Kerbal Space Program Version 19 is out

[Logan Darklighter]

Just a few pics from the first couple of hours of play. 
New Re-entry effects are epic. (though nothing can actually burn up yet). Here's an Eagle on it's way to making a successful landing back at KSC. 



Here's the beginnings of my refueling way-station. Olympus Station is fully stocked and has 2 "Columbia" style CSMs and a "Rigel 2" CSM docked. 



Jeb's in the Rigel 2 CSM and he's pretty excited. 



"Heya Thomsel! How ya doing?" 

"Oh, just hanging out."



Kerbals now have a wider variety of expressions. But none more so than Jeb. 





If that grin gets any wider, his head's going to split in two. >.>



Remember one of my goals from way back when was to nail a landing on the KSC grounds? Well it's trivial with a powered ship like an Eagle. But it still takes a bit of finesse to aim ballistically with a basic capsule and nothing but a parachute at the end. 

Well - I finally nailed it. This is the aforementioned Rigel 2 Capsule coming back from Olympus Station from 155 Km up. 







"Liiiiiike a GLOVE!!!" ^_^



Take a bow, lads. 

[Logan Darklighter]

Whoops! That was quick! Version 19.1 with some bug fixes was released just a couple of hours ago. (Dragonflight - you might want to check this version out - maybe it'll work for you.)

[Dragonflight]

Okay, next challenge. Powered landing at the spaceport!
Edit: I'll get to the 19.1 download soon. Right now, their connections are maxed. I imagine it's a very busy day on the Kerbal server.
One of the things I'm looking at is putting the Xenon "cheat" mod I found, which uses a reactor module to produce Xenon. Tack that to a space station, and create a deep-space gas station. Then I can build those things around various worlds, and have an in-game reason which lets me refuel space probes around other worlds.
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Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[Rod.H]

Okay, then what's the version that's available on Steam? Yes, that means that I just saw it there & have dropped a ~twenty on it.

[Logan Darklighter]

Steam will have the latest version available. So it'll be 19.1. 

[Rod.H]

Well the steam version is that and I get constant program crashes....and I've yet to master an orbit.

[Bluemage]

Orbits are deceptively difficult.  You have to build the right rocket, of course- it's quite easy to make a rocket too heavy, wobbly, flimsy, or some combination thereof to achieve one.
The second trick is figuring out how to get into one.  I've built some real monster rockets, flown them the wrong way, and ended up making an 'orbit' far out enough to intersect the orbital path of Mun.  If I knew how to make a proper orbit, I'd've ended up a tenth of the distance out in a fraction of the time, with about 1/6 the rocket and 1/100 the trouble.
The third, hidden trick is figuring out how to get into the *same* orbit more than once.  That's where I am.  I can make orbiters, and get into an orbit I can see Kearth from, but it's a miracle if I end up in the same orbit twice in a hundred tries.
After that, it's all about learning precision.
I recommend watching this video series: shows you how to make a controllable rocket, get into a tight, circular, repeatable orbit, and even perform docking maneuvers.  That's a good knowledge base to work from- enough to get within spitting distance of space station construction.

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My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Dragonflight]

If you're like me, and actually want to put things like space stations in orbit, but probably won't ever be able to handle orbit calculations in my head, get "MechJeb." It's one of the most popular add-ons for the program. It can handle all the difficult orbital calculations for you, allowing you to match orbits with other objects. Depending on your comfort level, you could let it handle the ascent, orbit matching, and docking, if you wanted. Or you could run any combination of those on autopilot and handle the rest yourself.
As for the crashing, I'm still having the problem. It's tied to a flaw in the design of the game. Although it was originally written for a 32 bit operating system, the program they're using as the foundation for the game is itself an open-source program which is constantly being updated and rewritten by its designer. So that means that as the base development program is updated, this changes the behavior of KSP.
Unfortunately, due to the way the program has been written to date, it can't handle multiple cores on a 32-bit machine. On top of that, it keeps expecting a machine to have over 2GB of available RAM. And on a 32 bit machine, that doesn't happen. So it causes memory addressing errors and crashes. (Don't assume if you installed 4GB of memory in a 32 bit OS that you actually have 4GB of memory. That's the maximum amount of memory a 32 bit operating system can address. But the video memory and audio memory are also allocated space from that stack. So if your video card has 1GB of memory, and your audio card has 512MB to 1GB of memory, then all the RAM left which can be addressed is a maximum of 2GB. It's one of those little loopholes that tends to get missed when people talk about how much memory they have in a 32 bit machine.)
So the short answer is that the game really only runs properly on 64-bit machines. Which means that until they either fix that flaw, or I get a new machine, I'm stuck watching from the sidelines.
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Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[Rod.H]

Yay, yet another reason why I need to rebuild this machine as a 64-bit. I think my windows 7 key will cover it, don't know if I've got the disk nor remember were I left it.

[Dragonflight]

Okay. A combination of a nice tax return and some contributions from friends who *really* wanted me to join the 21st century, and I've rebuilt my PC with x64 architecture, and Windows 7 Pro.
Now to see if I can launch without crashing.
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Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[paladindythe]

If you have your Windows 7 key, you can just download the disc: http://techpp.com/2009/11/11/download-w ... oad-links/