Piper

The only "official" death I have in my space program, was when certified "badS" Orkin Kermin was testing a spaceplane prototype (his very first mission as well), and decided to fly out to the mountains west of KSC. At the start of the flight, Orkin had piloted it above the clouds, but as he approached the mountains he began a decent below the clouds. Moments after breaking through the bottom of the cloud deck, Orkin discovered just how close he was already to the mountains, and next thing I knew Orkin and the prototype spaceplane had formed a brand new crater in the side of a mountain. As a pilot in real-life, I felt extra dumb for descending through the clouds into a mountain range, and forced myself to not revert the flight, and accept Orkin's death. The whole spaceplane program had tons of comical disintegrations due to aircraft going out of control and crashing. In fact, I think I still have some debris at the end of the runway I need to clean up (that's no joke, I keep seeing it every time I launch a rocket and I keep forgetting to recover the debris). Thankfully I set up the spaceplane's cockpit with a decoupler and a couple of parachutes to act as a way to eject. Luckily this system worked surprisingly well, and Orkin was the only Kerbal to die in that program.

I try not to use quicksaves too often, but I definitely do use them. Ok, I use it a LOT . But like the OP, I am thinking of forcing myself to forego using using it when I start a new career mode, but that may not be a while for me. I just unlocked the last tech tree node, and I still have a bunch of the Kerbol system to explore. Now if that dang docking bug would stop getting in my way , I discovered today that my space station in Kerbin orbit is completely plagued by it. Ironically, yesterday I had a moment where using the quicksave turned out to nearly cause me disaster. I was landing a robotic lander/rover combo on the surface of Eve, and everything was going fine, until I hit the wrong key and sent the lander tumbling over just before touching down, so I hit F9 and reloaded to just after the chutes fully opened. The problem with this as I discovered, is that already open chutes seem to disappear when you load a quicksave, forcing me to perform a fully powered landing, using the very last fuel in the lander. After I landed I think I had all of 9m/s of deltaV left in it (starting from about 130m/s).

Turns out it works just fine, I just had the background scan turned off in settings. Once I turned it on it worked perfectly fine

I found that SCANsat wasn't scanning the surface of Gilly. Everything else I have been scanning has worked fine, just Gilly won't. Is Gilly too small to scan?

I recently got back from a big vacation out west, so naturally I hopped right back into KSP, and had a VERY big day The first thing I did, was take a screenshot of my landing on Moho with the crew of Kerbodyssey 3. I ended up landing at night (and took off and rendezvoused at night as well), so the screenshot is kinda dark, but at least that meant Jeb and Genedred didn't have to deal with the intense heat and radiation coming off of Kerbol. After getting back into orbit and rendezvousing with the Kerbodyssey 3 return vehicle (with a very lonely Bob in it), I did a bunch of science in low Moho orbit, boosted up to a high Moho orbit, did more science, and since I was already in a good place in Moho's orbit to return to Kerbin I did just that. After sending the crew of Kerbodyssey 3 on their return trip home, it was just in time to switch to Kerbodyssey 5, to insert it into Duna orbit, and for Kerbodyssey 6 to insert into Ike orbit. After Kerbodyssey 6 orbiting a bunch of times to map the surface of Ike for terrain and Kethane, I landed on the surface, becoming the first moon of another planet for me to land on. Landing went really well, although I realized I landed on the far side of the moon, so Duna is always below the horizon. And of course, despite trying to land on low terrain, I landed on the side of hill. Oh well, I have tons of fuel still, so I can just take off again and land somewhere else, and still have a wack load of fuel to return home. After the successful landing of Kerbodyssey 6, I went to Kerbodyssey 5 to land it on Duna. If you are wondering about why 6 landed before 5, it's because I launched 5 first, but ended up putting the lander for 5 on a longer trajectory to Duna, meaning the return vehicle for 5 would arrive first, then 6 would arrive at Ike, and then the lander for 5 would arrive/land on Duna and I didn't feel like it was a big enough issue to fix after the fact. And if you are wondering about Kerbodyssey 4, that one is slowly making its way to Dres. So, getting back to Kerbodyssey 5, the lander was meant to entering straight into the atmosphere and land directly (no orbital insertion), so I didn't have a choice in which side of the planet I landed on, and naturally I arrived when Ike was below the surface of where I was going to land. Insertion and landing went very well, albeit I landed on yet another hill.

