purpleivan

Not strictly speaking today (I completed the mission a few days ago), but Jeb and Val took a trip to Eve and back, as an entry (level 5) to the Eve Rocks Challange. Everything worked as it was supposed to, but the challenge entry was thwarted by me forgetting that you can't just transfer sceince between docked vehicles in the right click menu... it has to be trudged round manually by a kerbal, heading over to another vehicle, tapping on the door and asking very politely to be allowed to hand it over. This resulted in the surface samples required to be brought home to Kerbin, being left behind in the boat that they were collected in, as the ascent vehicle smashed it to bits, when it launched back into Eve orbit. Oh well... Heading for Eve. Arriving at Eve. Burning into orbit. Ascent vehicle descending. Splashdown. Val heads to the shore for the land surface sample. The boat was landed seprately from the ascent vehicle. Ah a surface to stand on... time for that sample. Rendezvous with an ascent vehicle. Liftoff. Back home.

A few pics from the Eve Rocks challenge (level 5) entry, that worked as planned, but ended up as a failure due to me assuming that science data can be transferred between an docked vehicles. A fairly large dump of pics for this, but here goes.

Ok, first off, due to misremembering how science such as surface samples are handled by the game, my entry was a complete failure. But let's step back a bit. My plan was to make a level 5 entry to the challenge, not a particularly efficient one, but a successful one nonetheless. This plan involved launching a huge (4919 ton) vehicle to Eve, that carried a two kerbal ascent vehicle (for some reason I had the idea in my head I had to send two of them) that would land in the sea, a boat to go get a surface sample from the land, plus a return vehicle, left in Eve orbit. Here's how it went and where it all went wrong (Imgur album with all pics is here). The flight of the ER 1 There she is, sitting on the pad, with Jeb and Val taking a last look around before heading for space. Orbit... no problem, although the launcher is a bit on the wobbly side. I went for a high orbit to do the Eve burn from, as the ISP for the transfer stage is on the low side. A 966m/s manoeuver for Eve. Braking into Eve orbit... no problems so far. Heating got pretty high on some parts during the many passes the vehicle made through the upper atmosphere, to burn off some speed. In the process 2 of the 4 large solar panels on the boat exploded, fortunately on opposite sides, so the boat should still drive straight. The return vehicle separated without a hitch, but strangely it began spinning up to a very high RPM. Hopefully it will still be in one piece when it's needed later. The descent through the atmosphere began as planned, but when things got really hot at around 50km, one of the ore tanks, used as floatation deviced for the ascent vehicle exploded. Finally the ascent vehicle made it to the surface, with Jeb at the controls... better get that boat down too now. The much smaller vehicle had a much smoother ride down through the atmosphere, the only worry is that it might break through the clouds, to find that it's come in over land. Needn't have worried, that's the sea below and the shore isn't far away. I didn't bother with mapping the torque of the rotors to keys... just cranked up the sliders and headed for shore. Made it... now time to get that that surface sample. With the surface sample collected, it was time to head for the ascent vehicle. But it's 15 degrees around the equator and the rotor blades do not respond well to physics warping. The journed to Val's ticket home took about 1.5 hours real time, but fortunately the boat keeps a perfect heading, so time to crank up the torque again and go make dinner. 1.5 hours later. Now... the problem. I had it in my head that science data could be transfer between docked vehicles, which is why I went for docking ports, rather than a bunch of ladders for Val to climb up. Unfortunately the data has to be carried by hand between vehicles, which leaves the surface sample stuck in the boat. It's at this point I realise that the whole trip's been a failure. Jeb was quietly displeased. Ok, nothing can be done to save the goal of the mission, so let's get this ship of fail back into orbit. Fortunately the missing ore tank didn't hinder the launch. Back in orbit, it's time to make a maneouver for the return vehicle. No docking ports, so it's time for Val and Jeb to head across the old fashioned way. The return vehicle still suffers from the wierd accelerating spin around its longitudinal axis. The only way to get aboard was to park the kerbal right next it it, do a momentary warp, to stop the spinning, then grab the door in the couple of seconds after warp, before the spinning became too great to get a hold of the hatch. With both onboard the return vehicle, it was time for the burn home. A welcome sight. FInally home after 632 days. So in summary, I sent a fat, expensive, slow vehicle to Eve, only to return to Kerbin with zero surface samples.

