Pwnstarr

Thanks for the advice but couldn't figure out how to meet the asteroid for the life of me even after launching both ways and playing with maneuver nodes for hours, I guess you have to get it in interplanetary space, this was already in Kerbin's SOI.

Oh nice... good to know.

First asteroid capture attempt - I can get to other planets and moons just fine, but polar orbits are my weakness. I'm having a little trouble. Asteroid is coming in on a polar trajectory but will impact the atmosphere. I tried launching south and coming around so I can maneuver to rendezvous with it... but having a little difficulty. I only have a ascending node and the target markers make no sense to me. Suggested strategy?

lol, maybe when KSP can calculate orbits like this :

Thoroughly enjoying this implementation of the ASAS from an aesthetic standpoint. Great work.

I only learned a couple days ago that you can use the mouse wheel on maneuver node controls to make fine adjustments. o_O

I have no clue what I'm doing regarding SSTO's... but thanks to this thread I built my second SSTO to successfully reach a 75 km orbit, but again with barely any fuel to do anything else... lol great thread though keep em coming!

lol no nevermind.

edit nevermind....

Jeb is en route home from Jool in his ion ship. He tried to burn out of Jool's SOI but lacked the necessary power as the Pe was on the dark side of Jool. He managed to extend his orbit just enough to catch a gravity assist from Laythe which catapulted him into the needed orbit to go home.

Joined the SSTO club at long last... just barely

LOL. That is great.

Can confirm ice flats very flat.

Yeah call it old-guy syndrome or whatever but I don't feel like learning the new parts just yet. Trying to get proficient at using old parts.

I am very happy for the claw, docking ports are overrated!

Isn't the KSP nuclear engine around 890 ISP in vacuum? I've started experimenting with the ion engines on manned craft... 4200 ISP ... Sure it takes like a 9 minute burn for 4 engines to get a mk1 pod to a Hohmann transfer to the Mun, but thankfully mechjeb exists.

Yeah, the Mun and Minmus science contributions should probably drop off really quickly. Additional biomes shouldn't be worth quite as much as that first landing... imo

Surface sample probe / scoop (a multifunction part?)

Meh, I immediately deleted my career save when I realized the game had updated to 0.23 lol

I don't mind it. Being able to max out Science from one location by just transmitting repeatedly is cheap. Right now I have a traveling mobile processing unit - I go from one place to the next and take science observations, transmit, and move on since the value of repeat transmissions is so low. The only thing it needs is fuel, so I plan to send out refueling tanks to rendezvous with it. Just took a set of experiments from Sun orbit, now to move it into Duna and Ike orbits, rinse repeat as long as fuel is available... Hopefully I can get the Kerbals back home at some point but it may be a looong time. In the name of SCIENCE!

The sun was directly overhead in my case.

I thought I would share an interesting observation I had tonight. I hear criticisms of the aerodynamic model (personally it doesn't bother me), but while reentering with extended solar panels tonight, my panels were perfectly aligned to the flight path, and they didn't shear off! Only after getting lower in the atmosphere (like < 20 km), I started turning the ship for fun, and the panels rotated and showed the sides to the wind - at which point they finally broke off, unfortunately no screenshot. Normally extended panels will break off while burning in reentry... these stayed intact until I made them rotate their flat side against the wind. Interesting huh? So it's not conclusive, but it seems the engine knows that, for solar panels at least, the aerodynamics of the edge behaves differently from the flat side.

After rendezvous, the best tip I ever heard for the docking step was to put your camera in chase mode, rotate your ship so your RCS thrusters work in the direction you expect. Also set "control from here" on the clamp you plan to use, and set the clamp you're aiming for as the target. Then just aim for prograde in the target circle. Docking is super easy without mods.

Very cool. Wish that stuff had been around when I was in school. A school down the street from where I grew up had a cubesat aboard the Minotaur I rocket that launched out of Virginia last month

CubeSat? I could see it...