justidutch

Pay Kerbals? Wages? What nonsense is this? They should pay me for the honour of flying my beautifully crafted vehicles. If they don't screw up, I might deem to give them half a snack...

Last weekend I had made a trial SSTO plane with a gullwing configuration. It made it easily to 80x80 orbit, so I then tried different versions with ISRU components on it, but couldn't get them right. Last night I took my first attempt and successfully expanded it to make it a useful vehicle... for the most part. It does reach a stable orbit with the added weight, but just barely, it will have to be refuelled before it can begin its explorations of the system. Then after satisfied with that plane, I wanted to make the smallest SSTO plane I could conceive of, just for my own personal kicks. I call it Uno. I'm thinking to build two other versions of it, one replacing the docking port with cargo bay for small satellite delivery, and one replacing docking port with workings for ISRU stuff, though that might make it too heavy...

Yup, found it! May I *hic* buy you a drink? In fact, *hic*, a round of drinks for all in this fair coach, on me!

I know I am late to the party, but respectfully submit my ticket... so I can sit in this section:

In my kareer save I go as cheap as possible, which usually translates into 'small'. But because I also have grandiose dreams, I have a sandbox save in which I restrict myself only by part count (about 350), which can translate into 'where did that moon come from?'

Every once in a blue mun I have to revert to the 'get out and push' method when returning from a mission, in order to get periapsis into Kerbin's atmosphere for a very long and slow aerocapture. I hate doing that though, as the kerbonauts demand extra hazard snacks in compensation.

Anyone for Planet 9?

Sadly, today I have nothing, in KSP or this other life some people call "real". But perhaps in a few hours... But the last couple of days I did a few missions in my kareer: I had a contract to expand my Mun stayshun, just to add five more living spaces, so I built this nuc powered ship that fulfils the contract, and then I can use to zip around the local system. I think it could even get to Duna or Eve and back. Here it is on the burn towards Mun, And docked to Mun Stayshun Then I noticed a contract to return science from the surface of Duna. Since I already had a probe crash landed there, that was easy... I wanted to get some fuel up to Kerbin Stayshun, knowing that it would be needed in the near future, so I built this tanker and got it to orbit fully loaded for under $100,000 which I think is a decent deal, and will serve the future missions well... … and docked it to the K-Stayshun Next up was to think about getting my two science crews home from the moons (since I have only four scientists on the current roster), in order for them to go to Duna and/or Eve when that window opens. So I built another ship to land at Minmus to return the crew there. I decided to dock it at Kerbin Stayshun to fuel up even though it didn't really need it, but better safe than sorry... Yesterday out of the blue the idea to build a gullwing plane come into my head, so I jumped right on that. First was a proof of concept plane to see how the gullwing shape would affect aerodynamics, if at all. I don't think it does, since I managed to get it into 86x86 orbit on the first try... Then I tried building one that was actually useful, and ISRU plane. I also wanted to try building a grabber into the plane so it could sip asteroids, choosing a bottom mounted style... It didn't have enough get-up-and-go to find orbit though, it needs more power. I tried adding two turbojets but that made it too unbalanced at top speeds and it ended up flipping over. I do like the look of them though...

It works quite well on spaceplanes that just can't quite get to orbit on their own

Sporadically over the weekend I put some time into my career save. I had abandoned it until reading the news that the good folk at Squad are creating ways to not break saves going forward; I was waiting for the new version to drop but now can press on forward. It's still early on... Waiting for launch windows for Duna and Eve, over a year to wait, so in the meantime building up a little infrastructure around the local system and fulfilling the roster of Kerbonauts through rescue contracts. Had contracts to put very basic stations around Kerbin and its moons. Here's the Kerbin one along with its launch engines detached, and a ship I used to fulfill a Minmus base contract that is now in service as a rescue ship about to dock; I call it MiniHut. After several weeks of zipping around the system picking up stranded Kerbals and housing them in the station I needed to bring them home. Here's a funky little craft that is two ships in one; a lifeboat to bring Kerbals home, and a fuel tank to rescue MiniHut as she couldn't quite make it back to the station after several mistakes in a Mimus mission. Here's the lifeboat returning to solid ground, splashdown was quite close to the deserted island. Two other contracts came up to expand Kerbin Stayshun. One to add a lab, and one to expand its crew and electrical capacity. After more tooling around the system, another ship to drop more hitchhikers home... And lastly, after getting impatient and time warping several months ahead and transmitting science from my Mun and Minmus bases, there was a contract to expand crew capacity of my Minmus Stayshun, so I built a little nuc powered ship that will also be used to move around the local system.

