Monkeh

May I direct you to this excellent thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/48876-The-art-of-modular-base-building Have fun and good luck.

People saying we'll evolve into unrecognizable forms need to realise you need natural selection to evolve. The human species is no longer naturally selected, at least not In the Western world. People with massive genetic abnormalities, doomed to a short, horrible existence 50,000 years ago happily pro-create these days. Nothing is killing our babies or adults in high enough proportions to create selection and therefore evolution. Once we get permanent colonies elsewhere in the solar system the environments may cause adaptations to arise, but again, true evolution may be completely impossible unless we find a new threat to our superiority and we start to lose significant numbers of individuals. Of course gene manipulation can't really be considered evolution as such but could well produce vastly differing individuals. Prehensile tail for your baby madam, will really help getting around that zero g holiday home you have!

There are in-line parachutes available in the Spherical and Toroidal Tanks mod. At least I think that's where I got them... That isn't much help is it, sorry, but yeah, inline 'chutes exist, I've used them.

Best bet is to make a shortcut on your desktop for the steam 'common' folder. All your games will be in there. Mods go in GameData as usual. If you make a copy of the game, (Which is a great idea by the way, I have one for testing out new mods and stability before putting them into my main game), steam screenshots won't work, you have been warned!

Sleep is an important art of a healthy lifestyle. Like food, people underestimate just how important good sleeping patterns are to a healthy and well adjusted human being. Here is a list of things that have been attributed to a lack of sleep: # aching muscles # blurred vision # clinical depression # colorblindness # daytime drowsiness and naps, excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) # decreased mental activity and concentration # depersonalization/derealization # weakened immune system # dizziness # dark circles under the eyes # fainting # general confusion # hallucinations (visual and auditory)(Not the good, drug kinds.) # hand tremors # headache # hyperactivity # hypertension # impatience # irritability # nausea # nystagmus (rapid involuntary rhythmic eye movement) # psychosis-like symptoms # sleep paralysis (while awake) # pallor # slowed reaction time # slurred and/or nonsensical speech # sore throat # stuffy nose # weight loss or gain # severe yawning # increased desire for sexual activity # delirium # temper tantrums in children # symptoms similar to: * Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder * alcoholic intoxication This list shows what you are doing to yourself by not sleeping enough. Lack of sleep is no joke. If you're in school then your concentration slips, you don't retain information, you'll get bored easily and lose interest not to mention being in a bad mood and snapping at people who irritate you a bit. Who needs friends though right? Some food for thought though there, lot's of nasty things you can bring on yourself by not sleeping properly.

Let me try to remember all the different bits. The main mod on show here is the Spherical and Toroidal Tank pack. It has some lights from both B9 Aerospace and some from Aviation Lights. The engines on the lifter stage are from either NovaPunch or KW Rocketry, not sure which one sorry. It also uses the invisible struts from the B9 pack as well to keep it all looking nice. The 'command chair verandas' are using some structural stuff from the Spherical and Toroidal tanks pack, which are really nice and useful. The top is encased using the 'Interstage adapter' part from the Procedural Fairings mod. If you'd like the .craft file and the parts required to make it, then let me know and I'll sort out a little pack with them both in for you to download.

Check out the Spherical and Toroidal tanks mod. That does exactly what you want.

The fun for me comes from the sense of achievement and beating the heartless bitch that is gravity. I've also enjoyed learning about rocket science as well.

The only modded parts on view there are some lights and the fairings. I'm pretty sure those, combined with a little KerbPaint, won't change the relevance of the engineer readout showing the thrust to weights of a successful ship's stages. It also shows that before the 0.55 TWr nukes come into play, I'll be in orbit, as the other stages have over 4,500 m/s combined. I hereby conclude the picture is relevant and helpful.

