technion

This has been something I always felt should be balanced. Kerbin's surveys start showing up early, and reward accordingly. But by the time you've unlocked enough science, and played enough that you want to try building a plane, you've already completed survey missions on Dres or something at a much higher reward level.

Speaking for myself, "Things I Won't Work With" include PHP code that uses eval().

I read several of the grand tour reports and contemplated it myself after completing the Jool5. The thing that always struck me is.. moho. It's painful at the best of times, and I struggle massively with the absurdity what would be required to go from Kerbin to Eve to Moho, and THEN come back outwards.

I don't know if it's been mentioned due to skimming but.. C always ends up being the lowest common interface. Which is why when the new SHA-3 was announced for example, the outcome of that will be a reference C library. The applications I write in Ruby and the applications I write in Erlang (and you all really should write more Erlang) can all use that C library, and if Java happens to float your boat, you can use that library too. It just so happens that performance is a major issue for a hashing library, but if it wasn't, you still wouldn't find this sort of thing written in C#, because Linux users aren't going to install Mono so that they hopefully point at some way of accessing the code from their favourite platform. So it doesn't always come down to performance, sometimes it's down to being the right portability solution.

Always like a different looking rover. Is that a thruster pointing upwards?

I'm not sure that makes it much easier. Landing definitely is harder, and landing a return rocket along with an appropriate mining operation is harder still. I've never seen anyone try to haul a massive 3.5m setup to Eve and back, and I've never imagined hauling a jumbo tank to Gilly. I'm definitely not knocking it here, just saying the fact you can build a mission that large doesn't make it easy. You can't just put a chair on a probe core anymore because of the drag, and placing an actual lander can with a nosecone in its place can cost you over a thousand dv on a small tank/engine combo. I played with FAR and DRE prior to 1.0, looking forward to taking my trusty lander out there.

Hi, As you probably gathered, this mission report details my trip to Moho. Moho was always a problem, but the nerfing of the lv-n engine made several of my previous designs inoperable. I played around for hours using spaceplane parts on a nuke to try and get somewhere, and ended up with this mission. A few second after launch. Sorry I didn't get an image before it. The rocket is mainly built on 2.5m parts, with a 3.5m lifting stage. The 2.5m lifter is an incredibly good part. For some reason I started seeing all these heat alerts after I killed the engines. Here's the ejection vector. Rather than using a direct transfer, I'm using this method as best I can: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/61478-Oh-bugger-Injection-burn-at-Moho?p=835667&viewfull=1#post835667 The engines weren't actually setup with asparagus staging like this, I just manually activated two, and managed decouplers. Blowing the shroud to reveal my lander. Doing some science out in the sun, then resetting the experiments. This won me a contract. THIS is why moho sucks. - - - Updated - - - Right where I did not want to be: Using my last tank of transit fuel this early on in the circularise. I promise I managed to land, but for some reason I never got a shot. The lander wasn't without incidents though. First, it turns out I never attached landing gears, and it took five or six tries to touch down softly enough that the engines stayed intact. And then there's this launch, where decoupling the three outside tanks left one stuck to a light that was apparently clipped into it. Lander had more than enough fuel. This was a burn to both circularise, and fix the inclination. There's that empty tank being lugged around It wasn't exactly a smooth rendezvous, but this lander had fuel to spare. Jeb transferred to the transport. I then also had a scientist go back to the lander, reset the equipment and get more science. - - - Updated - - - We've blown off all the supporting equipment and come down to our last stage. Guess what - not enough to get home. We did however, just make it to Eve. Aerobraking. With a rescue mission to Eve a lot more promising, here's a drone controlled fuel delivery. Interplanetary resndezvous - pretty ordinary. Extending the claw, coming on in to grab. Might as well do this while I'm here. Topped up and easily able to get home. Heat shields: Because who needs orbits? Coming on down. I really don't get the ablator count. I mean I get that it might match realism. But I don't see how it's possible to actually ever get that counter to 0. It's not like anyone reuses shields repeatedly. Anyway, I also neglected to take a landing picture, but you can see it's going to happen. Seriously, the game needs and all liquid fuel X200-32. That trip home from.. ugh.

Very side issue there - every notice that pretty much Wikipedia article on a book or movie, includes a "plot summary" - which details how it ends?

I've done more than my share of ion engines. There's no way in heck I'm pushing a planetary lander in a transport power by ions, unless it's going to Gilly or Pol.

Thanks. I'm not too worried about the aesthetics, but wouldn't that be a terrible thing to try and launch, drag-wise? I'm going to have to experiment with how that was done.. it looks pretty good.

