nremies1

I redesigned the lifter for my little multimission science ship to work in the 'new' atmospherics, since I haven't played in months. The core ship carries 3 Kerbonauts and a lab and has been to Eve, where it dropped a probe, Duna and Ike, where it deployed a Kerbaled lander, and Jool, where it just orbited. I had built this big and undoubtedly over-engineered lifter which was working satisfactorily before the patch, but can't make orbit post-patch (flexing and wobbling problems). So, I redesigned it and it puts the same basic payload in LKO despite being cheaper, smaller, and with more delta-V left over. Now I need to start working on the payload itself, to add a service bay and some other doodads. Still not really sure how to mate the lander to it since in the old atmo I just perched it atop the command pod with no ill effects. There will be a payload fairing involved but still trying to plan it out while I'm at the office allegedly 'working.'

So, this is a weird thing: I was putting a space station in orbit of the Mun when all of a sudden I lost all input controls on the vehicle. The unit was nothing fancy, and was being controlled by an Okto2. I launched, made my initial burn, and warped along the route until the Mun capture burn. Nothing at all amiss. Then I came out of timewarp, throttled up...and nothing happened. Ship also no longer responded to any w/a/s/d/q/e commands. Solar panels are deployed, batteries have plenty of juice, SAS is on, reaction wheels are online...nothing. I went back out to the tracking station and then back to the ship, and the engine works but I still have no SAS and only minimal attitude control (pitch and roll authority were ok, yaw was nonexistent). The autopilot stability control icons you usually see to the left of the navball simply aren't there. I get it in a lopsided orbit and quit to desktop, then re-load. Hop back into the ship and presto, everything's fine. All icons there, responding to commands, etc. Has anybody else experienced something like this? Is there some 'break everything' button I accidentally hit without realizing it?

Launched a ship to the Mun to do a bunch of contracts including gravity scans, samples, visual surveys, etc. Put it in a polar orbit so that I'd eventually pass over every location. Was going well until I actually landed it; I missed the designated LZ by a few km and figured no problem, I'll just hop over there. Simple, right? Well, I forgot to put the pilot back on stability hold rather than retrograde hold and we crashed into a crater. All that survived was the big command pod. Well, that sucks, but it's not a total disaster. I quickly put together another ship with a Hitchhiker can on it to go get them. I again miss my intended LZ by several KM and the fuel situation is not looking good because like a dope I also put this one in a polar orbit. The first three Kerbals will just have to jetpack over to the rescue ship, no problem! Unfortunately Doodson was a little too aggressive with his jetpack's throttle and ended up not being able to slow down fast enough, so he overshoots the rescue ship and splatters himself into a crater wall. The other two guys managed to make the trip without killing themselves in the process. We all lift off, watching the fuel gauge. The rescue ship gets to orbit but comes up just short of delta-V (thanks, unnecessary plane-change maneuver!) so we park it and fire up a *second* drone ship to go get them. The RV goes fine, although we do it in the dark on the far side of the Mun, and everybody EVAs over, climbs aboard and goes home. So, my potentially very-profitable trip to complete 3 contracts with one launch turned into three launches, one wrecked ship, one abandoned ship, and a KIA. But the Kerbals were grinning like idiots the whole time.

Big Three are in Duna orbit. Three others will be heading to Minmus. Anticipating that the off-duty pilots will probably cluster around the launch pad and fire off several RT-10s.

Exactly what happened to one of my Duna probes like two days ago. Restarted the game and only that one ship had been nuked, though. Everything else was fine.