I didn't get to do anything today, since I stated on my vacation today driving across Canada, in fact I'm writing this from a room in a motel (hrmm, I think I may have become addicted to KSP ). But oh boy, let me tell you what I did yesterday! Yesterday, I successfully landed Jebediah and Genedred on the surface of Moho, marking my very first manned landing on the surface of another planet. I have to say though, it went really, ah, "interestingly". I needed to use my massive refuelling vehicle to mostly deorbit my lander, because I wasn't 100% sure my lander had enough deltaV to land and take off again, even refuelled. The only thing was, because of how massive the two vehicles were, and the fact I'd be doing it with fission rockets, it took a couple of minutes just to kill about 400 deltaV. That part wasn't a huge deal, because I could just rotate the whole thing slowly to make sure I didn't build up a negative vertical velocity, keeping both vehicles above 30,000 meters. But once detached, I needed to get my refuelling vehicle back to orbit as soon as possible, since I needed to have it dock with the return vehicle to refuel it. But if ignored the lander while getting the refuelling vehicle back into a stable orbit, which would take another couple of minutes, the lander would of course crash into the ground. So while getting the refuelling vehicle back into orbit, I had to kill the engines, switch to the lander to kill the vertical velocity it had built up, and then switch back. Once the refueller was back in a stable orbit, I switched back to my lander for the last time to complete its decent. The only problem, was I had overshot my landing site. Thankfully by not too much, and I just burned into the appropriate direction, and headed over to the unmanned lander that I had landed the previous day (and a few months previously game time), and successfully touched down beside it. Heck, I nearly landed on the thing. Oh and ya, did I mention I was doing this all in the dark ? Originally, I wanted to land on the day side, but the first time the lander's orbit crossed the probe's landing site, it had just become night time, so I decided to make the long wait until the next time the orbit crossed the landing site, thinking that one would be in the day time. The problem was, because of Moho's quick rotation around Kerbol, the second crossing was still on the night side. Getting up on to the unmanned lander to collect all the science also proved interestingly since I didn't put a ladder on the thing . Using RCS to hover up beside the science instruments is WAY harder on Moho then it is on the Mun or Minmus. I fear I may have given Genedred a bit of a headache bumping into everything on the probe until I realized there was a part I could just stand on and collect everything with ease. I was also right about the lander not having enough deltaV on its own for landing and getting back into orbit again. Even using the refueller to kill a bunch of the lander's orbital velocity, I have JUST the right amount of fuel left to get back into orbit. Unlike my landing, I'm going to have to have a perfect ascent or Jeb and Genedred are going to end up learning about lithobraking. After I go all the science into the lander, I switched back to the refueller, had it burn prograde at one of the intersecting nodes between it and the return vehicle, at apsis, which now was also the oppossing node, matched inclination with the return vehicle, and then returned to a circular orbit. After that, it was a pretty standard intercept to the return vehicle. When I came up to the return vehicle, I parked near it, and switched to the return vehicle. The return vehicle only had one docking port, which at the time was tied up with a science lab, that didn't have an extra docking port, so I needed to undock with the lab, dock with refueller, then return to the lab. Easy enough, between playing Orbiter for years and now playing KSP, I had done tons of dockings. This is when I discovered the apparently infamous "docking bug". So that's where I'm sitting now, with Bill staring out the window of his command module as a glorified gas tank with the fuel he needs to get himself, Jebediah, and Genedred home, just a couple of dozen meters away, and he can't dock to it. I didn't have time yesterday to go correct the save file, reload, and continue, so I'll have to get back to it later. I'm also going to have to take some screenshots, darkside of Moho not withstanding.

Another pretty productive day for me. Launched a manned mission to orbit Eve and land on Gilly. I also launched a probe to Eeloo which will slingshot by Jool. The probe won't be getting much of a boost from Jool, mostly just using it for a small inclination change. But most significantly was what happened around Moho. My new "Trifecta" probe arrived, which is a combination orbiter, lander, and rover. All three elements worked perfectly. The orbiter is in a good orbit scanning for Kethane, the lander and rover landing perfectly, and I had fun driving the rover all the way up the side of a larger crater to look inside. Reminded me of some of the photos from Spirit and Opportunity. The only thing I realized, is I kinda messed up the design of the lander. The way it was supposed to work, was a skycrane type delivery system would release the lander/rover combo onto the surface of Moho, and then the skycrane would fly off and crash in the distance. The only flaw was, I completely forgot to put a decoupling mechanism between the lander and the skycrane . Thankfully, I picked a nice flat spot to land on, because with the skycrane still attached the thing is massively top heavy. The other big thing that arrived at Moho, was the fuel resupply mission for my lander and return vehicle. Orbital insertion went beautifully, as did the rendezvous and docking with the lander. The only catch with this one, was after docking with the lander and refuelling it, I realized I had meant to rendezvous with return vehicle first, because I had a decent stage for the lander attached to the resupply vehicle, and once it decoupled, the rest of the vehicle wouldn't be able to dock with anything again. The lander and return vehicle are in very different orbits (in retrospect, I should have inserted them into similar orbits), so I don't want to undock, do a massive plane-change to the return vehicle, and then do another massive plane-change back. So instead, what I'm going to do once my orbit gets to where I plan to land, is I'll use the entire resupply vehicle to kill most of the lander's orbital velocity, undock, then burn prograde and get itself back into a stable orbit. After I land, I'll then have the resupply vehicle head over to the return vehicle, and transfer over whatever fuel is remaining. Which makes tomorrow the big day for me. My first manned landing on another planet. Oh boy.... Oh, and ya, I almost forgot to mention I also inadvertently crashed an airplane into the side of a mountain Oops. Lesson learned, don't descend through clouds in a mountain range.

