Kulebron

1. Can I use a takeoffer that I leave in LKO, and then mothership + lander that goes to land on planets? 2. Is MechJeb allowed?

Not quite understanding: if I take off, visit 2 or more bodies, then land on Kerbin, then visit them again, how much will this score? Do I have to repeat the tour, or I may take another double mission after that? Re-read them, that's clear.

^^ "It's moho man, halleluiah?"

Backspace to go back. Tab (shift-tab) to switch between planets (but careful with shift button). Double click on a planet to focus.

Phew. I thought you deleted it faster than noticing

What about MechJeb orbit ascent? You may try profile 5-35-1-40 to start with. If TWR is very high, reduce the last parameter. I compared the max air in mechjeb with their mass, and ram air intake seemed to have a little bit better ratio than the cone intake.

KSC definitely must have this form of life:

Lifting a 1000 tonnes of VAB with boosters to the Mün would be a tongue in cheek contract in KSP.

The reason is that at sea level, thrust is considerably lower, unlike KSP where it remains the same. But there was no reason to optimize the engines for the lowest 20km of atmosphere. Engineers sacrifices some gravity losses for the sake of better TWR and Isp at higher altitudes, where the most of the work is done. Also, in Apollo missions, launch pad was destroyable. Soviet rockets were launched from 50 degrees latitude and thus needed to accelerate 200-300 m/s more (this meant that they also had less centrifugal force working for them and had to do more work to raise apoapse). IIRC, gravity loss IRL is about 1-1.5km/s among 9-9.5 km/s total dV (15%). In KSP gravity losses make about 1.2km/s among 4.4km/s (27%). So in KSP it's a bigger problem, that's why we deal with that. By the way, Better than starting manned mod tweaks engine performance so that atmo TWR is lower that vac TWR.

Well, I read that Soyuz had launch cost about $70M, and a lot of cost is engine turbopumps. So if we look at it's size engine, like LV-T45 at 950f, the reasonable ratio would be $1000/1f. (20 such engines on one rocket, would be $19M.) Seems within 100% margin error, which is enough for estimates. $66 000 IRL would be about what Virgin Galactic wants for its suborbital flight.

I think SQUAD is doing pretty well, and that they have enough information and smart people on the team to handle development and the strategy. I don't think that users are qualified or have enough info to judge how the team is doing. But I think it's a matter of discussion what is happening around and what kind of gaming process/experience should be paid attention to. I can only urge SQUAD to extend its userbase by attracting people to use KSP in more ways. And here are my suggestions: 1. An API for interactive languages (Python/Lua). Right now modding is a hard matter. API documentation is not easy, but also iterating, as I understand, takes ages: compile, run (load all the KSP), stop, fix, compile, run. Interactive languages let you program in the shell, try things on the fly and then just dump the shell session in a file to polish, that becomes the mod itself. Python and Lua are times less verbose than C, so such easier languages can remove entry barrier for lots of people. There's kOS mod, but guess how narrower its language base is compared to wold-wide used languages, and think of how much effort it takes to support such a mod. This is not just easier modding. It may turn KSP into a deeper engineering game. Instead of, say, making a contest where you assemble rockets and fly them, one may make a contest of autopilot programmers at school/university. 2. Other modes of meaningful playing besides or beyond space program. Whether you play vanilla, or BTSM career, it's still a game against obstacles someone put for you. More interesting is to play and compare yourself to the others. Whether there will be multiplayer mode or not, it would be great to have more support for such things as challenges (either those that aim to get objectives, or those like cheapest travel ticket). I would be pleased to pay for a "beyond" extension pack. 3. Sketchup for 3D modelling. We do have a lot of parts mods, yet it takes a serious effort to learn 3D max or Blender. Sketchup takes little effort to start, but can involve a lot more people. I use it extensively for everyday tasks like drawing a scheme of a bike lane, or draw a home plan. It takes nothing to start, and learning curve is very welcoming. Has enormous support and pre-built 3D components library where users share their models. This could boost the process a lot! Speaking of well-running community, success indicator could be a payware mod. Yes, this is an indicator that ecosystem is big and self-sustaining, not making one do a free effort and get exhausted to death. AFAIK, ArchiCad has a paid plugin called Grasshopper, which does a lot of physics calculations, and has its own system of plugins as well, some of which are very popular. Guess what, it's benefitual for ArchiCad too. (I don't mean all mods should be paid.)