My multi-ship mission to Duna and Ike arrived in orbit today. Well, most of it did. I tweaked the maneuver nodes for the final approach and the first probe came screaming in wayyy too fast (because I am still a nub at interplanetary flights), so the aerobraking was almost completely ineffective. Had to burn all its remaining fuel to get it into a lopsided but tolerable orbit. So, that one's not going to be able to be positioned to complete a "satellite around Duna" contract. No matter. I have others. Well, *had* others, because the second, better probe with more bells and whistles was apparently eaten in transit by the mythic Kraken. Loaded into it, got a black screen and "nan" and after I restarted the game, there it was - gone. Sigh. Probe #3 - ironically the first one launched, but the least-useful - is going to have to finish that contract for me. Wait, the encounter that I had apparently vanished in transit and it has hurtled past its target. So I burned like 80% of its fuel getting it an intercept like 250 days from now, sigh again. But it should have enough fuel left to capture and establish the desired orbit. I also flubbed the trajectory and aerobraking for the tanker drone, which delivered one of those Rockomaxes that's half the size of an orange tank, but it's in an acceptable orbit. On the plus side, Jeb, Bob and Bill arrived as planned and we used the experience gathered from the not-so-good piloting to make sure they captured correctly. Jeb landed on Ike, lander-hopped once for double the science fun, and then they returned to Duna where he landed again. Wasn't planning on landing on Ike - the Flying Dutchman probe was supposed to do that before it vanished - but we should be okay to return to Kerbin without needing the tanker, which was put in place as a contingency anyway. I don't have Alarm Clock installed and really dislike juggling multiple flights at the same time. But we got there in the end.

Thread answered. I'm not particularly interested in strapping a tiny probe to an SRB to cut costs.

High 3/low 4. Munshots are a trip to the grocery store, and most launches work as planned, but I don't meet the rest of the L4 criteria.

The satellite contracts seem profitable enough at this point, I just sorta wondered if 105k to land three guys, goos, a materials bay, etc, on the Mun was about what other people were spending. Nice to have points of comparison, is all. I think I'm getting better at cutting waste from the actual rockets (thanks Flight Engineer!) but since I haven't spent much time in Career I'm only now starting to consider cost.

Just curious: how much do your missions cost? Not really interested in a "who can execute a mission to X the cheapest" competition but rather simply in knowing how much people are spending since I started my first career save after the patch. I've got a direct-ascent Mun mission that costs 105k funds, about 17k of which are recovered upon return to Kerbin. If the mission completes a "plant flag" contract and an orbital science contract it's usually completely paid-for, but not profitable. The same vehicle goes to Minmus because I haven't built something specifically for a Minmus shot just yet. I'm designing a Duna mission - and this is really where my interest in other people's mission costs comes from - which in my old sandbox game was about $250k. I'm seeing if I can trim that down without sacrificing capability but am not happy with the design yet.

It's very odd to me that no experience is awarded for EVA. I guess the obvious answer is that there's no difference in an EVA over Kerbin as opposed to the Mun and so it's something you'd award XP for exactly once no matter where in the universe it was done. But still...it feels like a thing that should be logged.

I put two satellites, the Kerbosat 1 and the Kerbosat 2, in orbit to fulfill contracts. Quite a bit harder than I thought it would be without maneuver nodes and using an SAS-less Stayputnik core. But it's pretty cool that satellites and stations have purposes now - contracts to return science from orbit are as easy as push buton, receive funds. I also fired up my pre .9 save and got like 300 brand-new science from my lonely little Eve probe, which has been beeping and booping in orbit over a biome-less planet for months, waiting. Going to have to blow the dust off the Duna Explorer and send the boys back there for another round of landings, too.

Oh, almost forgot - I was also glad to discover that you can transfer Kerbals between modules without EVA now. About time!

Returned my two interplanetary missions to Kerbin today. I had near-simultaneous expeditions to Duna and Eve. Learned a few lessons for future missions, mostly regarding the necessity of nailing those optimal phase angles. The returns both turned into minor Charlie Foxtrots because of sloppy flight planning but were ultimately successful. The Eve mission was just an orbit-and-observe while the Duna trip was landing #2. I wanted to do an Ike flyby as well but fuel consumption wouldn't allow it, because I still suck at this, heh. Only had to reload a save on the Eve aerocapture once after the first attempt got a little *too* captured and was about to turn into the first permanent settlement. The boys are taking a little break after having been in space for so long, and a probe to Dres just left LKO.

Bill and Bob are sitting at KSC waiting for their next assignment. Jeb is treading water somewhere out in the ocean, I think, after a slight reentry mishap with a spaceplane.