Just as a warning...lol, this challenge may bring on a Kraken attack! So inspired by the posts above I thought I'd shove a load of full hitchhiker tanks in a row, EVA out all the Kerbals and then shove them on a load of command chairs of another ship... I got to about 15 or so stood on the pad when it struck. Had to restart and when I returned the 'ship' was moving at over 10,000 m/s away from Kerbin and the poor guys who were stood minding their own business, waiting for their trip to the Mun, were close behind at 4,700 m/s... Ye 'ave been warned yer flabber fleshed land lubber yer!

Mine black holes. Easy

So I decided to just throw another craft at the first one, slightly modified to rectify the last problem. Got a nice slingshot around Ike to improve the orbit. This time the girder dropped off as designed and we managed the ascent. The delta v readout from the engineer redux doesn't take into account the last stage as it's on top of the root part. This seems to confuse it. I still don't know if I have enough fuel to get home. No idea how, but one of the fairing panels decided to fall off before the staging, but time to unveil the return vehicle and EVA over. Cute little thing Whoops, flight engineer chip not on this stage...still no idea if I can make it home. Ran out of fuel a few hundred m/s away from a perfect mission, then I tried to use the RCS to get the last little bit of deceleration at the apoap to start an aerobrake at the periap...alas, to no avail.

Keep in mind you'll need around 4,500 m/s to get a decent orbit. Use asparagus. Keep thrust to weight above 1.4 and below 2.2. I find a slow turn from around 12,000m works well. Don't aim below 45 degrees until you're going over 500m/s. Get apoapsis above 70,000 and coast to around 50 seconds before you hit it and then burn horizontal as hard as possible until the apo and peri swing round. Hit x. Badda boom badda bing. With all that in mind and looking at your screenshot I'd say you don't have enough thrust to weight in the last 4 stages or so. You're losing too much to gravity. Lose one of the nukes to save weight. 2 is more than enough. Bit less fuel and some little tweaks and it will do fine. All your lifter stages should be 1.3-4 minimum. Here's a shot of my mum return ship. Check the thrust to weights. Works a treat. Good luck.

Mine change with the mission. My latest Duna mission I decided to only use the round and toroidal fuel tanks. I have started trying to get my kerbals back from wherever I shoot them to, so that's new for me as well. No doubt they'll change again sometime soon.

Wait...s.e.x.y. got censored? Really? Wow.

I feel KSP is both. Truck driving simulator is both sim. and game. In fact most games simulate something, even if it's just simulating being a soldier and shooting baddies. Soldier sim doesn't sound as **** as Call Of Duty though does it.

Love these parts. They look great and work real nice and I love them. Did I mention the love I have for these tanks? Here's a ship I put together with them, it nearly got to Duna and back. A few tweaks and it's easy mode.

Thanks, I am kinda proud of it, my little baby... Yeah they're both still there. I think I may have rage quit so the game very nicely put them back to my last quicksave, just before take off I think. A rescue mission is in the works. Just got to check that damn girder... Oh yeah, and the mod is great, really nice tanks and stuff.

