G'day from the Southern Hemisphere!

[Cephas Atheos]

G'day everyone!

I'm newly onboard, though I've been lurking for a while.

I've just made my very first orbit by hand, a supremely ugly elongated ellipse, with about 2 feet between the capsule and the upper atmosphere, but it was an orbit!

I've been watching, learning, and reading everything I could about the space programs here since I was 6 (the year Neil Armstrong did what he did), so I've absorbed the Right Stuff, Lost Moon, Rocket Boys, and so on and so forth. Sadly, I found that I didn't understand most of the maths (I was crook in school when they were teaching integrals and differential calculus, so I kinda had to restart from a very late start. So I bought everything I could lay my hands on : Robert Goddard's book, which made some sense at last! Unfortunately, I'm still a maths cripple, so things that come naturally to many space buffs takes a looooong time to get "under my belt". But I'm trying!

I've even bought some manuals on celestial mechanics and space dynamics and mission planning and so on, but they're in a different orbit althogether! So I bought Newton's Principia to help me understand the basics, and when I got lost in there, Euclid's Elements helped. (Told you I was a maths dunce!).

I'm 50 years old, semi-retired from computer design and support, which I still do as a hobby when I can. As an ex-biker, I had a couple of personal experiences with inertia and uncontrolled landings, thanks to a careless driver. As a result, I have quite a lot of titanium prosthetic elements holding my spine together. Oh, and a pump administering opioid painkillers directly into the spine, and even a neural stimulator to take care of any extras. That's the reason I'm semi retired, naturally! It means I have a lot of time on my hands, but not a heck of a lot of it vertical. So laptops (Macbook Pro and Compaq Presario) are my best friends. However, I've just installed KSP on my core i5 2.8G system running W7 x64 on a very nice studio setup. So it's there if I want it!

I can't begin to describe how cool it was to finally understand in my bones manoevers like rotating, rolling, and escape velocity when I fired up KSP for the first time this afternoon. It took me 19 attempts, but in the Kerbal X it all finally fell into place (I've flown planes (real ones) before, but not quite as high). I'm still grinning from ear to shining ear!

I hope to have many accidents, impacts, burnouts, crashes, and just plain fun, and I'll do my best to add to the "You're not going into space today" thread.

THanks for reading all this crap. I have verbal diarrhoea, probably from being cooped up on my own (my wife notwithstanding) for the past 8 or 9 years! My apologies for the eyestrain.

To infinity-1 and beyond!

[SRV Ron]

Start out simple and small. They are easier to become familiar with. do sub orbital, get into orbit and return. Soon, the universe is the limit.

And, don't let age deter you. I was a teenager when Neal Armstrong first set foot on the Moon.

[kahlzun]

Hey mate, Welcome aboard. Pull up a deckchair and grab a Crowny- you'll be here a while ;-)

We need to get a fair dinkum space agency here in aus, we've got the oil and uranium and everything. Hell, we've even got Woomera outback, where they tested the first ICBMs ('blue streak'), so we know we've got orbit capability.

Even the ruddy kiwis have a proper space prescence (http://www.rocketlab.co.nz/) and we're hitchhiking on the french and americans launches like a mob of yobbos.

Not right.

[Cephas Atheos]

Hey mate, Welcome aboard. Pull up a deckchair and grab a Crowny- you'll be here a while ;-)

We need to get a fair dinkum space agency here in aus, we've got the oil and uranium and everything. Hell, we've even got Woomera outback, where they tested the first ICBMs ('blue streak'), so we know we've got orbit capability.

Even the ruddy kiwis have a proper space prescence (http://www.rocketlab.co.nz/) and we're hitchhiking on the french and americans launches like a mob of yobbos.

Not right.

I couldn't agree more with you. We were such an integral part of the Apollo missions (geographically relevant at first, then we proved our chops), then to see all the work revert to the big 2 (NASA and ESA) with nothing for us to do except empty their wastepaper bins and tie their shoelaces, is just so frustrating!

We did get a part of the Kilometre Large Array telescope, but again, it was a consolation prize, not a part of the primary mission. WTH happened?

I met Jonathan Nally a few years ago (he was a customer of mine), and he was even more frustrated, because he knew more about the programs, so he knew precisely just how much we've lost!

Still, if aussies like anything, it's a challenge. And a beer. Crownies will do just fine!

THanks to both of you guys for the welcome. I'm keen to see just how much fun it's possible to have. And I note a fair lack of documentation for beginners (thinking technically - mousewheel sensitivities, graphics settings, stuff like that that's not in the wiki), so that might be something I can help with.

Cheers from the Yarra Valley!

[Capt'n Skunky]

Happy Launching!

Arrr!

Capt'n Skunky

KSP Community Manager

[Cephas Atheos]

Thanks a heap, Capt'n! I've actually made my first multistage rocket without needing to cheat too much. Iterative trial and error is expensive, but quite a lot of fun, especially when Jebediah forgets to include booster separators and he's left on the pad in the middle of a beautiful flower of smoke! Oh, there are so many ways to increase local entropy, my head is beginning to spin.

This could be fun... Thanks for the welcome!

[kiwi1960]

To infinity-1 and beyond!

OI, That's going to be my quote, get your own.

Are you Aussie or Kiwi? careful, now... if you say Aussie, the race is on... the Mun will be ours, just like the Bledisloe Cup is.... and the Rugby World Cup... and the Americas Cup (with luck) ....

I'm 53 so nice to meet you, even if you ARE an Aussie.

[benzman]

Cheers from the Yarra Valley!

I live just West of Melbourne and occasionally drop over to the Yarra Valley for a spot of wine tasting and generally enjoying the good life. If you feel like it, drop me a PM and you never know, we might get together one day.

[Dispatcher]

Welcome, Cephas (Stone) :-). I too was a teen while Neil's first walk was on TV and I was standing at the door looking up at the Moon at the time.