Superfluous J

If you have the ability, a youtube video of your launch would do wonders. Fly in map mode, with an eye on the navball. Never deviate from East, and only change your vertical aim from 90 (straight up) to 0 (straight sideways). One problem with being in map mode is you can't stage, so watch your staging in the lower left and when you must stage, hit M, then space to stage, and then M again to go back into map mode. Complain on the forums that this is bad, like we all do When you get to about 50-100m/s, pitch over about 5 degrees, to 85. Hold that until your apoapsis (which you can click on in map mode to get it to stay up the whole time) gets up to about 2000m, and then pitch to 80degrees. Continue to pitch 5 degrees every 2000m until your apoapsis is at 20km and you should have pitched over 50 total degrees, so you're aiming at about the 40 line (still pointing East!). If your prograde marker tends to always be above you and you seem to be pulling it down, you've probably got too much thrust. If it sinks below you you've probably not got enough. A little difference is fine, but if you spend a lot of time outside the prograde circle you're not being super efficient, and (much worse) your rocket could become squirrely and/or flip uncontrollably. Then hold that until your apoapsis gets to 30km, and pitch down to 30 degrees. 40km apoapsis, pitch to 20 degrees. 50km, 10 degrees. 60km and on, hug the horizon line.

...once they're updated for it, of course I'm getting a bit excited about the effective erasure of the memory cap, and am starting to think about the mods I've either never used, or tried but uninstalled because they got me too close to (or sometimes past) crashing. When 1.1 lands, I know I'm going to reinstall KerbinSide and Texture Replacer (with the biggest, prettiest textures I can find). I may even start dabbling in part mods, something I've never really done. What about you? What mods are you looking of trying, either again or for the first time, once you are unshackled from the memory cap? Linux users, feel free to gloat discuss the mod combos you enjoy right now, to give us some ideas as well!

Hm. My burn time is always wrong until I do a bit of burning (like in your Notes) and then it's as accurate as can be expected. I've never seen it not go up once you start burning. I don't even know if log files would help in this case, as I doubt "how much you're thrusting" and "how long the node says it will take" are logged under any circumstances.

I personally hit > one time to go to 5x time warp.

Which just pushes the sentence sideways, to "They should have the same semi-major-axis as I understand it. No idea if the exact orbits have been adjusted at any point." I can actually state with assuredness that the two moons have the same period. I can't speak on if they have been modified, having only started playing it recently.

Modifying the persistent file should ALWAYS be done with care, and more importantly with backups. Something as simple as changing a Kerbal's NAME can cause save files to become unusable.

Yes. You should. Everybody in the Universe should.

This probe core.

When the engineer report tells you that you have power generation (solar panels) but nothing that requires power (even though you've got a probe core).

While I agree it doesn't sound difficult, is it so difficult to right click the node and click the X? Or the X on the navball, which I personally prefer? I don't understand this request. You can drag all 6 node arms forward and back, which will change your resultant trajectory in every manner possible. You can also drag the node itself along the orbit path.

Agreed that we really need to see the rocket to help, but keep several things in mind while climbing through the atmosphere: Things like to fly with the heaviest parts in front. Look at arrows flying, hammers being thrown, and the like. As your rocket burns fuel, it starts at the top and burns down, which can make a rocket that starts top-heavy (which is good) become bottom-heavy (which is bad). The obvious solution here is to break your ascent into stages, so you're keeping more fuel up front. Turning violently is a no-no in 1.0 and on. Do NOT burn up to 10km and then crank it over 45 degrees. Instead, tip over almost immediately (Get up to say 50-100m/s first) and then slowly tilt over so you're about 45 degrees at 10km, You may need to be tilted more or less than that, but until you've got the system down 45 is a good target. Fins help push the margins in your favor, but they won't fix a bad design flown poorly. And don't put them too high up without having other ones lower to compensate. Going very fast in the lower atmosphere means you're shoving a LOT of air out of the way, quickly. This will make anything hard to control. This is not a problem in itself, but it WILL exacerbate any other issues with your rocket. Slowing down will compensate for bad flying and design, but if you have a good rocket and fly it true, you can pretty much go as fast as you want.

