Superfluous J

Really? I thought it took just the star level of your most leveled Engineer and that was it. Never tested it, though.

Because they can't read YOUR mind. Yet. Have you seen that new song yet?

How would that video be... OH you mean MY videos. Thank you (Note: Thanks for the badge but my .sig is scraping maximum characters as it is and I have things I've left off of it, so I will not be putting it up.It's very appreciated though!) The big difference is 1.0.2 has far more forgiving re-entry. I re-entered from Duna at 6.5km/s (It was not your father's transfer orbit) with no heat shield and no problems. In 1.0.4, returning from Minmus was much worse. However, I think it's still pretty much in the spirit of the challenge. In the end, I lost a few experiments but probably still did just as much work as I would have had I played this in 1.0.2. ...except the extra work where I had to change my underwear

What about a ship orbiting Kerbin with an orbit that has about a 1/1000 chance of intercepting Mun's SOI on each pass?

It'll eventually break when they update the game but not the mod. Or, at least, it'll require a redownload. Any ships using the parts won't be "stock" even though they're only using Squad parts.

This was during the Caveman Challenge. Every part (and ton) was precious. And thankfully the Jr didn't explode, though it came terrifyingly close.

Agreed. Though this mod should IMO.

You and me both. The crazy part is how one re-entry will be fine, and the next will have stuff overheating all over the place. I did some testing in episode 4 (see below) and guesstimated that you could actually set it to 0.4, though I think I'd set it to 0.5 if I had to again. ...which I don't! This episode represents the last of our petty cash the HMV Caveman Challenge episodes. Minmus is one rich mine of science!

It's buried in options. Go into options and go to each tab, and everything that looks like a label, click it. Some of those are dropdown lists. Look through all of those. You're looking for "Warp to" options.

I agree, but there is a difference between "not a great deal of" and "none." And that's what my RCS thrusters provided. None torque.

I had this same issue. I figured my RCS blocks were just too close to the axis I was trying to rotate around (it was a Modular Girder Segment, and they were around the skinny circumference). But now that you've posted this I think perhaps it IS a bug. I wonder if we can exploit it. I have long wanted to be able to leave RCS on for translation but not have it rotate.

Not strange at all to still get a bug they haven't fixed yet.

Do this all with maneuver nodes. Get your orbit around Kerbin circular and (at least mostly) equatorial. Create a maneuver node to burn prograde out to Mun's orbit. Then drag the maneuver node around until you get an encounter.

Not directly. The profession is DIRECTLY linked to the Kerbal's EXACT name. So any Kerbal named "Jebediah Kerman" or "Valentina Kerman" will be a pilot, for example. The ONLY way to permanently set a Kerbal's profession is to change his or her name to match that profession. The best way I've found to do this is to keep trying different names until you get one that works. And yes it's a pain, and yes we've asked them to change it. And no, they haven't even responded as to if they even know how big an annoyance it is.

I personally would land the rescue ship normally, then Hyperedit the hexicans down into a landing and recover them. If you really wanted to be a stickler you could then edit your save game to remove the money you got for recovery but I'd take it as payment for dealing with the annoyance. I assume you'd get the Kerbal and complete the contract at that point, but if you didn't, you could always Alt-F12 complete the contract and/or hire a new Kerbal (hacking the save to give yourself back the money if you felt it was important). A lot of annoyance to fix a bug, but it's the best I got. At the VERY least you should Alt-F12 to complete or cancel the contract without penalty, seeing as it's not your fault you can't complete the contract normally.

I also don't like this, though I'm not one to squash an exploit that the player can squash on his or her own by simply not doing it, or by installing a mod. This includes both clipping and timewarp rotation. The first by not doing it, and the second by installing the Timewarp Rotation Fix mod. As a bonus, that mod allows you to timewarp whenever you want so doesn't annoy the %@&$ out of the player who is just trying to play the game.

I never understood these. I had a friend who had a book that supposedly showed you exactly how to solve it. I couldn't figure out why that was supposed to make it more fun. I have similar problems with Prima Strategy Guides.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'" -- Isaac Asimov Or,

I recently noticed that putting parachutes on a science Jr. is a bad idea, considering the Jr has terrible heat tolerance. I noticed this during re-entry. Of course.

I've been thinking about ways to expand this challenge after you complete it. To just toss a spitball at the wall, what do you think about - after you've completed the challenge - allowing a certain number of building upgrades (I think 3 or 4 total), one of them must be R&D and the others (2 or 3 of them) can be any you so choose. Then, you have to complete the tech tree (Up to the 500 cost nodes) without upgrading anything else. 3 (in addition to R&D)is an interesting number. Do you want maneuver nodes? Then you can't have >30 parts AND >18 tons. Do you want decent ships? Then no maneuver nodes for you! You could call it the ... I don't know ... Bronze Age Challenge. Or the Hunter Gatherer Challenge. Or something. As I said, just spitballing. Oh, and the sub-title to episode 3 is "Space Is Hard."

I personally prefer the "only lift the fuel" method. The only reason I prefer it (and it's marginal) is that you'll never run out of fuel while lifting it off the surface, yet you'll never end up docking to your station with fuel left over. So, it's more efficient. One bonus of the orbiting station is that it's in the sun more often, and in night for less time, than a surface base so the refining can run all the time with less batteries, but that's not a big deal considering if you leave your surface base alone for a year and jump to it in the daylight, it will fast forward time and fill up all your tanks no problem. No opinion on Jool. I've not mined there yet. Is Laythe (I assume with an inbound aerobrake) more efficient than Tylo (with less dV in all other legs of the journey)?

Based on the text in the upper right (About how flight times were based on AlexMoon's calculator) I'd assume - with no further info to the contrary - that the dV requirements were arrived at similarly. No guarantee, of course, but it makes sense. And if it doesn't do that, why doesn't it? How were the numbers derived? Was each transfer burn on the chart planned for all situations? Regarding Eeloo, based on this chart I expect to orbit it from LKO would take 950+1140+1370 or 3460, plus somewhere between 0 and 1330 for the plane change. Returning to Kerbin from LEO would take 1370+1140 or 2510, plus somewhere between 0 and 1330 for the plane change (probably on the much lower end). I assume you're not reading the chart that way because the return trip takes 950 or better LESS dV than the outbound trip in this case.

I wonder how useful bug fixes would be on the cusp of changing over to Unity 5. Some of those bugs may just go away in the rewrite of code to work in U5. It could just be wasted effort to fix them now. I'm all for waiting for 1.1.1 or 1.2 to pick up bugfixing again.

I briefly considered making two 18-ton things that can somehow Voltron themselves together on the runway, but there are so many technical limitations and problems that I just don't think it's worth it. I've finished episode 3 which is (as always) ripe with both failure and triumph. I probably won't post it until Monday, though.

You did not, but for regex this was a continuation of a post he quoted earlier on this very page.