duckunlimited2

old pictures back in .14 Jeb is in the lander that\'s standing up out in the distance. This is how jeb was chosen to be the pilot.

The body looks like 3 kosmos radial RCS packs attached to something in the middle.

Really, Ima test that out right now! Edit: Well I be darned... it is true!

I forget what version I first played with when I discovered KSP. (.11 or .12, whatever had the mun first). But I remember I would launch a rocket and try my best at aiming it at the mun hoping i would hit it with a straight course. (wow i was dumb).

I wanted something light. so I used the tumblebot from the bigtrack mod.

For some reason, I like to build small planes. Don\'t know why, but all of my planes are relatively small. So, a few days ago, when I was fiddling around with planes, I wondered if replacing the regular fuel and engine with RCS tanks and RCS port would allow me to build smaller. Well, best inquiry ever! Here\'s the proof of concept space plane: Unmanned, Minimal, VTOL, and a PAIN to actually fly! I had to slap on the kosmos ASAS just to keep it flying straight. But it was RCS powered. This thing stays airborne pretty long and if I allow it to keep climbing in altitude, this thing can easily go orbital, all on just RCS power. I actually got this thing to slingshot shot around the moon then crash land back on kerbin! And here is what three days of work would give you. Perfection. It can do everything the proof of concept can do and fly. Craft file will be posted on bottom. You will need Probodobodyne, novapunch, c7s aviation pack,kosmos, bigtrack, and vanilla parts ??? Now the challenge here is pretty simple. Build your own RCS plane! Show them off in here. And honorable mentions will be given to unique designs. Rules: No mod restrictions Must be able to take off and land Must be easy to fly; balanced well; asas not permitted (avianics sas allowed) Can\'t lose any parts; must be one solid plane; no staging or decoupling RCS must only be used for thrust, it can\'t be used to aide stability or take-off and landing Honorable mentions (I think I might just mention everyone who beats the challenge; everyone\'s winners in my opinion , and it would be fun to create the reason\'s why ) 1. Duckunlimited2\'s 'Triangle' for the first successful RCS powered Space plane 2. RedDwarfIV\'s 'Scoot' for excellent use in part modification skill to make a small enough command module 3. Vostok\'s 'Biplane' for creatively merging early 20th century design and looks, with modern virtualware 4. TheMattyPrince\'s 'Parachute Plane' for having an incredible close flyby of the launch tower 5. Saaur\'s 'almost stock plane' for having an attractive sparkly nose on his design 6. Phoenix Aerospace\'s 'Swift Mk.I' for denouncing physics and proving we can fly in the vacuum of space 7. Shhhilent1\'s 'little jet' for an unconventional design that leaves ze kerbals, battered, bruised, and stranded, but alive 8. Excalibur\'s 'Mosquito' for being a 400m/s annoyance complemented with its own catchy theme song 9. Excalibur\'s 'Hawk Moth' for winning an Oscar for 'Most Innovative Film On Alternative Powered Flight 10. 11. etc, etc Now go and make me beautiful planes my minions! =P

One 3 meter tank with bertha engines and radially attach 4 or more 3 meter tanks also with bertha engines attach. Attach the payload on top with a secondary fuel tank and engine in between the payload and first stage. Make sure you have an advanced sas system on board to reduce wobble. I think i have a pic somewhere... ahh! this would do nicely This is a big, heavy interplanetary vessel destined for kerbol orbit. Those six radially attached rockets sent the vessel from the surface of kerbin, to a kerbin escape velocity with some fuel to spare. Again: Payload on top. Next stage down is your landing engines and tank if not already integrated in your payload. Next stage down is your orbital engine and tank that has the job of circularizing your orbit and doing your transfer burn. don\'t be stingy with this stage cause your first stage is massive! The final stage down, or first stage is a 3 meter tank with bertha engines with 4 other 3 meter tanks with bertha engines radially attached to that. Its job is to get you out of the atmosphere and into your target altittude. ASAS should be attached either on your payload, or landing engines with some regular SAS integrated on all staging. If you need rcs, you only need it from your orbital engine and tank and up. This is my personal rocket design which has no faults. Its stable cause its very bottom heavy and symmetrical. Its powerful with all those 3 meter tank and bertha engines. And its wobble proof thanks to its squat design and ASAS! Hope this helps!

I like to attach my big screen hd tv to my laptop while I\'m playing ksp. It makes everything look, well... big! And bigger just makes the experience that much bigger in my opinion. I wish I could split different game views (map view, regular view, the view without altimeter and navball, etc) on different screens. It would be cool knowing when I need to go into map view, I could look down and it would be there as regular view without the instruments is on the big screen and the altimeter and navball, etc is on another screen on my left. I get the feeling that I\'m truly in mission control down on kerbin.

