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[Rakonas]

I would never expect a person to starve or die of thirst after less than a day of going hungry, seems like a silly overreaction 

More likely to die from having too steep a re-entry vector I'm sure.

[BigD145]

I would never expect a person to starve or die of thirst after less than a day of going hungry, seems like a silly overreaction 

More likely to die from having too steep a re-entry vector I'm sure.

Oh? I've come in with just a mk1 pod and 1.25 heat shield straight from minmus to kerbin's poles. Punched through the atmosphere in maybe 5 seconds. I think I was more likely to die from a heart attack because the ablation was ticking down fast and I barely had time to deploy a parachute before hitting ground.

[Descan]

Does that mod make the consumption of food/water slow down the lower the supply gets, to simulate rationing, or is it just constant?

[Puzzlemaker]

Man career mode is kicking my ass, I can't get enough science.  Blehh.

What's the easiest way to get science?  I just got the upgraded VAB.  No surface samples yet though.  Should I send a probe to the moon or something?  I don't have solar panels yet either...

[Shadowlord]

You can get some by building a simple rover with all your science instruments, putting a scientist in it so you can collect and reset them, and drive around your base sciencing.

There's supposedly 33 zones at KSC, although from a rover I could only find the most general of them (corresponding to the launchpad, runway, and each building, chiefly).

If you can get into orbit, there's science in low orbit as well as high orbit (far from kerbin). You can also get more by just entering mun or minmus's zone of influence without having to land.

[Culise]

I would never expect a person to starve or die of thirst after less than a day of going hungry, seems like a silly overreaction 

More likely to die from having too steep a re-entry vector I'm sure.

Oh? I've come in with just a mk1 pod and 1.25 heat shield straight from minmus to kerbin's poles. Punched through the atmosphere in maybe 5 seconds. I think I was more likely to die from a heart attack because the ablation was ticking down fast and I barely had time to deploy a parachute before hitting ground.

Yeah; I haven't had it from Minmus to Kerbin, but I've definitely hadn't had nearly the same concerns with stock heating as I did with Deadly Reentry, and I knew my trajectory was fairly close to safe with that.  I didn't even burn off my entire heat shield, actually, and my reentry vehicle also includes a service module which can absorb a wee bit of heat in a pinch.  I'm assured explosions make an excellent ground cushion.

Nice to know everything about Life Support, though; half of my concern was the margin of error for oxygen.  I know the Rule of Three outside of the game as a rule of thumb for needs for air, drink, and food, but even leaving aside whether it was modeled at all, I didn't know how well it was scaled to the game's contracted time scales; I mentioned food and drink in the initial post, but due to the supply ratios, I was down to the final update tick for oxygen as well when I hit surface and immediately recovered, and I expected in-game minutes at the very most after that ran out (since I didn't think to check beforehand if it ticked down in Kerbin's lower atmosphere or not; being told here it does is going to help a lot for future missions).  I just looked it up in the documentation, and it appears to be rather generous, actually.  You have 360 hours to resupply for food deprivation, 36 hours for water, and 2 hours for air or electricity.  I probably did go a bit far in my concern, it seems.  ^_^

Man career mode is kicking my ass, I can't get enough science.  Blehh.

What's the easiest way to get science?  I just got the upgraded VAB.  No surface samples yet though.  Should I send a probe to the moon or something?  I don't have solar panels yet either...

You're probably nowhere near it yet, but landing a Mobile Processing Lab (Advanced Exploration; 160 Science) on another world can give you massive science, apparently, which makes a decent target for bee-lining.  Building a science-buggy, loading on a scientist, and cruising around the KSC for each individual building biome can pick up a bit of science if you need to scrape up a bit, and you no longer have to worry about the Pol/Pole confusion if you do that, either.  Otherwise, I've mostly been prioritizing science unlocks, and I have a little sci-jet that my scientist flies around Kerbin as a whole to pick up biome science as needed. 

[BFEL]

Man career mode is kicking my ass, I can't get enough science.  Blehh.

What's the easiest way to get science?  I just got the upgraded VAB.  No surface samples yet though.  Should I send a probe to the moon or something?  I don't have solar panels yet either...

Basically do the rover thing others have suggested for now. I personally would suggest you grab up the ability to do surface samples as soon as possible, because with those a good trip to Minmus with a scientist onboard can net you well over 2000 science. That trip alone unlocked half the tech tree for me


So my first interplanetary mission is encountering some pretty fucked issues. The craft is basically just a 3-man pod with a 2.5 meter service bay filled with materials bay, solar panels, and parachutes, strapped on top of a half-orange with attached NERVA. This is complemented somewhat by the two docked fuel tanks, each of the middling 3.75 tank. These also have mystery goo and some batteries/panels of their own.