Assuming the forum assigns a new number iteratively to each thread, then by looking at the urls for This thread started at 11:43am on 9/20 and This thread started almost exactly 24 hours later, there were 134795-134722 or 73 threads started in that span. Frankly I'm a bit surprised it's that small a number. This thread started 5 days before the 9/21 thread implies that 134795-134415 threads were created in those 5 days, or 380. That's 76 threads a day. Seems pretty consistent. I imagine that things get busier during release time and just after, but for Situation Normal, 70-80 sounds like it. That's about 3 threads an hour, or a new thread every 20 minutes.

Not revert. Jump to. If you revert to KSC you'll have to launch again.

I basically do what you do for rockets. For space planes, I flail in the SPH or an hour or so and then give up.

While most people (and most rockets) manually guide the pitchover, it is possible to do a (at least more) real gravity turn in KSP now that the atmosphere is kinder to fast moving, sleeker craft. I have a lot of "press space for space" rockets where all I have to do is stage - and never touch the steering - until I'm so close to orbit it's not worth worrying about. If that ain't a gravity turn, I don't want to do one

It could be worded better, but the choices aren't "Do you want (A) or (?" but instead "Do you want (A or versus not having them?" A Yes answer means you would pay for DLC or a new game that is a more realistic KSP. A No answer means you would not pay for either of those.

Sort of. The main character - a Native American - thought he saw adobe type cliff dwellings on the wall of - I think - the walls of Valles Marineris. Before he can get close enough to see for himself, though, certain things happen. Pretty much nobody believes him because his heritage could be affecting his judgement and we all know the trouble you can get into making guesses about vague shapes you see on Mars. It's not until book 2 that we get up close and personal with what he saw from afar in book 1, and as I said I found the actuality lacking compared to the mystery.

Huh. I coulda sworn it was 1.08 days per Nom. Oh well like I said I used the tool to see how many days, and always had hefty margins. And now I don't use the mod because I'm lazy

I just assume it's 1 per day and the extra saves me having to build in my own safety margin. Actually that's too much math. I just toss a few big cans on, verify the ship has at least as much time (but not more than - say - two times as much) as it needs right before launch, and then mash space.

Two words for your sister: Tee Fury.

TIL is YAA. In fact, it's YATLA. Amusingly, YAA is also both YAA and YATLA, but YATLA is not YATLA. It's just YAA. YAA = Yet Another Acronym YATLA = Yet Another Three-Letter Acronym

I really enjoyed Ben Bova's Mars (Original title, I know). Great hard science story of the first manned Mars mission, with some good human drama that doesn't overtake the story. The 2nd book - Return to Mars - I didn't like as much. I liked how the first book hinted at a great discovery but didn't allow the payoff. In my mind, those hints were far better than the actual payoff the 2nd book provided. i never read the 3rd book.

Technically it was not homicide, because HAL is not human, but that's just side stepping the issue. If he's intelligent enough to be "considered" a person, then yes it was homicide, and therefore he was homicidal. If he is not intelligent enough to be "considered" a person, then it is as much homicide as a boulder rolling over someone and killing them would be homicide.

The contest specifically said orbital velocity. Doesn't matter which you feel is better, in this contest surface velocity is incorrect, and only an orbital velocity of 0 counts.

I personally prefer to land a fuel lifter directly onto a Sr. docking port on the surface. It takes a very steady hand and a good amount of practice to get down, but it feels awesome to nail it and even better to realize you're actually comfortable with it. Another option is a claw-enabled car or hover-tug. Claw it onto the refinery, fill up, claw to the lifter ship, fill it up, and then head into space. I suggest if you go this route to use the Stock Bug Fixes mod. Speaking of mods, a lot of people (myself included) have used Kerbal Attachment System to hook everything up. I've not used it since Kerbal Inventory System came out so I can't really speak on its current implementation, but back in the day it was - in my mind - THE way to do ISRU bases. And the final option is the simplest: Lift the whole ISRU refinery off the surface and into space. It's not the most efficient and you gotta land it again to be useful, but hey it's the simplest method, so it's not expected to be the most efficient.