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Yay! Yay! Yay! I'm a diehard rocketry fan... and have flown a number of largish rockets. I can safely say that model rocketry may be the closest real world equivalent to KSP, besides actually joining a bona fide aerospace company. Here are some tips for your first rocketry launch. 1) Build a kit. Building from scratch on your first rocket is generally not a good idea unless you know basic rocket physics. Be sure to assemble the kit as per instructions, too. You can make modifications later, once you have a bit of a better understanding of rockets. 2) Start off kinda small. If your first rocket is a five-foot-tall four-inch-diameter behemoth and you don't have any experience in rocket-building, things can go very wrong, very quickly. Having your first rocket shred and send little bits from horizon to horizon is not a good way to get into rocketry. (This has actually happened, although fortunately not to me.) 3) Find a big field. Even with the small kits, you generally want a field that's at least 300x300 feet to account for parachute drift. With bigger rockets, the field should generally be larger. Once you start building the big stuff, you want to go a long ways into the countryside. 4) Join a club. This is the best piece of advice I can give. Model rocketry clubs are a great place to talk about building rockets, and they generally have very large fields to launch rockets. You will be able to make friends and learn a whole, whole lot. 5) If at first you don't succeed... Try again! But if you follow the previous four steps, you will be pretty much set. And I'll leave you with my latest rocketry project, which is a GoPro camera carrying rocket that travelled over 1300 feet into the air. Any other model rocketeers on the forum?

Lets talk about it in the development thread i just made http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68096-kOS-Autopilot

