Anquietas314

I meant you could send them to e.g. Eve, and not care about returning them home for their experience reward (assuming you had something for them to do on Eve that required that experience) EDIT: Then you'd be better off quoting the other guy

I agree with most of your other points, but something like the materials bay or mystery goo could be made a bit more interesting if the science gained was based on the time you ran the experiment for (e.g. to collect more space dust particles or to see how the bay/goo's contents would change over time in a particular environment). Obviously having time-based mechanics for stuff like atmosphere analysis and gravity scans would be silly since for the most part those things wouldn't be affected by running the experiment for longer (we can sweep the uncertainty stuff under the carpet ). Thermometers/seismic readings are a bit of a grey area there though - both would actually change with time (in some cases).

I'd be interested to know how these Kerbals could browse Kreddit out at Jool/Eeloo with the couple-minute signal delays But sure, another use for the lab would be good

Er, read what I was quoting in that post

Well sure, but remember the last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation was exactly 20 years ago. People still watch that (granted it's not quite the same thing, but still), then of course there's the original series, etc. Also, I never said I watched quantum leap We're getting way off topic too lol.

Eh, that show isn't that old, and it's quite well known

This thread isn't suggesting resource gathering, it's suggesting that it be a time-based mechanic when it's added (i.e. 0.91 if plans don't change), so it isn't covered by the do not suggest list. Even if it were, with everything else in the thread that's not, I don't think the mods would close the thread purely for that. They're pretty reasonable people, just like (most of) the rest of us Personally I think the fact you have to actually go and get the science is enough of a hassle without this (disregarding contract science). Otherwise, I'm happy with most of OP's suggestions/examples

This is actually a really inefficient way to do that plane change. If your launch isn't perfect, the best way to do it is to plot a maneuver node with your apoapsis out at Minmus's orbit, and then stick another maneuver node (before you burn the first one) in the middle of the transfer to do the plane change, and then tweak the first node (move it around your orbit too if necessary) until you get an intercept. It'll cost you a few tens (or less) of deltaV instead of a couple hundred for the plane change itself. If you get lucky with your botched launch, you can of course just do one maneuver node at AN/DN and end up with your apoapsis at DN/AN respectively with a Minmus encounter nearby

Ahem, we "experienced players" get "wrapped up" in efficient transfers for a damn good reason: it costs way more delta-v (and therefore fuel + cost) to brute-force it . I think I get the essence of what you're saying though: figuring it out yourself is way more fun

Well, okay, but remember that most of the things you need to do to get experience take at least a day's worth of travel (going to Mun/Minmus/...). Surely the Kerbonauts would have time to reflect while they're sitting in the ship in timewarp?

I agree, but to play devil's advocate, that would mean you don't need to bring them back

While technically yes you could use a rover, landing one on Mun at the same time as a Mun lander - otherwise you've got to either land very near by (tricky) or walk over there (boring) - is a fair bit more complicated to do. Plus rover parts come pretty late in the tech tree, assuming of course you use the electric wheels. I suppose you could use the basic landing gear and rockets, but then you have fuel and such to worry about. From experience, using an EVA pack is a terrible idea - first you've got to find out which bloody direction the marker is, then you discover it's 5km away so you use at least half your fuel getting there, then probably run out on the way back and have to walk the last km or so in Mun's gravity, at Kerbal walking pace, with physical timewarp at 3x (because 4x makes him glitch out)

You should make the Center of Mass(CoM) and Center of Lift(CoL) visible on the screenshot. Without them, it's harder to tell what the problem is. From your description, I would guess the CoL is too far forward - it should be just behind the CoM in a typical spaceplane design, but it depends on how fuel drainage affects mass distribution in your particular design.

Psst. you get EVA survey missions on the Mun(and elsewhere).

I'll just add to this that, at least in KSP, making a reusable SSTO launcher that just decouples a payload and returns to Kerbin is much cheaper (and easier) than getting a shuttle design to work, even if you do recover the big orange tank

You have to take them on different kinds of missions - kerbin orbit and back will generally get you to level 1, landing on the Mun, planting a flag, and then going to visit Minmus will get you to level 2. So far I don't have any level 3 kerbals yet, but I haven't been much further than Minmus in my 0.90 career game (transfer windows are ages away )

Matching velocity only (almost) matches orbits when you're very close to the target and ideally more or less at the same altitude as your target. Depending on which planet/moon you're orbiting, matching velocity while 1km from target if you're above or below could be either not too bad, or far away from correct. At that distance, you shouldn't get your relative velocity down to 0 completely, instead make sure the velocity vector is aiming roughly at your target. Some screenshots of the flight/map views would be nice though, because if it takes 40m/s relative velocity to get an intercept at 1km away you're probably doing something wrong, or have found a bug.

The +/- buttons are only visible when you mouse over the stage list (at least in flight - can't check VAB atm due to atmospheric flight), and they're buttons - that means they should be among the top-most UI elements. I do agree that the click-through thing should be fixed though

The infiniglide, I understand, but how is that getting up to 28km/s? The landing can doesn't have the monoprop for that, and I don't see any other sources of fuel...

Let's not derail this thread, but you can't argue that it was economical and (needlessly) expensive - those are directly contradictory terms. As for comparing the 1970s era design with modern ones - the costs for the NASA stuff have been scaled for inflation. That is, it would cost about the same as those figures if it were done now instead. Development costs are very relevant - if it costs more to develop a design than you will save by using it, it's a terrible idea. In the case of the shuttle, the development costs dwarfed even the usage costs, never mind savings.

Spaceplanes: 1) That means they ran out of fuel or intake air - probably the latter. Solution: MOAR INTAKES! 2) Yes, sortof. With turobjets you can actually get out of the atmosphere without using rockets, but of course you can't get to orbit because they don't work in space - that's where rockets come in. 3) With Mk2 spaceplane parts, small station parts and rovers can be lifted to orbit, yes. It's not trivial to make that happen though. You technically can lift larger pieces using the Mk3 spaceplane parts, but this is considerably harder due to the weight of the parts and lack of accompanying wings/intakes/engines suitable for the scale. Space stations: 1) A space station should not have engines - the idea is they stay put. For a long, thin design though, it may be easier to move it using engines placed at the front, yes. Contracts: 1) Yes, they get harder. 2) Contracts are randomly generated, so yes but it won't be exactly the same for e.g. survey contracts. EDIT: Damn you Pecan!

Well, that's just herbal's image... so, yeah. lol.

IMGUR tags are for albums - i.e. multiple images. You use IMG ones (directly on the URL, without additional URL tags) to make a single image appear. That is, [ IMG ]http://i.imgur.com/napMQ9Z.jpg[ /IMG ] without spaces to do this:

Well, okay, how about the money spent just developing the space shuttle? That thing was not cheap by any means. According to this, in modern terms it cost on average $450 million per launch, with a net cost for the full 30 years in service of $196 billion. There were 135 missions flown, which equates to just shy of $61 billion, or in other words ~$120-125 billion in development costs alone. Compare this to the cost of SpaceX's Falcon 9, which can lift almost half the payload of the space shuttle, for $61.2 million per launch (source). Yes that's a much more recent design, but had NASA's budget been spent on developing something similar instead of the space shuttle, it would most likely have been far cheaper.

You made the poor Kerbal sit on the outside of the plane the entire way there?! You monster! The problem with your IMG tags is that you've stuck URL tags inside them - remove those and it'll work.