Starwhip

Hello up there! Remember, it is always OK to add more boosters! Also: int boosterNum = 0; buildRocket(boosterNum); while(1) { launchRocket(); if toSpace() { continueFlight(); } else { boosters ++; } }

No. How does one hack into a helicopter?

No and no.

Banned because my eyes are actually bleeding now.

Nice. I'm heading out to our Pittsburgh event in a little over 48 hours. Perhaps we will meet at nationals...

Yes, the badS flag is important. I think only Jeb and one other Kerbiet have it enabled, and it literally makes them un-scare-able. Set it to false and you're golden.

Banned for wielding a hairdryer.

I claim this hill in the name of Starwhip! *Plants flag*

7/10 You're vaguely familiar...

Okay, here we go! Small I may be, but you wait and see. I'll show you what I make, and it's much more than me. Parts of a whole that are many in number, yet powerful forces may rend us asunder. Dependent on currents with nature of lightning, images depicted, may be fascinating or frightening. Tricking the eyes with the illusion of motion, I may not fly, but I can give you the notion. What am I? Decided not to make it as obvious.

Tutorial #3: Docking So, you've finally managed to set up a rendezvous between two ships. You're halfway there! Just a little longer until the ships are stuck together by the magical magnetic forces of docking. Correcting your Orbit Time warp until the intercept is in 45 seconds. Rotate to face retrograde, and burn until the display reads "0 m/s" The Approach Thankfully, the orbit came into the view of the sun just as I was completing the final burn. Docking in the dark is a pain... The Docking As you come in, orient your ship so that it matches the orientation of the docking port. This doesn't mean face the docking port, it means literally aligning the ship in 3 dimensions in the same way as the docking port. There is no real way to learn this, it just takes some fiddling. Screw around with the RCS rotation controls (WASD) to orient. If you are coming in sideways, use the IJKL keys to thrust laterally. This is where having your thrusters on your Center of Mass is vital, because you can thrust sideways without rotating. Use H and N to thrust forward (Toward the nose of the craft) and backward (toward the engine) respectively. Once you are about this close, make sure you are properly aligned with the docking port, and slow to about 0.3 m/s. Almost there! Slow to 0.1 m/s, the standard docking speed. The magnetic forces should soon kick in, hit "T" to disable your SAS. Aaaaaaaand.... BOOM! (Hopefully not literally! That would be very unfortunate! ) Docking Complete! If I should continue on with the tutorials for station building, let me know! But even so, I hope these tutorials cleared up some of the troubles of learning to dock effectively and quickly. Good luck out there!

Tutorial #2: Basic Rendezvous Rendezvous, although it may seem impossible, is not really all that hard. It is the meeting of two ships in orbit, at a distance close enough to dock, generally 0 Kilometers to around 8 Kilometers. Although docking is possible at distances of around 25 Kilometers, it is a waste of fuel to dock this way. Getting this close to another body in space is difficult or impossible to do by eye, and you need to know how to use Maneuver Nodes. Maneuver Nodes: These are essentially planners for burns you want to do in the future. You can click and drag the little symbols to use them. The "prograde" and "retrograde" symbols (note that they are the same as on the Navball) are used to indicate a prograde or retrograde burn. The "normal" and "antinormal" ones are used to indicate a north or south burn. And finally, the "radial in" and "radial out" are used to "shift" your orbit to one side or the other. So, launch a ship into orbit. Click anywhere along your orbit. Choose "Add Maneuver Node". One will pop up at the spot you clicked. Play around with the different choices until you understand the basics of how they work. Rendezvous: Step 1: Build a ship capable of making it to Low Kerbin orbit. This is from 70,000 Km to around 200,000 Km. The ship needs RCS thrusters, as well. Make sure you put the thrusters on the COM (Center of Mass) of the bit which is going to be docking. In the VAB there are three little buttons. The one that looks like a weight toggles the center of mass display. Place the RCS thrusters on the same level as this. Center of Mass in the editor. This is my Crew Transfer Vehicle. It is probably capable of a Munshot, but it will do for docking. And this is the station I am going to dock to. Note that you could just launch an identical transfer vehicle and dock to that. Here is the orbit of the station. It is in LKO at around 136 Kilometers, an easy orbit to achieve. Setting up Launch: Don't just go ahead and launch the second your ship loads. You need to check some things first. Set your target ship to whatever thing in orbit you want. Time warp (not too fast!) until you have an arrangement depicted in the image below. The Launch Launch your ship. Pitch over at 9,000 meters to 45 degrees East, or the "90-degree" mark on the Navball. Continue going up. Wait until your apoapsis is nearing the orbit of your target. Then, pitch over all the way to 0 degrees, the line between the blue and brown sections of the Navball, but make sure you are still on the line from 0-90 degrees! Otherwise, you will go too far north or south. Once your apoapsis reaches the orbit of the target vessel, hit "X" to cut your engines. Maneuver Time! Once you have the correct suborbital arc as depicted above, mouse over your apoapsis. Right-click and create a Maneuver Node there. Then, pull on the "prograde" setting until your orbit matches the ship's orbit. Continue to pull the different settings to minimize the distance between the two craft as shown by the Intercept markers (the orange and purple triangles). Turn your ship so that the Level Indicator matches the Maneuver Node Marker on the Navball. Wait until the Time Until Node is half the time of the Time Required for Burn and begin your burn. As you near the end of the burn (the last 10 m/s or so,) throttle down and just caress the ship into exactly the orbit you want by chasing the blue node around until the Delta-V indicator reads around .1 to .3. Delete the node by clicking on it, then right-clicking once the editor pops up and clicking on the red "X". Check your intercept. If it is within a few Km, you're good to go! But, if it's significantly larger than the maneuver was set to be, turn on your RCS and fiddle with it (The IKJLHN keys are for RCS. Mainly, use H and N to thrust forwards and backwards.) Now you have set up the rendezvous! Congratulations!

