Pecan

A mission is simple. You're never going to get structure and purpose until you get to projects and programmes ;-0 Seriously, it's when you try to put together a whole series of missions to in a common style and 'sensible' sequence that you get anything really interesting. Chucking big fireworks at the sky is the easy part! Programme profile: Establish a space-station around each planet in the system (and their moons, if you wish). Map every body (including moons), land on each at least once (where possible) and visit each 'anomaly', if any are present. Each station to have a tender capable of acting as local tug/rescue vehicle and a lander capable of descent and re-orbit (not Jool, obviously!). Station, tender and lander to have 1 crew each (min). Station to also provide 'off-duty' accommodation for each crew member (hitchhikers are fine, external seats don't count!). Any crew on transfer missions (eg; refuelling) must also be accommodated at the origin/destination station(s). Any flights over 3 days also require 'off-duty' accommodation (separate module - 1 Kerbol in a 3-person pod still needs somewhere to stand-up and stretch a bit). All ships must include remote guidance units/probe cores and be capable of uncrewed operation. Any crewed mission must be preceeded by (at least one) uncrewed. No landing can be carried out before mapping - doesn't have to be the complete body but does have to survey the landing-site. No suicide missions! Do all this while minimising (one or more of), a) cost, part count, c) launch-mass, d) number of launches, e) number of different vehicles - whichever you choose is totalled across everything you fly (or drive, in the case of rovers). Required mods - FAR, DREC, TAC LS, RT2, SCANSat. Forbidden 'cheats' - hyperedit, part-clipping; both only where they don't make sense in 'real life', such as one engine inside another, etc. Plus now, of course, you can build a rock-garden for each station :-)

The full game contains much more than the demo so you should reckon on specs at least as high as for that - although the 0.18 demo version doesn't suffer the 'ocean lag' bug of 0.23(.5). My machine played the demo fine despite not meeting the system requirements so I bought 0.22 and that was fine too. It struggled a lot when 0.23 came out (mostly that bug, which is easily fixed), until my old graphics card finally died and I bought a new one (despite that not being much more powerful). Reasons to buy the full game instead of staying with the demo: More concurrent flights with ships made of more (different) parts in more sizes going to/from more places (planets and their moons, not just Kerbin's). Docking, (space)planes and rovers. Mods ('modifications' = add-ons), including the brand new NASA ARM (Asteriod Retrieval Mission). The demo's really great in itself but it's only a tiny taste of what you can do with the full game.

It's incredible how many experienced people still don't get the point of asparagus staging - it's more efficient. Why is it some people will happily put boosters around their rockets but balk at attaching pairs with fuel lines? Whatever size of rocket you're making, staging will still make it more efficient and asparagus will still be the most efficient staging strategy. Neither different parts nor different aerodynamics changes that. Yes, people can make excessively wide asparagus ships but others can make excessively, erm, dramatic ones by strapping loads of radial boosters on them. The only plausible arguments I've heard against asparagus are still either a) conservation of rotational energy and I just don't like it. For any payload mass (up to 40 tonnes because I haven't bothered much beyond that) I bet I have a more efficient yet aerodynamic launch vehicle than most peoples' using other staging, or none.

What temperature is it designed for? Some chips just run hot - my old graphics card preferred around 83 degrees centigrade.

Store one as a sub-assembly and then use it with the other. Sub-assemblies are available in both buildings. Then remember that unless they're the same mass their suspension will exapand/compress by different amounts under different gravities. Then remember that unless the ground is (almost) completely smooth they won't be pointing at each other anyway. Try the KAS mod so you can just get and a put a hose between them.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/24898-Challenge-Submission-Guide

This current thread will probably help: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/73205-How-can-i-calculate-geostationary-orbit "0m" is a problem though, since you don't start at the centre of a body but on its surface - and presumably with some rotational deltaV too (unless it isn't rotating). In an atmosphere your ascent trajectory can put the calculations all over the place and wherever you are it depends on TWR too so there is no single solid formula. For Kerbin the 'standard' figure is 4,500m/s though.

With the current tech tree and documentation (virtually nil) career mode is just a bit silly. Reading/watching tutorials then following them in sandbox mode is a better way to learn how to do things and a better way of getting them done.

Pull up a sandbag and sit down, swing the lantern and list' to a tale of old computy ... In days of yore we did learn to type and find all keys without lookin'. Typos there were a'pleny but we sorted 'em as we wan'ed. Then Apple hove inna view and said we had on'y one hand; t'other were fer the mouse. Well tha' was fine wi' cap'n hook and the lubbers but fer the rest is slowed us up rotten. Us 'as two 'ands - WASD is one (wi' QE I don't 'azard a doubt). Fer me t'other IJKL and HN betoo is narry a bother. Be it IJKL or 8426 'tis nothing but keys to who can. Who can will, however they will, and god bless the buggers behind. [Hope this makes some sort of sense - I'm in an odd frame of mind, lol]

Theoretically, yes, since the magnets do draw both ships together. Obviously the acceleration would be pretty minimal and it'd be very hard to keep close enough without docking/touching. Might make an interesting challenge :-)

If you have a laptop with you; KSP! (Do you think Jeb would play the Sims or something if he were in space - "Look, strange alien 'humans' stuck on a planet"). If you have a laptop and satellite comms - the internet! Otherwise boredom is the biggest problem - and eating all the food in the first week because you're so bored ^^. There's very little traffic (might not see anything for several days) and sod all else to look at in the middle of an ocean and weather-sat systems make avoiding really big weather easy(ish). If I had to do it again I'd probably go mad(der) and get off half-way. On the other hand, if I was locked in a small plastic box (yachts ~30-50ft) for 30 days with someone else I'm not sure both of us would make it either. Ask yourself - is there anyone I could cope with in close confines 24/7 for four weeks with no-one else to talk to and no-where else to go to get away from them?