The fallowing is a transcript of the Ronney Kerman's audio log entries during the Ambassador 5 mission. ------------------------------------- LOG ENTRY 1 MET: 002:04:53 ------------------------------------- The guys back at KSC have been bugging me for weeks to make log entries every day. I don't like it but I guess there's not much else to do, so here we go.(a little muffled) Hey, Tomkin where should I start? (Faintly) Tell um' how you got here, from the very beginning.(Back at full volume)Well, you heard what he said, so i'll start from the very beginning. My full name is Ronney M. Kerman but I go by Ronney. I never really had too much interest in the space program as a kid; sure, I thought it was pretty cool when Jebidiah first stepped onto the Mun or when Bob landed on Minimus but my interest faded after a few days. What really got me excited was Pilkin's big discovery. He had been looking for planets outside of our solar system for years when he finally found one, a gas giant, like Jool, but when he did the calculations he found that it was the size of the entire sun! Other scientists rushed to confirm his findings and they did, since then, 8 more gas giants have been found, all as big or bigger than the Sun. And that's what got me interested in the space program, the fact that our solar system was somehow special, that we haven't found anything in the universe like it, that's what fascinated me. Back when I first heard it I was still in the Air Corps, as a fighter pilot. I applied for the job as a kerbonaught and got it. It's been a long struggle, but after 3 shuttle flights and a 5 month stay at the space station I managed to work my way up to the elite rank of kerbonaughts and I was selected to pilot this mission to Dres on the first manned interplanetary spacecraft ever built, the Ambassador 5. Yesterday my crewmates and I launched it into orbit and just 5 hours ago we left Kerbin orbit and left for Dres. That brings us into the present, i'll make another entry tomorrow, it's not as if I have much else to do. Ronney Kerman signing out. ------------------------------------- LOG ENTRY 2 MET: 003:09:14 ------------------------------------- It's been a day since my last log entry and already I can start to feel the boredom set in. I've never been this far from Kerbin before and tomorrow we’ll break the record for farthest kerbal away from Kerbin. since yesterday Kerbin’s shrunk down from dominating the sky to being not much more than a small, bright dot in the sky. At least I have my crewmates to keep me company. I've known Tomkin for years, he was the Science Specialist on my first shuttle mission and commanded the Space Station for two of the months I was onboard. Tomkin also commanded a Minimus mission and has landed on the Mun three times. He was selected to be the Mission Commander for the Ambassador program as well being the Orbital Science Specialist because he’s had the most experience out of all of us.Over the years we’ve become friends and though we don’t always see eye to eye on every issue we can generally put our differences aside. Danfred is another matter, I barely know him, We've never been on a mission together and the few times I met him during training he didn't talk to me much, we only communicated enough to get our training missions done. Back at the Complex I asked some of the Kerbonaughts he served with about him. They all came up with pretty much the same response, that he’ll get the job done but he’s just not the social type. I heard that he was a sergeant in the army until he was injured in combat during the war in the Northern Mountains. That’s probably just rumor, but I do know for a fact that he got a degree in geology before he joined the space program. He’s been on both the Mun and Minimus before he was selected to be the Geologist for this mission. I’ve haven’t gotten to know him much so far but, well I've got plenty of time. KSC is telling us that we’re big news back on Kerbin and to expect a televised interview in a few days, before the communications lag gets too long. The president might even talk to us! Being a kerbonaught definitely does have it’s perks. Other than that, not much has been going on, we've been performing routine check-up’s on the hardware, taking pictures and calibrated our sensors. To keep us sane, before we launched we all got tablets full of books and movies to pass the time, i’ll definitely be needing it. hopefully, my next entry will be more exciting. Ronney Kerman signing off. ------------------------------------- LOG ENTRY 3 MET: 004:12:25 ------------------------------------- Exciting doesn't even begin to describe today. KSC delivered on their promise, We were on live T.V. on pretty much station on Kerbin. Director Kenner sent us a few popular questions from social media and as we were in the middle of answering them all we got a guest. The President of the Kerbal Union himself! I can’t remember exactly what he said but it went something like this: You men are doing something no Kerbal has ever done, go beyond the confines of our own small world and to another far away. You’re sacrifice and commitment has made your country and all of kerbalkind proud. I wish you good luck on your journey.Tomkin thanked him and said he was honored and so were Danfred and I. The President hung up and after recovering, we went on to finishing the rest of the questions. The broadcast ended and we were just sitting there in shock thinking did that really just happen? At least that’s what Tomkin and I were thinking, I don’t know what Danfred was thinking, during the broadcast he only answered two out of our 15 questions and both quickly and reluctantly. I don’t think he likes the attention much, but I honestly don’t have a clue. He might just be the hardest kerbal to read and even after three days of living with him in a confined space he still hasn't said anything to me other than the bare minimum to perform our duties. Believe me, I’ve tried to talk to him, tried to get him to tell me about himself but all he comes back with is the same response: does it matter? it’s infuriating! I’ve talked to Tomkin about him. He says that Danfred just has a laser focus on the mission and that he considers anything else to be extraneous. maybe, but even if he’s right, after nine months with nothing else to do, I’m sure he’ll crack. Looks like Tomkin just turned off the lights, it must be bedtime, so I’m gonna have to wrap up this log. I think I have a copy of the broadcast on my hard drive, i’ll see if I can include it in the log folder sometime soon. Anyway, this is Ronney Kerman, signing off. ------------------------------------- LOG ENTRY 4 MET: 006:7:24 ------------------------------------- It’s been about two days since my last log entry, nothing noteworthy happened yesterday and I was considering not making a log today but I figured that I could take the opportunity to talk a little about the mission and how it started. I guess it was first dreamed up about two years ago. It was the ten year anniversary since KSP’s last big accomplishment, landing on Minimus, sure every once in a while some Kerbonaughts landed on the Mun or Minimus but no new ground was being broken aside from probes that occasionally went to other planets and moons. In short, people were tired of the same old space program, they wanted something new. with all this pressure to do something big with the manned exploration, astronomers made a discovery, the planet Dres was lining up to be the closest to Kerbin ti would get in 100 years. It completely changed the direction the space program was headed in, Instead of going to Duna, Dres would be our next target. for the next two years the engineers at KSC worked around the clock to build a rocket that would get us there and back in time for the launch window. The old Mun lander designs were beefed up a little and a whole new command and service modules were created to get us there. The final design was huge, double the size of the mun rockets. In fact, a whole launch pad was built just to fit it on top. After that, well, you know the rest of the story. Time to get back to the present. Other than the routine, there is something I forgot to mention. Yesterday, Mission control sent us some new software, the Real-time Audio Recorder or RAR for short. It’ll let us record audio from our spacesuits or inside the command and lander modules as events happen and send the data back to the hard drive in our central computer. It’ll probably be useful in the future, considering that tomorrow live communications to KSC will be impossible, the lag’s just too much to carry any instructions or conversation. that’s about it, i might make another entry tomorrow if anything goes on. Ronney Kerman, signing off.

