nadreck

Places I haven't even probed: Kerbol Moho (had ships going there a couple of times when new version came out) Dres Tylo Eeloo had a ship going there when a 0.23.5 came out Places yet to receive flags Kerbol (impossible) Jool (impossible) Tylo Eve (had a piloted return craft headed there in 0.23.5 but when 0.24.2 came out I dropped that one) Dres Eeloo Moho

Ah, I just want to take Eve out for a bite of sushi, she is dressed up so nicely in that translucent purple number. Doesn't Gilly sound fishy enough to suggest sushi? Anyway if Eve does agree to go out for sushi with me I bet Jool will be green with envy.

Contracts adds a new dimension to this by giving you "experimental" parts before you get to them on the tech tree. If you are careful to not accidentally run the test you can have the higher level part without getting it (LV-N was one of the last tree nodes I unlocked this time around because I was using it as an experimental part.

For the universe of Career Mode I started in 24.2 Kerbal date Y1, D07, 23:43:12 Funds 4,510,378 Reputation 946 (seems kinda stuck) Science earned to date: 6894 Contracts completed: 75 2 Kerbals, Donlorf and Shervan sadly lost their lives in a tragic accident on the Mun at the dawn of Day 6, Bob felt terribly responsible as he had been bragging to them about his amazing EVA emergency landing on the Mun when one of his 4 engines was knocked off on a crater rim going 160 m/s. Before the lander crashed he had EVA'd and managed to slow and land safely with a couple of units of suit jet fuel left. Since the deaths of Donlorf and Shervan, he has landed every single time taking a different Kerbonaut on each sortee. Once he has trained the rest of the compliment he intends to return to oversee the launch and flight to Eve of the EVE lander return mission.

In 0.24.2 I have what I call Tank Farm in 90km equatorial orbit: I have a shuttle called Fuel Train that goes back and forth to a tank and spare lander in an approximately polar Munar orbit, it brings my science modules back and I put a Kerbonaut with samples and EVA reports on board too: And here is my LowGee NSUV Mk1.1 and a spare that along with another tanker module acts as a station and emergency rescue craft at the MUN, they stay in polar orbit the NSUV (Nuclear Science and Utility Vehicle) can generally make two landings on the Mun per fueling though I could only do one when I landed at the north pole (I had to translate a lot to find relatively flat ground to land on). Note that my Fuel Train is powered by the LowGee NSUV Mk1 (it was missing lights and was, after two Munar landings, up graded with the NSUV Mk1.1) Note the 4 science modules on each lander in the picture above. They have their own chutes and return to Kerbin independently after being brought to LKO and the Tank Farm.

As a newbie that just tried the free version? NO, with the experience I have now I would fly one of my own design for sure. I would be more worried about flying in one of Elon Musk's but I would do it. However I regularly do things where I have to have confidence in my ability (skiing, boarding, scrambling in the mountains with serious exposure).

Doing it vanilla in 24.2 career mode, except I have self enforced rules not to Revert (and am generally testing anything I am not sure of with a probe core), and I consider that I am trying to beat the clock and look at cash as a score as well. So my goal is to get through the tree in a minimum of elapsed Kerbal time, and then to each celestial body and return in the minimum time on the clock. However being cash conscious hasn't stopped me from building stuff like this: However, my tank farm is mostly recoverable and I will salvage what I can when I feel a need to update it with parts further down the tech tree. Still working on filling it as I wait for my next burst of Science from my first Minmus contract and mission.

Right now, my names denote function, generation, destination/application - so SciLander Mk3M RV is my third generation of Science collection lander (temp, barometer, mystery goo, materials lab) version M for Mun or Minmus (D for Duna/Ike one is one the way) and RV is a special application, it has a probe core and is being sent to Mun (and a 2nd will go to Minmus) as Rescue Vehicles to be permanently in orbit there. I have some generation 1 (pre docking port) Kerbin orbit rescue vehicles just hanging out in case of contracts.

I use it, for mother ship load balancing rovers and landers, and on a particular rover/lander design where I need a control from here point that is perpendicular to the tanks that make up most of the body of the rover.

As promised, though a little later than promised. The arrangement below has me recovering the booster stage in the ocean. But some configurations are SSTO and I am building a fuel depot/station with two of these boost stages.

I would love space station, moon base, and asteroid relocating contracts!

I like the default, though I can certainly attest to the rover control issues. The hardest part of the default for me is the EVA jet pack Shift/Ctrl ones. They seem wrong, but I am used to them now.

Just 'cause they use the square root symbol, doesn't mean they aren't dollars/bucks.

I have a new habit in 0.24, not sure why it felt natural to change my game play to do this, but, now all my new, untested manned spacecraft designs get flown unmanned at least once before I put a Kerbonaut aboard. Part of this new game play is that I am refraining from using revert in First Contracts because I feel it invalidates the value of cash balance as a score card. Crashes should cost me money. So, I don't risk pilots on unproven designs. Now, the line between minor modification and what consists of a whole new design is somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent ;-) Old odd habits: use retro thrust from engines to course correct on rendezvous (you point further out on a line drawn between heading to target and the relative velocity pointer on the gyro ball) rather than trying to line it up on forward thrusts towards the target. slow craft landing by parachute with a little engine or even RCS thrust just before landing. Even deliberately design craft with fare less parachutes than necessary but use parachutes to control the descent and direction rather than apply all the needed breaking.

