Monkeh

The main thing I'm looking forward to is the actual structure it will bring. rather than some self imposed wishy-washy objective of, 'let's go get a rover on Duna', from me, with this science and career mode I'll actually be planning an actual mission. Go orbit - do science Go Mun - do science Go rover and new part of mun - do science Go Minmus same launch - do science etc. Really looking forward to it myself. It you're not, then hey, just stick with sandbox, no biggie.

Great idea up here. Please start new thread, thank you. I edited your comment because I had a word with Professor Herbal Von Kerbal of the University of Splode on Kerbin and he had this to say: "Please tell your ill informed pinky or browny skinned monkey descendant to leave us Kerbals to our own logic and ways of doing things. When you evolve from something similar to your 'frog' species, you reproduce very quickly, seriously, you should see the spawning tanks around the major cities, millions of these little green wrigglers every week. Only the best get to become Kerbonauts of course, but there's still many more waiting to fill up any holes in our roster. I'm sure you saw the training montage we released Galaxy wide not so long ago, around the year .21 I believe it was, and I'm sure you noted the general incompetence of the many, many applicants we get each year here at the KSC. I mean, who cares if we lose a few of those numpties huh? Ha, yeah, exactly. All I can say on the subject is this, if we want to get real eyes, real ears, real brains and real skid marked pants into space before some unthinking, unscreaming, unphotogenic probe cores, then that's our business and nobody elses" He stormed off shortly after, he wasn't happy at all. But there you have it folks, straight from the frog descendants mouth.

I've been reading all the threads about 0.22 and it's tech tree and how it will all be handled, including the cost of building your rockets and there's some great suggestions and ideas coming in from all over the place. There's one question that hasn't been asked yet, afaik. The question I was wondering about is if there will be a 'Game Over' at any point in the finished career mode? Can your space program run out of money and have to shut down? Should it be possible to go bankrupt and have to start over again? I don't think this has been asked or answered anywhere and it's kind of important to answer all the other questions about how it should be structured imho. If Squad don't want to force players into starting again then keeping your program running with donations or getting funding from simply accepting a mission will have to happen. If Squad want to make it a bit tougher then running out of resources could be a real threat and a massive challenge. Or a minor possibility and no real threat unless you mess up again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again... So what do you think? Should there be the possibility of totally running out of everything and having no option but to start again or should your space program be protected by government and repeatedly handed funds despite numerous catastrophic failures?

Nope The user below me would rather be attacked by a horse sized duck than a flock of duck sized horses.

I guess you're questioning how the gaseous atmosphere spins relative to the planet below it and how that impacts aerodynamics? I think it would be faster flying the opposite direction to planet spin. Faster to reach the same point on the surface, (or above that point), but slower to travel the distance of a full circumnavigation. If that makes sense. The atmospheric affects requires someone with a much better grasp of fluid dynamics than myself to answer you though.

I have typed this message, here on this forum thread using my keyboard, with the intent of expressing my feelings towards this particular suggestion... *Ahem* THESE ARE GREAT IDEAS! I do hope Squad see this thread. Thank you for your time.

It sucks me in every night recently. Such a great piece of software. I recently found a few mods which are inspiring me even more. Some cargo bays from robodyne, the magic smoke industries robotics, the kerbpaint, the b9 aerospace and the ISA MapSat to name but a few. Don't be afraid of mods, they're awesome.

I'm better Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Foundation series-seminal stuff. The user below me can name who was used as a template for 'The Shrike'

I flew over a Munar arch once, barely noticed it to start with but then I could see what it was. I got excited and went and got the MapSat thing to find the rest of the stuff I'd heard about. Good decision from me there...for once.

I design like that all the time and it can work with some struts going from your jumbos to the top stage. Once you get out of the atmosphere it's not so bad. Here's my interplanetary stage delivering my lander and itself to the Joolian system: Now I've decided cargo bays are the way forward, those and robotic stuff.

Yes, you are, of course, correct. If I see that 150m/s drop down to 130m/s than I get angry with my stupid lifter.

No it's not mine but I found it last night and frankly, it's awesome. Please have a look and see what you think. All I know is I now have a plan for what I want to do with the Robotics mod I got this week. Amazing.

I've found a starting TWR on a lifter of around 1.6-1.8 is nice. That will obviously go up as the fuel is burned. Any higher than 2-2.2 and the air resistance works against you and you lose efficiency. Anything from 1.2-2.0 as a starting TWR can work well though. Less than 1.1 and you'll burn a LOT of fuel to go not very far, also, if you use asparagus staging watch for decreases in your velocity after each separation, if you see your speed drop between stages this is a waste of fuel as well, burning to get back velocity you've lost is not very efficient. With that in mind I also try to keep my speed increasing even when waiting to get to the apoapsis for the main thrust of the orbit insertion burn, just so you don't have to regain lost delta v, a very low burn can keep your speed increasing slightly and save you fuel in the long run.

