AlphaMensae

That's all you really can do. Scott Manley did that (well, I don't think he used MJ) during those hours-long burns in the later episodes of Interstellar Quest, and I did it as well with a mere 5 minute game time burn but due to heavy slowdown and lag lasted over 15 minutes in real time I let MJ handle it and did something else away from the computer.

As a part of the ongoing prep work for the Argo Navis Jool mission, I have converted the previous 2-stage Laythe/Tylo rover-carrier lander into a multipurpose modular system. The lower stage, which now has the majority of the overall dV, has been made a fully separate and reattachable unit, while the upper stage or ascent vehicle has been reworked into a full lander itself: Laythe version during Hyperedit test. Tylo version during Hyperedit test. There are two versions of the lower stage, one for Laythe and one with more fuel for Tylo. The central tank is a 5m one from SpaceY, and the landing legs are from Modular Rocket Systems (you may have noticed that pretty much the only mod parts I use are from Necrobones ). I have an action group to decouple the port between the lower and upper stages. Now instead of having to bring multiple landers to Jool, I only have to carry the crew vehicle/lander and two of the lower stage/rover packages, and possibly a small tug to transport the all-up lander around. With refueling from the mothership, I'll have the whole Jool system covered. I'm also going to leave the crew vehicle at my soon-to-emplaced Colchis station and ship some more lower stages over, so the station can continue the Jool survey mission.

My interplanetary ships that I have in space now are almost completely controlled by Mechjeb, which I see as the interface for the JAL-9000 computer (RGU) that is the brain of each ship and is "commanded" by the captain. Columbia has a side-mounted cupola pod for the captain's benefit, but the Endeavour and Challenger twins don't have even that; the captain is in the hab can with his/her laptop, I figure. Argo Navis will though have a cupola, this time mounted up front, but the ship will still be controlled by the RGU (may switch it to SpaceY's 3.75m unit).

The Endeavour is on its way to Eve! She will get there before Columbia gets to Dres. The last manever was to reacquire an encounter after the main transfer burn ended with the shp just outside of it. I then fine-tuned the encounter into a pass over the north pole to get a polar orbit (did the same with Columbia and Dres). And yeah, I'm using MJ to command and control all of these ships. One, it seems more appropriate for large interplanetary ships, but the main reason is that these ships are BIG and turn like rusty screws, and, especially with the loaded-up Endeavour and its 468 parts, lag becomes an issue, so I'm letting another computer program deal with it. Also, MJ is like a multi-tool; not only does it have the equivalent of Transfer Window Planner, it also will create the proper maneuver node for you, then execute it if you want. Then you can use its maneuver node editor to create fine-tuning maneuevers, and have those executed for you as well. So sweet! I have a nice Moho launch window coming up pretty soon, so I am now working on finishing the Argo Navis (I'm still tinkering with the design, trying to reduce part count even furthur) as well as add resupply fuel tanks for landers) then launching it for that mission. I'm just going to send one of my smallish rover-landers to Moho; given enough refeuling capacity it will be sufficient.

Yup, you can use a single LV-N for a Duna lander, here's one I made for many of my upcoming planetary missions: The atmo TWR is lower, but still plenty to take off. The tanks are LF ones from Fuel Tanks Plus, but stock ones would work too.

Yup, they do indeed break very easily when driving a rover on Kerbin, as I've found out. Now I only use RTGs.

Nope, as @Snark reported in the Suggestions thread: Which is indeed unfortunate since Jool could easily have at least four altitude-based situations; my ideas were for above the cloud layer ("Upper" or "High"), in the clouds ("Middle"), right below the cloud layer ("Lower"/"Low") and just above the ship-killing point that's still possible to survive and recover from ("Deep").

