G'th

Started playing again after watching some old Scott Manely vids. And naturally, I promptly got to orbit on the first try, and had enough fuel to probably do a good orbit of Mun and possibly an orbit of Minmus (or at least a flyby). Don't know why so many are having issues flying with the new aerodynamics, though then again, it does kinda reveal just how many people did actually use FAR. I've had FAR as a permanent addition to the game since I first tried planes, and the new aero wasn't any sort of shock at all.

Well thats the thing, I have been taking a break lol. Haven't played since the middle of february or so. And I will check out the challenges.

I need to be inspired to play this game again, but I'm having trouble doing it. I really, really want to play the game because I haven't even played with the 1.0 features yet, but I'm having trouble finding the inspiration to do so.

Sometimes I don't think this game gets enough credit for educating the crap out of the young people.

I ditto this sentiment. That and honestly to me it seems like the markets getting a bit saturated with LS mods, most of which operate on the same idea.

So I binge watched the entirety of the "From the Earth to the Moon" series tonight (alongside The Right Stuff at the start. Basically to get most of Mercury through Apollo), and something that got me thinking was the image of the "Space Cowboy", and how there's quite a lot of people who, for lack of a better description, despise the type and the image itself. I personally like the idea. Aside from the obvious PR benefits having these kinds of people going into space, it just seems to me like these were the sort of people that you'd want doing things that weren't as simple as just sitting in low earth orbit. The way they behave, in popular culture and in real life, just seems ideal for the situation.

Pfft, cluster Saturn V's and we'll talk. (or get on Whackjob's level and use mainsails as sepratrons)

We, who are about to be locked, salute you!

Ahhh, CKAN was linking to an older version apparently. Cool beans.

^10/10

Been having an issue with the Mk1-2 pod. The fairing for the heat shield automatically turns on when I place the part, and nothing I can do actually removes it, including decoupling in-flight and disabling the fairing via Tweakable Everything. Not quite sure whats causing this.

I used to do real time missions in LockOn (A combat flight simulator). They were oddly satisfying and even relaxing, even in the frenzied dogfights I'd get into after running six hour CAP missions and only finding enemies at the tail end of it. God, I need to reinstall that game. My HOTAS is getting dusty But anyway, I've been tempted to do it in Kerbal, though thusfar I've only managed it for LEO missions. Course then again it's been a long time since I've had the time to the 10 hour plus missions in LockOn, so there's that too.

When I started I usually just made cool sci-fi type ships that half the time I'd have to hyperedit into orbit. Then once I started actually building rockets, I always went for direct ascent. Eventually I started looking into Apollo and from there I was hooked to the LOR concept (and I still haven't broken out of that addiction either lol) and I spent a lot of time playing around with it on Mun and Minmus. (Varying in style from grounded rocketry all the way up to Interstellar stuff depending on what tickled me) But even back then I hadn't yet really learned how to rendezvous and dock. Then I got on the SSTO spaceplane bandwagon. Then I really got into the Shuttle (Because I had installed CSS out of boredom and fell in love with it). After a while I ended back with Apollo, and I started looking at Eyes Turned Skyward to spice it up a bit. And now, after getting bored with that, I'm going to up the ante and go for Realism Overhaul, and I'll likely go for the Apollo route with it.

So I'm doing a clean slate of KSP atm and I've decided that I'm going to try Realism overhaul with all the goodies. So I'm trying to get an idea of what all to expect. Obviously its going to be like my first moments in KSP all over again trying to get into orbit for the first time (because I'm purposely trying to ignore the required delta V), but what else? I'm used to realism mods like Remote Tech, DR, etc but I've never played with Real Fuels and the like.

I don't know if he's updated since I last watched the series, but for a while he had RT2 disabled because it hadn't been updated.

What I like to do is to the "fleet" method, particularly when it comes to manned missions, as it allows a much longer and more simpler mission. I send an unmanned station core ahead of the crew (ususally I do it for the first transfer window then crew on the next) equipped with life support supplies to last the intended mission duration (usually 1-2 days for Duna) plus the return trip into a polar orbit of Duna. This serves as a waypoint for the entire mission, and also allows for mapping of the surface while it waits for the crew. That way, when I send the crew and lander(s), I only need to supply life support for the trip to Duna, which cuts down on mass very heavily. It also saves FPS.

