Material Defender

Xactar is the best! His delivery is just so hilariously on point and he's really great at characterizing his Kerbs. Everytime my phone alerts me he's made a new vid is just my favorite day. Also big shout to Danny2462. His vids are super hilarious and addictive. Can I humbly request more special agent Kirrim, pretty please? M1sz does the darndest things with robots. He hits a 10/10 for "woah" factor in all his vids. Nassault makes some of the most beautiful and poignant videos I've ever seen. KSP inspired or otherwise. "Nothingness" seriously makes me tear up every time, even after watching it at least a dozen times already. There's so many others too I ought to recognize, but a great way to find more is to start following one youtuber and then check out who he or she follows and links to, you can tap into the whole network that way. Thank you to all you youtubers! You make so many of us smile every day, please keep doing what you're doing, you guys are the best.

23.5 broke my massive 3k ton lifters! I used to have a nearly perfect success rate at putting 150-200 tons in orbit, but now they catch on the launch supports and explode on the pad. Back to the drawing board I suppose, thank goodness for new SLS sized parts

So I just cracked the 400 hour mark, and by this time I've done most everything. I've got stations around and bases on every orbital body. If a kerbal can get to orbit, say with any one of my basic SSTO designs, they can interact with my network of large and small interplanetary shuttles and landers to go to and from any planet or moon in the system at minimal fuel cost (not that ample fuel is a problem, each station has massive surplus). Bill, Bob, and Jeb just had a reunion on the surface of Eeloo, each coming from somewhere different in the system, just for kicks. But now I'm, astonishingly, running out of steam. I need a new challenge. What would be your recommendations for mods to inject some new fun in my game? I've been playing full vanilla and never really felt a lack of anything in particular, but now I want to know - are there any mods that you felt really enhance your KSP experience? That would be a good way for an old spacer to feel a little bit of that excitement again?

just cracked 400 hours and i just now have bases and stations around every planet and moon, if that gives you any benchmark. it's also been 5 yrs in game time. Nice round numbers. But yeah, probably the most fun i ever had was just learning the basics. Reaching orbit, landing on the moon, these were the most exciting things I think, and it probably took me 100 hours just to make consistent orbit with small craft. Not that it's stopped being fun, but now the fun is in playing with my bases and toys on all the various environments. Watching Duna rise and fall from my base on Ike is one of my personal favorites. Some things have gotten tedious though. Like the 10,000th interplanetary plane adjustment. The millionth launch of my standard, workhorse, million-times debugged lifters. I got into SSTOs for a bit, and that made the game new again, but I still haven't tried any mods. I'm not interested in mechjeb or anything that would make the game "easier," I'm really not sure where to start with mods. - sorry for the ramble, this is my study break from med boards, and I'm a tad loopy

Jool. Specifically aerobraking there always gives me the heebie jeebies

Don't make this about gender equality. This is about stereotyping. What do you expect these "females" to look like? Maybe long pretty hair? Makeup? How about a dress and I put them in your kitchen? It's a little sad to me that the superficial appearance of an individual must fit into your preconceived gender role. How about you instead take a step back and reconsider what it means to be "male" or "female," because it shouldn't be primarily based on what you see from the outside. Personally, I like to think that the Kerbals are fungal. That would explain their ability to survive for extended periods of time with very limited life support.

Who says 0.23 is going to kill your save? My understanding is that it would not.

woah. gorgeous. and a little bit scary

For lag reasons I no longer send any unmanned probes or plant any flags. I pretend that those activities are still going on, but that they're just handled by the unkerbaled branch of the KSP. I never send a Kerbal anywhere without the on-hand capability to return him home (so no bases on Eve or Tylo until I master landers to and from there). All planetary bases have shuttles capable of rendezvous with orbital stations, and all orbital stations have docked spaceships with the capacity and fuel to return the base and station crew to Kerbin SOI, where I have littered the gravity well with stations full of small shuttles, return capsules, and SSTO spaceplanes. Rather than build massive, intricate, multistage spaceships capable of flying off to distant planets and back again, my entire space program is based around an expanding system of waystations and refueling points, allowing relatively small and simple ships to travel anywhere in the solar system. An average trip might look something like this: 1.) Take off from KSC in the reusable Mark 98 SSTO spaceplane (15 tons) and rendezvous with LKO station at 80x80km 2.) EVA crew over to a mini shuttle for transfer to a waystation in higher orbit (these minishuttles are extremely fuel-efficient, with a deltaV per ton of around 2,000m/s) 3.) Board a small interplanetary capable ship such as my NERVA powered Skipper Mk2, weighing in at 15.9 tons with a deltaV of 7763m/s (I have some larger, but less fuel-efficient models as well, going up to 14k delta V) 4.) Fly to Jool and aerocapture, then rendezvous with a station there and board one of the many lander shuttles I have ready to ferry crew down to Jool's moons 5.) Party on a new planet in SPACE. All the infrastructure for the return trip is already ready and waiting. To keep this system running, it takes a steady stream of fuel tankers from Kerbin, but these fuel tankers are the same that ferry the waystations, landers, and intraplanetary shuttles of my ever expanding network, so it's not as much of a bother as you might think.

