StrandedonEarth

Dual monitor should be almost mandatory for this simulation, look at how many screens were on the Space Shuttle! Having one screen in map view and the second screen in stage view would be soooo handy. With a laptop connected to a big screen on the wall it would be extremely Mission Control-ish

I strongly second that. Ctrl-z undo does work in its way, but it's that moment in the VAB when you try to click on a misplaced strut and take off the whole 6x strap-on assembly instead that gets frustrating. You know right then you made a mistake and it would be so nice to be able to press esc to undo that selection and be back where you were a misplaced click ago..

I note that impact tolerance in the tooltips has been changed to crash tolerance, with units of m/s. While that certainly helps with knowing just how fast you can crash, er, land, the laws of momentum (mass x velocity=impulse x time) imply there should be more to it than that. A 50 ton ship landing at 10m/s (500tm/s) is going to put a lot more stress on the landing gear than a 1 ton ship landing at 20m/s (20tm/s). The part itself may be able to with stand a crash/landing/impact at the rated speed, but not when you stack a 3-kerbal can with the required snacks on top of it! Granted, this gets a lot trickier to calculate depending on whether your 20m long craft is hitting on its side (all parts should survive) or on its 2.5m diameter (accordion from the bottom up) at 10m/s. Crumple zones FTW!

Red 5 standing by... until after work...

Sent Bob and Dilbles on what turned out to be a 1-way trip to Moho, landing on fumes.

Or there's the old "get out and push!" Seriously, you can go EVA and maneuver him to be in 'front' of the capsule, then push it retrograde with the suit RCS. Once you get down to about 10% RCS propellant, go back into the capsule to recharge your RCS, then rinse and repeat until you're in the soup. If the capsule has any RCS capability left you can use that first, of course.

Nah, he's fixing the wheel....

(To the tune of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer") Jebediah, the cheerful Kerbonaut, Had a very shiny nosecone, And if you ever saw it; you would even say it glows. All of the other Kerbonauts Were very jealous of his fame; They never let poor Jebediah Join in any Kerbal games! Then one foggy Kerbmas Eve Santa came to say; "Jebediah with your rocket so bright, Won't you launch my sleigh tonight?" Then all the Kerbals loved him As they shouted out with glee; "Jebediah, the cheerful kerbonaut, You'll go down in history!"

Deck the pad with big orange tanks Ka-la-la-la-la, la-la, la, la Excitement fills the kerbonaut ranks Ka-la-la-la-la, la-la, la, la Jeb is in his space apparel Ka-la-la, la-la-la, la, la, la As the ground crew bids him farewell Ka-la-la-la-la, la-la, la, la Jeb is on his way to Duna Ka-la-la-la-la, la-la, la, la With more boosters he'd get there sooner Ka-la-la-la-la, la-la, la, la Bob prepares the rescue ship Ka-la-la, la-la-la, la, la, la 'Cause Jeb didn't plan the return trip Ka-la-la-la-la, la-la, la, la

As was pointed out earlier in the thread, the chinese had solid rockets centuries ago, but they never tried to build a space-capable (AFAIK) one nor had anyone brave enough to ride one (except maybe one). Perhaps if they had figured out parachutes as well (prerequisite tech: hot-air balloons) more people would have been willing to ride one.

We three brave li'l kerbonauts are Launching on a flying cigar Overloaded, it exploded Now we're on yonder star. Oh-oh OH Flight of wonder, flight of fright Flight into the beautiful night Westward heading, parachutes shredding We won't get to the Mun tonight

These are the voyages of the Kerbal Space Program. It's continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out Jeb, and bring him snacks. To boldly go where no Kerbal has gone before! Edit: Sorry, I don't actually have anything to report; I just couldn't resist saying that. Maybe one of our video experts can whip something up.

