XiXLLAMAXiX

Heck, yesterday my Valentina survived a 3.5km fall (into water, but still...)

It's possible that they wanted the SSTO to be full on fuel when it reached Earth Orbit (?). Also, I believe the highest gravity planet they landed on had 130% earth's gravity, but I might be remembering wrong...

I feel like one standard deck of cards could probably keep people entertained for a significant amount of time.

That would probably have to be one of the weirdest ways to discover FTL travel possible...

I'm not sure where you're getting your 2200m/s value from, in my experience a direct one way trip from kerbin to moho requires at the absolute minimum 4400m/s (not counting dv to get into kerbin orbit), and normally that value is closer to or above 5000m/s. I would doubt that anyone could beat 4.4km/s without some fancy maneuvering such as gravity assists or aerobraking around eve source: http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/

did you check issteamdown.com ? In my experience, 95% of the time when I'm connected to the internet and steam says it's not connected, it's a problem on steam's end...

I would recommend Neptune's Pride http://triton.ironhelmet.com/ The game is "real time" but it takes several hours to days for ships to go from star to star, so you have to log in periodically to make sure that you're not being backstabbed. Makes for truly epic conflict as by the end of the first week you're really invested in your empire. If you are interested in Sins of a Solar empire, I can arrange for you to get a copy of the original game (no expansions) so you can get a feel for it, I would of course ask that if you like it, you purchase a copy to support the developers. Alternatively, for the exact opposite of Neptune's Pride's absurdly long game, there is 10 Minute Space Strategy. http://www.desura.com/games/10-min-space-strategy.

Actually, it is known that Half Life 3, Portal 3, Left for Dead 3, and Team Fortress 3 are all going to be released together in The Orange Box 2, thus getting around valve's inability to publish games containing a 3 in the title...

I've played both. I would say that they are roughly equal in terms of enjoyment. If you enjoy 4x turn based games, you would enjoy both of them, though GC2 fits the bill of Civ5 in space better than endless does if that's what floats your boat. If you don't need your 4x game to be turn based, I would recommend Sins of a Solar Empire (either the original game, or the standalone expansion "SoaSE: Rebellion"). In my personal opinion, GC2 does a better job of making you feel attached to your empire, like, as you see Korath Clan ships nerve gassing your capital, you feel like you've failed your people, and like 100 turns later when you've made a comeback and grind their fleet into dust, you feel like such a boss. On the other hand, in Endless, when something similar happens, you're sort of like "well that's going to be inconvenient" (The same thing in SoaSE results in cursing. Lots and lots of cursing). So that's really the big difference in the feel of the games. The other differences are mainly technical/mechanics (though I will say that the fact that there's no clear documentation on how "weapon strength" and "defense strength" of military components impact performance in battle in Endless, other than "Larger numbers are better" which kind of bothers me, but oh well). So overall, GC2 has better flavor, Endless is slightly closer to chess on the chess->civ5 continuum (and has a slightly nicer and vaguely less cartoonish interface). Also, if this matters to you, GC2 doesn't have multiplayer, Endless's diplomacy system is (imo) stupid, and SoaSE is better overall if you're ok with real-time.

General equation for dv needed to take off from a body and reach a circular orbit of height H above the surface is: sqrt(G/(R+H))*(1-sqrt(2R/(2R+H)))+sqrt(G/R)*(sqrt(2(H+R)/(2R+H)))+sqrt(G/R) where G is the gravitational parameter of the body, R is the body's equatorial radius, H is the height you are trying to get to. Assumes no atmosphere, and that you took off from an altitude of 0. Plugging in the values for Vall, we get that an ascent takes 858.03m/s, thus with a perfect ascent and descent, your lander will need 1716.06m/s. If you want to land and take off to a minimum safe orbit (~8km), that will require 1685m/s, so no matter what, you're going to need to get out and push (the last time I checked, kerbal eva's have 600m/s dv, so your lander might work if all you need is the kerbal in orbit). Also, note that landings tend to take up a not insignificant amount more dv then they should, because a perfect landing requires a "suicide burn" which are hard to pull off properly, I normally give myself an extra 20% on landings to make up for this (more specifically, 60*(surface gravity)).

So, you'd want dv for direct transfer from (for example) Ike to Kerbin? Because that's actually pretty hard to calculate accurately. What I normally do in some situations is figure out the height of the moon above it's host's surface (for ike, this is about 3200km) and plug that height into the alexmoon calculator (ejection dv for duna(3200)->kerbin(100) is about 574), I subtract the orbital velocity of the moon (Ike's is avg 320) which lets you know that you need to leave ike's SOI traveling at about 254m/s. This gives you a lower bound for the dv required. Using orbital kinematics, we can find that a good upper bound for the dv required is (254 <known final SOI velocity>)(1049598 <height of sphere of influence of ike>)/(130000 <equatorial radius of ike> + <whatever starting height you're going from>) - ((1.857e10 <gravitational parameter of ike>)/(130000 <eqr of ike> + <start height>))^(1/2) which calculates to 1673m/s (from an orbit immediately above surface level on ike). the above formula I provided should get you rather accurate values in this case, but know that this makes several assumptions such as assuming that ike is properly lined up so that you can eject into a transfer exactly at the alexmoon launch window time, which is not necessarily very common. You can use this methodology to find moon->other body dv. I don't feel like figuring out moon->other body's moon at this point, =P

So add in a ton of cool stuff, start the thing running, go eat a sandwich and watch some GoT, come back when it's done, ???, profit.

