Kerbart

Most contracts have extremely long expiration dates. Wait until you have a couple more "land on Minmus" missions and execute them all at once. That should give you a much bigger budget.

If we helioform Jupiter then: (a) We're technologically advanced enough to exterminate ourselves completely and likely sterilize the solar system in the process ( We're technologically advanced enough to reach out to the stars (Loosely based on Sagan's hypothesis that we will only encounter friendly aliens)

"30km and 12° relative inclination. Yes, that'll do for an LKO rendez-vous. I can just burn the gap"

I have an iPhone. Spending more years in the IT world than most KSP'ers are of age has taught me that there's a lot of convenience is sticking to a platform that dominates the market, not to what is “better†(whatever the hell that means in your own opinion). Android might sell in superior numbers, Apple is still the 800 pound gorilla in smartphone land. Does that mean it's perfect? Far from that. Apple fanboys “it just works†mantra is complete BS. We have an iMac at work (the large screen and ability to work past 4GB made it more suitable than Windows for certain jobs) and I'm amazed how many things don't work, or don't work properly. And the best is, because “it just works,†if it doesn't there's not a lot you can do. Windows gives me all kind of ways to tinker with settings. Apple is truly plug and pray. If it works, it works great. If it doesn't, you're in for a lot of pain. Apple has superior ergonomic design. Whoever thinks this has obviously never used an Apple keyboard and mouse Most Apple products, including iPhone, are usually well made. I'll give'm that. Apple's non standard, non-usb plug was annoying, but hey, at least you can connect all your Apple devices with the same cable. Enter the lightning plug. User friendly? Every time I have to change settings I have to freakin' google it. Some settings are in-app (we're talking vanilla apps here, not 3rd party ones), some settings are in the Settings app. Which might or might not be under "general", some generic "non-general" header or under an app-specific setting. Want 24h time but date settings the American way? Easy! Pick international settings for "Barbados!" WTF!! Granted that has been "fixed" with IOS 7 but really, SEVEN? That couldn't be figured out before? The only interface from computer to phone is iTunes. And it's a ##### disaster. I spent two days figuring out how to get rid of songs on my iPhone that I no longer wanted there. I ended up wiping all my music from my iPhone (wiping my iTunes library twice in the process before I figured out how to do thatâ€â€settings useage, doh!). Whoever claims that Apple are masters of useability is insane "We have determined the best sizes for phone and tablet. No need to come out with other sizes" *competition makes killing in selling devices in other sizes* "We know have devices in exciting other sizes! Look at us! We're innovative! Nobody thinks of this but us!" It's not a bad phone, and it's good enought to the point that I have no intention to try out how green the grass is on the Android side, but Fanboys idolation and pretention that it's superior to anything including sliced bread is just ridiculous.

Well they seem to be overheating to the point of exploding. And when they explode they disappear. Not really that strange that they're disappearing

Because people familiar with IRC will call it IRC and there's a good chance they won't make the connect with it when it's named "IR Chat" Repetition of the last word in a abbreviation is a common thing. Yes, it's wrong, but it happens. Better get used to it I come across a lot of trailers from trucking company "NFI, inc." (one of the larger companies in town uses them a lot). What does NFI stand for? "National Freight, Inc." Same thing. It happens...

Tylo's even less dense?

Most of the fuel would be burnt before you start to turn, so the weight isn't really an issue. At any rate, weight would be a different vector (pointing down) than the direction in which the fuel flows. I can imagine though that moving all that mass around would matter, but you were talking about weight. Yes. I'm nitpicking. But c'mon, we're talking about physics here. And rockets. Understanding the difference between weight and mass is important.

Ehm, yeah. Right.

Read contracts before accepting them. Don't be afraid to turn away “bad†contracts Make a list with all contracts. I just write them down, but you can use a spreadsheet as well. I have different categories like “in flight†(where altitude and velocity matter) and “in orbit/sub orbital†(where only altitude matters) Fly regular missions but pick out a few contract experiments that can hitch hike along. Except for very large parts you can usually bolt a part that needs to be tested along with one stage or another. Plan & Build: if you accepted that mission to test a KS-25×4 in Mun orbit, find a mission where you need such a monster. A scientific mission to Jool for instance. Build mission craft that happen to use experimental parts, don't build experimental craft to fullfill contracts.

If it works NASA will give a ***** if the thrust comes from quantum bibaglion frupturts or from Unicorn farts; it would allow them to launch probes to nearby stars. Mind you, I highly, highly doubt it works.

One can argue that part clipping offsets the many limitations you have inside the VAB that you would not have in reality. Obviously fitting two tanks in the space of one wouldn't be one of those cases, but batteries, small RCS tanks, etc can normally by fitted in between other parts.

Ion drives offer much more thrust. For the distances within the Kerbal system there's really no need for a thruster that delivers less power but uses no propellant (IF and that's a big if such microwave devices do indeed work. NASA didn't say it worked; it said "we had a force we couldn't explain but so did the device that wasn't supposed to work") Such a propulsion system if it exists (IF! IF! IF!) would be great for exploring other star systems as it could run for years (and thus propel vehicles to great speed). KSP doesn't have other stars to visit (how awesome would THAT be) so... it would be without a lot of use.

