running

Because I'm a man. Technology, space, explosions... what's not to love? Just needs large breasted female kerbals and guns and it's perfect.

Everybody should do what they want. Personally, I avoid mods because: - If bugs appear the cause is not any mods I installed. - If I need a part it should come with the game. (So I'd be more tempted to suggest improvements or find a work around.) - Some mods offer something that is missing, but in doing so they eliminate the need for the elaborate work arounds I come up with. So the message here is that less parts can force you to be more creative. (Like writing blue with a red crayon.)

Has my vote. I am very carefull with my kerbalnauts. But I'd like to see them grow from glorified chimp to hero of the planet.

Well actually, I haven't unlocked everything yet, but yes I got the nukes, the main sails and the orange fuel tanks. So I'm still playing career and science still matters to me.

Of course your orbits should already match more or less, orbitting in the same direction makes life a lot easier. By staying in a higher or lower orbit than the target your speeds are different so you should get closer over time. Set your target as the target (like the name says) in the map view. Then use the manuvre node. Tweak it so the intercept get's close... 10 km is close enough but I'd prefer 5 km. Move around the manouvre node and play around with it's parameters untill you get it right. After executing the manouvre.... wait. In map view it should tell you the closest point to your target. Don't start going crazy 100 km's away from the target when you know you are going to be at the closest range at 5 km. Click on the top of the nav ball so it shows target speed and not orbit speed. Look at your nav ball. Where is the pick circle showing the target... where is the open yellow circle shoing your direction of travel? Now if you are racing more or less towards it at high speed, turn around, point your nose away from the target. Use the other pink indicator and the yellow circle with the cross in it. Point at the yellow crossed out circle and and start to burn to slow down. The yellow crossed out circle should start to move towards the pink target telling you that you are correcting your course. If it doesn't move fast enough, point further way from the pick target in the same direction as the crossed out circle was and burn. Now at some point you might reach 0 speed and still be of course and/or to far away from the target. In this case you want to spead up so turn towards the target. It works just as with the breaking with one little twist. Instead of aiming at the open yellow circle or even further awaw from it as you did with breaking... now you need to point in the direction you should be traveling or further out. So if the yellow open cirlce is a little bit to the left of the pink circle... point a little right of the pink circle and burn to move the yellow open circle towards the target. If you start going to fast you have to turn around again to start breaking again... When you get below 1 KM. You should be going really slow and it's time to let RCS take over. All this goes best with highly manouvrable ships. Lot's of SAS and if needed for the big ships use RCS too. The later you start (or have to start) manouvering, breaking the less fuel you spend but the more risk there is to missing the target or hitting it. To be on the safe side I usually retract the solar panels on both vessels before I attempt to dock just in case.

Ok so I've build a base on Duna before. But this time I'm doing career mode and I want my manned mission to Duna to be a succesfull round trip making use of the science lab. (All stock parts, only "cheat"i've used is F9 and tat was only a few times for the Duna landing and the few times I sped up time to fast and missed burn points) So first step is to bring a ton of fuel in orbit around Duna and do some science on the way over.: Next step is to launch a second ton of fuel and hook up the 2 in orbit around Duna so it starts to look like a space station. Followed by a rocket that brings over the science lab (no crew on board): So the science lab is docked to the station. (but without a crew it doesn't add much yet.) Now the tugboat part that brought the lab to Duna is in the way for the lander to attach to later on, so I undocket it from the lander, rotated the space station 180 degrees and docked it again. At this point the space station is filled to the brink with fuel and everything is set for the crew to arrive: Of course we do a little flyby of Ike first: and after a bit of rotating the lander with crew fits on top of the science lab: Now I sent over the 2 scientists while Jeb stayed behind to fly the lander and they start to work on the science already gathered. Some experiments are cleaned so we are ready for our trip to Duna itself. Landing it safely was a bit of a pain as I tried to conserve fuel to much but in the end we got there: So after some succesfull science it was back to the space station. I forgot to undock the empty science lab before liftoff, so I undocked it during takeoff. It crashed to the ground leaving not a single piece of debris...like I planned it like that. Arriving at the space station I had to loose some parts of the lander to be able to dock. After refueling, I undocked the lander and undocked the tugboat that brought over the science lab. I connected the two vessels within 100 meters of the space station and left for Kerbin: On it's way back I ditched the lander nukes as they where no longer needed. I parked the tugboat in orbit around Kerbin so it could be refueled and reused in a future missions. I deorbitted the lander and sent it for a nice dip in the Kerbin oceans: Bringing back material bay and goo samples from high sun orbit, low Ike orbit, while flyig over Duna and Duna surface among other instruments and ground samples. In total I got way over 3000 science points out of this. (could be more I didn't keep track of it that well.) It's interesting how you really feel like comming home from a long trip to a far away place when you arrive back at Kerbin.