Okay, so I'm going to post another one, then. Give me a while.

Banned for calling Jeb a Stuntman. HE IS A PILOT!!!

I take the Vogon Construction Fleet (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)to the crater. My asteroid-in-the-shape-of-a-hill-where-the-Earth-used-to-be. EDIT: You, sir, below me, have been Ninja'd

10/10 I know you.... (LOL: The following errors occurred with your submission: This forum requires that you wait 30 seconds between posts. Please try again in 1 seconds.)

I hold up a board covered in the blue Repulsion Gel and the pitcher is ricocheted to the next poster, along with a few potatoes for good measure.

Docking is a key component in station building, orbital construction, ship refueling, and many other activities in Kerbal Space Program. This multi-part guide will explain the basics of docking in a very simple manner. Although there are many other tutorials, I find they ask things of new users that they might not understand. We will start with the most essential component: the Navball. PDF DOWNLOAD: Here's a link to the tutorial in PDF format. Still a work in progress itself, the tutorial will soon include the Asteroid Redirect Mission! Tutorial #1: Learning the Navball: This incredibly useful little instrument, located on the center of the bottom of your screen, gives you nearly all of the information you need to know about nearly everything you could ever do in KSP. G-force of ship, throttle setting, speed in orbit, compared to a target or surface, Delta-V needed for any maneuver, time until said maneuver, time to complete and direction to face for the maneuver, direction of ship compared to planet, prograde and retrograde, toward and away from target. Basically, everything you ever need to know about docking is right there, in the little 1" by 1" display. This is a display of all the symbols on the navball as they are seen in game. What follows is a key to these symbols. The level indicator displays the orientation of your ship. The "front" of it is represented by the dot in the middle of the symbol, and either of the two "sticks" to the sides display your port and starboard sides, not particularly useful for a rocket, but vital for a spaceplane. The next symbol, prograde, shows you the direction you are going. If you need to accelerate, say, to take off from the Mun, that is what you want the level indicator to face. The retrograde symbol is the opposite, it shows you the direction you are not going. If you want to land or de-orbit, that is the symbol to face, and you will slow down. The maneuver symbol, if you have created a maneuver node, shows you where to point to complete the maneuver. The "target prograde" node shows you where to point to go toward whatever your target is. and the "target retrograde" is away from your target. The part of the display labeled "1" is your current selection of speed. In "Orbit" mode, it shows you how fast you are actually going in relation to absolute zero. In "Surface" mode, it shows you how fast you are going in relation to your current body of influence, a planet, usually. And "Target" mode is in relation to your current target. Notice when you switch between these settings the prograde and retrograde nodes move. "2" shows your current speed in relation to your selection. It is in meters per second. "3" and "4" are the toggles for RCS and SAS controls. RCS stands for "Reaction Control System", turned on with "R" , is a system of thrusters to orient yourself in orbit or to give little thrusts in a designated direction. Note that docking in nearly impossible without this, and you need to build your ship with RCS thrusters and fuel for them to work. SAS is for "Stability Augmentation System", and helps to keep your rocket pointed in the right direction. As of 0.23, it is included on all capsules. When engaged with "T", it does everything in its power to keep the ship oriented in the same direction. "5" is the throttle setting. Each of the larger lines indicates a third of the full thrust. "6" is the G-Force indicator. It is best, when getting to orbit, to keep this in the green zone, and the top of the green zone is even better. If it is too high, throttle down, if it is too low, throttle up. "7" is the Maneuver Delta-V indicator. It shows you how much Delta-V is needed to do a maneuver, and how much of it is completed by the yellow arc. "8" is more Delta-V stuff. It tells you how much time is approximated for the burn of a maneuver, and how long until the maneuver. A good rule of thumb is to start burning when the time until the maneuver is half that of the maneuver burn itself. "9" is the main display of the navball. More on that below. "10" is your heading. You do not ever need to pay attention to that for any purpose, really. Finally, "11" is the minimize button. If you can't find the navball, there is a small arrow near the spot where it should be. Click it and the display will reappear. Now that you know the basics, I will show you how to orient your ship with the navball. If you hold the "A" key, the navball will turn to the right. An easier way to think of it is that the level indicator goes to the left, same as the "A" key is the leftmost key on the controls. The "D" key causes the level indicator to travel right. However, the "W" and "S" keys are reversed. Think of "W" as "Push nose down, and "S" as "Pull nose up". So, the level indicator sinks when the "W" key is pressed, and rises when "D" is pressed. Practice in orbit for a few minutes until you get the hang of these. There are also the "Q" and "E" controls. "Q" rotates the level indicator counterclockwise, and "E" clockwise. --------------------------------------------------- Tutorials in this series: Learning the Navball Basic Rendezvous Docking Building Lifters First Module RCS Tugs - Function and Design Finishing Spirion Station Mark II In Progress: SLS Introduction Basic Theory of Asteroid Rendezvous The Asteroid Redirect Mission Design of the K.S.S. New Horizons Asteroid Rendezvous Redirection

