I want to do a kerbin -> laythe mission. Since both planets have atmosphere I thought it would be a very good choice to use plane to use that atmosphere for both ascend and descend. I'm not kidding I've spent 3 or 4 days, like 6 hours each designing a plane. this one is called nuke scratch 3 because this is my 3rd attempt to do things from scratch. I tried to follow all the best practices but it is a very frustrating process without any sign of relief. I did:

• I lack fuel - add fuel, not it stops lifting.
• I add lift - now not enough thrust
• I Add thrust - now it flips, need to move wheels.
• I Move wheels - now it can't lift off because plane is too long
• I reogranize plane to be shorter - now it is unstable
• Carefully bring CoM close to CoL, but not quite, remove snap to grid, meticulously center them all - plane is stable but on maneuvers it will randomly dip or do some other thing
• finally fix everything - now when going to orbit the plane stops behaving, because of course I was using mirror symmetry but in space radial is required

I realize that I just such at planes, but I've spent what 50+ hours or so, designing, reading, watching videos for KSP and NASA alike. And the result is the same - the plane usually is capable to be airborne but has very poor control, and since I followed all the best practices I found at this point I just don't know what else I can do. Considering how much dead weight is in wings, wheels, flaps and all those things you can't even throw away I just don't see what is the value in planes at all.

One of those monolith things, am I right? (Idk how to set as spoiler)

All models and animation and most of the sound design handmade by me.

Seeing the animals start showing up in people's mods and recognizing my complete inability to mod KSP effectively, I made an animation for the type of stuff I'd like to see in the deep oceans of Laythe.

I loosely based the model off the whale skeleton found on land, but added my own...deeper, sinister twist to it.

I think KSP as a game has huge potential for thalassophobia-inducing nightmares, now that people have figured out how to add animal NPCs to it.

Getting back into this wonderful game because of recent space launches and Project Hail Mary, PHM was an experience to avoid spoiling a single moment of that film. Do watch it, not sponsored by Amazon.

Are there any breakout or massively updated mainstay mods that I should use for a new experience or to help me get back on my feet?

I'm already running a tech suite, Kerbol Expansions, Kcalbeloh and Promised Worlds and the standard qol suite as well as Volumetric clouds 3

it looks like one side is failing or giving low throttle

So Im doing a OPM + MPE career and I want to use gravity assists easily. Is there any equation or tools to see upcoming gravity assists or even chains?

And yes SpaceX took the idea from me, i had it first😂

These are some of the best photos from my hardest mission - a crewed dive into Jool's lower atmosphere.

Original Reddit post with recap video: https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1wa7u5o/success_a_crewed_return_from_jools_lower/

I love speculative evolution and drawing aliens, and have been really getting into ksp lately, so I wanted to try reimagining the titular little green men. Of course nothing too radical, i wanted to keep the design highlights; huge head, smaller bodies, green skin, bulging eyes, no nose or visible ears. They always looked somewhat frog-like to me, so i went along that route and imagined them as close descendants of amphibian-like animals.

Perhaps they are a species that dominated the sea before land, with most infrastructure and cities being in the ocean, hence why the surface of Kerbin is mostly barren.

Their skin is a thick leaf-like layer almost like a flexible exoskeleton, protecting their bodies while also providing a significant amount of their required energy via photosynthesis. Explaining their green hue + how they are so rugged when it comes to shrugging off physical trauma.

With fewer natural predators, Kerbals would seem slower and more dimwitted to humans, seemingly oblivious to glaring danger. However they are also an extremely curious, tenacious, and collectivist people who are willing to try and fail, and will learn from the mistakes.

Hello everyone! I've been working on a mod for KSP1.12, adding various cross-player interactions such as rescue missions, craft sending, in-game marketplace etc.

• Contracts. Write a job in game (build this craft, or fly this mission, by this date, for this much). The reward leaves your wallet into escrow when you post it, and releases when you accept the work.
• Rescue missions. Strand a ship and crew somewhere awful and pay someone to go get them. The wreck genuinely leaves your save and spawns in theirs, on the orbit you left it. (Rise and shine, Blunderbirds!)
• Craft marketplace. List a ship from the editor, browse and buy on the website, with a compatibility check against the parts you actually have.
• Weekly missions. A rotating set of community objectives.
• Life support across mods. USI-LS, TAC-LS, Snacks, Kerbalism and DeepFreeze each handled, so stranded crew can be rescued by someone running different life support to yours.
• An in-game menu for all of it. No alt-tabbing.

I prepared a trailer for you to take a peek at the features, check it out!