Really? I personally stayed away from intel cores because from what I saw, I thought that for equal processing power the intels tended to be more expensive. (Also, now that everything is paid for and assembled, I really don't want to think I made a wrong choice =P )

here's a link to the part list. Note that the case I got was like 90% flashier than it needed to be, but oh well =P http://pcpartpicker.com/user/XiXLLAMAXiX/saved/3OSq

I'm not sure if OP is still considering graphics cards, but I recently built a computer that runs KSP phenomenally (highest graphics settings possible at 1920x1080 resolution). The graphics card I used was a NVidia GTX 750 Ti. It's a $150 graphics card (at most places. Some vendors are selling it for more. Don't buy from them) using NVidia's new Maxwell architecture. Also, because NVidia is preparing to roll out new graphics cards based off of this architecture which they claim is "twice as powerful at half the wattage", I would recommend against buying a more expensive GTX series graphics card for a bit as you might as well wait for the new ones. If you want, I can send you the complete parts list for the comp I built (was able to buy all the parts for $800, very proud of it =D )

Alright, so I'm just going to throw out an idea which is probably going to be the most far fetched of them all, but you know what? that's ok. Idea: Put the station in orbit around Jupiter. Now I know what you're saying, "But that completely goes against the ease of access part of op's question!" I know, but this is where the far fetched part comes in. The station is less of a station, an more of a support network of ships orbiting Jupiter with one central station with all of the physical samples on it. This station, in addition to its other functions, can build these support ships, which in turn go off and recover materials to repair or refuel themselves or the station. Every once in a while (100-1000 years or so...?), the station manufactures a craft which is sent to land on Earth. This craft contains etchings with basic information (math, science, rocket technology, etc.) to jump start any society that can find and decode them, some select parts of info about our culture (if the station sends these out periodically, then each individual one does not need to have all of the information), as well as information about the location of the main station around Jupiter, so that the "original copy" can be recovered once society has advanced to the point where it is capable of doing so. Advantages: -Less likely to be accidentally destroyed by humans who find it -People are more likely to stumble upon the messenger craft that come to earth b/c they probably would have seen them falling from the sky and landing -potential for self replication of any information stored -capable of self-maintenance Disadvantage: -If station loses ability to produce messenger craft for any reason, station will be extremely hard to find / will no longer be able to "jump start" society -Might be impossible if it turns out that you can't manufacture spacecraft in space -computer failure could result in station not being able to build anything/build things incorrectly, at which point station will be extremely hard to find / will no longer be able to "jump start" society -computer failure could also result in station accidentally maneuvering to de-orbit itself. Thoughts?

Hi, I was wondering if it is possible to download an offline version of the current website. I frequently have spotty/non-existent internet, and I've found that this website has been a phenomenal help for planning missions, and it would be nice to have access to it in times when I don't have internet access. Is such a thing possible?

Alternatively, use this to plan your interplanetary transfers: http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/

Use this: http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ to plan your transfers. As stated by Nibb31, the olex.biz website makes some dangerous assumptions, while alexmoon's planner does not, and gives you a better idea of the effects of making/missing a transfer window

As someone who just lost literally 9 hours worth of gameplay, I would very much like this...

I'm interpreting this as "I have some other craft which can successfully deliver this into low eeloo orbit, can this then take me the rest of the way to finish the mission?" Well, assuming a perfectly optimal landing/ takeoff. landing on eeloo from low eeloo orbit takes about 720m/s, and taking off is about the same. The ejection burn from low eeloo orbit to kerbin orbit requires about 1000m/s, and any plane change maneuvers can be anywhere from 0 to 1000m/s depending on how well you time your ejection, and how patient you are. Thus, it takes a minimum of about 2400 m/s to go from low eeloo orbit to the surface, then back to orbit, then back to kerbin, but with the plane inclination change required for the interplanetary burn, this will probably be closer to 2900m/s. Note that this assumes that you will be aerobraking at kerbin. Tl; DR: If you get a perfect transfer window, yes, otherwise you're probably gonna run a little short sources: http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1iw30a/a_more_accurate_deltav_map/

You could make it so that time warp slows down to the lowest selected time warp of all players. This way, if one player needs regular game speed for, say, docking or something, they can do so, but if everyone agrees to do so, they can all set their time warps higher for interplanetary missions

I feel like this is relevant.

^This guy wins^ And today I learned that I\'m too lazy to get pictures =P

For clarification, the largest craft wins? I feel like it would be more of a challenge to make it so that smallest craft wins. I can get a big-a$$ rocket to the moon and back all day every day, but getting a smaller craft to do the same thing is more difficult. Make a space-worthy craft: many times Get your craft into a Kerbostationary orbit: haven\'t tried yet, but should just be a matter of figuring out how high up Kerostationary is, and then launching my orbiter Land on the moon: many times. I can get multiple craft to land next to each other too Orbit the moon: many times. orbiting the moon is part of my munar landing procedure. Drive a Moon rover on the moon: working on it. My rover launch vehicle keeps getting attacked by a space kraken (randomly breaking apart) Perform an eva in orbit: when my rover craft broke up, I had to rescue the poor pilot. He had to EVA into the recovery vehicle. (By the way, you should add orbital rendezvous to your challenge list, because that is a challenge =P) Perform an eva on the moon: yup! Do 2-4,6 for minnmus: I\'m not sure what this means Orbit the sun: not yet... I\'ll get some pics up later... I didn\'t take any while I was doing this =P