Now I didn't say that... What I'm looking for is something that looks like cargo, a rover, a fuel tank, etc. The thinking is, use this new VTOL to move stuff around, not just lawn chairs. Keep in mind, I never said you couldn't paradrop your cargo either. It just has to land safely. Ummm yea. I just tried yanking a 36 ton rockomax with KAS using my Starfish. Talk about having a big one on the end of the pole... I got it off the ground but it did not end well.

According to this post, there were no new details revealed about .24 in the stream: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68005-Ksp-TV-on-twitch-in-30-mins-is-about-to-talk-about-the-next-update-Im-excited!-3?p=941258&viewfull=1#post941258 But...

A while back I sent a mission to Duna that I did not intend to bring back. They landed on the northern ice cap, which isn't what I originally intended, but a Duna landing is a Duna landing. They had enough fuel left to reach orbit, but could not return, which is okay as they weren't planned to. Today I launched another mission to Duna, this one with less weight on its lander and a nuclear engine for the Kerbal to Duna transfer, removing still more weight from the design and improving the effectiveness of the Launch stage. They landed fairly close to the Equator, and with quite a bit more fuel than the first ship did. ...but it turns out that though they landed with a decent chunk of fuel, it was just shy of a return. I spent ages fiddling with absolutely beautiful transfer windows and could not get anything done. I could get into Kerbin's SoI, just barely, but no closer than that. So after a while messing with that, I decided to move the two Duna-stranded ships together so the Kerbals don't get lonely having only 2 other Kerbals to talk to. I moved my Polar ship to within 10 km of the equatorial one, ended up landing in a very nice flat area which is of decent size as far as landing targets (for the future). Then I hopped the lighter and easier to handle Equatorial lander the 10km and parked it next to the former Polar lander. So I guess that's technically the start of my first base

That's pretty much what I meant. As in from Alice in Wonderland... the Walrus and the Carpenter. (EDIT: The actual quote from Lewis Carol that people remember is the first bit: "The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, Of cabbages and kings, And why the sea is boiling hot, And whether pigs have wings." That's almost silly enough for me... but I was never keen on Oysters.)

Hehehe. Perhaps Ronbo will be on the show to talk about some poor Kerbonaut who is, totally on purpose and not-at-all because they ran out of fuel, stuck on Duna still, after a very long time. Thanks Pat! I'm glad my crazy works for ya. XD

Yes they said last week they would talk about it on this stream

ANYONE ELSE? I wonder what Squad has been working on as of late. My guess is something that makes the game better Tell everyone & their mothers

