BillWiskins

I'm going to recommend the 'come in low and fast' approach' too. I set my periapsis around 5,000m and begin the retrograde burn just after. It's perfectly do-able to come in lower, but I used to start my descent at something silly like 80,000m, and I guess some of that hesitation remains. One of the benefits is that if you do it right, you'll cancel your horizontal velocity and only have a short distance left to descend. That means using less fuel, and it's quicker too. Jean, the controls can be a bit touchy, especially if your lander is small. I recommend using precision mode (capslock) if that's what is causing the problem. Also, I remapped the throttle up/down keys over to 'p' and semicolon, so I can use left hand for steering and right for power. Another thing to mention is that once you've more or less confirmed that you're headed for more or less flat ground, all of the flying is done with the nav-ball. You'll be moving around in all directions, probably rotating as well, so the camera view is pretty useless apart from checking how far it is to the surface.

Just in case, since you mentioned not knowing a lot of technical terms, 'burn retrograde' is just turning your craft around, so that the engine is aimed at the direction you are moving - so you're travelling backwards - and throttling up. It has the opposite effect of burning prograde, obviously, so rather than accelerate, you'll slow down. On the navigation ball in the bottom centre of the screen, there is a yellow marker. That's your forward direction - prograde - and there is also one on the opposite side of the ball as you rotate, which shows your retrograde vector. That one has a cross through it. Nibb refers to adjusting your Pe - that's marked on the map, so you'll have seen it already. It's your closest point in an orbit to the body you're in orbit of. It's short for 'periapsis', and the opposite is 'apoapsis', Ap in game, and the furthest point of your orbit. When you burn to intercept the Mun, you'll see the orbital projection change in the map view. There will now be a new 'Pe' marker - referring to your approach to the Mun - and this you can alter from as far away as low Kerbin orbit. Basically you'll want to adjust it (by speeding up or slowing down using pro and retrograde burns) as soon as possible, so try to do it as soon as the map screen shows the encounter. It's more fuel efficient that way.

There is, but you have to go in and edit the persistent.sfs file in your saves folder. I've never done it, so back up the file first, but I believe you'll need to edit the 'UT' parameter. I think the value is in seconds, so you'll want to work out the total seconds represented by the date you want, and set it to that. Good luck...

Aye, precisely what I meant.

Tee hee. It's not really a landing engine, is it? Land on them anywhere with much gravity and they'll soon be overwhelmed, unless you have a lot of them, which sort of defeats the point. If you were determined to use them, though, you could mount two or more symmetrically high up on the lander, on radially mounted tanks. That way they'd be out of the way, and you could use landing legs as normal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latitude_and_longitude Should be enough information there to get the gist. And I share your feelings on the topic of MechJeb. Some very useful features, but... no.

Related: http://www.petapixel.com/2012/09/11/amateur-astrophotographer-captures-huge-explosion-on-jupiter/Obviously a different scenario from what we will experience in the game, but with all the talk of atmospheric entry of our largest new celestial body I thought it seemed relevant. With that kind of density, there may be ways to go about descending in to it, but whether it's a good idea remains to be seen...

Mr Manley, sir, I'd like to say that your videos are quite splendid. I largely avoid "Let's Play ..." or similar instructional videos - I think KSP is about spending countless hours trying, failing and redesigning before finally hitting that refined design that actually works - but I will always watch your creations. The 'Budget Cuts' series was fantastic and I do not mind admitting that I almost cheered when Wildorf Kerman finally managed to grab a rung on his rescuing ship. Long may it continue, I say (and hope).

Well, there are a couple of ways to do it (including editing the persistence file) but you can just switch to the items in question using [ and ] (or double-click icons in map view), and then hit ESC and 'End Flight'.

Just turn off any SAS/ASAS you have running (hit 't') and use WASD to pitch your rocket over slowly. Head for 90 degrees on the navigation ball for best results. In all honesty, you'll probably want to do your gravity turn a little earlier - I tend to start mine at 10,000 meters, but of course it depends on the craft. You want to be horizontal by the time you leave the atmosphere (just under 70,000m). Then, as stated - burn in the direction of the yellow circle, which should hopefully be at the horizon on the nav-ball at 90 degrees by this stage. Wait for your Periapsis to appear on the other side of Kerbin, and then watch it rise until it's out of atmosphere as well. Then, you'll have a nice, stable orbit. Edit - predictably beaten to it. Oh dear.