Thanks Exothermos! One of my earlier designs looked like the old Bearcat, but each subsequent redesign looked less and less like the WW2 naval plane... so the name changed gradually. And gorgeous plane too my friend! I love the simple designs, I just might have to steal that one. How does she handle at low speed? Any fuel left over once at LKO? @ Sermor: That's a sweet plane buddy! I'm stoked that I was able to inspire you. I've also been trying to make a version with a nuclear engine, but it's been too heavy and I've always failed. If you succeed please post it and show me how! UPDATE: Took the Sharkwolfcat and gave her a facelift: added rover wheels and a docking clamp for refueling (as well as designed a refueler that works) - these mods were copied from Brotoro's design of his BirdDog with the intention of making the Sharkwolfcat Laythe-capable (here, visit Brotoro's mission pages, they're a great read and inspired a lot of my designs: http://www.mindspring.com/~sportrocketry/ksp/ ) Anyway, to test out these changes the new spaceplane, redubbed the Mark 99 (yeah... she may have been my 99th redesign...) needed to be put through it's paces, so i looked up in the sky and decided "to the Mun!" (read the image descriptions in order for the full story )

@ Sermor Of course my friend! I'm glad you like my design. My goal was to make a simple, but well-handling small plane with no cheats and all stock. It's certainly not as dramatic as some of these other beautiful creations, but I know there's other people out there that appreciate the straightforward, vanilla approach.

It's time to get silly. Introducing my largest interplanetary vessel - the Pioneer class mothership. Powered by eight NERVA engines with a Mainsail afterburner, This 180+ ton monstrosity must be lifted into LKO in two sections, then assembled and refueled in orbit. The Pioneer comes in many different variants, including a lander-carrier, probe-carrier, orbit shuttle-carrier, and NERVA powered mini-ship carrier. Specs: (for the production variant) Crew complement: 9 Mass: 173.16 tons Delta V: 10,741 m/s Docking ports: 6 Parts: 232 Mods: none Awesomeness quotient: Extreme

Introducing the Mark 5, version 3, or, as I call her, the Mk5 v3 - an all-stock interplanetary cruiser with a seven kerbstronaut crew, light suite of scientific equipment, and a Delta V of an astounding 11,363 m/s Driven by four NERVA engines, her 98.25 ton mass is placed into orbit fully fueled in a single launch by my stock proprietary universal Monster-Lifter 9. Once in orbit, framerates are kept low by a minimalist design of only 95 parts. Round trip flights to anywhere in the Kerbol system are now possible for a large crew from a single launch of this multipurpose vehicle, no mods required. More stats: Launch mass: 670.34 tons Orbital mass (weight without lifter): 98.25 tons ------ Payload fraction = 14.6% Dry mass: 23.095 tons Delta V: 11,363 m/s Crew: 7 Mods: none

Introducing the Sharkwolfcat! An all-stock, orbit-capable SSTO spaceplane. No part clipping, no air hogging, and no mods required. I've been playing since 0.20, and by now I have a full networked infrastructure of stations and interplanetary shuttles to move Kerbals from the surface of any body in the solar system (except Eve and Tylo) to any other using small ships and many refueling stations, but I never could make a successful spaceplane without cheating a little bit. Until now. The Sharkwolfcat weighs in at 18.61 tons fully loaded and has a crew of one Kerpilot. The two turbojet engines require 75 units of liquid fuel to reach their effective flight ceiling of around 20k, and then the seven Rockomax 48-7S engines kick in to carry her to orbit. She has enough fuel left over to rendezvous with my LKO station at 80km altitude for refueling and crew transfer with a little over 100 units of oxidizer left in the tank. Earlier versions were able to reach orbit slightly more efficiently with less drag from fewer and smaller lifting surfaces, but coming in too fast for landing was quite a problem. The Sharkwolfcat, however, lands like a Piper Cub and flies like a MiG-15. The extra lifting surfaces mean that the Sharkwolfcat can loiter as slow as 60m/s, making this SSTO also fully STOL capable. Touchdown is gentle as your mother's soul and takeoff is nearly automatic. Now go get a hankie and wipe all that drool off your face.