benzman

1. Aerobraking can save LOTS of fuel, but be careful not to overdo it or you could end up landing on a planet that you don't want to. 2. When planning a rescue mission, make sure that both craft have the same sized docking ports.

Loads perfectly now. Thank you!

I am playing 0.23 in sandbox mode and the Skycrane gives a 'locked or invalid parts' message. Is there a mod needed for this craft? All the others show up O.K.

Just a small query. I have an unmanned interplanetary tug in Kerbin orbit and I sent up a crewed lander to dock with it. The crew did not gain a 'docked' ribbon, although the persistent file shows the two craft as being in a docked state, as far as I am able to understand the persistent file. I am using version 0.23b. Utterly brilliant mod, by the way. Gives the game a whole new focus.

As I understand it, and I am only a layman, Delta V is the change of speed (or more correctly, change of velocity) that your rocket is capable of. If you had a fully fueled rocket far out in space with the engine off you can consider it, for the purpose of this example, to be stationary. If the rocket had a Delta V of 2000 metres per second, that means that if you fired up the engine and ran it until you were out of fuel you would be traveling at 2000 M/S at the end. Also, disregarding mass changes due to fuel use, if you accelerated from stop to 1000 M/S, turned retrograde and fired until your tank ran dry you would finish up stationary again. But your speed would still have changed by 2000M/S, 1000 up and 1000 back. So the Delta V figure gives you the total of all the changes of speed that the rocket is capable of. The importance of the Delta V figure is that regardless of what you want to do in space, go from Kerbin orbit to Mun orbit, Go from Minmus orbit to surface, change an orbit, anything at all, there will be a required Delta V figure that your rocket will need. If this explanation is wrong I am sure that one of our genuine rocket scientists will correct me.

Brilliant!

For me personally, flying a successful rescue mission and landing everyone safely back home is by far the most satisfying part of this game.

In my humble opinion, this is the nicest ISS-looking station that uses all stock parts. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/kerbal-space-station-2/

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25029-A-moon-rocket-for-newbies This is the best guide I have come across for landing on the Mun.

It actually flies quite nicely provided that you are climbing, but the slow spooling of the engine make hovering or flying at a constant altitude difficult and I find landing not possible at all! Hence the awesome explosions.

It is amazing that such a small craft can create such awesome explosions!

Golly! And I thought that my mouse was dying! Just as well I didn't go out and buy a new one.

I have seen so many things in this game that I would love to have in real life, but this one tops them all! This may seem a dumb question, but how do you get the Kerbal to sit in the bike seat?

Built and test flew a ship to act as a rescue pod to evacuate eleven Kerbals from my space station, if the need arises. Test flew it to within 200 metres of the space station's docking port and ran out of electricity! Then I had to launch a rescue mission to rescue the rescue ship. Oh - well!

We are all familiar with the 'six degrees of separation' theory? Well, in a book I am currently reading the author proposes a 'handshake' theory. The idea is, you shake the hand of a famous person who has shaken the hand of another famous person, and that puts you one handshake away from the other famous person. A few years ago I very briefly met and shook hands with Buzz Aldrin, so I guess that means I am one handshake away from Neil Armstrong!

I spent the last few days assembling this station and I really enjoyed it. Some of the parts are an absolute pain to rendezvous and dock and I will admit to using the infinite fuel cheat a couple of times, but I finally got it all up. Now I can just sit back, admire it and send screenshots to friends and show them what KSP is all about and why I enjoy it so much.

Once you are within 200 metres of the target use Navyfish's brilliant docking port alignment indicator. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/dock-align-indicator/ It might be a mod, but I am sure it must be similar to what real life astronauts use.

Jeb, Bill and Bob are currently sitting on Duna with insufficient fuel to get back into orbit and rendezvous with the mothership, which is irrelevant anyway because it does not have enough fuel to get back to Kerbin. So they will all have to sit there until I am competent enough at this game to design, build and fly a rescue mission. And as I probably will land miles and miles from them I will have to learn about rovers too. So much to learn in this game!

When you see a mobile phone tower and it reminds you of a space probe antenna!

As I understand protractor you are supposed to sit on the launch pad and warp until the FIRST column counts down to zero, which puts the target planet into the right position, then launch, establish a stable orbit and warp until the SECOND column counts down to zero, which puts you on the right position in your orbit to start your burn. If you click on the "?" on the right hand side of the protractor window it will bring up a help file.

A lesson I learned early was, if you are a bit light on fuel, or are not experienced enough to work out how much fuel you will need, when returning from the Mun burn to give you a periapsis that is well within Kerbin's atmosphere. Something like 30 Km or less. That way you are certain to land. Perhaps on the land or in the sea, on the daylight side or the night side, but you will land somewhere. I first tried to be cute and burn for an 80Km periapsis so that I could do a circularization burn and then time my re-entry burn to, hopefully, splash down in daylight just offshore from the launch pad. But I would usually run out of fuel and finish up in a big, ugly Kerbin orbit with no option but to organise a rescue mission.

I have only been playing this game for about a month so I can't claim to be 'good', but some of my early fumblings resulted in three three-Kerbal command pods drifting around in weird Kerbin orbits with no fuel. It took about two weeks to figure out how to mount rescue missions. Without going into boring details I eventually got everyone safely back home. Now THAT was satisfying!

IrfanView is free and will allow you to save virtually any type of graphic into any other type. It will also allow you to resize and crop and compose nicer looking shots. It can probably do lots of other things that I haven't bothered to find out about.

yes, that is what I thought I would have to do.

I have only had the game for about two weeks and I have two manned ships in permanent orbit around Kerbin with no fuel. I have finally come to grips with rendezvous and docking and have made a resolution. Do not launch any manned mission that does not have a docking port on it! You may have to organize a rescue mission. I also learned not to stick a radial parachute over a crew hatch!