suicidejunkie

I'd linked that thread earlier, but as you'd noted it isn't quite up to date. I was thinking to try and make an MM patch based on the changes you'd found necessary, but I suppose the best way to communicate what those changes are is an MM patch itself

Nice. Could you make a list of the steps you took while they're fresh? I'm collecting a mod set for my Dad to upgrade to, and that would come in handy for me and probably a lot of other people.

Would it be possible to simply grey out/disable the sliders when picking the ship design for a survey station? I feel like that would get the idea of can't-auto-fill-it-with-resources across while still giving that warm fuzzy feeling of security knowing you've got the right sort of craft. Try that perhaps

Over 200 since in addition to the orbital junk, I've coated Kerbin's mountains with a surface grid of relay probes to allow a link from KSC to radio towers at Kerbin's south pole, to Mun's south pole and then out from there. Got a solid belt around Minmus north/south and east/west. All fixed ground stations so there is no orbital drift and connectivity is guaranteed for eternity in case my Kerbals ever feel the need to check their chatterer messages.

My mouse ran out of left clicks last week, so I quickly swapped with a co-worker who isn't here, and scrubbed it down with alcohol before waiting for a replacement. The supplies of spare parts at home are fairly similar in quantity and variety to Jeb's scrapyard on the Minmus flats.

1) Does your vehicle withstand at least 0.1g accel from one end? No -> How were you planning to get anywhere? Add moar boosters/struts, goto 1. Yes -> Land it on Minmus, hook up a fuel hose to the refinery on the flats, do some other stuff for a bit, and come back to a full tank.

I've found I've mostly needed midsize engines and landing legs due to terrain/loading glitches. Smaller fuel tanks and 909s are provided by the junkyard from my early surface-staged rockets. I do keep a crate at my bases well stocked with lights, screwdrivers, cans of Perri-air (IE; the smallest TAC LS containers), and some RTGs for emergency slapping on to crippled craft to give the engineers time to work. There's also the standard orbital rescue kit with oscars, ant, octo, parachutes and fins for punting random things (contracts mostly) into Kerbin's air for recovery. My spaceplanes on the other hand, are generally repaired in the SPH since that's the only place the mirroring can be properly fixed for hands-off ascents. Jeb was involved when they were officially Kerb-rated for one-wing zero-control reentries / lithobraking, and the more common problem is Minmus nipping off a control surface leading to flat spins on reentry, but I've gotten pretty good at recovering from the latter and putting 'er down on the runway anyways.

For fuel sourcing, I like to refine on the surface for faster fueling action. Pumping mass quantities from one tank to another goes a lot faster than running the ISRU conversion. The surface bases can mine and refine in the background while I'm off doing other things. My fuel stations have 2.0 TWR at Minmus surface, and refill on the flats from the refinery tanks before heading back to their posts near LKO and Mun. For launch vehicles, I usually have them boost the payloads only to space; the payloads can circularize themselves before refueling, which saves on the booster size. Crew transfers and small cargo ride direct to Minmus surface with a whiplash/nerva Mk2 spaceplane. I used to do random browser stuff while the planes chugged their way to orbit, but my new PC is a lot faster. KAS for doing in-situ repairs is also critical to maintaining your fleet and reducing the number of replacements necessary. Having a collection of common spare parts is much more cost effective than having entire spare vehicles.

Personally, I like to rescue a kerbal with a tourist in the 3rd seat. That way I can get a direct launch-to-rendezvous and fill the empty seat without having to wait for too many orbital maneuvers. A finely tuned BACC-pack with a hitchhiker on top also makes for a great fast space-bar-to-space for suborbital tourists. ("This vehicle has now reached our AP of 70258m, and your credit cards have been billed. Have a nice day!") Once I've gone beyond LKO, my tourism drops to a nothing until the training/tour bus SSTO starts making bulk Kerbal shipments for $2000 worth of fuel. And satellite contracts are almost always lucrative, particularly if you do two in one and then end up with a useful comms relay buoy afterwards.

If you want cheap gas, then Minmus is the place to get it from. 6x LV-Ns with a dedicated 1500 LF each will haul 200 tons of cargo fuel to Kerbin and Mun with enough left to return and land at the refinery. I threw enough docking ports and auxiliary bits onto the tanker so they are basically LKO/LMO fuel stations that take a two week vacation once per year or so, to go get themselves more fuel. In contradiction to the laws mentioned, these monstrosities launch with the minimum amount of fuel for safety, lob high and spend a long low thrust burn circularizing with the LV-Ns before trundling off to Minmus.

Landing the SSTO rocket at a lower altitude / semi-random location wouldn't be a problem if you have surface based infrastructure (truck, helicopter?) to haul it up to the launch site and point it towards space. Also, what about drop tanks with box struts for impact protection? They wouldn't be on parachutes so they'd reach the ground rapidly, but also have the impact tolerance to not explode on contact and thus be reusable. The aerodynamics would be terrible, but you'd just be using them to get more altitude while your speed is low anyways. An alternative would be a rocket-skirt with the same lithobraking option, and maybe one drogue to keep the struts pointed towards the ground. Set the rocket on it, boost, and then stage it off. Throw in some retractable wheels so you can reposition it easier for the next use. The main thing is it would burn fast, fall back down relatively quick and autoland while you're still in physics range, but still give you that dV margin you need.

