rodion

Yeah, it's amusingly over-thrusty compared to any real-world ion engine, which also makes it all the funnier when impatient players complain about their burn times.

Are all green things with bulging eyes instinctively attracted to launch pads? This is getting out of hand.

Happened to catch a couple of transits: Ike/Sun and Mun/Sun It's nice how they both occurred fortuitously just at the moments after I had successfully completed the main point of my past two missions (manned return from Duna and finishing up the main functionality of my station/depot).

Well done on this whole thread guys, now I'm inspired. Getting the fully-fueled Jumbos into orbit is one of the most complex and frustrating tasks out there, but I've been feeling like rising to the challenge of getting more than one up for a while now. I'll see what I can hack together.

Why would it vary that much? I mean, you need different amounts of deltaV, but surely you can use the same basic design but tape more fuel tanks onto it? That's what I'm working on for my current mothership design, at least. It's a solid design, but just needs more fuel to get further than Eve or Dres. Since the whole thing is modular, I can just stick more fuel tanks onto it in LKO. Or just stick multiple motherships together, so there are spare engines, and empty tanks can be dumped into planets or muns you don't mind irradiating. I think the truth lies somewhere between these two viewpoints. On the one hand all interplanetary stages are just large masses of fuel that throw exhaust out of their back ends as fast as possible to shoot around space, so there's not strictly any need to design another interplanetary stage from scratch just because you're moving a payload to this place or the other. On the other hand, trying to infinitely extend existing ships with more and more tanks on docking ports and/or decouplers doesn't really make for a nice ship to maneuver or use, and the chance of something going wrong in space (mis-staging, struts and lines breaking, rolls, excessive wobbling) obviously increases as a function of ship mass and complexity. Just three docking point junctions in a row usually makes for a ship that wobbles terribly, even if you don't hang any other masses off the sides. There are certain considerations, such as whether to rig the stage to push or pull the payload in space, that depend on the shape and mass of what you're transporting.

Went for one of the extremely flat, oxide-saturated looking beds that a lot of the huge vaguely canalia-like fissures radiate from. It looks like it could almost have been an ocean in older days, actually. Thanks for your help. Oh, gotta get the contingency sample.

This is all looking really nice...the crater floors on the border between the poles and equator seem like they would be good too. The graphics anomaly at the pole where the textures come together is very clear from orbit.

In a few minutes I'll have a lander in orbit around Duna. I originally figured I would enter a near-equatorial orbit and just drop the craft down on the first convenient patch I could see, but it turns out due to accident that I'm only a small-ish correction away from a total polar orbit, so I basically have the complete pick of landing sites. The thing is, now I don't know where to go. What regions of Duna are most curious or attractive from the ground? I don't have any mobility gear (rovers, long range flyers etc.) so it's mostly going to be strolling, planting flags and peering vacantly at rocks.

Simple IVA view (maybe the simplest), but Kerbin looks great here through the window and it gave me that nice little feeling of pleasure you sometimes start to lose after dozens of routine orbits.

I've never even built an LES for my manned ships, and rarely code the Abort shortcut; the ability to revert and quicksave things with abandon makes it feel a little bit too much like useless extra mass and complexity on my ships. All of the Kerbals I've lost in 0.21 have been for stupid and trivial reasons, like accidentally hitting the Space Center button instead of reverting, thus losing the revert option and stranding them in some hopeless situation/trajectory.

That's a fantastic find. I've seen other people post various interesting transits of various bodies but that is certainly the nicest eclipse I've seen. I think the only notable thing I've seen is a transit of Minmus over the Mun when I was on Kerbin escape, via the cupola module, but I don't think I took a screenshot because I was time warping.

After several days of extremely miserable performance in the VAB, my fortunes are finally looking up. This still easily ranks as one of the ugliest boosters I've ever assembled in the VAB, but I must have done something somewhat right, because the flaky pilot design, with no flight tests or modifications, actually lofted just about 50,000kg to a 200 km LKO on the first ever rollout (which started as a test to see if it broke up on the pad or not - in the words of test pilot G. Tyson, 'She simply wanted to fly, so I let her.'). The X-64 and X-16 tanks at the top are dummy masses to simulate the kind of payloads that will supply my next permanent space station for mission support, or a reasonably sized one-launch mission to another body. On a less grandiose note, you may notice the novice omission of batteries or power generators, meaning yes, it's still up there.