That's a lot of rocket for one little guy! I guess I've been playing longer than you have - one-man landers were all we had, back in the day... I found the transition to massive three-man things quite challenging to begin with. Seemed like you had a pretty solid landing there, though - what was scary about it? Those chunky landing legs can take more punishment than you'd think.

In before the 'bounce' technique is outlawed or sub-categorized, this: Observing the wheeled approach used by others, I made some adjustments and added some landing gear. Largely by accident, what happens now is that everything but the SRB and the landing gear are destroyed on impact a hundred metres or so down the runway, leaving a nicely elevated trajectory and almost no additional weight. It is more or less what I was shooting for, but I'd be lying if I said I expected it to happen straight away...

Trial and error is understating it a bit! I don't think I've ever hit the 'launch' button with such frequency. Anyway my best thus far is 11.2km: Edit: slight angle adjustments yielded a great improvement:

I base none of my advice of real-world physics - just what seems to have worked for me. Too much weight in front of the wings makes it very hard to rotate and lift off. Then again, I'm sure someone with more knowledge and space-plane experience will be along to give more definitive answers in a short while..

That's a fancy party trick for sure. Very impressive. I was even more impressed to hear a bit of Nightwish backing the flight, though. Nice choice.

Don't use too many control surfaces. I abandoned the large ones in favour of using the smaller ones, positioned as far out along the wing as possible. Use precision mode when flying (hit capslock). Mount your wings at an angle (hold shift and use WASD when building) such that the leading edge is higher than the trailing edge, if you are struggling to take off. Try to place the majority of the weight towards the rear of the aircraft, and the wings as well.

i like the larger parts. Now that we have the ability to stand next to our creations, they mean we can build some very impressive-looking machines, and pose for smug photos on the Mun with them. There are issues, certainly, and the decoupler problem is an irritation - but it can be dealt with by managing acceleration. Keep that G-force meter down and they will hold. The only real annoyance is the way the crafts will sometimes mis-behave when being manoeuvred. Here's hoping that the Kraken fix will address that. They can also be slow to pitch, but I have found that they don't mind nearly as much when you ask them to roll - you can use this. If you need to pitch up or down to hit your velocity vector or whatever, give it a bit of roll side-to-side first. It looks daft, but it seems to make the vehicle much more willing to pitch. Finally - here's what I have been using to take lumps of metal to the Mun:

I like the way it looks... also, tried flying an empty ship recently? Having said that, there is now a growing temptation to do a few more missions. Maybe make a new landing site nearby, EVA on over to join the others... Guard13007, thanks. There are 19 - there were 16, and then I landed another three-man capsule. Sorry for the unclear image. Will supply a better one next time...

It affects your control with or without RCS. It doesn't require ASAS either. I find precision mode practically essential for flying planes - using a keyboard, the controls are just way too sensitive without it.

Oh hey, I got on a leaderboard. Splendid! I have an update, if such things are allowed. There are 19 there now, but that will be the limit. Certainly in terms of landing ships in that spot, which for me is the meat of this challenge. With so many ships there, the lag has become so bad that any kind of manoeuvre is pretty much impossible. Example: I wanted to move the latest lander a little closer to the others, so I lightly tapped the throttle up. A number of seconds later, the screen updated and my lander was about 20 meters up, throttle all the way up to 40/50%, and (significantly) upside-down. How it came down feet-first and without causing a terrible disaster I don't know, but it did, and I left it there.

Well, I did some tests (science!) using a ship comprised of a three-man pod, two large liquid fuel tanks, one large LFE and three of the updated SRBs - so far, decoupling them with parachutes works fine at just under 350m/s (the point at which they burned out), 450m/s and 550m/s. What sort of speeds were you decouplachuting at? 0

There are many, many ways to to pretty much everything in this game. Keep throwing parts together and eventually you'll come up with something that works. The experimentation is the best part of KSP! However, if you're having a specific problem, there are lots of 'How To...' guides on this forum (and on YouTube). Or let us know what is going wrong with your designs specifically, and you'll soon get some relevant advice.

Well, there were more, but they went home. Pansies. Commander Aldley Kerman gathers the others around to break the news that none of the vehicles present brought any 'getting home' fuel.

That's not a glitch - that's how all engines behave! As far as I know, the fuel glitch occurs when you use minimum throttle on certain engines or fuel tanks, or combinations of the two (look it up, there will be threads) - at which point the fuel will not just last longer, it will last forever.

In related news, F2 will turn off the instrument display for a clearer view.