They accomplish the SSTA mission by being extremely efficient with their TWR and dV budget. The place you're going to will put a lower limit your TWR, but that's the TWR well into the mission after burning off some fuel. As to the dV budget, LKO is halfway to anywhere if you chart your course right, and it costs less than 3km/s to get to LKO. An extra 1.5km/s burned at the bottom of Kerbin's gravity well can put you on course for most other planets, and then you spend the rest on arrival to land/capture safely. Some go for gravity assists from other planets to squeeze out a bit more dV, and aerobraking is extremely useful. (Have you seen the suit-only return from Gilly to Kerbin surface? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDLBTvpzf_s) That's 600m/s total budget IIRC)

They aren't engraving the plaques, they're just choosing which one to use. The large supply of pre-engraved plaques for every possible occasion and typo is why stock rocket parts are so heavy.

I hate to waste fuel and parts, so I was busy using my Mun lander's transfer & deorbit stage to come in for landing. I staged it off while hovering about 10m up, then lowered the landing gear and prepared to settle down for some science. Landing on a fuel tank is far less effective than landing on solid ground, and my vehicle promptly tipped over. ... But the stupid part isn't that it happened, rather that it was the third identical mun lander to have the exact same piloting problem. (The subsequent identical Mun landers #4 through #6 managed to avoid landing on their previous stages, but still managed to tip over for unrelated reasons.)

I had a Minmus bus which had been reconfigured to hold extra snacks to deliver. At the last minute, a tourism contract came up, so I piled in a full set of 6 instead of the originally intended single pilot. Between the overcrowding and the reduced tankage, I got the 10% low O2 alarm halfway to Minmus. By burning all the landing and return fuel, I was able to accelerate the bus to the point where it would reach Minmus SoI in 3.5 hours instead of 3 days, but it would be performing a 1000m/s flyby at PE. Bill was working at Jeb's Junkyard at the time, so he assembled an LV-909 and stacked a bunch of FL-T400 tanks around it with KAS. Scraping all the fuel in the area together along with an extra can of air, he launched vertically and fought hard against the unbalanced load to hover near the incoming trajectory before burning to rendezvous. Going EVA, he bolted the can of air onto the bus with 9 minutes to spare. The subsequent docking and fuel transfer was much less panicked, and the combined vehicle was able to land safely at Minmus with no casualties.

To be clear, my vehicle might be named Engineer Training Bus on launch, but two weeks later it will be auto-renamed to Minmus Fuel Depot Ship, just like every other craft that has visited the Minmus Fuel Depot.

I used to name my ships, but almost all of them are now called "Munbase Alpha Ship" or "Minmus Refinery Ship" and I have given up fighting that.

I'm convinced that the mystery goo is refined from that suspicious residue in the launchpad surface samples.

Is it a terrain issue, a fuel issue or a piloting issue?

They don't have lift, so probably not? What about using some control surfaces tuned so they fold flat to the airstream and act as tail fins when "deployed", but open up into a variable pitch prop in normal mode?

You don't need the radial decouplers unless you're planning to have multiple solid stages, and solids are heavy enough that you shouldn't try to lift one off the ground unless it is burning. Just bolt the SRBs together for free and drop them all at once with a single stack decoupler. Steer heavier rockets gently to prevent origami around that single connection point.

The best way to clean up a mess, is to not make the mess in the first place.

Valentina was in low Mün orbit on her way to deliver some radiator panels to a goofed-up mining operation. The plan was to deliver the panels, refuel, and return to Kerbin with this final stage. The problems started when Val was too impatient to dock with the orbital station for a smidgen more fuel and instead began her descent with only 550m/s in the tank thinking it would be enough thanks to the surface speed (note: Münar surface speed is actually only 10m/s, not ~100). The suicide burn ended a couple hundred meters away from the base, with zero fuel and 40m/s remaining. A quick lithobraking later, and the only parts left were a lifesupport container, the capsule, a docking port and two scattered landing gear. Plus the radiator panels in her backpack, so the primary mission was a complete success. Hitching a ride home took longer than expected.

My interpretation was that the next collider doesn't exist when you reach the edge of your current one. You then start to fall. Just a moment later, the collider loads in, and rips the wheels off.

Uhm... *None* of Duna's atmosphere is thick. You can use nukes and ions on the surface. Also, never slow down on your way to orbit. Slowing down is a good way to ensure you will not go to space today. If your trajectory is high enough to clear the local terrain, you're good to burn for orbital speed. If you've got rocket engines that can take you to orbit, surely you can throttle down and hover to move it closer? Just keep the nose pointed surface radial, and tip over just a wee bit to accelerate sideways before going back to radial and drifting. Once you can't get any closer, pull out an FLT-400 (or other smallish portable tank), fill it at the base and then roll it up or down the hill to the rocket. Repeat as necessary.