I've never had much trouble with docking. Not sure what the problem is. However I recently discovered that you can make life a lot easier if you switch between the 2 objects, especially if both are quite manouverable. By switching between the two objects and rotating them to have the dockign ports pointing at each other it's much easier to allign them. If you keep setting up the target dockign port you will notice that the navbal will start showing your target in the center and the yellow direction indicator will help you see in what "wrong" direction you are traveling. Always bring along huge amounts of fuel for your RCS and take things slow. Switch of SAS when you are getting so close that you are about to dock. When the two ports are aligned and touching, I add a bit of thrust to keep them together incase they don't lock but want to bounce.

I was playing with career mode waiting for the 0.23, trying to max out my skills in low tech space crafts. I build this probe with solar panels, 2 goo canisters and a materials bay. It was supposed to go to Mun and either land or crash into it, but I couldn't get it into orbit. So a slapped a few extra tanks and engines on it. (Untill then this career mode save hadn't even reached high Kerbin orbit.) It flew to Mun, it landed, had some fuel left so I decided to let it take off again and go outside the kerbin SOI... Decided to pass Minmus as there was enough fuel left and grab some science points there... I went from high to low orbit, and with enoguh fuel left landed on Minmus... Had some fuel left so decided to launch again and see if I could get outside of the Kerbin SOI. and yes I still had enough fuel left to do even that. Amount of science points gathered was huge... I hope my next KSP session will be a new carreer in 0.23

What worked for me a lot of times... (assuming your break is between the fuel tanks): Use the small structural cube thingy. (name?) place it on 4 (or more sides) above and below where the 2 tanks meet (and break). Then connect a strut from the lower right conrner of the top cube, to the upper left corner of the lower cube, creating a cross (do this on all sides ofcourse) (You can do the same even if there is more stuff in between like a decoupler and engine.) For me that makes the rocket a lot stronger. However as stated above, this design is quite extreme in it's large weight ontop. - You could use smaller tanks (as in thickness) to which you attach the nukes (and add more tanks without a nuke) to keep the top mass closer to the center. - You could attach a few small SRB's to the top tanks (the ones with the nukes) that pull on the rocket during lift of instead of the balancing act from the bottom. You might run into trouble when they run out and you are still doing the balancing act. - For the 3 engines and tanks below the nukes I would also look into smaller engines and more slimmer tanks to keep the mass closer to the center.

Hehe I have the original game in it's box within reach. But How I'm gonna read that cassete tape into my PC

Jameson flies a Cobra MK3... this looks more like a MK1.

Last night I flew the rocket back to Kerbin. After reaching Dres orbit it still had a delta V of over 6000 so plenty of fuel. It parachuted down safely close to KSC. Each module and the rocket for the return trip had it's own rover underneath to manouvre it in position. The rovers where small enough to drive under the module, between the landing legs. I'm wondering what to do with them now. Except for driving them into the canyon there must be something I can do with them. Any suggestions? (They all have around 200 battery power, mostly only 1 solar panel and a headlight.)

I wanted to build a base, but not on the obivous locations such as Mun or Duna. So after sending a satelite, then a small rover (which already had a chair on it) to scout out a landing site I started sending over the modules. The rocket is docked to the base and complete refueled. Now all that remains is a flight back home and ditching all those rovers in the nearby canyon.

Transmission times decrease and electricity usage increases with the "better" antenna's. So if you have the battery power, you are doing a rapid decend in an atmosphere and you are doing science, a "Faster" antenna could be worth it. Time acceleration doesn't speed up transmission times, if you are doing a lot of science you also like to have a "faster" antenna.