Wonderful discussions. Personally I think it's a lot easier: because history. Up to .24 there really was no value in any debris. With asparagus designs you'd easily be shedding hundreds of parts each launch, and littering Kerbin's surface had no real value but would slow the game down in the long run. So the obvious solution: if it's shedded during launch and doesn't have a command unit, it's debris, and you don't need it. So it gets deleted. In-orbit debris is different because it has entertainment value (Kessler syndrome, cleanup missions) and besides that, not every command-less object in orbit is regarded "debris" by the player (think fuel tanks for refueling, etc). I don't think it's something Squad really touched at the .24 release, not realizing that most players have spontaneously morphed into Scrooge McMizers and want to recover every last strut (god forbid you'd run out) even though you really won't run into funding problems if you don't. Personally I just make the same launch vehicles as I did in the past, with maybe a few more SRB's instead of asparagus boosters, but I'm not trying to recover any ditched stages. And after a few days of game time I'm at $5M. Squad surely had experienced something similar when play testing so they didn't think people would be that desperate to recover everything.

In the good ole' days (mid nineties) the excel vba usenet group (probably something like microsoft.common.office.excel.programming.vba or whatever, they always had convoluted names) had a tread on what was the most effective "datestamp macro". It started the way we all do: writing a macro that enters the =today() formula, copy, paste special, yadda yadda yadda. Then of course if got mentioned that you can do that much quicker with real vba code, etc, etc. And then somebody absolutely killed it by mentioning "ctrl ; (semi colon) does the same thing" This thread reminded me of that. Thanks

I hope you're reinstalling the game! There are still a few lessons the be learned here in general: Test! Anything that can be tested on the launchpad should be tested (blocked hatches, too short landing gear, rovers, etc). Finding out that something doesn't work was expensive in the past (for invested time) and is now even more expensive in career mode! Try out design concepts in smaller designs. NASA testcased most Apollo procedures and techniques with the Gemini program and got some valuable lessons out of it. If your assembly depends on side-port docking, try it out small scale first. (A) you'll discover a lot of hurdles you didn't think of and ( you'll know if what you want is possible or not* Screenshot the crap out of everything, especially when you're encountering errors. It helps to prove it's a new bug and we'll all be impressed. Or you goofed up and we'll all have a good laugh And trust me I prefer the "dude you #### up" option because that I can (usually) fix, rather than "yeah that's a known bug, it doesn't work" As in the real world, sometimes things should work but they don't. Welcome to the wonderful world of engineering. Deal with it. Find another way to make it happen.

Remember a lot depends on how you describe a problem. If there's not a lot to go on, people will assume the most common causes. In case of docking the wrongly mounted ports, approaching too fast, etc. When you describe a problem, try to include everything that will prevent other people from wasting time and effort in good-natured efforts to help you. Docking usually (as in: nearly always) just works, so mentioning "if this docking will ever get fixed" will immediately trigger well you must be doing SOMETHING wrong. Please note that the information that clarifies that you have experience in docking and that you checked the docking ports is rather sparse (I'll list it out for effect): No critique is valid without offering suggestions on how to improve, so here it goes: I've tried multiple times (over 40) to dock a part to my space ship, and it bounces of every time I know how to dock; I've done it many times and assembled a large station with SR docking ports without problem I checked to make sure that the ports have the right orientation I'm using "control from here" on the one docking port and set the other docking port as target Here are screenshots of the two docking ports that don't want to dock As you can see, there are no other parts that can interfere with the docking Now you've painted a picture that clearly shows a bug. You've already pre-emptively asked questions that would be asked otherwise (docking port orientation, are the ships colliding elsewhere, do you know how to dock, etc) greatly reducing the amount of communication needed on things that don't matter. Non verbal communication is hard, and this forum is a great place to learn that (better than the workplace or with the professor who oversees your graduation). Good luck in your future ventures!

I know. Which means that all those tests you have to do at various altitudes now have to be on a manned craft that makes it into orbit. Instead of an unmanned "straight up, straight down, and likely to land on the Kerbal Space Port and get me 90% or more recovery Funds" contraption.

Really, try Dunkin' Donuts The morons also managed once, when I asked for “a bagel with butter on it,†to yes, give me a bagel with butter smeared on top of it.

Well, we're getting a bit more info now. Did you set the docking port as target, and did you use "control from here" on the other one? What kind of docking ports? If they were the inline ones, did you actually open the doors to activate them? As mentioned before, docking is a process where virtually no one has reported a bug. Ever. Undocking, yes. And I doubt there are that many people that use auto docking tools (the only one I know of is MechJeb and it does an absolutely horrible job at it) or hacking (a total headache, only for special cases; docking manually is much, much easier) in the first place. I'm glad the Wright brothers, Goddard and Von Braun didn't give up so quickly; we'd still be stuck to the ground.

Keep in mind that just because a part fails, the test doesn'tâ€â€The contract is testing the part, and it didn't work. I'm sure everyone agrees on this but it's good to get it out of the way. Second of all, I think there's a fairly simple solution to what is described above that would meet all criteria, and also defeat the current wave (at least that how I am doing it) of unmanned probes that, with brutal efficiency, test 2 parts on the launch platform, 5 parts on the way up, 3 on the way down, and another two when splashed down. I know that HarvesteR loves those contraptions and for the first three times they're fun, but it gets old quickly. This thread, and a recent bunch of contracts that had me lift a LFB KR1X2 into orbit (before staging it) and use that to get a KR2L into Munar orbit made me think... Things can be made a little bit more challenging if you require a Kerbal to inspect it (during an EVA). In some cases there might be an additional requirement to inspection ("in orbit") and maybe in some cases a second "run test" gets unlocked after an inspection. Maybe the inspection reveals a "part failed" result which unlocks a new contract to repair/redo the test (eva: "reset part")

Well, the monolith is there, so if you want you CAN

In layman's terms: if this were a medical test, the control group that was given the placebo's showed the same result?

From what I understand, compared to the QVPT, an ion thruster is like a mainsail engine.

In reference to this part: If you want to operate your craft while using the upside-down Aerospike the velocity vectors will "act weird" as positive thrust will result in deceleration, etc.