RizzoTheRat

Went on a 3 kerbal rescue mission, picked up the one in Mun orbit and then headed back to Kerbin to collect the other two. Rendezvoused with the first pod...and discovered it was empty...yes I've already rescued both of them but forgot to stop tracking their pods. Oops

Using RemoteTech and kOS I am very reliant on having a good comms connection at all times. My original constellation of 4 KommSat 1's went in to LKO back before I first landed on the Mun, so somewhat limited in technology, but with enough range to talk to constellations of 3 identical identical KommSat 1's around The Mun and Minmus. Now I'm ready to move further afield the network needed upgrading, so Kerbin's KommSat 1's have been retired and replaced with KommSat 2's, these have a much longer range RemoteTech omnidirectional antenna, as well as a directional antenna that can reach Minmus. The longer range omni means they can talk to the pair of KommSat 3's in a polar orbit, with long and medium range directional antennas

I've been developing my kOS scripts for interplanetary travel, so while this might seem a bit of an overkill for a Minmus lander, there is method in my madness Quite a lot of pictures...

I keep getting the falcon legs mounted at odd angles when I load from a save file, is that the same issue or something else?

Despite playing on and off for many years, I've only just realized the benefit of something I've never done before. Transferring between Minmus and the Mun is exactly the same as transferring between different planets, and even involves an inclination change, but with much smaller distances, shorter burns, and is therefore an overall faster process. As I'm doing everything with kOS, this is proving an excellent way to develop my interplanetary scripts without the time and expense of interplanetary missions. I've never bothered transferring between them before, and I guess lots of other people don't do it either, but I'd say it's well worth doing for new players to get the hang of the maneuvers needed for interplanetary missions.

I think I may have found a bug in my kOS landing script...

Finally got my kOS aerocapture script working properly Which means I can now land my returning ship Still needs some work on the guidance to get it landing in the right place, but it'll do for now. (Apologies for the length, my video editing software seems to be having issues)

I only ever use them to fulfil station/ base contracts. I put some scientists in one once but they take so long to process stuff you can progress a lot faster by just going out and getting some more science instead.

Automated rescue mission went well Landing less so, it was supposed to land at the other end of the nice flat runway! Amazingly didn't explode when it fell over, so despite being a bit of an overkill to send a quad vector engined SSTO to rescue 2 stranded Kerbals, the total mission cost was still under 11k, which is cheaper than my much less capable early game 3 seat disposable tourist orbiter (the launch stages are disposable, not the tourists!) Why are so many stranded Kerbals Pilots though? After my first couple of missions I have no need for pilots at all, all my craft have a probe core and is flown by my kOS scrips, so all the crew need to do is reset the science experiments and give a bonus for ISRUs or drills.

I keep meaning to revisit that challenge, it's a bit limited in that it's a single design, I had plans for rounds 2 and 3. My standard approach for a multi stage rocket, which I did a bit of experimentation to produce and is what triggered that challenge, is to aim for about 1.6-1.8 TWR at launch, with a first stage powerful enough to get the Ap out to 60 seconds, then 1.2-1.4ish TWR second stage to maintain that 60 seconds. Throttling to keep the Ap 60 seconds then improves efficiency by reducing the gravity loss is the initial pitch over for the gravity turn wasn't aggressive enough. I used to limit the ascent speed based on Q but in the current aerodynamics model I don't think it really makes a lot of difference unless you have a very high dV

Another tourist trip to the Mun gave a chance to get my kOS docking script working perfectly, the lander docks with the SSTO launcher in LKO and then does a powered descent to the KSC Landing script still needs some work though, the idea is the Blue Origin style wings on the SSTO let me extend the glide range and steer , and then nose down hard to get a vertical landing, currently targeted on the end of the runway Currently landing around 650m from the target

Ok I'm getting annoyed with the deployed seismic sensor now! Crashed a 2 tonne missile in to the Mun at nearly 2200m/s just 100m from the sensor, and how much science did I get? That's about 3 times the kinetic energy of the one on Minmus that netted 400 science yesterday! So I reloaded from a save and launched the missile as I was approaching the Mun, rather than from orbit. this time it hit at 2250m/s, but 70km away from the target Clearly there is no benefit in trying to impact near the sensor