I at last have got the Endeavour all loaded up, and soon Jeb, Bob and friends will be heading to the puzzling purple planet that is Eve, though Bob is the only one who will be actually going down to the surface. First, docking the lander to the ship (actually the previously-docked crew retriever): Next I fitted out the nuke jet plane (after the test flight I ended up adding a top-mounted Jr. port for a parachute pod): Then, adding the Eve atmo entry package, preparing a launcher and getting it to the ship: Next was the rover, used essentially the same launcher: Here she is, all ready to go: Also, the previously mentioned (and launched) Colchis station and Athene nuke lightbulb tug, destined for Jool along with the Argo Navis (the station starts with those retracted radiators):

As all the shuttles were named after famous ships in history, I can always fall back on the fifth HMS Challenger, the one of the famous expedition.

Shades of that floppy monstrosity Scott Manley built in Interstellar Quest...burned for hours and hours because it couldn't handle more than 10% thrust.. Yup, this isn't Real Life, so unless you're unable to due to your situation in Career Mode or something, send a more powerful tug.

What I really want to know is why Squad never put biomes on Jool when they were assigning them to the planets. That's why I brought up the Galileo probe, they must have forgotten that the planet itself would be interesting as well. And since then people must have thought Jool was a special case, since it had no biomes it was not possible to add them...until Snark had a little brainstorm.

Well, the Columbia is on its way to Dres, and now I have been prepping the Endeavour for the Eve mission. This is a little more complex job, since I have to actually launch the Eve lander with attached utility tug into orbit and dock it to the frontal 2.5m port on the mothership, design and launch a crew retrieval craft to bring Bob back to the ship, and launch and attach the nuke plane and rover. The utility tug morphed from the simple retro engine used for the HyperEdit into a full-blown automated craft, since I figured there was no point in simply dicarding it when it could be used for other purposes--like sending the crew retriever to Gilly. That meant the orginal simple craft to dock with the Eve Lander's crew pod also morphed into something bigger, with a science package and dual 2.5m ports so I could attach it to the frontal port on the mothership and then attach the lander package to THAT. The Endeavour has gotten a bit longer. Now to design the plane and rover entry packages and launch THEM to the ship. The sister ship to the Endeavour is the Challenger, and she will be going to Duna, but there's a ways to go before a launch window opens. The Argo Navis when launched will be going to Moho first (its got the dV for the round trip), then to Jool...sort of my version of the Discovery from 2001. When that happen, I'll also be sending a station there for a permanent base of operations. Named Colchis (after the place where the Golden Fleece was located), it has 4 labs and lots of fuel storage, and is already launched into Kerbin orbit with its tug, another (smaller) Nuclear Lightbulb ship named Athene. Pics will come later.

That was a big part of your problem, those things are actually elevons, a combo elevator+aileron, and need to have pitch control enabled.

Snark, thank you, that is an exellent guide! The best thing was alerting me to the Navball Docking Alignment Indicator mod. I remember doing my first successful docking unaided, then I must have forgot what I exactly did as I started having trouble, then lately I've been completely screwing up docking, with my ships flying off in all directions, having to use MJ to finish it. That little mod added the missing piece to docking--the direction of the target's port axis. THAT is what I needed to point my ship at, do that and the rest was easy, as I did a made a quick ship for a docking test and succeeded on the first try. Heck, I was still centering the pink target indicator while moving slowly forward when all of a sudden I was docked.

It's amazing no one ever thought of this before! It seemed pretty simple for Snark to do it, I wonder why Jool never had biomes in stock before...maybe no one thought a Jupiter-type gas giant had anything to offer scientifically besides the moons? This after the Galileo craft had sent a probe into Jupiter's atmosphere.

