irongut

Today I built my first successful SSTO spaceplane, the Stiletto 1a. It has two RAPIER engines and uses stock parts plus KER and MechJeb (not used for this mission). Bill Kerman piloted it to orbit and back to land on the KSC runway. I've entered it for the K-Prize challenge, the first challenge I've tried. The Stiletto will hopefully become a shuttle for launches to a future LKO space station and I plan to try attaching some landing rockets for a mission to Minimus.

The Stiletto 1a is my first successful SSTO spaceplane. The previous version was able to make it to space but didn't have enough fuel to circularise it's orbit. I used stock parts plus KER and MechJeb (not used for this mission). I had some problems with the RAPIERs in auto mode, they would switch mode at different times sending me out of control, so I bound them to an action group and switched them manually when the air got too thin. Stiletto 1a, piloted by Bill Kerman, prepares to take off on my first SSTO mission. A reasonably circular orbit was achieved with PE approx 73km and AP approx 75km. Bill performed acrobatics for the camera. I tried to take a screenshot showing the AP & PE but apparently it didn't save. The Stiletto 1a performed several orbits until it was morning at KSC to make landing easier. The flight path brought it in over the mountains. With the Stiletto coming in short of the KSC Bill engaged the engines and turned towards the runway. Now on target Bill cut the engines and Stiletto 1a glided in. Success! Bill and the Stiletto 1a returned safely to KSC, completing my first ever SSTO mission.

Today Jeb tested a new form of personal transport, the Grasshopper! Flying the Grasshopper is tricky, it wants to pitch forward constantly, and Jeb has to concentrate. The range of the Grasshopper is poor and Jeb landed in sight of the KSC. Footage of the landing was destroyed but after a few weeks in the hospital he'll be ready to try again. One final image of the prototype survived.

Brilliant! I especially like the black & white albums of your early missions.

You're center section is either too heavy or its engine is too weak. You need a Thrust to Weight Ratio of at least 1.4 to get off Kerbin. I recommend using the Kerbal Engineer Redux plugin, it will tell you TWR, deltaV, etc while building.

Jeb had to hike 8.3km uphill on the Mun to get to a rescue ship after he ran out of fuel 50m up and touched down perfectly. It was my first manned Mun mission to land and I didn't know he could run with the shift key. So used a screwdriver to hold W down and kept an eye on it while I made dinner.

Because it is impossible to buy a computer with a single core x86 processor unless you buy second hand.

It's much easier to land on Minimus than Mun and not really any harder to get there. So you could practice landings on Minimus and then go back to the Mun. If you're having terrain altitude issues try Kerbal Engineer Redux. It doesn't include autopilots like MechJeb but it does give you useful design and flight information that will make your missions much less trial and error and much more successful.

The part info in the VAB tells you how much electricity a panel will generate when on Kerbin or in nearby space if it has clear line of sight to the sun. While on a mission you can right click a solar panel and it will tell you how good the line of sight to the sun is and how much electricity it is generating. These numbers are quite small so it's easy to sum them in your head. Don't forget to fit batteries for when you are on the night side of the celestial body you are orbiting and eclipses. If you move further from the sun than Kerbin you will generate less electricity, if you move closer you will generate more - I don't know how much effect this has because I've not left Kerbin SOI yet. Parts that use electricity tell you how much they use in their part info in the VAB. Bear in mind they only use electricity when they are doing something so an antenna only uses electricity when transmitting. During a mission you can see your current total electricity use in the Resources window at the top right of the screen.

Liowen is probably right but in case you have an electrical supply... Depending on how big your fuel tank + engine are you might need a reaction wheel, the Stayputnik doesn't have a lot of torque.

Search for the water speed record challenge thread. You would be surprised at how fast it is possible to go in Kerbin's oceans with a rocket powered boat. (well over Mach 1) IIRC the people in the challenge thread put air intakes under the waterline to make their boats work better. They have negative drag or something.

Aha! Yup it's Show Vessel Labels on the General tab. That fixed it, thanks. The tip about Engineer was useful too I'd forgotten about that tab.

