Greeting and salutations from Glorious planet of Kerbal

[azazel1024]

First I have to say, this game is addictive and is likely it will ruin my marriage.

I started playing Saturday at the instance of my brother-in-law (see honey, it is your brother's fault, not mine!). A few hours on Saturday. A few hours on Sunday with my oldest son ridding shotgun building rockets (he is 4 1/2, so you can imagine the gleeful squeals of delight watching rockets blast off and occasionally blow up). Well last night I bought the full version and went to town.

Over the weekend I managed to land on the Mun in the demo (maybe land isn't quite the right term. I think there is another term when you touch down with 1,560m/sec of V still). Last night within the first hour I managed to put together a launch vehicle to get a ship in to Mun orbit. Circular, 110km altitude. 1 Kerbal capsule, RCS, SAS, aSAS, now empty small fuel tank and the low power LF rocket engine composes the orbiter.

Then it took me 3hrs, both finding a few mod parts and playing around with them (I still haven't installed a good solar panel/power mod, but I am sure I'll find one). Goal, build a satellite and insert it to a stable Kerbal orbit. I finally managed to. It took me about 45 mintues to play with some mod parts, maybe 45 minutes to figure out how to move parts around the logical "stages" in the VAB to properly control seperation and rocket ignition (and also to seperate the satellite from the top of the capsule before seperating the final stage from the capsule so that I can back off the final stage/capsule and do a deorbit burn). Then about an hour and a half to build a launch vehicle powerful enough to get it to orbit and stay intact.

Final satellite was a high gain antenna, a pair of small satellite body modules, RCS and SAS. Not sure of the final weight, but I think it was around 4.5t. Its in circular equitorial orbit at around 170km. Went to bed at 1am. 5:50am wake up from my youngest son this morning was BRUTAL.

Next goal.

First, I believe that I will commit myself to achieving the goal, before this week is out, of landing a Kerbal on the Mun and returning him safely to Kerbal.

We'll see if I manage it.

I'll poke around the forums, but if anyone has any good suggestions on power mods I am all eyes. Also anyone know if/when there are plans for orbital docking/assembly (or mods)? I don't recall seeing it in future enhancement thread, though maybe I just overlooked it. I am sure me and everyone else wants it, but I really would love to be able to assemble things like space stations in orbit, launch rockets up to them to refuel the rocket in orbit and then shove off from there. Heck, being able to construct things like Mun bases and have my little kerbals running around on the Mun would be a lot of fun too (or other planets once that gets added in .17).

[Capt'n Skunky]

Happy Launching!

Arrr!

Capt'n Skunky

KSP Community Manager