annallia

NovaPunch and AEIS Aerospace mods provide fairings that can hold gear/parts in place and allow building on top/below them. There are also a few other mods that have true cargo bays though I forget the name, maybe B9?

Yep: http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/audio/bickel/DDDMMSS-decimal.html

If I can help it I put down in booster bay. If I have the fuel I will try to push my capsule towards land but ultimately my target is in the water just outside of KSC. Space planes I don't use often. After spending all that time developing and testing one only to have it crash land (mostly my fault) just made me put them on the back burner. Used now and then when I have a specific purpose for them but not really used at all.

Not sure how to fix your confusion on W/S control. However as for the maneuverability RCS is only needed as a booster (as you would see with big ships). In atmo obviously you have control surfaces to change all of these, in vacuum however you use reaction wheels to apply torque to your craft which turns it.

5. 4 of them were all on the same mission, was meant to be a rescue to get Jeb, Bill, and some other kebal home (they ran out of fuel and were on a trajectory out of Kerbins SOI) so I had to rush to put together a rescue ship that would get to them and bring them home. As it turns out there is a side effect to having radial chutes on the bottom of a hitchhiker capsule which has stuff on top of it (including another command pod) that side effect being when they fully deploy it crushes the SAS module, destroys the hitchiker can, and leaves the command module falling without a chute... Bill who was one of the 4 was also the 5th. I was testing my refueling rover, landed a a small lander that was low on fuel near it, had bill (the driver) run the line (KAS) out to the tanker and fueled it up. When it was full I grabbed the key, meant to release it and pull it back in with the winch but I guess I miss clicked. Switched back to my lander started to retract and took off... that is when I saw bill suddenly go zipping away from the rover. Distracted me just long enough that my rocket buzzed the VAB and slammed Bill into the side.

With all the modding I have done to chutes in this game... This one never occurred to me despite being something incredibly useful. Thank you.

That or they program the rover in feet and you use meters.... Ok I know that was technically an orbiter but it just wouldn't feel right not making that reference here.

I go into a 90 degree inclination (polar orbit) and just hit time warp. The planets rotation makes sure you don't stand on the same line and then it is just a question of fine tuning the altitude, obviously the faster the planet rotates the lower the altitude you want so your orbit completes faster. I scanned duna fairly quickly doing this, currently have about 75-80% scanned in just a few days.

This is what I was thinking. Below is my super tank, it weighs 150 tons (just the tank) and an extremely simple launcher to get it in space (mind you I use a few mods). No asparagus staging, just raw power. The 6 boosters were jettisoned when they ran out (no fuel crossfeed) which was around 32,000m The core stage used the fuel in the tank first, it made it to 80k orbit with enough fuel left in the core stage to not only refill the tank, but to de-orbit itself as well (and top off my tug...) Edit- by 6 boosters I meant the stage that the liquid fuel boosters from nova punch are sitting on, I forgot about those boosters so in effect I had 12. That said despite the mods this can be done with the stock game or KW. I simply prefer novapunch parts.

My most recent fail to success would be a munar rescue mission. My attempt at landing my rescue ship landed too far away for me to fly my kerbals over. Since the other ship was mostly intact just too low on fuel to return to kerbin I switched to it intending to do a little hop over to the rescue lander. Problem is I forget that I lost part of the ship (was a rough landing) and it was now imbalanced on thrust. I throttled all the way up hit my hotkey to turn on the engines (I've had a few accidents from hitting shift so I toggle my engines) the 2 LTV-30's made my light little lander take off like a bat out of hell and angled luckily directly towards the rescue ship. I immediately cut the engines, now my problem was how to land this thing? I swung it back around kick in the engines again for a burst of breaking speed just in time to slow me down enough that my landing struts clipped a hill breaking them off and making my craft cartwheel across the crater (still off the ground) I checked the fuel, only 13 units left, put my engines on full (still off but throttled all the way up) managed to end the spin and just before hitting the ground turned the engines back on. After that there were a series of explosions as the lander hit the ground, the command pod broke away and bounced across the ground for a good 200 meters. How do I know it was 200 meters? Because I was about 200 meters away from the rescue lander when I hit the ground, the pod came to a rest just a few meters short of the rescue pod.

Not at all boring, some of us like to see other peoples designs for new ideas on old projects. Welcome to KSP.

That depends on how far you take the asparagus staging. Going massive with 6, 7, 8 stages just to get into orbit... Yeah that is out of touch with reality. There are however real rockets that use asparagus staging in their launches. NASA was developing one, I forget the name. Falcon 9 I believe uses it. Russians built one... They are used but the benefit to using them is less than it is in KSP. The reason for that being the TWR of the rockets themselves in KSP. Real world rockets providing similar thrusts to KSP's weigh far less than they would in KSP.