Don't know which is better, the knowledge that the buildings are still destructible, or seeing a couple of SRB's used as missiles to prove it.

Your pics It looks like they're not far from where my pic was taken (looks like you identified that location). Looks similar to the terrain that Bob drove through over a couple of days in that area anyway. Might fire up the Juice Goose (on second thoughts, might take something faster) and head out that way to take a look.

My silliest was probably the "KSS Points Pirate". Named after its function of grabbing as many points as possible in a challenge.

Ooo... here's a pretty impressive location (probably my favourite on Kerbin), but as it looks like I'll be helping with the judging, this one is just for fun, so I won't get the bonus 10 points. Flower description of how to get here from the KSC, hmmm, let me see. Take off from the runway (either direction), keep flying straight until you get there... can't miss it.

I went there earlier this year, but took a much, much less direct route. It's a bit wierd now that whenever someone shows a pic of part of Kerbin's coastline, I think to myself "been there". In other news, Jeb and Val headed off to Eve this morning, as an entry attempt to the Eve Rocks challenge (level 5).

Regarding the issue of running KS3P and Distant Objects mods, I'm using both of these and I'm also unable to get the skybox to show up while in space. Adjusting the colour grading (e.g. setting it to None, or Neutral with zeroed sliders) to get it appears doesn't brighten the skybox. That's with KS3P Beta3 and Distant_Object_Enhancement_Continued-v2.0.0.0 For now I've just removed Distant Objects, but it would be really nice to be able to reinstate it.

Bingo... the setting to only show in the Space Center view was on for some reason. I'd not opened the GUI since installing KSP 1.8.1, so wierd that this setting was turned on, but all working now. Thanks.

Is the way to access the settings different to earlier versions? I can't see the old cog wheels button in the HUD with this version. Definitely running as I can see the planets rendered by the mod... just no button.

I'm having problems with using alternate KS3P profiles that I've created. Changing the settings for the default profiles for each scene (Flight, EVA etc.) works fine. By that I mean I can change the KS3P settings and see the live resultes ingame, then export the settings, rename to CFG and place them in the root KS3P folder and my new settings loaded and used ingame. The problem I have is that I'd like to have a set of profiles for Flight and EVA, each with different depth of field settings, so I can easily access them for a range of tightness and distance of focus for screenshots. The ability to select a profile for each scene suggests that this is supported, but I've not managed to get it to work so far. My alternate profiles for flight (named Flight2 - Flight4) can be selected in Setup/Select Profile for Scene [Flight] however when in flight the game is always rendered with the settings for for the profile "Flight" and not whichever of Flight2 - 4 profiles that I select. I'm using KSP 1.8.1 and KS3P build is 1.8.x-6.1.2-Beta3. To be clear, this is where I'm selecting my alternate profiles, the files for which are in the KS3P root and not Export. Any ideas?

I'm in the later stages of testing a 3000+ ton beast, as an entry for this challenge. All the bits work individually, just need to see if my transfee vehicle has the get and go, to get to Eve and make it into orbit. The plan is for a 3 vehicle assembly to be delivered to Eve, an ascent vehicle that will land in the ocean, an electric boat (hopefully landed in the same ocean) for the surface sample and a return vehicle left in orbit. So drop the ascent vehicle in the sea, then the boat, then the brave crew makes their escape back to orbit and on to Kerbin. Somehow I misread the rules as requiring a crew of 2 (no idea how) to ascend to Eve orbit and designed my vehicle around that, which increased the weight of everything considerably. If all goes well with this first attempt, maybe I'll have a stab at this another time with something lighter.

First post in here for a few months. Working on a level 5 entry for the Eve Rocks challenge. Once those side boosters were staged, I thought "hey... this is doing great, way more fuel than required to make orbit", only to realise that I was then burning on the stage for the transfer to Eve. Not launched anything substantial for a few months, I'll blame that. So, going to have to boost the power of that launcher. Less pretty screenshot than norrmal, as Scatter dropped out when switching to the launch pad.

Just tried out the "go via the Tracking Station" work around and that works. Weird though that I've been using Hypedit for years with all sort of vehicles, always going straight from the pad to the planet I want to test around, with no problems. Just been lucky so far I guess. Thanks for the info @Ezriilc