Ok here is the thing... you give aid to a country... that is being spend on whatever in that country. Doesn't matter much on what you spend it, it will create jobs which means income to people. Those people will spend that money on stuff. Which also creates more jobs, income etc. etc. I might start off with money for the people high up in the piramid, but it will trickle down to all levels. Wether the money is initially used to launch a probe to mars, build a palace or a new highway. However the smart investments are those that have the promise of being able to sustain themselves. So building a factory is better because if there is a market you can continue to produce goods than building a palace which after it's ready is just sitting there only costing money in maintenance. (Unless it becomes a tourist attraction.) There are plenty of possible money generating spins that a Mars mission. Its a promo for what companies in India can do, you are overcomming technical challanges which could lead to all kinds of products (just hard to predict when you start what you will get) and learning more about a another planet might teach you more about your own, possibly boosting your own aggriculture for example.

After trips to jool, missions to Eve and a base on Dres, I figured to give planes a try. This is the first one that was able to reach space... I call it the swan:

Some kind of progression on my Kerbals. Record keeping of what they have done, and improving their skills. I want to be able to see some statistics on what a specific Kerbal has done. time spend in the air, on the ground, in space. number of missions, planets/moons visitied etc. When they die, the record should be kept so you can see all the kerbals who paid the ultimate price. Let them build up experience to improve succes rates of missions. So you are encouraged to let them first do a simple mission or travel along more experienced Kerbals on their first missions. So for example I'd have a Kerbal first flight around in a jet, then launch them into space, then orbit and do and EVA, then go to Mun etc. Of course I could send them to Duna on their very first mission, but I run a bigger risk on bad stuff happening. Not sure what "bad stuff" would have to be: Higher fuel consumption rate, poor manouvreability, random failures of parts... This would bring my Kerbals more to life, encouraging rescue missions and propper mission planning. (Or more evil, take a risk, send a noob to Eve, if I bring him back in one piece he'd get a huge experience boost, if he doesn't return... he was just a a noob.)

As I can't warp as fast as I like while in orbit, I often switch to a flag on Mun and look at that while warping. Then switch back to my space vessel. (I use pen and paper to write down how many days and hours I need to warp, then look at the timer in the left upper conrer when switch to the flag and calculate to which numbers I need to warp.) In low orbit without switching you might indeed have to wait for days and maximum warp.

Yes Iran and North Korea are well known for their role in the UN.... The effects of Chernobyl are hard to measure, there was a rise in birth defects world wide though. The effects of Fukushima will also be unclear. However make no mistake, it's a distaster still in progress, we might not have seen the worst of that disaster. They are still leaking large amounts of water into the ocean. There are still a lot of spend fuel rods that need to be cooled which are in the risk of becomming exposed to the air which will cause them to burst into flames and send radioactive clouds into the air. (They are laying in pools of water that leak and are in de buildings that are still in danger of collapsing.) The big problem is how to clean up the mess. you can't just cover it up as it needs to be cooled. You can't tear it down piece by piece as you can't get near it and a robot can't do it either as the radiation fries its electronics. you might try to cover it, fill it with water and pump that water around to cool it. But you will have to make sure the water doesn't leak out at the bottom. How are you going to close the bottom part of the dome? It's a hard puzzle to solve. I'm not against nuclear power, the alternatives also have their downsides. A lot of downsides of nuclear power refer to the older model reactors (of which there are quite a few.) But we need to be very smart in their construction. Placing them in an area know for earthquakes, on a shore known for tsunami's... well that doesn't sound to me like we are being very smart about them.

After we run out of oil, we'll start buring poo (or it's gasses) see how you like the smell of my 4-ton pickup then Atleast the cities will get a more back to nature smell.

Yep at that time it was the evil empire. Making it more special that they were there.

So far works for me: Ofcourse it's not a manned vessel. But still, engine, fuel tank, materials bay and stuff... To be honest, it is parked on a slope and sometimes during the science gathering it suddenly started to tip over. SAS saved the day though en kept it upright.

When I was 10 years old and the space shuttle was doing it's first missions, I met 2 russian cosmonauts. They didn't speak Dutch, I didn't speak any other languages than Dutch and we had no translator. They where at a science exhibit and I managed to escape my parents attention and decided to hang out with them. I got 2 books filled with lots of great pictures and information of space missions and some nice posters I put up on my bedroom wall. (The books where in Dutch and I must have read them a million times) I'm sorry I never got their names, would have been nice to be able to lookup what missions they actually did

during launch, always give 50% throtlle max. You want to save all that fuel for later.

what's this "Earth" planet he's talking about? Was that in an earlier beta version or something?