One of the things I really love about KSP is that the base game is pretty simple, and there's a host of mods available to turn it in to something else. The general concept of career mode with the science unlocking the tech tree allowing you to build ever more capable craft to fulfil more complex contracts is great. The lack of connection between the science gathered and the parts developed isn't realistic but it does make it accessible to new players. I like the idea a few have mentioned here of having different science disciplines (astronomy, chemistry, materials...) that contribute to different parts, but would that make the game harder for new players? Personally I always play with RemoteTech and ScanSat, and establish a communication network and then send probes to map bodies before I land, so I can see where the different biomes are and find relatively flat bits, but most new players just want to blast their way to the moon and the additional steps required would be pain for them. I do think the Tech tree could do with a bit of a reshuffle though, putting probes up before crewed vessels would be more realistic.

I think that's probably one of the better ways of doing it, certainly on a vacuum body, KE = 1/2 m v^2 so velocity is more important than mass assuming the seismometer uses sensible physics. I'm quite enjoying the challenge of trying to get something as close as I can at the maximum speed possible though, plus I like multi purpose missions so the launch and transfer also took a lander with 5 tourists to a new biome for science, and fulfilled a put a base on Minmus contract. For manual flying @Grogs approach of stop and then go straight down is probably going to give the best accuracy, but you still need to account for the body's rotation. But in that approach mass is probably going to be easier than velocity as lower speeds should get better accuracy. I don't think my current approach, done with kOS, would be doable manually. I've still got several hundred m/s horizontal speed so even a fraction of a second out on the engine cutoff can make a big difference. One thing I have learned from this, in future sensors will be placed on west facing hills, and the steeper the slope the better, to reduce the east/west distance error. Duna's going to need something with aerodynamic guidance and a slow enough speed to not explode which should be interesting.

The higher orbital speed for the Mun magnifies the errors on my Impactor calculation that worked so well on Minmus, so I've tweaked it a bit to fire the engine earlier, and then cut the engine shortly before impact, allowing it to make adjustments in range by when it cuts the engine. My Minmus impactor weighed 3.9 tonnes (Poodle powered transfer stage), and crashed at 860m/s, giving about 1.4 GJ around 100m from the sensor, and maxed out the data collection with 400 science. My Mun impactor was 2.7 tonnes Terrier powered missile and hit at 835 m/s for about 0.9GJ around 70m from the target. I am somewhat underwhelmed with the result! As this is still a work in progress I'm tempted to revert and have a go with a Reliant rather than a Terrier for some extra mass and a lot more speed.

A fairly long winded and complicated mission over the last few days for me, developing the kOS code to do sections of it as I went along. My main earner at the moment is tourist missions, so Jeb took a group of tourists on an adventure. The launch is in to the plane of Minmus orbit, and works pretty well with only around 10-15m/s needed to tweak the inclination once in orbit. 4 vectors may seem a bit of overkill for a trip to Minmus, and that's because it is. The lifter is actually a SSTO capable of lifting a 36 tonne Rockomax Jumbo 64 to an 80km orbit The transfer stage with almost 1600 m/s dV also looks like a bit of an overkill, and again that's because it is. Having put the lander in to a Minmus orbit, it had enough fuel remaining to accelerate straight down all the way to the ground, impacting at 860m/s just 100m away from my deployed seismometer (posted about that the other day, quite proud of it). This was done with a numerical integration approach to calculate the optimum time to start the burn, and then some lateral steering to eliminate cross range errors. The lander then put Jeb and his 5 tourists down on Great Flats to run some science experiments. It then returned to Kerbin, using Trajectories to plot an aerocapture rather than landing. This allowed it to rendezvous and dock with the launch vehicle, this was actually my first docking in this career, and involved a fairly hefty overhaul of my Hohmann transfer code, which will now need to replace the current code used for Moon rendezvous, and RCS guidance code. Unfortunately I then realised my landing script is set up for an equatorial orbit, and I don't have the calculations in there to wait until the orbit passes over the KSC, so instead of landing on the runway for 100% fund recovery, it landed a bit further north for only about 95% The lander had sufficient parachutes to land on it's own if all went wrong, so they were used to reduce the fuel requirement on the landing, but the aim is for fully propulsive landings. From an equatorial orbit I can reliably land the booster on the runway (I still haven't got the range error small enough to try for the pad) when empty, but this was the first time landing one with a payload. the Blue Origin style wings and fins give me trade speed to lift and extend the range, while steering to minimise the North/South errors, and then pitch down to a nice steep angle for landing, but I've not quite worked out where to start the pitch down manouvre. Some further optimisation is required, but it means the entire lander is recoverable without the need for heatshields or worrying about stability in hard aerobraking, it just needs to survive enough aerobraking to get an orbit.