I'm trying to learn how to dock and I can get my two ships within a few km of each other but in camera view I can't see the little pink reticule that should be on the target ship. I've tried this several times and looked all around but just can't see it. Thinking back I have seen it about 2 weeks ago when doing an EVA on Mun with my lander targetted but I haven't seen it in similar situations since. I use Kerbal Engineer, Kerbal Alarm Clock and Protractor plugins but I have also tried removing them and bringing two 100% stock probes within 3km but still didn't see my target. Is there a setting that enables it that I might have changed? Have I found a bug or do I need to keep looking? Edit: changed tag to answered.

I'd love to see a bit more life on Kerbin, especially city lights during night lanches and while orbiting the dark side, but I have no interest in any form of KerCity, Kerbalisation, etc. I have other games for that.

I can't do much more that a simple Kerbin orbital mission without Engineer so I install that as soon as its updated. Other than that I only have Alarm Clock and Protractor installed; and I installed them yesterday. I don't use parts mods yet because I'm still learning how to use all the stock parts.

I use either depending on the ship. SRBs are nice because they are one part so I don't have to assemble nose cone, tank(s) and engine(s) and my cpu likes them better. But, as I progress towards heavier loads and my first interplanetary mission I'm starting to find liquid boosters and asparagus staging necessary.

I've been messing around with some rover / jet car ideas in carreer mode and wanted to use the external seat but when I launch from the VAB I get a warning that I have no crew capacity or probe body so the vehicle will be uncontrolled. I was able to get round this by using a plane cockpit for now but it isn't the look I wanted. Why doesn't the seat count as crew capacity when it is on the pods tab? Is there a way to build a vehicle I can use on Kerbin using the seat but no capsule / cockpit?

Some kind of robotic arm for shuttles and stations or a soil scoop / drill for rovers.

This one just reminded me of the old GoBots ship, I forgot the name of it, from the old tv show. For those that are too young the GoBots were like the ghetto Transformers of sorts. Here is a picture of what I am talking about LOL http://www.teamplayergaming.com/attachments/nc-17-public-discussion/4126d1360496943-just-howlin-gobots-toys_4814226.jpg.att Looks like an Eagle from Space 1999 to me. Very cool! Today Jeb returned from his second trip to Mun with lots of data from the East Farside crater. Meanwhile Bill took a jet over to the Island Runway and back to KSC. Jeb then had a very successful round trip to Minimus' Great Flats and Slopes biomes. Finally Bill experimented with a jet car. It was a busy day.

On my 5th birthday I went to the cinema to see a film called Star Wars, I've loved anything to do with space ever since. As a kid I spent hours designing spaceships and robots with lego and eventually got into electronics and programming. KSP lets me carry on playing with spaceships just like lego but in a way slightly more appropriate for my age.

I don't see a poll. Overall I think the current science system is a good start but it needs improvement. Like you my biggest problem is that unmanned probes are useless. I like to send unmanned probes to bodies I haven't visited before I send a manned mission; to observe, map and find good landing sites. In sandbox I generally put a probe in orbit and land an unmanned rover before sending Jeb. This is similar to rl space exploration but carreer mode would penalise me for doing it this way. I like your ideas. A probe mission should not penalise a future manned mission and the longer it is in orbit or on the surface the more science it should learn.

Where do those ribbons come from?

Nice mission. I really like the design of your probe with the solar panels on the arms. What is on the ends, fuel tanks? I haven't tried ion engines yet but after reading this I'll have to try them soon.

This is Squad's game, not yours and they can develop it any way they want. If you don't like what they are doing tough, many other people will. I like carreer mode thank you. It forces you to be smarter and think about your builds rather than just using the same parts all the time. They may pay some attention to forum threads but at the end of the day they have their own plan and MUST follow that. If they, or any other developer, did what every forum denizen wanted they would end up with an unplayable peice of trash that no one would play. Literally 2 days? So you know the exact process and everything it details from design to graphics to codeing and testing? Or are you just one of those people who have no idea what the word literally means? I am a developer. I can tell you that very few features can be added to a large code base in 2 days and certainly not something as big as a whole planet. I think people on forums should shut the hell up because they are damaging the games they claim to love.

Jeb is currently stranded living on Mun after my first manned landing ran out of fuel 50m up touched down perfectly as planned. He is conducting experiments while he waits for the second rescue mission.