For interplanetary travel use http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ - not only will it tell you when the transfer-windows are available but also exactly how much deltaV you'll need and what your transfer time will be.

Map satellites first (SCANSat) then unmanned landers, then manned. Everything has a probe-core of some sort, since it's first tested unmanned and might be used that way later too. Stations (bases if I bothered with them) and tractors/tugs need 1 crew, 2 crew + spare space if >month in space (I've sailed single-handed across the Atlantic a few times so I know what 1 month feels like ^^). Stations may be unmanned if 'mothballed'. 'Dumb' fuel modules are unmanned and can dock but would normally be tug-assisted. (If docking unmanned I'm assuming they're controlled by the crew in whatever it is they're docking to). Next time around RT2 will add another level of satellites to everything.

I usually only find out mine don't have (enough) struts when I land them at <10m/s vertical speed and a wing or engine gets jolted off anyway.

13km/s is plenty to get to and orbit Moho. Since you're going to be mining and refining kethane there do you even need to worry about the fuel to come back?

I find it pleasantly surprising the number of people here who are saying things like 'small', 'unmanned' rather than 'huge', 'moar boosters', 'weapons', etc. I suppose I should have expected it and the huge/moar has a certain appeal of its own but I think this thread shows that KSP players like to think more than most :-) Someone should nudge Rowsdower.

... Starting again to create a design a 'meaningful' series of missions, the craft to suit them and an overall purpose. Getting distracted while waiting for transfer windows and ... (redo from start)

Poooh! The smell of necro.

Tested and got an AP of ... 55km. Solution confirmed, I think. (When you move the decoupler up to the engine it will normally 'snap' to the top connector but if you continue to move the mouse up it can snap to the lower one.)

ninja'd :-) (actually I was still thinking "that 909 looks very thin" and trying it in the VAB). FWIW my first stage burns-out at about 23km and 817m/s then the 909 takes it out past 370km. Have fun.

Well I thought I was off to the pub but my lift left without me (it's a long walk from here!) so I've been trying a few more things but even without the T30 I'm getting to 80km+. All I have left is - make sure the fuel tanks are full! All tanks and the 909 should be 100%, the T30 at 60% and the boosters 38% thrust/full fuel (but as I've said before, even with everything at 100% I was getting 250km+). It helps if you can post a screenshot of your ship in the VAB so we can see exactly what you've got where. Apart from that can you give us a commentary on your flight - speed every 100m up to 1km and every 500m after that? That's probably a bit much, but at least what height you reach when you stage, what speed the navball shows when you do, similar for when the upper stage burns out and when you start falling again.

Well, possibly. Since you're spotting it and manually staging to it there shouldn't be too much problem but in general it is best to be very careful about staging and very easy to get it wrong. EDIT: Incidentally (information for later in your KSP experience), some designs call for the engine to be in a different stage to the decoupler below it - the way you've got it in other words. The reason is that sometimes the lower stage(s) throw the upper so quickly you can afford to just drift upwards for a few seconds between dropping the spent stage and firing the upper one. Doesn't usually make that much difference but 'cruise and burn' is a genuine and useful technique.

No, you shouldn't have to adjust course - he's just pointing out what happens if you do. Neither is there any need to re-throttle. It's just 'T' for SAS, left-shift for throttle, spacebar to stage and launch. Straight up until the first stage burns-out, then spacebar to stage again. (With the thrust limiters - I just tried it again - I get an apoapsis above 370km). If it's not mods, throttle or direction the only thing I can think of is your staging. CHECK that stage 3 (confusingly enough the first one that fires) just contains the T30 and the three boosters, stage 2 contains the decoupler above them, the 909 and booster parachutes (make sure it isn't firing the top one, lol), stage 1 is just the pod-decoupler and 0 the top parachute

Nope, just tested it and even without setting the thrust limiter so the boosters last longer it still got an apoapsis over 230km. Are you actually putting throttle to full when you launch? The solid rocket boosters (SRBs) don't need throttle - and in fact ignore it - but the T30 and T909 certainly do!

RCS = Reaction Control System SAS = Stabilisation Augmentation System (Space Anti-Sickness, etc) Maybe some of the more popular mods? DREC - Deadly Re-Entry Continued (adds burn-up on too-fast re-entry, etc.) FAR - Farram Aeronautics Research (replaces aerodynamic model with a more realistic one) KAC - Kerbal Alarm Clock (an alarm clock for ship-operations) KAS - Kerbal Attachment System (add/remove parts after launch) KER - Kerbal Engineer Redux (information display) MJ - MechJeb (information display and autopilot) RT2 - RemoteTech 2 (communications satellites)