The goal I had for this mission was to get to Duna and back with a manned vessel. I added the stipulation that I could only use fuel tanks from the round and toroidal pack. The design for the ship took me a while to get right, but I felt I had the right selection of stages to make the attempt. I also think the ship looks mighty cool :: On the launchpad. Nice and steady on the ascent. We made orbit and the remaining stages seem to have the right delta V requirements to at least get me to Duna, getting back is still on the cards I think but I haven't looked at any charts of tables so it's a bit of guesswork as to how much I will need. Only one way to find out of course... Drop the last of the lifter stages and burn to Duna. Slowing down at Duna, you can see both Duna and Ike in this shot. Set up a nice circular orbit and pick a landing spot. Use the last couple of hundred metres per second delta V in the interplanetary stage to begin killing the horizontal velocity. Drop that stage and prepare for the lander module to make touch down. Pop out the parachutes and burn like mad to reduce speed. With the last drops of fuel in the insertion stage we managed to get below a speed that would have caused total destruction. A couple of the landing legs decided to take a long vacation from actually being landing legs and blew up a little bit, but the lander module made it down to the Dunan surface and we could get Bill and Jeb onto the planet for a wander with the rovers and just to sit and chill and enjoy the view in the command chair verandas, beautiful. Obligatory photo of the heroes planting the flag and roving like bosses. Jeb thought he was too far away in the first shot and demanded a retake! Popping the fairings whilst on the command chair veranda wasn't advised by mission control, but the guys just thought, YOLO, and sat and popped. The fairings killed nobody and exploded harmlessly, well away from the lander module, rovers and other delicate equipment...more or less. So my bright idea was to have this module separate from the lander, get the little return home vessel into orbit, transfer the guys over and head for home in the little 2 man can. I felt reasonably confident we had the delta V requirements and felt supremely confident after the rest of the mission going so well. This is where disaster struck. A tiny little detail, not spotted in the VAB, is about to ruin these brave Kerbal's attempts at getting home. Have a look at this screenshot and see if you can work out what went wrong. The decoupler removes the lowest landing stage, the rest soars to the heavens. Have you spotted the oh-so not deliberate mistake? Look at the girder that connects the two stages. Now look at the toroidal tanks just above the little engines. Can you see the problem? The width of the toroidal tanks means as the top stage tries to pull away the tanks grab the thickest part of the girder and try to lift the entire landing stage up instead of dropping all that dead weight. They had absolutely no chance of going anywhere with all that tagging along. So after re loading from the quick save and trying again a couple of times before I realised what was going on, this was the end result. The lesson here, I suppose, is to check and re-check everything before embarking on a mission that will take a good couple of hours of real time. My emotions at that time can only be described as, 'very sad', but it hasn't deterred me, I shall make a visit to the VAB, fix the design and send another set of brave explorers out there, hopefully this time, to come back. Wish me luck and make sure something like this never happens to you.

Got my, 'round and toroidal tank only', Duna return mission craft all the way to Duna, only to be foiled by an upside down girder! Full mission report incoming. So gutted

I don't have problems with the actual docking aspect, (I realised that changing between the docking and staging modes allowed me to line up easy enough), it's the rendezvous part I have massive trouble with. I have no problems with using MechJeb except I feel it will take away the fun for me a bit. I enjoy flying things and learning as I do and simply getting an autopilot to do it appears to both remove the challenge, which is a massive part of the fun of KSP for me, and just reduce me to a spectator. My solution to this dilemma has been to try to work enough delta v into a single launch for the things I want to do. Up until recently that has meant getting to lots of places and not really attempting to get back. This last couple of weeks has seen me change that stance and now getting my little green fellas back is all part of the challenge. So far I've got to the Mun and...ermm, the Mun. I've now decided that a trip to Minmus is at least as easy so meh, skip that one and go for Duna. I've also decided that I can only use the round and toroidal tanks as well to add to the challenge. All in all, I'd say just do whatever you feel you WANT to, not what you feel you SHOULD do. Single player game, play it EXACTLY how you find the most fun playing. If learning to dock just sounds like a pain in the ass then don't bother, simples. Just make sure you're having fun, you got nothing to prove to anyone.

Grab yourself the engineer redux. It has a little part you clip on your ship and you get a box with your delta v and thrust to weight shown. To get to orbit you'll be needing around 4,500 m/s and a good thrust to weight is around 1.6 - 1.8. Too much over 2 and air resistance makes it less efficient. It's not cheating and if won't fly your ship. It's a calculator, but once you have it, building things efficiently becomes a lot easier. It's a 'must have' in my opinion.

Transmitting drains them VERY quickly. Keep an eye on your resources box top right as you transmit. Add solar panels and those little nuclear reactors and it will get sent in the end. Just takes time.

Add parachutes and it should be fine for landing and leaving Laythe. Landing on Tylo is a different matter that requires much more delta v. A good, efficient landing and you might well have enough. Good luck.