Kerbal Space Program, Revisited.

[Marko Dash]

i just unlocked the 1m docking ports and put a fuel station into kerbin orbit, i'm holding off going out of the local kerbin area until i get some orbital infrastructure up. has anybody tested to see if kethane works in .22? i'm playing vanilla at the moment but kethane would be a big help in sending interplanetary missions.

[TimothyC]

I'm trying to get to heavy rocketry, mainsails and such, but mostly I have been spending science without much of a long-term plan. I've done landings on areas of Kerbin (South pole, desert, highlands) landings on the Munar midlands and Munar orbital experiments, Minmus fly-bys and landings (also returns from both satellites) and also a Kerbol encounter.

There are 9 biomes on Kerbin:

• Grasslands
• Highlands
• Mountains
• Deserts
• Badlands
• Tundra
• Ice Caps
• Shores
• Water

On the Mun there are also polar regions, highlands, and low lands, each broken up by the crater they are in. You can get lots of science (200+) for each sample return mission you complete from each biome on the Mun (Kerbin biomes give some science, but not a lot).

i just unlocked the 1m docking ports and put a fuel station into kerbin orbit, i'm holding off going out of the local kerbin area until i get some orbital infrastructure up. has anybody tested to see if kethane works in .22? i'm playing vanilla at the moment but kethane would be a big help in sending interplanetary missions.

Kethane parts from .21 will work in .22 Sandbox. If you want to have them in .22 career mode you have to assign them to tech tree nodes and give them an initial cost.

[Grumman]

Where abouts in the tech tree are the docking ports?

I still haven't got the hang of Munar landings. I successfully landed my probe on the surface, but I blew up the engine again. Fortunately I was able to transmit some Science back, so it's not a total loss.

[TimothyC]

Where abouts in the tech tree are the docking ports?

Specialized Construction, which is a Tier 6 tech. It requires the Tier 5 "Advanced Construction" tech.
The full tech tree is here, on the KSP wiki

[Grumman]

Thanks.

[Grumman]

I just lost another Munar probe. This one is stuck in a Munar orbit with no power, because the solar panels are all side-mounted and the last burn was coincidentally directly away from the sun.

[PeZook]

Welcome to spaceflight: where missing a tiny detail can kill you.

Did you know that Apollo's LM had to fire its descent and ascent engine by a certain time, otherwise solar heating would increase pressure in the tanks enough to burst a safety disk and render the engine inoperable?

The amount of helium was carefully calculated to take into account the length of surface stays and expected amount of solar radiation the vehicle would receive in orbit. They even had to consider the LM's orientation during every phase of the flight...

[Marko Dash]

i had a lander stuck on the mun because it ran out out fuel as it touched down, added more fuel and an empty pod and sent another one... which also had too little fuel after landing.


so now i've built a lander that gets rid of all the science stuff to carry a hitchhiker module and a lot of fuel, but I've also unlocked the first docking ports. so i think what i'm going to do is get kethane working and then set up a pair of fuel stations, 1 in kerbin orbit and 1 in munar orbit and start shuttle flights between the two.

the way i put kethane into the tech tree means i only have the small scanner, the small 1m tank and the smallest drill, but i think it should work.

[Grumman]

I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the lost probe was actually rotating extremely slowly, so it eventually exposed the solar panels enough to recharge the batteries.

The bad news is that I ran out of fuel on ascent and smashed it into the Mun anyway.

[PeZook]

Well...with .22 out, I decided to go ahead and finish my Eve mission. I guess I put it off because, despite having tested the surface return lander, I couldn't be CERTAIN that it would work.

Well...







It did!

Not a very comfortable ride though

[Grumman]

I've got a new rocket. This one delivers three medium satellites to Kerbal orbit.

[PeZook]

I fired up .22 after properly setting up Mechjeb and assigning it to a tech node (I placed it in Advanced Flight Control) and I must say that I L.O.V.E. everything about this update. The fact there's an actual reason to do inflight stuff now adds such incredible depth to the game, and the science reports are hilarious ("We are most definitely in space now!")