First, try docking of 2 similar ships, not a ship+heavy station. 0. SAS on, RCS on. RCS should be placed around the center of mass to not destabilize the ship. 1. Click on navball velocity indicator, switch to "Target" (relative velocity) 2. Aim at the green marker (rel.velocity retrograde) and burn to nullify the velocity 3. Aim at target marker (purple round) and burn slightly to get closer. 4. At 100 m distance slow down to 0.5-1 m/s with main engines (will need to turn around) or with RCS. 5. Turn both ships towards each other (switch to another one, then back), exactly at the round purple marker. 6. Final approach: keep the yellow velocity marker center close to the pink marker center with translation controls. 7. If the purple marker moves off your aim, don't turn the ship, just move the velocity marker beyond it, so that you'll be on the axis again. 8. Closely to docking turn SAS off and may be, when ships will touch, push a bit forward with RCS. That's it. MechJeb spends too much fuel while docking, because it's a control freak: it keeps keeping the ship close to the docking axis, which makes no good, just oscillating sign-changing (mutually cancelling) burns. BUT it has a valuable indicator: closest approach distance. At 100 meters distance you want to keep it within 3m, at 30 meters it should be less than 2m, and at closer than 20 meters you should aim better than 1 m. <400 mm is a good aiming. Also SmartASS is useful: point both ships TGT+, then to "kill rotation", and just do the manual docking procedure above. You can keep "TGT+" aim, but both ships must be controlled from docking port (right click to open a menu) and target must be a docking port too, otherwise one ship may aim at docking port, and another one aim at mechJeb part some degrees off, and it will always turn from you.

Exaple: open editor, make a rocket of 1 fuel tank. Switch symmetry mode to 2, put radial RCS tanks on a rocket body. Change symmetry to 4, put RCS thrutsers on the rocket. Pick the RCS tanks to re-locate them. Their symmetry mode becomes 4, you change it to 2, place them. Pick RCS thrusters and move them. Symmetry mode was 2, and if you forget this, you'll put only 2 RCS thrusters. This is a constant annoyance in the editor that you have to switch symmetry mode or sometimes forget and place 1 asymmetric part or what's worse, relocate a fuel duct in asparagus, without noticing that symmetry changed, and you placed it only on one side. The deffect then is discoverable only 1-2 minutes into the flight when the rocket goes out of control. I hope this can be fixed in 0.26.

MechJeb is allowed, so it facilitates test process a lot. You did a good transfer with Mün gravity assist and direct Laythe encounter by the way. Use [ imgur ] tag for albums: [noparse] [/noparse]

When you make a more or less complex ship, it's possible to forget to put staging sequence wrong, or forget an action group when you remove and then put back a part. Sometimes you fix staging in flight, but that's not saved, and you'll need to go to VAB, open and resave the ship. Action groups are not fixable at all, and sometimes it may reveal quite late into flight. This notably impedes playability, and these things should not be hard as stone after you put the ship in flight. If every part has an ID anyway, and docked ships are stored in save file separately with root parts and part trees, action groups on them should be saveable too.

That really is a problem, became every time you move a symmetric part in VAB/SPH, you need to go to action groups and touch them there (re-add on the copied parts, or remove/add on master parts).

Interesting. I did not have problems with Skid Vicious, probably because I got feeling of cars (well, their rails) there. They did crash when there was a highway turn after an up ramp, and I abused that too.

Me neither. Yes, that would be comparable. By the way, I think it's would be good to mark KSP versions of entries in the leaderboard, because I did this already in 0.25 having better hardware.

I don't understand the rules. Can I leave Kerbin ascent/descent stage in LKO during the mission? @metaphor: holy ***!!!!