More complex, but as others have stated, in one particular area. Science. The gathering and processing of science should, I think, require a bit more effort than simply clicking buttons in X location. For instance, something along the lines of the geology mod that was in development for a bit, where you actually had to search for surface samples and they'd have certain levels of quality (Which could be further enhanced by having the level of your scientist kerbals play into it). And then it could be further indepth by requiring a certain number of samples of varying quality in a given biome to retrieve the full science value. Samples could also take time to actually process back on Kerbin depending on their quality, which would also be good for giving the Mobile Lab more of a point all around. But in order to really justify it along those lines, there'd also have to be a reward for overcoming that kind of a hurdle, particularly if X experiment requires a lot of input. What could be done is to have it split where you can do more work for a bigger payoff in the long term (IE, look for higher quality samples to bring back rather than a mix from high to low) or get a smaller short term payoff that will require less work for a more immediate return (IE, a lot of lower quality samples that will be processed more quickly). Both options could be enhanced by the MSL (which would, I think, be a bit higher up on the tech tree), where you'd get more science from the quicker option, and more immediate science from the slower option. This idea extended to all of the experiment options (also, stockify Dmagic already!) wouldn't be overly complex, and would extend activities like landing on the Mun by a bit without it being arbitrary.

I don't know who said it first (because its how the game was described to me and I swear I've seen it said elsewhere), but my favorite quote goes along these lines:

Usually I restart depending on how I want my game to play out and what group of mods I'm using together. For instance, I'll start a new game to do a spaceplane only save (typically paired with Interstellar, otherwise I spend more time designing planes than flying them) or a real life replica save etc etc. Right now I'm starting a save that's based on stock friendly parts and KW.

How does the GUI organize the order of the suit textures? Does it go by alpha/numerical order of the directories? I'm trying to use a bunch of different suits for my ETS playthrough (IE, specific mission suits) and, while I'm assuming that that is how it works, I figured I'll ask as I'm waiting for the game to load to see if this was the case.

Have you ever considered making an adapter part for the LEM docking cone? Or even better, just a separate docking part that would be able to be used more generally? While I don't mind having to built my own adapters out of structural parts, having an actual single part would be a good addition.

The whole thing about the old argument "well why haven't time travelers just revealed themselves yet", is that it doesn't quite try to explain why humans who have obtained the ability to time travel would actually do so. Short of some random genius inventing one out of a Delorian, any time machine that is invented is going to be tightly controlled, either by some government or the team of scientists who created it. (Or more likely, both) And its already a given that those people wouldn't be so unwise as to use the machine and then go televising the fact to the past, particularly if there wasn't any certainty in how doing so would affect their present. And even if we go with the option of some other entity stealing it and then traveling into the past for personal gain, again, why would they advertise their time traveling? For one, few would believe them without proof (In which case, any personal gain would be lost anyway as it'd be seized by the first government to get its hands on them), and two, you'd want to keep eyes off of yourself otherwise you'd run into problems keeping whatever you gain. Contrary to the popular idea, I don't believe time travel will ever be accessible to the general public, short of it being used as a means to counteract time dilation in space (in which case, its usage would still be very tightly knit).

So as I continue work on the Eyes Turned Skyward rockets, I've come to the last stop with the Saturn Multibodies, half the designs of which use liquid boosters rather than solid rockets. Now, my question is what are the actual advantages and disadvantages between the two as it pertains to real life? And more specifically, why liquid would be chosen over solids. Obviously the variable throttle an advantage (though in the case of the MB's, none of the liquid booster variants are meant to be crewed, where I think the variable throttle would be most useful), but what else is there? Short of better lifting capability (IIRC, one F1-A should technically have more power than the Titan solid rocket), in which case liquid boosters seem an unnecessarily expensive option, I can't seem to figure out why liquid boosters are necessary in these designs. For reference, this is the Saturn family of rockets in ETS:

You should look into ASET PRC and Exploration. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/94947-Exploration-Rover-System-by-A-S-E-T-%2810-10-14%29 http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/86343-New-project-from-ASET

So, if some of you might remember, I recently landed something on Duna for the first time. Welp, today I've marked the same achievement, except this time it was Eve. Playing around with US probes I decided to send Magellan (Makellan) to Eve, using a Saturn 1C rocket. And it was glorious. It was real nice to see Eve up close and not in the tracking center. Now, originally I just intended the probe to just be an orbit and then deorbit (just like Magellan actually did), but little did I know that US probes are stupidly non-fragile. Despite my highly negative periapse (it was almost a straight free fall down the planet. I hadn't let lose my Centaur-E stage so I used its remaining propellant and half of that in Makellan to make sure the probe would be destroyed) the thing managed to survive entry into Eve's atmosphere. And indeed, it survived well enough that it slowed down to the point where I was able to use the remaining propellant to try and make a last minute suicide burn. And low and behold, I've touched the surface of Eve for the first time. Fairly awesome I must say.