I am not entirely sure myself. I am assuming he means people who slip in the X200-8 fuel tank (fat but short nicknamed pancake) under the Jumbo 64 to keep engines from overheating. Edit- I stand corrected, that would have been my second guess.

I know precisely what you mean. This for example was a new one for me, started out with an idea of a sky crane that could land a huge rover on Duna, decided to say to hell with figuring out how to launch my rover, dock with the skycrane, and then have a tug send it to Duna, lets build something that can do it all! I could have just let MechJeb do it, and I likely will when I fit the other 4 trucks and put them in orbit but for the first time, as a proof of concept it is always done manually for me. Granted it needs a refueling once it reaches orbit but I Think it has enough fuel to reach Duna and land, may add chutes later just to be on the safe side.

I am with the OP. Ascents are for the most part boring. The only time I find them interesting is when I am testing a new lifter, or trying to get off Eve.... Lifters despite being relatively similar in design all behave differently, is fun for me trying to learn how it wants to be flown, and figuring out how to make it fly the way I want it to... Eve is.. well its more frustrating than fun but that just makes it more interesting. That said I also agree with Whackjob. At times I build something that is just absurd and throw it against the wall hoping it sticks. Then again the building aspect of the game is what I enjoy the most. It may not always be pretty, it may not even look overly complicated (like whackjobs impressive creations...) but somehow it does the job even though you think it shouldnt.

Q and E will rotate you as well. Though easier to just point your camera towards where you want to be going and hit space so he snaps to that direction.

Grats, docking is one of those things that I still hate doing despite getting fairly decent at it. Nothing else except maybe having to make a drop landing (because your site is in the middle of a crater and if you come in at an angle like your usually do you will slam into the rock face) makes me feel happier that I managed to do it. That said: Sent a probe ahead of my mobile kethane platform. Still have to design the converter truck, the generator truck, as well as the living module but if I make them all relatively the same I can use the skycrane I developed today... I hope. This was intended for mun/minimus not Duna but I decided to hell with the moons lets go mine some pink snow! Satellite was a test design to see if I could speed up the kethane detection process. As it turns out the extra sensors serve no real purpose other than to drain the battery. Also stuck a small lander on minmus as a test lander... This thing had (key word had) two antenna and four solar arrays before I came in for my landing. Right through the middle of those two hills there in the backround, I clipped the one on the right coming in.

Not so politely but yes... Small slip ups like that I don't mind though. So he said space station instead of moon landing, that is minor. Now giving blatant false information because their fact checkers were asleep at the wheel... That is a different story.

If your command pod was backwards or mounted any other way than the way it is when you first select it (which causes the nav ball to go screwy) you can make that an easy fix by placing a docking port in its native orientation somewhere on the rocket (I usually just put it on the command pod itself). Then before launch right click the port and select control from here. It will reset your nav ball to the proper alignment.

I took my MKD (Mobile Kethane Drill) out for a quick spin on Kerbin to make sure it could drive, and that everything worked. Now to figure out how to launch it... I am thinking of dropping the winch on the command pods nose and adding a docking port, building a rocket under that. Then designing a large skycrane that can dock on the top docking port to land it. Then all I have to do is build a mobile Kethane storage rig, Mobile generator rig, Mobile converter rig....

A quick burn before the chutes fully deploy also helps minimize the shock.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/44135-0-21-x-Universe-Replacer Right there. Edit- it is just a skin, they don't appear till you are more than 70k (I think) in altitude.

By that logic nothing that was once a mod should have ever been added to the game... That said I agree with you to a point. Things such as the TWR/Delta V stats in the VAB/SPH should definitely be part of stock. As well as things like the landing information (not the auto land, just the distance from target your current course has and altitude above the terrain rather than sea level). As to the maneuver planner... I can see allowing the portion that will plot the next node and wouldn't argue against it being added though I don't see it being needed. If the rest of the planner (IE auto pilot functions) were added to the stock game then I might take issue.

I was tired of launching real missions so went over to my test save and goofed off a bit. Had some really pretty launches with probe core + about 200 SRB's Decided why not torture a few kerbals while I am at it? Removed the probe core and put in a small command pod and attempted again... Only Jeb never once seemed concerned he always seemed happy as a lark. What is it going to take to freak that boy out??

Because I suck at circularizing my orbits I tend to go minimum 80k AP this way I don't have to worry if my PE is a bit lower. If I were to try for just outside the atmo my PE would likely be in the atmosphere. Otherwise it is dependent on vessels. Satellites go 200k (+/- 5-10k) Stations if just a station go 90k (+/- 5k) refueling stations go minimum 500k (+/- 10k) And any orbital built ships go around 400k