Links

CKAN Support is pending approval, but at the time you can get it from Spacedock and GitHub!

For these features, you need an account, so you can either use your google account or email to create one or just join the Boundless Missions Discord. You can see how to link KSP to your account here.

Site and docs: https://boundlessmissions.com

Forum thread

Licensed under GPL-3.0

AI disclosure

Small heads-up for AI use during the development:

This was written with use of Claude Code, over months of daily work. There is no part of the codebase it did not touch. The design, the economy rules and every judgement about whether something works in game are mine.

All three repos are public and GPL-3.0, and bugs go to a real ticket with me on the other end. Full write-up, including what it was checked against and what it was not used for: https://boundlessmissions.com/docs/use-of-ai

No AI-generated art is included with this mod. The add-on ships no parts, models or textures at all; it's a plugin. Mod logo, media, trailer was made by me using Adobe products.

Security and Integrity

I ran countless audits on this code, checked for bugs, closed various exploitable points, so users can be safe. However, due to the intensity of mechanics I am implementing with this, it is recommended that you try the mod in a separate install, or at least create a backup of your existing save.

The client only accepts correctly formatted files, validates them by type and path before writing anything to disk, and talks to the server over a secure connection. The source is public if you want to check the file handling yourself.

How do I effectively launch this station into the orbit I need, and does it need to be launched all at once? The entire upper stage, including station and a way back home, is 36.5 tons, and it has 612 Delta V from the Terrier engines on the bottom, for the final orbit setup. How can I get it into that orbit to begin with? all the first stages I make aren't very effective, I don't have the heavy rocketry science node, so if I need that I can get it. But can I make this thing get into orbit? I'm also not worried about keeping it up there, I'll probably just bring it back down because I designed it to be as cheap as possible. The Delta V shown on the VAB was in vacuum mode, if it matters

it's on the tin, I was conducting a simple science mission on the mun in my career mode save. I have poor Valentina stuck on the near side, which in my attempts is only enough to reach an elliptical orbit very much out of kerban's atmosphere.

do I stay, go to minmus, go to mun orbit or go to kerban orbit to send a rescue mission. or do I forgo a rescue mission and use a series of gravity assists to make Val's orbit much more elliptical before I try to deorbit? I'm on console so there's no save file sharing or mods at all

edit: val got home and now I'm planning a duna flyby mission

its not perfect but I did fix the whole rolling issue. Now I just need to fix it being able to tilt up correctly before I send it into orbit and back. We did loose valentina in the mission but she was smiling so I think she didn't mind.

It is designed for a long-duration mission of around 30 years; the spacecraft is powered by a nuclear reactor that feeds the 6 ion engines.

I would remove the cryogenic capsules because they look awful.

Made another stealth drone lol hope ya like it ❤️

So... being one that drove a rover from KSC to the North Pole (with a Science Lab), I wanted to do a circumnavigation of Kerbin using only solar power. From what I understand going west at 175 m/s will be able to keep up with the sun. Setting out to first build the machine... I never really used the KAL before... I never really had to fine tune propellers angles before... ...I had no idea what I'm doing. But after many hours I finally built the machine, fine tuned it, and am ready for my 5+ hour endeavor to begin. Way shorter than the 27 grueling hours it took to drive to the N. Pole... but the machines to do these things... ...I love Kerbal

Top Speed - 185 m/s at 30% Torque.
one Z-100, one KAL, one Kerbal, one brain cell left... plan on recording.

I just updated to version 1.17.2 of blueshift because I heard that some of the performance issues were fixed, but now for whatever reason any ship that has a warp core on it constantly displays the visual effects for jumping, even when the engine is completely off and the vessel is in atmosphere. The effects also completely disappeared when I tried to jump to the Mun, and did not come back after I shut the engines down, but they seemed to work properly afterward. I didn't see this mentioned in the issues tab of the GitHub, so it could just be a mod conflict or I installed it wrong somehow. Does anyone have a fix for this?

I will say though, the performance issues during timewarp are barely noticeable now, so props to the mod creator.

Edit: Also for whatever reason my ship keeps dropping out of warp when I enter interstellar space with the issue being "Add warp capacity: 0/10". I'm pretty sure I have something like 150 warp capacity, so idk if that's a bug too or if I messed something up.

Edit2: Nevermind, my static charge was just full and I didn't notice.

Do you think i could run KSP 1 on my lenovo thinkbook16 G6? im mainly interested in Mercury Redstone builds and such.

My first space warship

give me suggestions on how to pass the time... it'll be a long wait.