Hi, I always played with a fairly standard "command module" in earlier versions. A Mk1-2 module, with an X200-32 tank and radially mounted LV-n engines. It was always a "get home from anywhere" strategy that worked well. I just completed a mission using a Poodle under a X200-32 and I'm trying to determine how this could go better. Using my old strategy and just draining oxidizer, the dv doesn't get where I want it. You can put a mk2 or mk3 liquid fuel fuselage in there but for some reason the adapters that make it fit the circular command module are filled with oxidiser. Again, I can drain it, but then you're hauling that dry mass. I could also base everything in a mk3 cockpit, but I don't see an easy to fit separator and heat shield to deal with my return. How is everyone else approaching this?

Thank you for that, a few radial points did the job. But the point remains, if my current separation is X, and presumably a node doesn't move significantly further from X, shouldn't the separation markers still be there so we can look at it and identify that some radial work would do the job?

Hi, I'm trying to understand how this can possibly happen. I've seen it on occasion from the early beta, but right now I'm looking at the most blindingly obvious example. Trying to make a corrective manoeuvre to target Dres Separation: 1.3million +1dv: Separation 1.25 million +1 mode dv: separation 1.2 million +1 more dv: no separation markers any more Given each single dv is clearly pushing closer, how do we get from "closing in" to "no encounter". If it would at least show me where these things are separated I could try and fix it, but now it's just an insane guessing job and I've been resetting this node now for over an hour.

Is Dres bugged? I'm heading there now without a contract. In dozens of playthoughs, I've never seen a explore Dres contract.

In a similar vein to the Rhino discussions, I started strapping an orange tank with a skipper on each side of my Jool rockets. Everyone at the time made a point of why you should be using Nukes, but damn, the thing is that the d-v you lose trying to make massive corrective burns due to the inaccuracy of your ejection always ended up cancelling out the benefit. One LV-N on one tank - that's what I used for the second half of the mission, once the Tylo and Laythe landers are gone.

Contracts are quite random, and unfortunately that means you can get stuck waiting for a good one. I'm further than that, but in my current career I've visited Duna and Ike several times and I'm still waiting to be asked to go somewhere else. The answer here is, just focus on progression. If you can't save a kerbal after reaching that speed, work out why not and get it done. You may need to grind some science, and there's a lot of it waiting in space. If you can get into a stable orbit, it's likely to start offering "rescue" contracts.

Just posting this website: http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html I really enjoyed seeing the scale like that, as opposed to the models I'm used to seeing (no affiliation).

Hi guys, I'm just wondering how the new atmosphere plays into this ascent. I did a lot of tests with pre-1.0 using FAR, so it's more a question of whether those findings are still valid. Specifically, do the pointy corners on a lander can (with a nosecone obviously), particularly one with batteries hanging off the side, interfere with drag enough that it's better, or at least comparable, to use a heavier one man command module? I'm obviously expecting the "probe with a seat" is out the window these days, which I don't so much mind.

I spent hours basically doing this: * Quicksave * 900m/s deceleration burn * Observe results * Quickload * 930m/s deceleration * Repeat

I've said it before, I honestly don't see how some people play this game without precisenode. I just started by 1.0 career after a break from the game, with no mods. It's all well and good getting to the mun, but even Duna is needlessly frustrating. I'll reinstall that mod before going anywhere else.

This was pre 1.0, but I had FAR and DRE installed for a similar effect. The short of it was I needed to use a combination of "using a rocket to bleed off speed" and "creative heat shield use". I can only see this working if your Eve ascender is as small as possible. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/82321-Eve-in-a-single-mission

Wide open at the start definitely makes sense because, no matter what your TWR, you aren't going to go from 0 to "too fast" in the first few seconds. This is also why small SRBs seem to never be a bad thing. It's definitely important however to manage your speed beyond that. If not for efficiency reasons - it's because going too fast makes it very likely to flip over once you start to turn.

If you fail to get the right orbit next time - using a radial burn from far out, the as soon as you enter the SOI, will turn a "20km prograde" to a "20km prograde on the retrograde side of the planet" for virtually no dv.

I'm not in general one to advocate mods for doing things, but, particularly when you go further and try to plan a path to Jool, I don't understand how people can plan these without the Precisenode mod. Being able to +-1 one point of dv is hugely helpful.

Without having unlocked and played with those features, I'm not sure. I've always considered reorbit the easy part though. A TWR > 1 is enough to do reorbit, and only a small fuel tank was required. It's landing where you need to shave off that 2km/s with the ground pounding towards you that was hard.