You seem to have missed the point. I like to be unnecessarily complicated, same as Whackjob likes to be unnecessarily large in ship size. But I'm not sure that the rocket would be cheaper than the SSTO in the long run. It might be easier to fly, but again, I like to be complicated.

I could come up with another if no one else wants to do it. I'll check up in an hour or so.

10/10 I like trains. *BWAAAAAAAAAAA* *clack-clack-clack*

I see. So let's sum this up: 1. Mun stations are central hubs for biome science. Landers may fly down to retrieve science, get the science, and fly back up. The science is then transferred to a return ship which goes back to Kerbin. 2. Mun stations look exceedingly cool. (Perhaps on the order of bow ties ) Aaand that's pretty much it so far. I'm thinking of a setup like this: Leave the Spirion Station II in orbit around Kerbin as an SSTO re-fueler. Create a reliable SSTO that can make it to the station and back to Kerbin. Then, create a ship that can travel between Spirion Station II and Mun. There will be a secondary station there, with a lander that can go to the Mun's surface and return to the station. And then it gets more complicated, like so... 1. Lander leaves station and lands on Mun. 2. Lander gets SCIENCE and returns to station. 3. "Mun Ferry" (vessel that travels between Mun and Spirion Station II) leaves Mun orbit and returns to the Kerbin station. 4. Kerbal transfers SCIENCE to the SSTO docked at Spirion. 5. SSTO returns to Kerbin. Recovered and SCIENCE!!! 6. SSTO launches to Spirion Station II. 7. Transfer vessel and SSTO are refueled. 8. Transfer vessel goes to Mun station. 9. Rinse and repeat... EDIT: I know this is rather insane, but I'm bored of launching Saturn-V replicas to get to Mun and back. This is more fun and complicated. And, it's modular: I could add more landers and transfer vessels. FOR MORE SCIENCE!!!

There we go! Aaaaand it's your turn... EDIT: So here's an idea. Limit everyone to 1 guess per post, and no multi-posting. They may edit their post to a new answer if they want, but only one answer at a time. Therefore, it minimizes the chances of those who are just straight-up guessing getting the answer, and makes you pick and choose more carefully. EDIT 2: You know, Vexx, I wasn't even going for lockpick, but I suppose that's an even better answer to it. Wow.

[Evil Laughter] Let's see if your new computer, once fully operational, can handle this thing... This, my friend, is V-GER. It is what the human probe Voyager became, a mind-bogglingly large, sentient starship capable of traveling around the galaxy. I dare you to even attempt it in KSP form. I posted in a thread a while back about you trying to replicate this craft. I speculated a new form of the Kraken, the Whack Kraken, where all the planets cease to render and the ship just goes poof the second physics load. This thing is probably several kilometers long... or larger. Maybe this shouldn't be attempted, as to spare Humanity and Kerbalkind from the unholy Kratanic destruction it would bring.

As the nuke descends on me, a glitch appears in the space-time continuum as a Whackjovian ship flies overhead. The Kraken eats the nuke. Now unarmed, you turn to flee. The Whackjovian ship and it's telltale disruption continues onward toward the next poster to wreak havoc upon them.