Longsok

I had a Luney Kerman, who was Jeb-like. He was a hero to us all, until I landed Munlas Kerman while Luney was doing his own landing. When I discovered he went awol, there was a bit of a panic to secure the SRBs.

From what I understand, most indie games don't bother with getting a rating. Anyways, mods aren't factored in, as you can see by Minecraft's E10(I think) rating when there are really disturbing mods out there for the game. So I think a E rating would make sense, as there isn't violence, and the game is centered on exploration.

Maneuver Nodes. I kept trying to dock, but i was spending tons of fuel just trying to get a rendezvous. I kept thinking that there had to be a way to see what a certain maneuver would do to my orbit, and Lo and behold when I watched Scott Manley do it, I saw the maneuver nodes, and suddenly everything became much easier.

The first time I started KSP, I built a pretty ok rocket, and went to go launch it. Cue me hitting every button on the keyboard trying to find the "Go" key.

I upgraded my KOSMOS parts, and my mun base made with it wouldn't load, so I had to downgrade. I could load up the base in the VAB, and I was able to fly by the base, but loading the base up didn't work. That is the base.

I name my ships like so, (name of design)+(destination)+(descriptor). For landers, the name is some sort of tea that is related some how to the destination. For orbiters, names relate to their purpose. For example, My Pisces orbiters are a knock off of the Gemini Missions and I named my recon satellites after the roman goddess of wisdom.

Ones that stood out to me are Laythe, which seems to me to sound like litho, the root word for earth, Eve, which makes sense because Venus is the evening star, and Minimus, because it is tiny.

This. Especially the cool names like Florence and Clara. The rest of this whole argument is silly.

Dres, because dwarf planets are awesome. It is one of the few planets I am absolutely sure of colonizing.

I landed my mun rover on the mun, which was quite a nightmare. First, I landed on the side of the crater Jeb's "base" is in, 15 Km away from said "base", on a wicked steep slope. So I took off, and flew closer to Jeb. Touched down about 1.5 Km away, drove the rest of the way. Well, Jeb wanted to take it for a spin, having spent the past 4 days sitting in his capsule. That was a bad idea. First, I turn too hard, sending Jeb flipping end over end soaring above the Munar terrain, but somehow, with the magic of reaction wheels, he only pops a few tires. All is good. THEN, as I am driving at ~22 m/s, there is suddenly no ground below my rover. Jeb drove, at 22 m/s, into a crater, dropping 100 meters, and the only damage was the popping of 6 of my 8 tires. Either Jeb is a wicked good driver, or my rover is invincible.

That was just Jeb getting revenge for you running him over.

It took me three attempts, first I couldn't rendezvous, then I put the thrusters wrong so I spent all my fuel spinning all over the place. The third time, perfect rendezvous, aligned my craft with the other, moved in, and presto, docked. No setting targets after the rendezvous, just some good old fashioned eyeballing.

My first landing went perfectly, until I loaded a quicksave where it never happened. So, then I sent a second mission. Everything looked great, the nuclear brake section detached, and exploded on the mun, and I was a few meters above the surface descending at 2 m/s, when boom, the engine exploded. Didn't stop me from getting Jeb out to take a picture. In game time, that was an hour ago. I already have the core of my rescue mission/base project in orbit. Now just to learn precision landings and get the rover, habitation module, resource module, kethane factory, fuel block, kerbal capsule, and lander on that. Good thing I dug up an old Rockomax design from before I wrote them off as "impossible to fly".

More like this seems so over their heads, what with the whole forum topic about gross misunderstandings about basic physics laws, that they view it as techno-magic. So they hear "asteroid" and think "boom", then immediately assume that is what would happen, because in their minds, Asteroids are rocks in space that fly about unpredictably.

Exactly, plus if we do want to colonize Mars, it would help to build a base on the closest celestial body to earth in order to learn how to set up a base in space, and how to send resupply ships and everything. That way, if something goes wrong, you don't end up with colonists at best 3 months away from help.

Not as bad as the time I dreamed about Dwarf Fortress, in ASCII. Anyways, when you start to dream about a game, you know it is awesome.

MechJeb seems to be true to it's name, only Jeb would be crazy enough to land like that.

I have to say, if you keep an open mind about it and don't go into it thinking "This sucks", it is not that bad. I kind of wish I had more control over the metro screen, for example making a custom tile for KSP with the title screen, but other than that, not so much. I have barely touched the windows apps though, like xbox music, games, and store. Microsoft should not head toward a more Apple-like experience. You do need a touch screen laptop for 8, and I think they should require it. The only problem I have is with some of Microsoft's apps, like Mail, which takes forever to load, and News, which doesn't have half the articles it displays in the Metro screen.

Depends on what you mean by landing.

I successfully completed my docking program, so now it is time to work on a Mun Satellite and manned lander, maybe even a space station

When I first saw this, I was going to be like "Just Keep Trying!", but after I got two craft in the exact same orbit, and ended up running out of rcs on both of them, I kind of see where he is coming from. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure my problems were horrible RCS placement, as rcs that is put so it spins you around is not really great for docking. If your design sucks, just put extra RCS thrusters exactly at the center of mass of the stage that will dock, and make an action group to switch thrusters for when it is time to dock.

Carrying The Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys by Micheal Collins This details a lot of the work that went into the early manned space missions, and the first mission to the moon.

I remember when I was in third grade, my teacher said that our solar system was called the Milky Way. Adding to that, after playing KSP for a while, I found out about the LRO, Ceres, and a whole ton of stuff about the lunar missions, like the surveyor probes. And this is with me who has been obsessed with space since I first saw a space shuttle model. How we can be bored with space flight amazes me, as there are millions of people who just don't care at all about what is above their heads.

Yeah, the learning curve is not as bad as some(looking at Dwarf Fortress:D), but I think that the closest thing to levels is the learning curve. In-game, I can build a rocket that will go to Eeloo, but the reason I can't get there is I don't know how yet. It is a hugely different experience from any other game I played. It is really interesting how this is really a game based on learning.

Since I didn't see any topics discussing the substantial learning curve in KSP, I decided to start this. Just getting to the Mun takes a long time to figure out, because you need to learn how to build a stable rocket, achieve Orbit, control your orbit, and land. I'm still trying to figure out landing. It seems practice makes perfect, and that some of the maneuvers you just learn over time, but I am not looking forward to guessing windows to interplanetary flights. Any problems you have had with the learning curve?