On to the issues. First off, I quickly discovered the service bay solar panels apparently clip into the bay itself, making them impossible to retract (they are the 1x6 version) this is frustrating, but not damning. The SECOND problem is MUCH worse however. The materials bay I threw in the service bay isn't accessible to my scientist (due to the girders holding the chutes forming a cage) so it is unfortunately gonna be a one-shot deal on my trip to Duna.
Possibly MOST CONCERNING is the fact that apparently the NERVA produces so much heat radiation that it MELTED THE ABLATION OFF MY HEAT SHIELD.

This is gonna be a fun mission

EDIT: GAH, this would have had SO much more dv if I hadn't fucked up several aspects of this design. Particularly, I should have put a goddamn goo canister on the actual ship, instead of relying on the fuel canisters for science. Coulda dumped those fuckers a lot sooner. Speaking of those fuckers, THOSE FUCKERS. Wish I had known NERVAs only use liquid fuel WITHOUT oxidizer BEFORE I had brought all that extra undumpable weight in THOSE FUCKERS.

Mission is on its return trip, and its not ENTIRELY hopeless, as I have a return trajectory that leaves me with about 50 fuel...but it leaves me with about 50 fuel. And I melted off my heat shield several times over.
And said return trajectory didn't actually encounter Kerbin, those fuckdamn lying maneuver nodes. Time for quickload.

[BigD145]

You can cheat rover with two mk1 pods stuck together if you're just looking at ksc and its buildings.

[Rakonas]

My first Kerbal just landed on the Mun. All hope seemed lost when the Munar lander's fuel line was discovered to not have successfully attached the two fuel tanks together. The lander ran out of fuel trying to land, but Valentina Kerman got out of the lander at the last minute and was propelled 20km up by the subsequent explosion. She bravely landed on the Mun with her jetpack and successfully planted a flag at the spot.

[nogoodnames]

On to the issues. First off, I quickly discovered the service bay solar panels apparently clip into the bay itself, making them impossible to retract (they are the 1x6 version) this is frustrating, but not damning.

You sure it's because of clipping? The caseless solar panels can no longer be retracted. It tripped me up as well. Also, I've found you need to be careful when EVA kerbals are flying around near the panels because they can easily destroy them even if they are in their cases.

[etgfrog]

hm...I've found my new favorite way of entering the atmosphere, and it tends to do so rather safely. You need to make sure your periapsis is 40k from kerbal, then once you reach the periapsis you should try to point downwards and essentially skim along at 40k. Doing so let me use about 300 m/s deltaV to slow down from 3500 m/s to 1800 m/s before gravity took over for the thruster. You do kind of have to be able to keep your entry spacecraft sideways to slow down via drag before you hit the harder atmosphere that will actually burn up your spacecraft.

[nogoodnames]

Well, just made my first SSTO of 1.0+ after seeing about two dozen threads on the KSP forums bemoaning the death of the spaceplane. It took 5 minutes to put together, worked on the first try, looked great and broke the sound barrier at sea level. I can't say I get the complaints.

[BFEL]

On to the issues. First off, I quickly discovered the service bay solar panels apparently clip into the bay itself, making them impossible to retract (they are the 1x6 version) this is frustrating, but not damning.

You sure it's because of clipping? The caseless solar panels can no longer be retracted. It tripped me up as well. Also, I've found you need to be careful when EVA kerbals are flying around near the panels because they can easily destroy them even if they are in their cases.

Ok, yeah this is apparently what happened then.

Also MORE UPDOOT! BFEL is trying to get everyone back despite several terrible errors that leave me with the BAREST scraps of hope. Full story in previous post.

[Shadowlord]

Well, just made my first SSTO of 1.0+ after seeing about two dozen threads on the KSP forums bemoaning the death of the spaceplane. It took 5 minutes to put together, worked on the first try, looked great and broke the sound barrier at sea level. I can't say I get the complaints.

What tech did you use?

[nogoodnames]

Well, just made my first SSTO of 1.0+ after seeing about two dozen threads on the KSP forums bemoaning the death of the spaceplane. It took 5 minutes to put together, worked on the first try, looked great and broke the sound barrier at sea level. I can't say I get the complaints.

What tech did you use?

Sandbox with MK2 parts and Rapiers. I may try making a low tech version in my career game.