Well, the Columbia is all loaded and ready to go. Final step was launching the two little LV-N landers (which for now I'm naming "Sagitta"). I first tried doing a "series" mounting, but putting a decoupler on that offset LV-N meant that the fairing was offset as well, preventing it from jettisoning properly...so, plan B: And what she looks like: Here's one of that pair of newer ships in orbit, this one is Endeavour; basically the two ships are a reworked version of the Columbia, with 4 supersized LV-Ns. Jeb and Bob are the leaders of this crew; I originally planned to send them to Duna, but now that I have a completed Eve lander ready, I might just send ol' Bob to the purple planet instead. And this is my current revised version of the Argo Navis (I), much slimmed-down from the previous version since it no longer has to carry 500+t of landers at .50 minimum TWR from Kerbin. I decided to add a visual touch by adding the docking section, complete with lights and helper rings from Modular Rocket Systems, since sticking the ports in between the Hab Can and MPL just didn't look right, so I went a little fancy. There are lots of stock parts, but also parts from Atomic Age (the Nuclear Lightbulbs), FTP, MRS and Space Y, and some have been Tweakscaled (not the Lightbulbs this time though ). 409t loaded without payload, a far cry from the huge 4000t+ monsters I've previously designed.

After spending a lot of time designing and redesigning and following various side trips, I'm finally prepping one of my three current Kerbin-orbiting interplanetary ships, namely this one: It's the sole survivor of my pre-Nuclear Lightbulb LV-N ships, the others were scrapped when I decided to install Tweakscale (but not any parts mods at that time) when, after one case with a ship having 16 LV-Ns, I thought "there has to be a better way". Then I "discovered" Porkjet's Atomic Age mod and decided to install Necrobones' Fuel Tanks Plus (and afterwards Space Y Heavy Lifters) and that put an end to the LV-N ships. This one, which was already in orbit, I decided to keep, since I felt it still had some use, as it is still capable enough. Originally it had the Argo Navis name, but I switched use of that name to the Lightbulb ships, and so renamed this one Columbia, after the first operational US Space Shuttle. I actually have two other LV-N ships in orbit, both of the same type, newer and slimmed-down vessels using FTP tanks, and they are also mostly fully-crewed and awaiting their mission plans and payloads. Their basically interim ships until I get the first finalized Argo Navis up and running (I gone through a whole bunch of designs for that too). This ship I'm sending to Dres, mainly because I have a launch window coming up in 50 days. For what it is to carry there, I've settled on the rover-lander you see attached to the front docking port, one I named Puppis (I have this naming theme for all the craft that are for the Argo Navis program that uses the component constellations and stars of the now-defunct ancient constellation Argo Navis).: This was a test of it on the Mun. Docking it to the ship. That's all I really needed, but since I had the attachment ports, I decided to bring along 2 indentical small 1-man landers as well. I already had some designs available, then I built another one, then, partly inspired by Cupcake's tiny VTOL dropships, I built this: Yes, that's an LV-N offset way into the body of the lander--a practical single-LV-N lander. Full science package, RCS and docking capability, radiators, RTGs and over 5400 m/s dV in a 15 or so ton package. For the mission, Natatris Kerman is captain, commanding in the cupola (more of a RP thing, an RGU is the actual "brain"), while Val and Berthis will be in the Puppis. There are two scientits already in the lab (which has some preloaded data from a big Mun science-mining mission) and the the two little LV-N landers will have a scientist in each; will probably launch them with their landers.

Amazingly, I never thought of that, but yup, legs or engines would make it much easier. Legs would be simpler than engines, if not the most visually appealing, depending on how big of a rover Red Shirt wants.

That's pretty much the easiest, if not the only, way to do it without going the storable route. I once tried to make a large lander that could deploy and reattach a larg-ish rover using the same method. Got it to work great during tests on Kerbin...then while doing tests on the Mun the rover wouldn't reattach--the lower gravity didn't pull down the lander's docking port far enough. Getting the heights of the two docking ports right is the key. You want just enough clearance after the rover deploys for it to move out without catching onto the plane's port yet no so much that the rover won't reattach.

