strollen

I am having the same problem with not showing the contracts in my game that started in 1.1. I took a contract and didn't see the target orbit. I got a NaN for one of the parameters (not sure which one.) Got offered another contract and the target orbit didn't show up. The new contract had a Long of Ascending Node as undefined and Argument of Periapsis as Nan I've tried running both 64 and 32-bit version and restarted the game. I haven't tried reinstalling.

Hey thanks for doing this. I'm sharing it on Facebook. It is not the most exciting video, but it is probably the best illustration of Thomas Edison's quote "Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.", I've seen. Although, my attempts to land on the Mun are fairly close :-).

I really like the MPL, and I think it is possible to use them and not exploit them, all you have to do is not go crazy with time warp. I am playing at Hard career level (with a slight boost to income),so without any revert to mission reloads I end up having to pay for all my rockets that go boom. I also have reduced science and contract income, and significantly more expensive upgrades, it is a challenge to pay for everything. The final upgrade on the R&D lab is 3.500K and I only have $1.500K. So I don't have funds to launch science only trips to Mun, and Minmus. Not to mention since Jeb died on Mun, I'd rather user safer unmanned landers despite them only yielding half the science. It cost like 75K to launch a space station, and much of the cost is associated with the getting the heavy MPL labs into orbit around various objects., so it seems silly not to utilize them. Right now I have four polar stations around Kerbin, Mun, Minmus, and Kerbol which is on the way to Duna. Mun and Minmus have 2 stars scientist and the others 1 star. I have lots of ships active so I rarely warp more than a day at a time. About once a week I transmit science and get 40 science from the 2 stars, 20 from Kerbol and only 10 from Kerbin. The Kerbin station is only 1/2 full of science experiments, so I've made several not always successful attempts to add more science experiments to it The science absolutely adds up, but it takes more than a month worth of 4 labs to equal one manned mission to Minumus. I find that much of my career is devoted to the care and feeding of the science labs. A Kerbin base expansion contract, cool I can add the Atmosphere fluid instrument, add tundra and ice cap biomes and also add more science to the MPL. Base expansion for Minmus, a good excuse to include the new orbital survey for future mining operations to my base.. I have landers on both Mun and Minmus and I periodically send them down to the surface, so that I don't run out of science for the lab I also use tourist spacecraft as a way of shuttling experiments from the science stations back to Kerbin. All in all, I think the labs adds a lot element of realism to the career mode. I think without that added emphasis on gaining more science, adding or expanding orbital stations just another fairly lucrative way of making money . Without actively MPL I doubt I'd need nearly the number of Kerbals in my space program. I can easily imagine setting up another science base on or in orbit are Ike. but I'm out of scientists, and don't have spare 500K to recruit a new scientist. so that makes me excited to get more rescue missions. I'm going to focus on making money. I expect that by the time I make another 2 million to upgrade my R&D, I'll also get enough science to need the upgrade. My science labs, will probably account for roughly as much science as I gain from exploring Duna and Ike. Long term, I expect to complete the tech tree, and then probably stop playing Kerbal for a while. I imagine that I'll end up flying a similar number of flights as other who've "finished" the game. The difference is I won't have done as many manned missions to land on planets in such (probably Ike, Duna and couple of others) but I will have done probably more rendezvous and docking procedures as others because the mobile labs are such an important part of my career. As I type this there are two space ships berthed at the ISS, the Dragon, and the Cygnus. I think it is fair to say that in the real world, NASA, the European and Russian Space Agency are all playing Kerbal at a very hard level. The super smart guys at SpaceX are paying the bills with satellites and space stations expansions/resupplies while they are gaining lots of science from doing part testing. NASA is gaining science from less expensive unmanned missions, but probably just as much from the ISS. Of course, I'll probably complete tech tree in less than 2 years and NASA has been doing it for almost 60 years :-).

I've become a bit gun shy after having Val burn up coming back from Mun. So now when my AP is in the 10,000KM range (say returning from Mun), I set my PE to be around 55KM. I then use aerobraking/thrusters to lower my AP to under 1,000KM. But this often takes several orbits and is sort of tedious to micro manage. Assuming I have a MK1 capsule science JR, misc science, batteries, plus heat shield. Is it safe to land directly from the Mun? If so what altitude should I set the PE to be? If I also have say a Terry upper stage with a several hundred DV left, when is the best time to fire off the remaining fuel. When I first hit the atmosphere, at the PE, or when I see first see the parts overheating?

Wow this has been a super helpful thread. I have a related question to mobile lab. I have a space station with mobile lab, docked in the space station is a Mun Lander, and resupply ship which I used to transfer two scientists. The lab is complete filled with 500 data worth of experiment, and there is a backlog of low-value experiments to put in it. My lander has been to the Mun a few times and has a bunch of experiments (soil samples etc.) with a lot of science. The lander has no parachute and can't make it back to Kerbin. Luckily my supply ship can. I'm trying to figure how can I transfer the experiment from the lander to the supply ship. I can't seem to figure out the process for taking the experiments from the lander and moving them to the supply ship? I also have a couple of high value experiments which are in the lab but I'd like to send them back with the supply ship. One idea was to take to do an EVA from the lander to the supply ship, but I was hoping there was an easier way.

I recently started a new career game after not playing since 1.0. Suborbitals are definitely harder than they use to be. I got a lot of tourism sub-orbital mission, so I ended up doing a lot of them. As everyone says the most important thing to do is not fly straight up. Ideally you want to get to a 45 degree angle at launch as quickly as practical, but even a 30 degree should be enough distance to let you decelerate safely. Second don't fly too high, you only need to get to 70,000 meters to qualify as a sub-orbital. So adjust your fuel and accent angle to keep your altitude under 100K, the higher you go the faster you fall. I found that a single Thumper booster ($850 one) was enough to get sub-orbital flights with most payloads, A Thumper at first stage, and Hammer 2nd stage was able to reliably and cheaply get a 3 person capsule to a suborbital for flying tourist contracts.

A friend of mine is writing a Clancy-like thriller with International Space Station as one of the settings. He has this question about orbital mechanics. I don't think the astronaut would intersect but I'm not sure.

I don't when it make sense to throttle rockets back either, but I figure if I don't see flames coming from the rocket on the ascent stage, I'm probably ok. With the lower thrust rockets you never that.

To me the most important thing in career mode is dv/$. Although stability is important obviously. I decided to do some testing for a satellite designed for doing a mission on Mun or Minimus. The lower stage was T45 swivel and upper V900 and a basic satellite. I varied the fuel tanks and had mechjeb autopilot put the sat in LKO at 75KM. SatA. stage 0 TWR 2.14/.53 stage 1 1.65/1.40 Upper T400, Lower T800,T400,T200 total cost $7,030 remaining dV at orbit 2,784 SatB stage 0 TWR 1.52/.38 stage 1, 1.53/1,28 Upper T400, T200, Lower T800,T400,T200 total cost $7505 remaining dV at orbit 3,100 SatC stage 0 TWR 1.30/1.10 stage1 1.20/.29 Upper T800 Lower T800, T800 total cost $7550 remaining dv at orbit 3,287 So to me it is worth the extra $500 for an additional 500 dv now if you don't need the dV than cheaper is better. But rockets with a 1.1 fly ok, in fact you never have to worry about throttling them back