Launch cost is about 110,000 for just a tanker, 1st stage recovery nets me about 55,000 back probably more if I could reliably splash it down right by KSC. The tanker stage can be recovered for about 10,000. Same 1st stage plus my 4x LV-N half orange tank transfer stage was about 130,000, with the same 55,000 recovered, and the Ike lander launch was about 120,000, again recoveries. I will probably try to make a heavier lift one soon. Will need it for my Eve return mission.

When I get back to my home computer I will grab a picture, I have a 5 orange tank all liquid booster that either gets about 3/4s of an orange tank 2nd stage into orbit while the first stage is in a long enough sub orbital arc that I can transfer control back to it after I circularize the upper stages orbit. It will put a lander into orbit as well in SSTO mode. Cost recovery if I splash it down is about 50% of it's launch cost. As someone mentioned, getting funds does not seem to be a problem right now for me in the game, my balance is $2.5M and I have two probes in Kerbol orbit, a Minmus lander on a hyperbolic trajectory to Minmus with a 22hour flight time for my first Minmus contract, I have returned my first Munar contract ship, and my LV-N powered Duna/Ike contract explorer is in orbit waiting a kerbonaut and a flight plan to get it there as fast as possible on the fuel available (1.5 orange tanks in the transfer vehicle). My clock has not ticked over into the 2nd 24hour Kerbal day yet.

Was too busy to try 0.24 until this weekend, but I put 0.24.2 on and had a Saturday afternoon full of rescuing Kerbals in Orbit, testing odd things in odd places (put an LFB into orbit to test it for > $700,000 with >$100,000 advance) and I must say this about contracts: I like that while I am waiting for my first Mun Mission (covered by a general exploration contract) to get to the Mun I have picked up science faster than I would have just going to various Kerbal biomes by doing experimental engineering contracts, and I have picked up lots of cash (at 9 hours in on the kerbal calendar I have $1.5M). Yes, I would like creating a space station, mun base, and similar activities as contracts. But I am taken with the ones asking me to put things in escape trajectories, and of course for all of it, the game is how many contracts can you get with a single mission. Given the costs of 'big' stuff, $1.5M won't come close to doing real exploration with multi ship expeditions. Note that as of 0.23 I have have been trying to keep time elapsed on the Kerbin calendar at a minimum, so I need to be able to do a lot of simultaneous missions. So yes, I am 'farming' contracts for cash to be able to do this. I may also have to work seriously at enhancing my vehicle recovery rate to keep the cash balance up there. I presume I can manage that by putting parachutes and probe cores on boost stages.

Spanish Harlem Orchestra - that was the name of the Joolian exploration ship with two lander components (one for Laythe the other lander for all the other moons except Tylo) the lander components were separately called Timbales and Trombone (two of my favourite instruments in Salsa music)

I use several, but an upside down cupola at the bottom of a very low CG lander with tanks all around it is one favourite as the view from IVA is spectacular. The Mk-1 Lander Can because of it's extremely efficient weight is another favourite and of course no armada would be complete without a Mk 1-2 command pod to bring the rest of the crew home in.

Sadly that is getting more and more common. Otherwise intelligent people just don't believe it is possible now or ever was.

You are welcome to your opinions, and in fact I would single handedly fly a Kerbal 1 person lander can all the way to Eloo to defend your right to those opinions, but one of them really does drip with irony to me: the lack of payloads for the SLS is a direct result of the waste of billions on the Constellation project, the SLS, the Orion capsule. Imagine how many science payloads they could have built and provisioned with that sort of money. If they had poured 25% of it into SpaceX and one competitor in the same time frame the other 75% could have gone to manned and unmanned missions for those vehicles (including the Falcon Heavy and probably the X with the Raptor engine) to carry.

and you may note I mention this one in my sig

Well, first of SLS is a long delayed version of a similar plan that got mired in development (Constellation) and politics, the Orion Capsule that is supposed to integrate with SLS is facing delays, one test by 2 years. Finally, I would suggest that we talk again in 2017 and see where SLS is then (possibly the same place Constellation is now with a new paper tiger in the wings).

I seriously doubt the SLS will ever fly, especially the Block II. One launch (not development costs) will be more than the Falcon X and Raptor Engine development program cost. But even if they don't cut the funding the SLS project has 2 to 3 times the delays as SpaceX programs do (and they run about 100% over time planned). Raptor engine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_(rocket_engine)) is a full flow staged combustion engine using Lox/LNG and will be more throttleable as well as having an impressive ISP (partway between Lox/JP1 and Lox/H2).

ah I had forgotten the odd chute, but the worst was, early in my 0.23 career mode where I got my lander down on to Minmus (a 1 kerbal lander can) went to EVA for flagging and sample gathering when I got a hatch blocked error. I had had bilateral symmetry on accidentally when I was attaching the Comms DTS-M1 and put two on the lander can by mistake. GRR. Lander wasn't meant for re-entry either.