First order of business: welcome to the forums! Second, if your trying to land on the mun, you should, once captured by the mun\'s gravity, create a stable orbit. I like 30-40 thousand meters above the surface. Then, retrograde until your orbital path takes you straight down. Another way to know if your going straight down is if you look on the north pole of your navball, your retrograde marker should be on the north pole. When your sure your going straight down, point your engines down and and thrust periodically to control your fall speed. (100m/s for my preference, when i reach 5000 meters, i slow to 50m/s.) right before you land, slow yourself to 10 or below m/s for a safe landing. I Hope that,s what your looking for

Curse you lauren faust! Why did you create such an awesome tv series. :\'( (I just became a brony this afternoon)

Yep, kerbin\'s radius is 600,000 meters. I shall show you some proof: Ever wonder why the mun\'s altitude is 11,400,000 meters and mimus\'s altitude is 46,400,000 meters? Why do they need an extra 400,000 meters? why can\'t they round it up to the millions place? Its because if you add kerbin\'s radius (600,000m) to their altitude, their orbital radius is 12,000,000 meters and 47,000,000 meters respectively. A nice, sensible number, that makes sense. If kerbin\'s radius was not 600,000 meters, then we get funky numbers like 12,100,000 meters or 36,900,000 meters, which don\'t make sense.

It could be releasing its gases when kerbol warms the lit side enough to sublimate its icy surface, creating a psuedo-atmosphere on the lit side. The Convection currents (or solar waves, or whatever that\'s called) could be moving the gases to the dark side of minmus, then it would turn into ice again. from then on, the cycle continues. Ima going to conduct some temperature data gathering on minmus in about a week. We\'ll see whats happening when the data tells its story.

I think the existence of a frozen minmus has a better chance in existing if we consider that the methane is not just pure methane, but a compound combined with other substances. I did a quick five minute research and found something promising. WHAT IF THE METHANE EXISTED AS METHANE CLATHRATE! Methane clathrate are methane molecules caged in a water molecule crystal latice. Or in other words methane frozen inside water ice. Water, being a heatsink, would better keep a solid, crystal state than just pure methane meaning it can exist in warmer areas, like closer to a star. To better get a picture on what temperatures it can exist in, methane clathrate has been found in large quantities in permafrost conditions on earth and under the ocean seabed. Yeah its cold for earth standards but its hot if you compare it to space cold. Now, its been said that methane clathrate forms in the outer reaches of earth\'s solar system so I would speculate that minmus is actually a captured 'asteroid' or the equivalent of a kuiper belt object in the kerbal universe that was slingshoted into the inner kerbol solar system and captured by kerbin. I also like this theory because it brings water to an already very useful moon. Methane based rocket fuel is being developed by NASA, meaning that minmus has the potential of being a very useful refueling station. Bring water to the equation and it can also provide water and oxygen to space bound ships. Here are my wiki links if you are interesting in learning about methane clathrate and clathrate hydrates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_hydrate#Hydrates_in_the_Universe

53 wpm on the first try second try was 50 word per minute only because I goofed somewhere that majorly derailed me for like ten seconds. third try was 44 (why am i getting worse!) only because I goofed somewhere again that derailed me for like 14 seconds ( i think its when i have to type an apostrophe) I feel like my average speed is around 60 words per second doing this if i don\'t make mistakes. But I won\'t try and confirm it.

I think I have a better grasp on what your trying to say. I think your saying that navballs aren\'t good for finding your space orientations because its designed to orient yourself while on the surface of the earth (or kerbin in the kerbal universe). Some of the things on the navball aren\'t needed while in space than is needed on the surface of kerbin (like knowing where north is). And its better to design a new system specifically for space travel and orientation. That\'s what your trying to say right? Well, albeit that its difficult to interpret in space, the navball is a tried and true instrument that works quite well. It could be tweaked, or changed completely, to better our attempts at referencing our orientation, but designing a better system takes effort and finding a fantastic design (like the navball) will take major effort and some luck. Hopefully Harvesters new systems would make it a whole lot easier to orient oneself. I also would like to say that we need a 3-d version of a compass rose that moves when we tilt our camera so we know what direction were looking at. It takes me forever to even find Kerbol in the sky while out in orbit.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=7485.0 This should do it. Your welcome. Note: its an old thread; don\'t go posting in it ya hear?

