StrandedonEarth

The very first time I loaded KSP, the first hint to come up was "Pointing correct end towards space." It just seemed so right.

Spork it Is the Earth flat?

EMP can't penetrate a Faraday Cage

I was not trying to do it as fast as possible, but: Finished the tech tree in my current save (upped the difficulty to FAR, DRE, and TAC life support) in 97 days, my fourth time through the tech tree. Once I got my labs in orbit around Kerbin's moons, I launched a Hopper to Minmus, and while that was on route, I launched another Hopper to the Mun. The Mun Hopper hit about 8 or so biomes before the Mun Lab was drained, and went home. Then the Minmus Hopper arrived and did about 6 biomes before the Minmus Lab was drained (it had less fuel stockpiled). All the while I had gravioli probes doing high and low biome sweeps. The Minmus return ship had to burn onto a hyperbolic return path (if Kerbin's atmosphere wasn't in the way, it would have gone interplanetary), shaving 2 kerbal days off the return, to get home before life support ran out.

Hmm, like the recent landing attempt where, even though I'm a seasoned kerbalnaut by now, nonetheless started flying the screen instead of the navball while descending less than 1000m from the Mun's surface and ended up doing a loop-the-loop. I still managed to right myself and pull off a landing (waaaay off target) with much less fuel left than planned, but for several heart-stopping seconds I thought Jeb was doomed. I think another feature KSP needs is automatic replay-recording for the last minute or so. Some of the best video moments don't get recorded simply because they are unplanned.

One option I did not see mentioned was distributed generation. I would love to be able to put a 5kW natural-gas-fueled fuel cell in my house, but the $20k-50k price tag is prohibitive. With that, I could have both heat and electricity without relying on the grid (power-outage-proof, as long as the gas supply remains intact), and even be able to sell power to the grid when house demand is low and grid demand is high. Once the price comes down, they will be more widespread. New mines for rare earths and platinum would help with price (or capture a platinum/rare earth asteroid). Distributed generation would help with peak loads, reduce transmission losses, and generally lower the demand for large base-load power plants. WikiLink. A google search provides several companies providing residential fuel cells A note about hydropower dams: while hydro is generally considered carbon-free, dam construction is not. Also, one thing usually overlooked is that when reservoirs are flooded, the vegetation rots and releases methane which bubbles to the surface, even decades later. I've seen this in action while fishing in Williston Lake in northern British Columbia, once considered to be the biggest dammed lake in the world. The bubbles could be lit. For those who don't know, methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.

That was... simply.... AWESOME!! My most glorious moment was just this morning. Last night I sent my Minmus science results (over 5000pts) back to Kerbin with Gregden and Kelden in a Mk1-2 pod. Well past the point of no return I realized they were gonna run out of life support just over halfway home. As the ground crew hurried overnight to prep a snack pack to do a high-speed rendezvous, Gregden dreamed up a solution. He did some calc's and figured he had enough dV to put the craft on a hyperbolic return course, drastically cutting the return time. Mission control was spared the difficulty of a high-speed intercept. Now the only concern was whether the heat shield could handle the 3500m/s re-entry, so Kelden decided not to jettison the service module and burned it off instead. Gasping for breath, they popped the hatch as soon as the chutes were fully open, then jumped out and kissed the ground when the capsule landed. They fainted when they saw the sliver of heat shield remaining. That's how the recovery choppers found them. *mission report edited for dramatic license* Prior to that my most glorious moment was my first return from Jool, as my 100-ton tug+lander assembly did a screaming 4500m/s (non-DRE) blazing aerobrake around Kerbin.

It was late and I was just trying to quickly cobble something together, so launch clamps didn't occur to me. That works much better, thanks! 244m! Now we finally have a proper cannonball! That was going to be the next step. My Tylo rescue rover should work well for that

Tried to blow the giant ball around with a K2RL (sic) engine using a sideways rig. Oddly, if I used two engines so the powerplant wouldn't move, neither did the (uncoupled) ball, but as soon as I shutdown one engine, then the ball would go one way while the powerplant went the other. Which the crew did'nt enjoy so much. But the ball did move.

I calculate that will have no effect here...

No more star

We had some problems where Windows Diagnostics decided the DNS server was down, but it's been fine lately (knocks on wood). Not as good as TheDestroyer's tho

A Laythe ascent after a powered landing. Don't know the numbers but it took several quickloads to find the right ascent profile, which included draining the RCS tanks on lift-off, and an atmosphere-top-scraping orbit. The tanker had to come down and dock with the lander while trying to stay out of the soup.

Duck tape is no match for X-acto

Obnoxious red orb FTW!

Then build a new bridge

I was just clarifying that $2.5B was more than just replacing a bridge, as the new bridge is twice as wide (tried to find the cost for the bridge only but couldn't; unconfirmed figures of $1-2B are thrown around ) and the cost of widening that much highway and building the overpasses was significant. Anyone who used to be stuck in Port Mann traffic jams would agree the upgrade was a good thing (something HAD to be done), but the $3 one-way toll is not. If the toll was lower (and spread to all the bridges in the region) the new bridges (Port Mann and Golden Ears) would be better utilized. I'm just disappointed that an area employing thousands (including some entry-level-wage warehouses) has no public transit service whatsoever.

Just like I tested a Saturn V class rocket, then realized I forgot solar panels along with other things, like the SRB's not actually attaching to the separators, escape tower not jettisoning, etc. Fixed a few things in the VAB and still forgot the panels, after putting 157 tons in orbit. Oh, and I'm reeeeally trying not to revert/quicksave. At least this time I remembered to add 'chutes. RIP Mellan and crew. I tried a powered landing but DRE got me. At least this time I'll have enough power to land. Good thing there are no budgets yet. Another pet peeve: 2.5m nosecones weigh more than Rockomax adapter + 1.25m nosecone (yup, going FAR)

Edit: Ninja'd, but the Pandorica should get destroyed when the sun goes supernova

The cost of that bridge also included 37km of highway widening, and the new bridge is 10 lanes wide as opposed to 5 for the old one, making the the world's widest long-span bridge. Public transit in Greater Vancouver is a joke, really, unless you live in Vancouver and the adjacent 'burbs, with its 3 Skytrain (metro) lines. Service bombs as soon as you have to cross a bridge to another 'burb. In fact, I work in the Gloucester Industrial Estates in Langley/Aldergrove, an area that employs thousands of people but is nowhere near (as in walking or easy biking range) any population centers. And there is absolutely NO bus/transit service there whatsoever! There are many people that would welcome a light-rail transit service (on existing tracks!), but hte local politicos always want to favor Skytrain (at ~$100 million/km) and then say it's too expensive to build!

Time to colonize somewhere else! (ship credit to Temstar, image found on Google image search and copied from KSP forums, posted June 9 2013)

By this criteria I must be a master KSP'er. .... When you think your kerbals are actually permanently dead when they crash on the Mun, or when you wonder how long they can survive being stranded there....

Kerbal Alarm Clock will tell you when transfer windows open, so you can start fiddling with maneuver nodes then (the main reason I first got KAC, but very useful for other reasons). Some planets are in different inclinations so you may need to make an adjustment at the ascending or descending nodes, generally after your initial ejection burn. But I agree that the simplest way is to escape Kerbin's SOI first, then you have a whole solar orbit to play with the maneuver nodes, if you have the fuel to spare.