I liked this bit: "...has a mass only six times that of Jupiter" Only? Surely a planet that is six times as heavy as Jupiter is a pretty damn big planet?

Nah, my Kerbals are recruited with full knowledge that their trip is a one way mission. They love it though, all those happy smiling faces on the other bodies of their solar system. Most of them have a rover to play with as well so they keep themselves entertained. They HAVE to stay there so I can go visit them every now and then and go for a drive in their rovers, bringing them back ruins all my fun! The statement I was responding to didn't mention anything about returning: I just wanted to make it clear that to go to any planet or moon in the system you don't need to dock and refuel. To come back of course is another matter.

Sorry but that is just plain wrong. They have enough thrust to get the job done. A thrust to weight of 0.1 will get the job done once in orbit, just very slowly. Ever heard of the Ion drive? it works at silly low thrust but it works. If you have an engine with half the ISP but four times the thrust, you'll burn twice as much fuel to achieve the same delta v but it will happen four times faster. (Those numbers are only an approximation as the weight of the engines and what you're pushing will have some effect but it's about right.) Basically the nukes let you take much less fuel with you, at the expense of longer burns. Yes, to get out to Jool you'll be burning for 12 minutes or more but they will get you there and they will use half the fuel, (or so), of a poodle. Saving all that weight is really useful for obvious reasons. For long burns you should start the burn at half the total burn time away from the node, so you do half the delta v in front of the node and half behind. The nodes assume an instant change in velocity at that point, doing half in front and half behind averages out quite nicely and keeps the burn accurate enough for your interceptions. So yeah, the most efficient ways to get places takes nuke engines and a lot of patience for those long burns. If you don't want to wait for the long burns then yeah, you'll need some beastly lifter to get more fuel up for those less efficient engines to burn through. The choice is yours, but don't think the nukes are useless as they're not, they're actually totally overpowered as long as you can put up with those double digit minute burns.

You'll need to re-orientate the command bit, whether it's a manned or unmanned, to the correct plane. Mess with spinning and flipping just that bit.

In short, docking ports or cargo bays.

This statement is completely untrue. I've been to Duna, Eve, Jool and most of it's moons and others all without docking or refuelling. Type 'Asparagus Kerbal' into a search engine of your choice. That will sort you out.

Still banging on about mods, but here's me and my efforts from one night of having a few to play with, (only just started getting into this amazing mod thing myself). I wanted a lander with a cargo bay holding a rover. It will be placed into another cargo bay of a larger interplanetary stage on a lifter at some point. But yeah, so much stuff in my head solely because of these mods I downloaded, opens up a whole load of new stuff to do. Oh yeah, the mods you can see here are the KerbPaint, B9 lights and some fuel tanks and mini rockets from AIES I think. Not to mention the Magic Smoke Robotics piston thingy. So good.

Feel I should also point out that you don't need to go huge to go far. This neat little thing got me to Laythe.

Who are they unfair to? But anyway, there's loads of mods that only add stuff that make it harder to do stuff. Have you tried to make a spaceplane and use the FAR mod? I'm currently building a Kerbal disco with some rotating discs from the robotics pack, the satellite probe core and some Aviation lights to make a disco ball...spinning around and around. It looks cool all spinny and flashy and disco style. I'm going to fly it to the Mun and have a disco on the Mun with as many Kerbals as i can get there. Just...stuff. Use your imagination man.

Have you found any of the 8 'anomalies' on the Mun? There's a couple on Duna too. Why no mods? Mods are great. Kethane, ISA MapSat, robotic arms form magic smoke industries. So much extra stuff to play with and design with. They add a whole load more stuff to do. Have you ever returned anyone from anywhere? What about Eve? Get someone back from Eve. Build a munbase. Build a space station. Loads of stuff to do.

Mission to the Joolian system: Beast of a lifter with 19 mainsails in lovely asparagus symmetry, so 2 tanks feed into 1 feeds into 1 feeds into 1 feeds into the centre stack. Under the fairings we have the interplanetary stage and the lander with rovers attached.

I downloaded this last night and I can safely say I'm VERY HAPPY with it. It's awesome. I have quite a bit of experimentation and playing around to fully understand how it all works I think, but it's soooo damn good. Thank you very much to everyone who has had a hand in this amazing mod. Should definitely be stock at some point, it's just too good. Probably should use some electric I suppose, but meh, whatever. I GOT ROBOTIC ARMS AND STUFF!!!!