AcidSludge

I read about KSP on TV Tropes, tried the demo, fell in love (with KSP - at least a bit). http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram

@ FilDays: These "I have no clue why these things fly"-planes without any propulsion are surely fun to fly and experiment with. I like the relaxing flights with them, far away from roaring rocket engines and exploding somethings http://i.imgur.com/13KrxTW.jpg . I posted this earlier, this is also such a "sailplane", but with full SCIENCE!-capability (and rover wheels. I like rover wheels). With an earlier design of this, without the heavy experiments, I managed to get this up to 3000ish meters and close to 100m/s. I'm sure with enough testing and good piloting these are far more capable.

<iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="http://imgur.com/a/u0zXW/embed"></iframe> Just a few designs who actually worked and flew - more or less. The first one showed in that album is the machine responsible for the death of my first (and only so far) Kerbalnaut.

an airbag landing system and an actual purpose for umanned probes

"Noctis" is a good one, in my opinion. Sure, absolutely outdated graphics, weird controls, but ... it's vast, and strangely addictive. And it's free. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctis Webpage: http://anynowhere.com/bb/layout/html/frameset.html

This is, more or less, basically what I've done on my mission Of course I'm coming back to Duna, I just tweak the LM-Design a bit before I start another mission. Actually I have planned 5 to 6 missions, including bringing more Kerbals along, dropping a rover, maybe a small plane, and of course a trip to Ike.

I finished the Duna-Mission a few minutes ago, all went exceptionally smooth. I decided to use ALL of the chutes during the Duna-Landing and was able to repack all of them already while on Dunas surface with a a little jetpacking The LM returned to Kerbin after 460 ingame days, the CSM stayed in Orbit and has to be refueled on my Space Station for further missions. The landing on Duna happened on mission day 186 and touched down with smooth 2-3 m/s, assisted a little by the engines. I left Dunas SOI again on mission day 192. Thanks again for your help

Yep, there are waaayy more chutes at the LM, ten chutes (all properly aligned and with symmetry) at the moment, to be precise. I just planned to use four of them on Duna, the rest is planned for Kerbin, I tend to overengineer my crafts a bit regarding to parachutes. I'm, so to speak, parachutenoid. [edit]Okay, it seems we have a GO for Duna tomorrow, thanks for your advices

I use the Black Widow myself for years (not for KSP, but for FSX and other FlightSims) Try to calibrate it first on the game controller settings in your OS, I assume it's Win (I used the Black Widow on Win XP, Win 7 and Win 8, so there should be no problem here) - especially the Thrust-Throttle tends to freak out if it's not properly calibrated. And then, like it is proposed earlier, take a look under the game settings and remap all manually.

I am currently planning a manned Duna-Mission with one Kerbal, and of course the brave Kerbalnaut should come back to Kerbin. The CSM-Module with over 12.000 dV (just to be safe) is already in Kerbins orbit, waiting for the Lander to dock But regarding my LM I'm unsure if my current mission planning work out, because this is my first land/start off again on a planet with an atmosphere except Kerbin. I try to briefly explain what I intend to to: The Lander, as seen in the picture below, has the following stats: Overall Weight: 19.205 kg Engines: 2x LV-909 with 3751 dV / 100kN for 7:39,1 (TWR on Duna according to Engineer 1.77) The LM is planned to land assisted by parachutes, 2x Mk16 and 2x Mk2-R (I could add more chutes to the landing on Duna-Stage, the return to Kerbin COULD involve a EVA to the space taxi docked on my Space Station, although a direct landing on Kerbin is planned), I'm (almost) certain this could work, but I'm unsafe about starting the LM and dock it again in the orbit of Duna with the CSM. Long story short - Is that LM capable to start off Duna and reach a safe orbit with that weight and the availabe dV?

I recently learned about the Zambia Space Program, aaaand I just wanted to share, just in case you didn't know about this. In case you know more (websites dedicated to that, book suggestions et cetera), please share http://youtu.be/3uzSSe8RP58 (Faces Of Africa - Makuka Nkoloso: The Afronaut) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Makuka_Nkoloso (The Wiki-Entry about Nkoloso, obviously)

I finished a 400 day-mission to Duna with an unmanned "scratch the atmosphere below 10km, do science and get out of there"-probe this afternoon. By the time I got it back to Kerbin to do some aerobraking before 'chuting the science-section of the probe I had 94 m/s left in the tanks. [edit]Oh, and about 6 units of RCS-Propellant.

I docked the first "tanker/supply"-ship as a training exercise on my Experimental Space Station, which is basically a fuel tank, a big RCS-System, solar arrays and some docking ports at the moment. And, I found out how to transfer fuel, RCS-Propellant and even electricity between the vessels (latter is of course pointless for a space station which is self-powered, but it is good to know that you CAN transfer electricity if needed). Next step for the Space Station is to bring some Kerbals to the ESS, aaand exercising docking much much more, my rendesvouz & docking-style is a little crude at the moment

Finally, my first successful DOCKING at my second Rendezvous-Maneuver, the vessels at the pictures are Flirter 2A & Flirter 2B. My first docking try a few days ago (Flirter 1A & Flirter 1B) didn't worked out due to unknown reasons, the docking ports refused to dock, and since I did the first try watching MechJeb doing the maneuvers while watching/reading tutorials I do not count that as a legit try. But this time I did the maneuvers all by myself, and without the (to me more confusing than helping) docking mode.

Girder Stresstest, manned. I call it a success! <iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="http://imgur.com/a/rgmfP/embed"></iframe>

doublepost, sorry for that

This is the latest version of the Komarov, my "workhorse" - or, as I call it - "the rocket-thingie that I manage to orbit and do spacey stuff with most of the time". I'm relatively new to KSP, I play it for 3 days now, and after two days of shooting rockets in all directions very aimlessly (Jeb is in an EVA orbiting the sun at the moment) I got the hang of what and where to do (I assume). The Komarov-Series was planned with Kerbins moons in my mind, and works as intended - mostly. Missions with the Komarov so far: 1. Unmanned -> Hey, I got to the Mun, and it is coming close very fast, aaah how beautiful it is, hey look at that hills - kaboom, Mun has a new crater now. 2. Unmanned -> More gently approach, the surface came earlier as I expected, a lot of debris, but promising. 3. Manned -> I got it, I got it, I gooooot iiiiiit, ah ****e, the lander flipped over, but the Kerbal named Bob is still alive! 4. Unmanned -> Training for a "Bob, hang on, we're getting you home someday"-Mission, landed the probe smoothly and returned it safely. 5. Manned -> Bobs Rescue, managed to land 5km away from him, got him and the lander safely back! 6 Unmanned -> Minmus-Mission, landed very smoothly, done a lot of science-stuff, went home and noticed that I forgot the parachutes for some reason - tsunami after the splashdown.