The way you plan missions and goals in order to maximize science makes the game properly structured and have a proper way of progression and reward for your efforts, with more ambitious missions being enabled by your achievements from previous ones.

It SO needs mission and milestone tracking per kerbalnaut, though.

[Grumman]

I'm waiting for the next patch before I get back to career mode, in the hopes that they'll split the science pools between transmittable science and untransmittable science. In the meantime, I've developed a single stage Munar lander. Since it doesn't have to drop anything it can land, take off, refuel and repeat. It's already back in Munar orbit after the first landing, now I'm going to dock it with the mothership and do the same thing on Minmus.

[TimothyC]

.23 comes out next week (or so it is scheduled to do so).

At the end of KerbalKon they also confirmed that there will be some implementation of multiplayer.

At last check it was still just 16.20USD on the KSP website.

[TimothyC]

Has anyone else been playing around with the Alternis mod?

It really does spice up the game.

[Napoleon the Clown]

And it's on sale again, 40% off for the next 14 hours, about.


I got the full version as a Christmas present from the fiancee. Career mode is quite fun, what with being given objectives and all that jazz.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I've only just started playing with the career mode, and I'm still having a blast trying to figure out the vanilla game. I've been taking it slow, so I've avoided mods of all kinds so far. Haven't done manned missions past Mun yet, so there's still a lot for me to do.

[TimothyC]

Has anyone else been in enjoying the ARM update (0.23.5).

For those that don't know, this most recent update adds asteroids & grappling arms to grab them. The result is that you can now move rocks into orbit, or out of orbit.

[HMS Sophia]

I'm now running a BARIS-alike using the career mode, with the players as various directors on another site. It's taking itself about as seriously as KSP ever does. We've had two missions so far, neither reaching orbit, and one involving an EVA to collect experimental data at 40km...
(I'm using a budget format called 'I'm making it up')

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Love the new rocket parts. Built a Saturn V-style behemoth, in order to better fling Kerbals deeper into space with even less chance of recovery.

[Nephtys]

I got back into KSP recently with all the changes and career mode. Now I've re-learned so much about how to make the most of my Delta-V. (Remember kids, retrograde burn at apopsis drops you back to Kerbin CHEAP)
Minmus remains the most fun thing you can easily get to. I'm building newer and more terrifying science platforms, including one to use the grappling arm to rescue a Kerbal who somehow managed to EVA from Minmus surface into a STABLE ORBIT, then ran out of gas...

[Nephtys]

Yesss... +847.5 science for a successful manned recovery from Minmus. Way to go, crew of Cherno Zeta. RIP Aldern Kerman, lost on the mission trying to do a barrel roll in his EVA gear, for science.

[PeZook]

I got back into KSP recently with all the changes and career mode. Now I've re-learned so much about how to make the most of my Delta-V. (Remember kids, retrograde burn at apopsis drops you back to Kerbin CHEAP)
Minmus remains the most fun thing you can easily get to. I'm building newer and more terrifying science platforms, including one to use the grappling arm to rescue a Kerbal who somehow managed to EVA from Minmus surface into a STABLE ORBIT, then ran out of gas...

Minmus is always my first landing destination, because it's so nice and easy to put a rocket there.

However, the most fun I had was exploring Gilly: the captured asteroid in orbit of Eve. It's very difficult to get to in the first place (because it's small, and its gravity is overshadowed by Eve itself), but once you get into orbit, it's actually EASIER to Eva from orbit to the surface and back. It's a lot of fun

[Grumman]

I've just launched my first probe in my new game. Due to two Out of Fuel errors on manned missions, they're dual purpose: the last stage that delivers the lander to Mun or Minmus orbit can also act as either a life raft or refuelling station to get stranded Kerbals back home. This way every time I launch a probe, I'm also launching infrastructure.

[Grumman]

My first spaceplane, capable of reaching orbit without drop tanks or any other staging.