Ah, the targeted landing is the issue. I suggest using a lander with a LOT of fuel and engine power, like an FL-T400 tank with four more radially attached to it and a Terrier on each radial tank; run a fuel line from the central tank to the radial tanks. This will give you plenty of delta-V and TWR to play with. Then adjust the plane of munar orbit (burn in the Normal and Anti Normal directions), and time warp until the lander will pass right over the Kerbals you want to rescue at a low altitude, like 10000 m. When the lander nears the desired spot, do a full-thrust retro burn until you kill a horizontal velocity. If you time it right you will come to a stop right over or very close to the stranded group of Kerbals, then you can land like normal. If you end up close enough the Kerbal(s) can jetpack over to the rescue ship; a 1-way trip with a full pack can go pretty far. If you don't have a docking port on a capsule, the ship can't dock, so you'll have to EVA the Kerbals over to the station using the jetpack, old-KSP style. I have successfully rescued a stranded Kerbal before (it was on Minmus). I think I had to jetpack him over to the rescue craft, but he did get back to Kerbin without any furthur mishap.

I was thinking the same thing--altitude-based biomes for gas giants--then AbacusWizard beat me to it. Yup, more science situations for gas giants would seem most likely to happen. "Upper" could be the clear region above the clouds, "Middle" could be the cloud layer, "Lower" could be below the clouds, and "Deep" could be a bit above the "surface" or ship-killing point with the highest temp and pressure that could be survived and returned from.

Oh, yes, it's quite possible to resuce all of them. You just need to decide if you want to bring them all back in one trip or several trips, because that will determine how big of a ship and rocket you'll need. Also, what's your current level in the tech tree? Are you playing Sandbox, Science or Career? This will determine what parts you have available To bring them back all at once, and if you have the parts, you can either send the Hitchhiker Storage Container + Mk1-2 Capsule or three Mk1 crew cabins + Mk1 capsule as the main ship, then add a small lander with a probe core that can go down to the surface empty and bring up the Kerbals. Put lots of fuel on it and/or carry extra on the ship for refeuling. Depending on the crew capacity of the lander this could mean doing up to 6 rescue landings, launchings and dockings. You also have to get the lander close enough to the stranded Kerbals so that they could at least do a long-tange jetpack trip to the rescue craft. The rocket to launch this ship will be on the larg-ish side, 2.5m tanks and engines as a minimum. Better err on the "too large" side to be safe if you aren't using a delta-V readout mod like Kerbal Engineer Redux. Bringing fewer Kerbals back at a time means you can use a smaller ship and rocket, it will just take more trips to the Mun and back to your station. The smallest ship needed would be an empty Mk1 capsule or lander can with a probe core attached and enough fuel to go to the Mun, land and return. Launch this into Kerbin orbit, then shuttle it back and forth between Kerbin orbit and the Mun. You'll have to do it 6 times, so it might be better to send a ship with more crew capacity.

I actually revised it again, in order to see how much smaller I could make it and to provide direct access to the surface from the crew stage so I could actually take back the science collected from the surface. I decided to drop RCS and docking ability, will use a small retrieval craft to bring in the Kerbal tasked with this mission. This is still in 1.0.4, so no Vector and non-stackable Aerospikes. I started up 1.0.5 to see what I could do there, and it's true, the Vector makes an Eve lander all too easy. I started with the final stage, and used KER to figure out the boost stages, in this case optimizing for dV and mass. Final result came to 168.5 t without the heastshield+retro engine, 210t with them. The final stage is essentially just the Mk1 capsule, a mostly-empty FL-T400 tank and a Terrier, so a bit under 2t. Lower stage of the core is a Rhino with radial-decoupled Aerospike boosters. Main engines are four Mainsails. The adapter tanks and slanted nose tanks are from Fuel Tanks Plus. Those big radial decouplers are from Space Y and include sepratons. Landing gear are Tweakscaled 200% LT-2s on radial decouplers.

Those are great, Hotaru, they would fit right in wit some of the shorter stories in the boo (also the Unidentified section from Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD)...and I read that "Nemo Station was the last..." in the style of the Babylon 5 intro. I take it you weren't using a life support mod, because that would have really upped the level of pathos in poor Adnard's story.

I forget the details now, not sure when it fell over, but I think I must have thought at the time that the situation was hopeless, so a rescue ship was sent. There's no probe core on the lonely little lander, so I would have to send another pilot if I want to try using the torque to get it upright. Still, I might leave the site undisturbed as a place for Kerbal Kids Field Trips.