Today was pretty productive. I launched a probe to orbit Jool, with a couple more planned for some of the moons, most importantly I launched an unmanned fuel-resupply mission to Moho to refuel the manned lander and return vehicle sitting in orbit of Moho without enough fuel to continue their mission (choosing Moho as my first choice for a manned mission to another planet was probably not the wisest of decisions ). And of course, along with the successful launch of the resupply mission, was the half dozen or so spectacular failures that went before it, including one that was reminiscent of a giant Saturn V sized missile going straight into the ocean beside the KSC. I also launched into a holding orbit the orbital vehicle for my first manned Duna mission.

Waiting in Moho orbit for a refuel mission to arrive from Kerbin so he can land and complete his mission. It isn't the first time he's been stuck somewhere waiting on another mission to arrive, he was stuck on the Mun for about 30 days after the first manned mission to the Mun when it was realized he didn't have enough fuel to get back into Munar orbit (let alone back home to Kerbin).

I personally love Minmus. Every mission I've sent there has been flawless, and I usually come back with twice the amount of science I was expecting. For me, my curse is anything involving rovers and the Mun. So far, they've gone something like this: Rover 1: When I deployed it on the Mun, it didn't have brakes on, and started rolling down all the way to the centre of the bottom crater of Twin Craters. I sent a Kerbal chasing after it, and finally caught up with the rover some 2km away from where it first touched down. I tried to drive it back to my Munar base, but the traction on it was so poor and it was so uncontrollable, that it ended up sliding even farther. By the time I gave up on it, it was now 4.5km away. I ended up sending another lander out to go pick up the poor Kerbal. Rover 2: Added landing gear to work as a parking brake. That part worked great, everything else didn't. I had added RCS thrusters to help provide traction and control, but I quickly ran out of fuel, and I didn't go anywhere with it. Rover 3: For some reason, I decided to change the engine layout of my "sky-crane" that I used to land the rovers, and it ended being horribly under-powered. The rover and skycrane ended up making a rather larger debris field in the centre of the bottom crater, ironically right near my abandoned first rover. Rover 4: Same design as rover 3, now just with a better skycrane. Landed well, had better wheels, and now engines pointed skyward to provide constant downward pressure when climbing steep slopes. This one finally worked fairly well, and I was actually able to climb out of Twin Craters and do some science in another biome. The problems this time, was it was still rather top heavy, and didn't have any SAS so it toppled very easily. The skycrane on this one also went all "wonky" after detaching, and crashed beside the rover, adding even more debris to Twin Craters. I feel sorry for the place, I've made a right good mess of the place. Rover 5: Improved and a more even layout, added SAS. Rover design looked great, but I did the dumb decision of deciding to test it out on a mission going to the anomaly near the south pole. As I approached the landing site, I very quickly learned I wasn't going to do much driving. But just to top it off, when I landed the rover, and detached the skycrane, I discovered to my horror that the MapTrak assembly was stuck to the skycrane, and the detached rover was flopping against the bottom of the skycrane. Somehow, after spinning through the air (well, vacuum), I dislodged the rover, and it actually landed landing gear side down. Thinking I had actually managed to salvage the rover, I sent out my manned lander and landed beside the rover, only to discover that one of the landing gear had become damaged, and wouldn't retract, trapping the rover in one location. I finally did get to test the same rover design on Minmus (just with a now properly placed MapTrak), and it worked really well, so I FINALLY seem to have a functioning and decent rover design. But for me, wheeled vehicles and the Mun just don't seem to go together. I'm also very much feeling the "curse" of deltaV and Moho. I decided to make Moho my first planetary target for a manned mission (I'd been been out to a couple of asteroids manned, but never to another planet). Right now the landing vehicle is in orbit of Moho with about 2600m/s worth of fuel, enough to get the vehicle down to the surface, but not up again (Jeb's in there, and naturally he looks like he want's to try it anyways), and the return vehicle with a very lonely Bill in it has not much more. The return vehicle has a large science lab on the front of it that I plan to jettison anyways, and I could transfer the fuel from the lander to the return vehicle, and I would have enough fuel to get back, but it would mean abandoning the manned landing. So instead, since I have another transfer window for Moho coming up, I'm sending up an unmanned refuelling vehicle to dock with both spacecraft so I can complete the mission.