Not directly related to improving anyone's ability to play KSP, but if I remember somewhat correctly, out of about 32 SR-71s constructed, 12 were lost in accidents related to their never-solved tendency to flameout...so don't feel too bad about getting it wrong yourself.

That's right, although with some of my worst rocket payloads with knife-edge steering I do find that even the small delay between switching and opening the tab can result in fatal loss of control.

Brotoro posted some before-and-afters of the terrain after migrating his savegame(s) too, showing the more bumpy terrain like you described. I haven't looked at it myself in 0.21 personally but I think it's certain that there have been major changes in relief.

That's right, I lost my only Kerbals so far this way by accidentally clicking through to the space center. (ostensibly counted MIA, but were last seen on a Kerbin surface trajectory with no parachutes or other brakes). The worst part is I only wanted to go and add a single extra solar panel to the craft in the VAB...

They will puzzle at certain ideas and challenges in our own manned space programs, such as the ideas that among other things "food", "water", "space", and "exercise" might actually be important variables when designing and launching an interplanetary mission.

I'm very happy with these answers and now I'm not sure if I can change the thread tag to "Answered" manually. Does a mod or someone actually need to do that? I don't know... I also considered this very same approach, although I've never been confident enough with my ÃŽâ€v margins to ever try it. Perhaps now I should, since I can launch missions with more fuel than I actually need at this point. That rules, at 64 pixels avatars become kind of stupidly small and vague. Even now his strong, shining features defeat all obstacles.

This has potential, especially if some island-of-stability unun-n-ium element turns out to make great rocket fuel.

Yeah, even worse when I'm moving complex payloads and the awkward center of mass defeats the power of any ASAS to keep the ship on course.

Good...I like this. I mean, I actually hate it, but I laughed at the post. How about 563. Rocket Armor DLC, though?

Not sure if this has been covered elsewhere but I've read enough threads without seeing anything so I'll ask. When one sets a maneuver node and then performs the prescribed burn at t-0s, especially in short-period places like low planetary orbit and with long burns, the result is often a distortion in the shape and position the trajectory compared to the one set. If I can estimate though, that a burn will take e.g. 90 seconds, if I start burning towards the target node at t-45 and finish at t+45, will that minimize the distortion in orbit? I've tried it a few times but I could never exactly tell if I was making the issue better or not. Is it maybe more subtle and less straightforward than that?

560. A complex non-optional system where if you lose any manned or high-importance vehicles in your missions, all operations are canceled for the next 24 months and as agency director you have to appear in public hearings, confer with legal advisors, deny culpability for manslaughter and professional negligence, and fill out thousands of pages of documents until the causes and circumstances of the accident are scrutinized to the public and government's satisfaction.

Here's my crude early attempt so far, the X-2 Boreplane. Turns out the name is partial misnomer since actually flying this deathtrap is an intensely "exciting" experience, and shortly painful. Main features: - Manned! ("Kerballed")? Seats one brave pilot. - Lightweight-yet-strong design means the craft weighs only 8.28 tons despite the large wingspan and area. - Harnesses the colossal power of no less than EIGHT stock ion engines. When combined with the previous point, the result is hair-raising 0.05 TWR on the ground. Seatbelts optional. - Elegant and efficient construction! A mere 211 parts. - SAS (sorry, reaction wheel) unit up front gives it a red cyclops eye and makes it look sinister. This doesn't have anything to do with the functionality of the craft, but it rules so I'm adding it here. - With a deficiency of 17 units of electricity per second (full throttle, midday) from a power supply of 4,000, you will be sure to have hundreds of seconds of airborne fun before the resource crisis forces you to slow down (to sub-stall speed). - If a cloud passes over the sun or it gets dark, you will fall down and die immediately. Fortunately, "clouds" are mythical phenomena that have never been observed on Kerbin by reliable sources, so this has never actually happened yet.

Yeah, this bug/exploit is one of the most entertaining aerodynamic eccentricities in the game right now. I agree that this plane is unusually well constructed and neat-looking for a craft of its type, nicely done.