I have probably launched close to 1,000 times in the 3.5 years I've played this game. Not once, ever, have I thought a launch to be boring. Or repetitive. Even if I happen to launch the same rocket (very rare) over and over, I am always trying to get better and better flight profiles. I find this fun; I must be defective. When playing career I find it very rare to use the same rockets more than a couple launches before I am able to get newer and better parts, and therefore designing new craft. Which demand different flight profiles, which I find challenging to figure out. Every single time. Part of the fun lies in that I don't always get it right, sometimes going too fast and wasting fuel that way, or going too slow, or my gravity turn was too turned too early, etc etc. I can understand how some would find this ridiculous, but I enjoy it. In sandbox I've built stations that required 16 launches of the exact same vehicle (segments of a ring), and flown them manually each time, because they were massive and hard to get it right. Then, getting the intercept and docking the massive ships were very very intense, hard, and therefore fun. For me. Automation in KSP, for me, would be like drinking non-alcoholic beer. What the heck would be the point?

One can craft a spaceship, and one could also ship a spacecraft, therefore 42.

As my newest career is just progressing to the point of interplanetary launches, I think this time around I shall attempt to avoid confusion in the tracking centre by using destination and launch windows as naming conventions. For instance: Duna-2-312 (ship leaves for Duna on year 2 day 312). Once If it successfully arrives I might rename it at that point. I used to give ships destined to explode and fail names to commemorate ex-girlfriends, but have since outgrown that...

If she ain't exploding real gud, she ain't worthy

Thanks for sharing, always nice to hear about positive people and things happening on this crazy planet of ours. Best of luck, and may you be able to consistently work your butt off through the good times and the bad.

It's been a while since I spent some time in KSP. But on the weekend I was feeling a bit inspired to build an ISRU ship that could do a grand tour. I built three different versions, of which the first two had troubles even landing on Mun. The final version is currently just in orbit around Kerbin but promises to fit the bill nicely. I will need to refuel it after getting into orbit, but after that it should be good to go. It features a single Vector engine. I figured the very high TWR offsets the poor ISP, and since it will refuel itself ISP is not much of a concern. The ship has a narrow band scanner on it, as well as the asteroid hunting scanner thingy. I may have gone overboard with the solar panels, but wanted to be able to pull enough juice when out around Eeloo. There are two little rovers at the bottom, one for joy riding and one that has a surface scanning module. The nose of the ship has a grabber and two small drills for mining asteroids. The cargo bay houses this ion probe with the large survey scanner. Getting it back into the cargo bay will be tricky as it is a snug fit and there is no RCS on the probe itself; but the ship has RCS so the docking operation should be okay. Plus difficult dockings are one of the things I really like to do.

This is right up there...

I have never cheated this game, but am angry that this favour has not been repaid in kind. Kerbal Space Program has cheated me endlessly. It has robbed me blind of countless hours of my life which are lost forever. Perhaps the most precious resource in existence (followed closely by beer) is constantly being drained from me: time. Is that how a devoted follower and practitioner is to be treated?

I'll usually use my first station as a convenient place to house a rescue craft. Once the station is in place I'll send up and dock a rescue ship that includes 4-8 pods that simply return a Kerbal to the planet, basically a life raft. Then whenever there's a rescue contract I'll go get the poor soul, return them to the station and send them on their way to the surface in one of the pods. Easy money!

Let's say you have an ANN that specializes in detecting patterns , perhaps in video. Or perhaps instead of a single one you get a bunch of them that all work slightly differently, networked together to form a consensus. Then network those with audio specialist ANNs. Then add in other specialized ANNs that simulate all the human senses. Could there be some sort of critical tipping point if you form a big enough collective (Borg anyone?) that could give rise to a form of sentience?

Depends if it is an African or European fly. How many fries could a fishfry fish if a fishfry could fry fish?

umbilical

It does, but nobody has any Midichlorians in them to wield it, especially you. I wish eating a Snickers bar was healthy.

^ That is an interesting position! I know it is foolish to imagine what anyone's thoughts might or could be at that point (the point when we have learned everything there is to know). But one thought I have right now in my very corporeal being is that we could still explore and expand our self, and ourselves. I am imagining myself when the knowledge exists to replace all my worn out cells, to expand my physical capabilities, to turn myself into a self-sustaining spaceship that can travel at significant %s of C. I would gather some like-minded souls and go travel and explore. I wouldn't care that it would take tens of thousands of years to get somewhere. I could hibernate the part of my mind that couldn't handle that sort of thing. Like right now, just because I know that Rio de Janeiro (for example) exists, and that I could go there, it doesn't mean that I should just do nothing about it and not go. It is FUN to go and explore that which you already know to exist. Just a random thought.

Besides KSP my other life-sucking addiction is Civ5. In a way I am glad I do not have a good enough computer to run the more modern games (like Beyond Earth). I do also like sports games though, have been playing EA Sports NHL and NFL games for the past 2 decades on PS. Nothing better than kicking back with a buddy, large case of beer and kicking the crap out of each other.