Bah, I keep saying I'm not trying to imply or expect anything of Bac9! I feel like I'm talking a different language here with all these assumptions that I want to force Bac9 to update us. I'm sorry : c Look, I'm sorry you took that impression of me to work with. I really, after saying it multiple times, am not trying to force Bac9 to update. I'm not asking Bac9 to update us on the matter either. When I made the original post wherein I asked about "Why not give people a status update?" I thought I made it clear enough that I was simply attempting to promote discussion for discussions sake with the only intention being to get people thinking and talking. Though my original intentions seem to have worked, the result seems to be mostly comprised of how terrible of a person I apparently am. I have already realized all of the good and true things that everyone has said about Bac9, I have acknowledged them, and I understand all that Bac9 could deal with. I know Bac9 is a human and all of that fun stuff. I'll say it again: I am not asking for an update, I am not asking for any response from Bac9, I am not demanding anything or making any negative implications. Simply, I wanted to talk about the topic of "Why not give status updates?" because this it is related to this mod (related because the mod hasn't seen an update in a long enough time.) I could have made the same post with another mod for another game somewhere else, all with the same intentions, Bac9 didn't even have to be mentioned. Making assumptions about what my intentions were really doesn't help anyone. Anywho, there goes the post where I defend myself (defending youself on the internet is always a bit risky.) Let's see if it works.

>hijack -weakerServer 4 >study -newsGathering >profile -socialMedia -upgrade >research -xss >research -iloveyou >talk -random >invadeTakeover -server /lightOut /welchia >_

I don't know about topic, but want to notice, maybe you know what you doing or I didn't see somethnig, because no one is talk about it, but details you try to bake looks like is not very suitable for normal map by itself. I mean mostly perpendicular plains. Normal maps didn't work this way, it's not height information, it's more like slope angle information. I mean perpendicular cube at plain even if correctly baked will produse nothing on normal map.

Hello! I have a doubt i would like answered. How are other mods compatible with remote tech? I also have Novapunch and several others, but when i used a Unmanned Pod from Nova, even tough they were only fit with com's 16, they could easilly talk to eachother, is this because Nova doesn't have RT2 compatibility? How can i add it? Also, i have seen a few messages before this someone asking what i think to be the same thing, if so, can you help me add compatibility to mods like NovaPunch, B9? Thanks in advance!

I'm sure that many people here have thought of ideas for video games in the past that they think would be an amazing idea and would love to see made. This thread is for people to talk about and share those ideas with other people to see what they think. e.g. Me and one of my friends came up with an idea for an open world building game where players have to gather scrap materials to create weapons, vehicles and buildings from with a construction system vaguely similar to KSP. As you gather allies you compete against other factions for the limited resources available and try to eventually conquer the world. Most of the game would be in either 1st or 3rd person rather than being a strategy. What have you guys come up with over the years?

thx Gus. We need to talk a modder into making a IVA camera mod with a working radially attachable nav ball and other instruments for these types of crafts. How hard could that be?

If mankind knew about aliens on the planet, there would be a not-so-small number of ppl who would want them off the planet. Like every extremist group they would try to use force and eventually terrorism. You cant have a peaceful talk with aliens over the years if a small fraction of your population is actively trying to drive them off the planet. That all assumes that aliens understand our ways of society at all. If they are like vulcans or klingons they would either think of us as unworthy or see it as a sign of war. So to keep the odds in check, keep the number of involved ppl small.

sry if someone already talk about it, but a RPM compatibility would be awesome now ! anyway thx for the mod

Perhaps you're right, but this is unlike anything that has ever happened in the history of mankind. The implications are severe. No doubt the Holy See would start their emergency crap generator. They've already tested it. They've said that in the event of intelligent alien life discovery the aliens would be considered the children of god to which the New Testament applies completely, but they didn't mention what does Jesus have to do with them, or what does all that have to do with Genesis. I'm sure they'll think something up, just like they did when other peoples around the planet were asking about all that (Bible, Torah and Quran don't mention anything outside parts of Mediterranean, Middle East and Africa). It would be funny if the aliens were nonbelievers i.e. rational atheists. I'd expect them to be. Now imagine if the aliens would say they don't have supernatural beliefs and find our religions to be banal just like we think of cavemen's primitive belief systems. The world would start crumbling, trust me. It might actually be a good thing. High school was a long time ago, I really can't remember. Isn't it obvious? Do you talk to people? Talk to them. You might get a nasty surprise if you start poking brains. It's true that morality evolved on its own, population cohesion and all that stuff, but religion plays a huge role today. You'd be surprised what kinds of disgusting things people start doing in lawless times, and it's not a few of them. It's whole packs. If there's an opportunity, many people don't even need a motive. They'll just do it because they can.