Ah OK thanks, I'd assumed I was only getting 45% of the maximum achievable amount. I've got another one set up on the Mun so I'll go and drop something on that later too. Then I'll need to figure out aerodynamic guidance for Duna... It does seem that distance is very important, I lost 8% at a distance of 100m, I'd guess it goes down with the square of distance?

I've never really used deployed science before, so it wasn't until I'd set up a seismometer on Minmus that I realised I needed to crash something near it to generate data. So my next mission to Minmus took a beefed up transfer stage that arrived in Minmus orbit with fuel to spare. After failing to work out the maths properly for it, I wrote a kOS script to do numerical integration to figure out when I needed to start a burn straight down in order to impact near the sensor with the maximum possible speed. After adding in some proportional guidance to cancel out the cross range velocity, my 3.9 tonne craft impacted at 860m/s just 100m from the target, with 1.4x10^9 joules of KE, approximately equivalent to a third of a tonne of TNT. I had to video it to see how close and how fast it was as it happened rather quickly I had no idea you got so much science from them! I need to train Bob up a bit more, he's only 2 stars at the moment

I just use WASDQE in my left hand for roll, and a IJKLHN in my right for translation

My usual career path is to do a couple of landings on the Mun so I can research some bigger engines and docking ports, and then send a bigger mission to the mun with a lander, orbital fuel dump and return vehicle to gather science from multiple biomes, then I send another big expedition to Minmus to do the same. This time around, after 2 missions to the Mun and one to Minmus, I realised that rather than saving money by doing multiple landing in one mission, I can make money by doing multiple trips to Mun and Minmus carrying paying tourists. The first iteration uses a Mk2 pod to carry 1 tourist, but that's just netted me enough science to get the Mk1-3 pod and take 2 tourists per trip. Of course this means lots of repetitive trips to the Mun and Minmus, but that was kOS is for. Glebree certainly looks she thinks the trip was worth the money.

Finally decided to stop fiddling with my kOS scripts and actually fly a complete mission! My first "real", as opposed to software development "simulations", mission to Minmus of this career, fully kOS driven. Annoyingly I accidentally flew it with Jeb not Bob so couldn't bring back science form orbit as well as the surface, but the autopilot works so I can now sent Bob to other locations. The launch stage is a bit rubbish with too high a TWR, hence the rather inefficient launch profile. My code is optimised for a launch TWR of around 1.6-1.8 and second stage of around 1.2, and will throttle back to flatten the trajectory if the ship is too powerful. Mid course correction still needs a bit of work, and the intercept is a bit off as I'm currently burning prograde rather than tangentially, which I think pushes the Ap to a bit too late. But I figured it was time to earn some science so I can build some better ships. Mission 124, so named as that's the input to the menu required for the mission: 1 (New mission), 2 (Minmus), 4 (Land at Lat/Lng).

Same as Snark, either launch in to a higher orbit ahead of the target, or a lower orbit behind the target, and then plot an intercept. Depending on the altitudes involved it's usually easy enough to sort it out within 1 orbit. My standard launch profile is to 80km so I tend to put stations at 120-150ish and then come in below them.

I use ScanSat so I map bodies before I land there and the map highlights anomalies, I've just never bothered visiting them as I usually just use the maps to get the Lat/Long of flattish bits in the different biomes to land on. Time to start visiting anomalies!

Bob broke Minmus

I also keep thinking I should have a play with subs at some point so watching this with interest. Presumably in a jet engine sub, as you use fuel it gets more buoyant? I'm sure I've seen people say landing gear has different buoyancy deployed and stowed, are there any parts than can be used to control buoyancy like that? I guess drain valves can be used to increase buoyancy, but I'd like to be able to decrease it as well.