Some more: This what brought me to flight sims: Built some maps for it and published on some forum. I played these!

My favorites: Stunts, 1988. Smaller than this widget _instance_ footprint. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KclrfaiEHVU This was CD era. Games took some megs, less than this vid itself, but had payload of video and music to extend to CD size. This ripped copy has video deleted, fit into ~20 megs. Played this for ages in 1996-1997, then again in 2007 (openTTD). In year 2000 futuristic future was coming true, everything became looking weirdly. Duke Nukem. Finished all 3 episodes, then spent time building levels for it. (There was no commercial internet then, so no place to publish, just for myself.) ...aaand watch this. 1988 fantastic sound for those days. If you heard PC "screamer" games, you know what I mean. Someone wrote in comments "my childhood was a lie!"

Impressive! I tried this once, was quite surprised how it slowed down!

Our spacelines made a major hardware upgrade, and now you can fly to Laythe in a more comfortable seat for less money! Kulebra Spacelines offers round trip for only $66! I made screenshots of ships at the beginning and in the end of the ciycle. All the additional fuel was loaded onto the Kerbin ship, then was pumped to the other ones. Some fuel was excessive, so in the next cycle I can load less of it. (Which will make me spend even less.) In the beginning, I took the new nice parts and made ships sleek and beautiful. But that could not be serious. A non-ugly thing can't fly in space, because it's suboptimal. So I squeezed more out of them: lower CoM, more compact layout which gave less oscillating and lower angular inertia. Very cheap and safe flying: aspirating engines to ascent, NERVA for interplanetary. Parachutes and engines secure each other: if parachutes fail, engines will land it safely. If fuel is over, parachutes allow safe crash landing sacrificing only some legs bits. AIn the end, the ship stands in KSC, ready to be refuelled and launched again. No parts are lost. Parachutes are repacked in EVA. See technical details (including ascent paths) if you're curious. Correction 1: Uploading these screenshots I found out that I was so carefully picturing both aerobraking procedures that both plane change maneuvers screenshots were missed. So here's the tech proof: look at MechJeb readouts and notice that I did aerocapture, but not circularization. That's for a reason: near Ap, velocity is low, and plane change is proportionally cheaper than in Pe/low orbit. At Laythe, SOI is narrow, so high orbit is just 3500Km high, but that was enough to get plane change budget (even in the middle between Pe and Ap) as cheap as 78 m/s for 5 degree rel.inc. On next Pe I circularized the orbit. You may hyperedit to make orbit according to screenshot data and see how plane change is cheap. At Kerbin, orbit Ap was about 11Mm, plane change cost 33 m/s of dv. Correction 2: you may notice that Kerbin shuttle has nose cones in one screenshot, but not in the others. That was the first attempt, I proceeded only to apoapse and cancelled the flight. After reorganizing the ship (removed some massless parts and these cones) the entire trip was made from that point. Correction 3: the first docking has a screenshot with an attempt to do it with MechJeb (where LF~=5x). I reloded from quicksave after that and docked manually. Conclusions: 1. If space plane has TWR >1.3 and you need to space, there's no reason to fly on wings. Just eject into upper atmosphere and save dV. 2. New parts have low drag, which made ascents very cheap, and allowed to get high Gs from engines while getting less drag. 3. New parts drag depends on orientation. I flew them like knife, which gives no lift, but reduces drag by 0.005 points. 4. MechJeb can't land ships with these new parts properly, because it estimates drag coeff to be the same as currently, and prediction oscillates with movement. Fuel is overused tremendously. I just oriented retrograde, aimed my prediction manually, used low thrust for corrections and compared coordinates. A couple radial and normal burns did the job. 5. dV expended is quite close to that of rockets, so it's almost perfect, little improvement margin. I guess, one can improve this if he uses Duna assists, but that is tricky and limits launch windows to 1 in 3 Earth years. These were too beautiful for me

Ticket price dropping to $66 !!! Will post in a few minutes. Older fleet is sold for $1 Multifora (interplanet), Ployka (kerbin), Vihotka (laythe).

Space X guys are generous regarding the competing designs