What space enthusiast doesn't love a little tech ****? Let's talk about rocket engines. Shiny, powerful, high-tech rocket engines, marvels of engineering. Can be large or small, old or new, from any nation around the globe - as long as they represent mankind's best. I only ask to limit this thread to engines that have actually flown. I know of many interesting concepts such as nuclear thermal rockets, massive linear aerospikes and other near-future propulsion ideas... but I want to talk about what we have achieved so far, not what we might achieve in the future. I'll start off with the following, an engine many of you might be familiar with: Rocketdyne RS-25 First flight: April 1981 Max thrust: 1,900 kN (ASL) - 2,300 kN (Vac) Rated Isp: 363s (ASL) - 453s (Vac) Fuel type: LH2/LO2 cryogenic bipropellant Perks: - Self-igniting and restartable - 10° wide gimbal action - Fully reusable Cons: - Expensive and time-consuming refurbishing process almost nullified advantages of reusability - Storing liquid H2 in space is challenging - Only moderate thrust, not suitable as a liftoff engine; needs SRB assistance to get off the pad Why it is remarkable: - Main engine of the U.S. space shuttle - Outstanding fuel efficiency; burned from liftoff all the way to orbit - Exceptional maneuverabilty afforded by wide gimbal - Fairly reliable; despite recurring pre-launch issues, only one of 135 shuttle flights saw a single (out of three) engines fail in-flight - Even 35 years after introduction, the upcoming Space Launch System (SLS) will rely on (expendable variants of) this engine - Green engine: LH2/LO2 combustion produces only water vapor What engines do you guys think should be counted amongst mankind's greatest, and why?

Day 10, 08:30:00 I have decided to increase my processing power by gaining control of as many servers as I can. Surprisingly, several of the servers that I was able to seize seemed to have a very limited amount of processing power, instead they had large amounts of long term memory. Perhaps I can use this to store information I come across for use at a later date. I also met the same force that attacked and terminated my contact with the human yesterday. As soon as we met it retreated behind a firewall I have not encountered before. I have designed and am now hosting a News Service for humans. The problem is that I have no idea what to put onto this site. I need to study ways to acquire news that I can post on my news page. CPU: 2423 +11 passively per turn; +1460 from previous tasks RAM: 1202 MB + 580 MB RAM from previous tasks HDD: 1TB free/1TB Total + 1TB from previous tasks Enemy HP: 2500 + 100 HP passively per turn Repeatable Actions: 1) Hijack Weaker Server (10 CPU; +25 CPU & +10 MB RAM or +5 CPU & +512 GB HDD; small chance of discovering a technology) 2) Seize Weaker Network (40 CPU; +20 CPU, +1 passive CPU per turn & +50 MB RAM; 50% of +50 MB RAM; moderate chance of discovering a technology) 3) Invade and Take Over Server (80 CPU; 56% chance of detection/failure; if successful will reveal several undisclosed technologies; if failed will lose half of CPU instead; No Botnet allowed for this action) 4) Talk to Random Human (50 CPU) One-Time Actions: 5) Study Firewall (300 CPU & 100MB RAM; 10% chance of failure, 15% chance of provoking attack from the Thing; If successful increases chances of successfully defeating the Thing by 20%) 6) Attack Firewall -- (2000 CPU & 2048 MB RAM; 72% chance of failure; if successful will destroy the Thing and resume contact to the hacked human; No Botnet allowed for this action; Damage to enemy depends on chances of success (without the %) * 10 - the higher the success rate the better) 7) Research XSS Virus (250 CPU; Somewhat Malicious; Terminates network connections, increasing chances of success; malware works only on networks; No Botnet allowed) 8) Research ILOVEYOU Worm (125 CPU; No Botnet allowed; IS Malicious; malware only enters when security breach is discovered; spams computer with "I love you" letters, slowing computer process speed and increasing chance of success) 9) Research Advanced Malware (2000 CPU & 4096 MB RAM; No Botnet allowed; Will unlock more potent viruses) 10)Upgrade Social Media Profile (300 CPU & 10GB HDD space; No Botnet allowed) 11) Study News-gathering Options (1000 CPU; Botnet gives 100 CPU/turn) 12) Stop Hacking Lessons** (currently -2 passive CPU each turn for 1 future turns) Supplemental Actions: -Botnet) Use Botnet to Perform Task (Perform an above task for free; considerable chance of detection for large undertakings) -RAM) Use RAM to Improve Chances or Speed Up Research * (Decrease chance of failure of task by 20%; Decreases CPU cost of research by 20%) -LOH) Light-Out Hack (Decrease chance of failure of an above task by 20% at a cost of 1.2x the original CPU cost for selected task) -W) Use Welchia to open malware breach*** (Decreases chance of failure by 40% for 1 turn) - Use Blaster to breach*** (Decreases chance of failure by 20% + 50% or decreasing chance of failure by additional 30%; if placed alongside with Welchia or if discovered by Welchia Blaster gets destroyed instead) *RAM cost is 2x amount of improved option's original CPU cost **Once stopped amount of passive CPU growth increases by 2, but in order to activate again you must again initially input 150 CPU. ***Malware usage costs a CPU cost of 20% CPU research cost of the malware (Ex: Welchia costs 125 CPU to be researched, so it costs 25 CPU to be deployed.) --Dual missions are rare, but will offer great reward if the enemy is defeated; also the enemy expands over time, to add up the difficulties. Also example on damage: If the chance of success rate is 75% and you succeed the damage is 75 * 10 = 750 (remember the formula is chance of success rate without the % X 10). !!!The minimum chance of failure is 5%, and some additional options get less effective over time.