Finally wrapped up a marathon Jool Explorer mission, which consisted of a 2-Kerbal lander with a 6-pack of probes. Made it back with one probe (which made 2 landings), and lost Kurt on Pol when he used a puff of RCS while jumping. He vanished in a puff of dust on landing. Overall made 2 manned landings in the system and left a probe floating around on Laythe. Biggest headache was having to launch a probe to jumpstart the fuel supertanker in solar orbit that was supposed to follow, but someone forgot to deploy the solar panels. IIRC correctly the mission burned about 7 jumbos of fuel all told, aside from the 5 Goliath (26 jumbos and 19 mainsails each) launches that put it all in orbit. Capt Kirk Tiberious Kerman arrived back in a blaze of glory, aerobraking at 4.5km/s down to 30km altitude to make parking orbit. After sending the science probe parachuting down to land, he made a 'chuteless powered landing 33km from the KSC. The mission netted well over 5000 science points, with about 3500 left over now that the tech tree is maxed. The jumpstarted Fuel Supertanker (3 of my regular fuel barges linked up) burning towards Jool: The blaze of glory:

Thanks. Hey Devs, can you make it so please?

If not, I'd like to suggest it to the devs....

Launched a manned ship with a 6-pack of probes to the Jool system. Launched 2 fuel barges to follow and assembled them on the way out of Kerbin's SOI. At some point while maneuvering for the Jool burn I managed to retract the solar panels on the fuel barge and didn't notice until after I warped and F5'd. When the time came to burn I had 4 full orange tanks with 8 NVR's dead in space. (I think a facepalm smilicon is needed for times like this). Upon hearing that the fuel barge was dead, Kirk said "Aw, kerb it! Punch it, Kurt!" They made the burn for Jool regardless and have racked up tons of science. The fuel barge won't be going to Jool today. And Kirk and Kurt won't be coming home.

Even being able to access the input settings (keymap) from in game would be a huge help, instead of only at the starting menu.

Ok, that was weird. Ctrl-Z was the second thing I tried after Esc and it didn't work. Trying it after reading this post it still didn't work, at least not right away. Eventually it worked in a hit-and-miss fashion. After a little more fiddling it worked every time. Odd. Thanks! Now if only I could figure out how to change this thread to "Answered"

My greatest frustration in the VAB is when tweaking a design. I can have a design with symmetric strapon boosters and say I want to tweak a strut or fuel crossfeed line. If I miss when trying to select a small part, suddenly all the boosters are off the rocket and have to try to put them back on . This is more frustrating when some of the strap-ons have been individualized. If only I could just press Esc and everything goes back to how it was. Is there a button I just haven't found yet or can the feature please be added in future update? I shouldn't have to save it after every single change but that (reloading) sometimes seems to be the easiest way to correct for when I accidentally remove parts.

What always gives me a chuckle is building a massive orange asparagus monstrosity with a MkI spam can on top, and watching it fall apart in multiple balls of fire as soon as I put it on the launch pad. The kicker is the spam can rolling out of the fireball and Jeb getting out with that idiotic grin on his face. Those command pods are tough to survive that!

***UPDATE*** After 9 years stranded in space, Jeb is home! Intrepid Kerbal Bill Kerman, the first Kerbal to (crash)land on the Mun, was sitting in his Goliath rocket in Kerbin orbit, preparing to rescue his would-be rescuers from the moon (they ran out of fuel during the first attempt to rescue Bill), when he heard that there were no plans to rescue his pal Jeb from solar orbit in the vicinity of Eve. So he cancelled his upcoming TMI burn maneuver and instead plotted a slingshot to the inner system. After a 3 year chase, Jeb exhausted his remaining RCS fuel and rendezvoused with the Goliath stack. Since his Monkeylauncher 'Kspam Kan' capsule was not fitted with a docking port, he had to spacewalk across to join Bill in his capsule, and they lit out for home. Jeb was in too much of a hurry to get home to plot a landing, and they splashed down in the middle of the southern ocean. Recovery vessels are now on route. Image: A happy day for Jeb http://s6.postimg.org/ca94lvjs1/Jeb_Rescue_2.jpg' alt='Jeb_Rescue_2.jpg'> screencast

Jeb is currently stranded aboard MonkeyLauncher Alpha in solar orbit in the vicinity of Eve, after having accidentally slingshotted out of the Kerbin system. With no fuel he is patiently awaiting a rescue mission which isn't even close to being on the books.