Here\'s some universal info (basic and advanced) to help you get your bearings with the navball: 1: Yellow Circle is your direction of travel 2: Green circle is in the opposite of your direction of travel 3: Purple/pink circle is Kerbin\'s position relative to you 4: If your cursor is at the north pole of the navball, your ship would be pointing straight up from Kerbin/mun/minmus/kerbol/whatever central object your orbiting 5: conversely, if your cursor is at the southpole of the navball, your ship is pointing straight down 6: When your cursor is on the North line (longitude) on the navball, your ship is pointing North, 90deg is east, 180deg is south, and 270deg is west 7: A circular orbit has both your yellow and green circle indicators on the equator line 8: if your yellow circle is in the north hemisphere, your direction of travel is generally taking you up and you are gaining altitude 9:If your yellow circle is in the southern hemisphere, your direction of travel is generally taking you down and you are losing altitude 10: If you are traveling west to east, Your yellow circle is on 90deg and green on 270deg 11: if you are traveling east to west, your yellow circle is on 270 and green on 90deg 12: If you are in a polar orbit (North to South) Your indicators will be either on the North line or 180 deg 13: If your traveling straight up, your yellow marker is on the north pole 14: if your traveling straight down, your yellow marker is on the south pole Here\'s some orbital maneuvers (both basic and advanced) that, if you truly master and understand, will allow you to go in any heading your little heart would desire: 1: burn on the yellow circular indicator to raise your orbit 2: burn on the green circular indicator to lower your orbit 3: burn on the north pole to raise your front half of your orbit, and lower your back half 4: burn on the south pole to lower your front half of your orbit, and raise your back half of your orbit 5: To change your inclination, its best to position your curser exactly between your green and yellow markers and burn (latitude wise) Note: your space craft position in your orbit will act as the orbits pivot point 6: when you are burning (no matter where you are on the navball) the yellow indicator will always move towards your curser, and the green indicator moves away from your curser. This is the best rule of thumb to exploit if you truly want to manipulate your orbits. Hope this helps, it definitely helps me Source: My own observations Reliably confirmed by: my own success stories

I made one of the earliest guide on rendezvous way back before persistence was implemented. It works on most circular orbits and its my main method for rendezvous. Actually, I just used it last night to get a satellite to minmus. Its an old thread though so don\'t go resurrecting it. Notes: Its alot better when you do the transfer burn a tiny bit later than mentioned in the guide. Its better because if you do miss minmus, its easier to wait for minmus to catch up to you than you trying to speed up your craft to minmus. (less fuel and less hassle) Also your calculating ORBITAL RADIUS, NOT ALTITUDE. Make sure you add kerbin\'s radius (600,000m) to the altitude to get orbital radius. I will make your life easier and tell you that your pre-transfer burn orbital altitude is 29,010,000m if you want to get to minmus. Good luck and here\'s the link: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=7138.0

Most of the time I just go straight up, full throttle, with extremely excessive amounts of thrust (like 5 Bertha engines) to clear the atmosphere and get me going. Then I start to fine tune the orbit. Or If I\'m using a space plane, I full throttle its engine at 45 degrees until apoapsis reaches my orbit, wait till I hit apoapsis, then circularize it.

I can do it with one engine if the craft is small and spins around quickly enough. If that fails, RCS is your friend.

Wait, you can deactivate/activate engines just by right clicking them??!!?!?! How come I\'ve never heard of this??!!?!?! When was this feature added??!!?!?!

I agree that it still works, but I disagree that its complex and requires perfect precision in order for it to work in ksp. All you have to do is thrust down in order to keep your altitude. Boom! That\'s it. It\'s not complex at all! And you don\'t have to persistently keep burning down in order to keep a perfect altitude. Just periodically burn down for a couple of seconds to keep it 50-200 meters in range of your target altitude. And remember, our end goal is to rendezvous, so we don\'t have to do it forever and prove we can break the rules of physics. Its doable. In fact, this method is my choice method for a rendezvous. Also, if you look at my previous post ( which should be 4 post before this post) I detailed how I do it. (actually its not exactly the same, since I set it up to slow the craft, not speed it up, but it works both ways with minor tweaking)

Hi guys, So, I\'ve been on hiatus for a couple of months due to other things getting priority over KSP. But the good thing is I have a whole summer to mess with KSP. Problem is I have no idea what the latest mods are and need help getting back up to speed. I\'m cleaning out my old parts and ship saves files for a fresh start and to get rid of the clutter. So what I exactly need is: 1. The most basic part kits (like c7 for aviation); I need a basic rocket kit, satellite kit, lander kit, etc, 2. The must have plug-ins like mechjeb, etc 3. Other revolutionary parts not found in the basic part kits (like the cart, and sunbeam) 4. anything else I might need to have Also, I probably need a rundown on some of the in game features that have been released since v14.

Ooooooh! Pick me! Pick Me! You should do what I do: *assuming both crafts have the same orbits (or as close as possible) Step 1. retrograde; how much is up to you. However, more does equal a faster rendezvous, but it will take more fuel. Less is slower but you use less fuel and its more precise. Step 2. After step 1, your craft will be slower than your rendezvous point/craft/thingy, so it will catch up to you, however, you will also be dropping altitude, to prevent that THRUST UP PERIODICALLY. up as in pointing your engine nozzle at the ground and thrusting away from kerbin/mun/sun/minmus/etc. If you actually look at the orbital map while your doing this burn, you will see that the immediate front half of your orbit will be raised up and the immediate back half of your orbit will be lowered. So burn 'up' to keep your immediate orbital path within altitude. Step 3. When your crafts are within 10-200 meters away from each other, boost/prograde to fix your orbit and keep pace with the craft. This method is best used when you need to cover a large distance quickly, or if you don\'t have a lot of time to wait for a hundred of orbits to happen (i.e. while in kerbol orbit) enjoy

NNNOOOOO!!!!!! My cat\'s turned to stone. :\'(