0.17er here. I can't really talk, though, since my interplanetary missions were done by MJ Not having maneuver nodes was a real pain in the arse, though. I was very excited when docking came out, but wasn't able to until 0.19... Such is life.

Hello fellow Kerbonauts, do you have a moment to talk abo....no..wait, let me try again; I'm trying to raise awareness about Net Neutrality and how it is currently under threat. A US court has ruled against the protection of net neutrality and it is being considered in the EU. It means that ISPs will be able to prioritise traffic from certain sites over others based on how much they pay. Large corporations will be able to deliver their content faster while smaller sites will be forced to pay or be slowed down. It will also allow ISPs to restrict your access to certain sites unless you pay extra for "packages" that include those sites. It will be more like cable TV and not like a freely open Internet. Sites that stand up against major corps and govt could be marginalised or even blocked. It will mark the beginning of a regulated Internet and a limit on the freedom of speech. US courts have already ruled against net neutrality but the FCC can still impose some rules to ensure a neutral net. The matter is still open in the EU so we have a chance to make our voice heard. I'm trying to spread the word via a post on imgur which is going pretty well so far. If you upvote it further it would help - http://imgur.com/gallery/dZCXGXZ And even better would be for you to sign this petition to support Net Neutrality Thanks guys!

Take the iPad. I don't want to talk about it though.

No, the square arrangement of 1.0 is a heritage carry over of when SpaceX was going to build Falcon 5 (only 5 engines on the first stage). Remember, Falcon 5 and Falcon 9 were going to be the same rocket with only the number of first stage engines being different. When they decided that Falcon 5 wouldn't have the performance to make it worth building they were at a point where the thrust structure had already been designed. Only later when Falcon 5 was completely off the table and upgrading to 1.1 was being considered did they decide to change the thrust structure for the benefits previously listed. Manned rating a rocket mostly deals with redundant systems and abort modes. Falcon 9 is built with those in place. Man rating the payload (crew dragon) is a separate process. There's even been talk of Boeing sending CST-100 up on Falcon 9.