds lonely but not to worry, he has Bob and Manfred in the station's science module to keep him company

I had a mysterious accident that I have since written off as a space junk impact. Unlikely I know but I can't explain it any other way. I was attempting to get one of my spaceplanes into orbit, got up to ~65km then I saw something whiz by and clip one of my wings, sending said craft into a flat spin. The object was small and at the same approximate altitude that some of my rocket stages are jettisoned so I'm guessing it was a decoupler... didn't think something that small could impart that much momentum. Anyways, needless to say the mission was aborted but I was able to recover from the spin and brought her down not too far from KSC. If that truly was a space junk impact it was a one-in-a-million shot methinks! Too bad I couldn't get it on tape, but then again it would be like catching lightning on film (without very slow shutter speeds of course)

I would attempt to trade some Pocky for some of their delicious snacks. Biochemical incompatibility between humans and kerbals notwithstanding of course.

Totally stock lander, single stage for descent and ascent, and managed to land by my own ability. The reason Hanner Kerman is staring wistfully at distant Kerbin? I used up ~85% of my fuel during my clumsy landing attempt... but needed at least ~40% to get back to orbit. (he was successfully rescued a bit later)

For some reason this thread makes me think of that Regular Show episode "Grilled Cheese Deluxe"...

I think I'll have to go with Jupiter, named after the king of the gods and it's definitely the king of the solar system (if the sun doesn't count). So many great works of fiction are set in the Jovian system and it works well since it's sort of like a scaled down version of the solar system, with destinations that are reachable within days, not years. You get variety, but in a convenient, easy to manage package! ... not too mention it just looks cool, what with the big red spot 'n all

My first Mun landing was a few weeks ago (I'm late to the party) and was relatively mishap free... but maybe that's because I took a long and roundabout way of doing it. One of the first things I did in this game was to put stations in orbit around Kerbin and Mun as I anticipated a Mun landing in the near future. I next built two different lander designs, one single occupancy and the other using the two-Kerbal Lander Can, and shipped them over to the Mun station. After that, I built a small shuttle to ferry Kerbals between stations and sent two brave souls over as well. Once all this was done, I had a crew and lander ready for action in orbit around Mun... so I sent them on their merry way! The landing was successful... but not ideal. I sent my single occupancy lander first and it had enough fuel to descend and make it back to orbit in one stage, but my landing skills were so piss poor that I spent ~85% of it during the landing process and didn't have enough for the ascent. Enter the B-team in the two-seater for the rescue! I swallowed my pride and used MechJeb to land this time (and watched everything it did), picked up the stranded Kerbal, then made it back to Mun station and later Kerbin. If I had gone the Apollo route, with everything originating from Kerbin, I doubt there would have been a happy ending to this story.

I think this is the most likely scenario since Kerbal craft are seriously lacking the "shooty bitz" that are always present on Ork creations. (I'm conveniently disregarding the fact that you can make somewhat Orkish ICBMs in this game)

Is it weird that my first target after the Kerbin system was Dres? I think it has something to do with me having visions of running a lucrative asteroid mining operation, and with Kethane that's a distinct in-game possibility... now we just need more asteroids. OTOH it might've been that Dres was at the right phase angle for transfer at the time so it was simply low hanging fruit

I discovered this incredible game about a month ago... and my social life imploded soon afterward. Coincidence? I think not! Anyways, I've been lurking this forum since I started playing Kerbal and have learned oh so much from you all that it seems only proper I drop in to show my gratitude. To that end... THANK YOU Now I'm off to launch (and explode) more rockets!

I discovered this incredible game about a month ago... and my social life imploded soon afterward. Coincidence? I think not! Anyways, I've been lurking this forum since I started playing Kerbal and have learned oh so much from you all that it seems only proper I drop in to show my gratitude. To that end... THANK YOU Now I'm off to launch (and explode) more rockets!