SleepyMan

I am using 0.2.5.2 version with 1.3.1 with no issues.

I fought the Krakken and I won! I had finally launched my probe to Duna, my first ever interplanetary mission. I may have been a bit generous with fuel, what with having 9000m/s dV left in the tanks after the transfer burn (Ion engines ftw). So with that mission on the backburner for the next 129 days before the mid course check in it was time to start base building. My first step was to build and launch a skycrane towards Minmus. There was nothing special about the design or build of the crane. The launch and circulisation went well but when I came back to the game after dinner to do the Minmus transfer burn the Krakken reared its head. The slightest movement of the craft induced a shaking that eventually tore it apart. Many reloads later all with no success I remembered a posting here about autostruts being the devil and causing ships to shake themselves apart. Now I don't use autostruts normally but checking to see if I had inadvertently enabled it on a part or two was a simple check. Nope, no autostruts. Then I thought what if I turn it on, will that prevent the shakes? Another reload and some rapid clicking later my fully autostruted crane successfully completed its burn and is now on its way to Minmus. Spent the rest of the evening designing a base and working out how to section it so that I can launch, land and postion and mate all the pieces.

I just started playing KSP one month ago and have slowly added a few mods. Some are simply graphics and sound enhancements. Others fixed issues I had with the UI. I later added a few part packs to add things I wanted in my career game. Mods I think help solve UI issues are: KER is about the best mod for giving you basic info that makes learning to fly spaceships an enjoyable experience. Instant deltaV and orbital parameters, rendezvous info all on one window on both the flight and map screen. Precise Maneuver allows more precise control of changing the numbers. So you can for example focus on Minmus as you plan your orbit and alter your burn parameters simply and precisely. Without trying to fight the UI to show the moon up close so you can see the node and you wont have to try to use the mouse to add 1 m/s to a burn. Docking Port Alignment Indicator again displays info that makes what can be a fraught experience to start with simple. RadarAltimeter switches your altimeter from ASL to AGL with one simple button press. Mode is indicated by the text changing colour in the display. Although you can get AGL within the stock game by swapping to the IVA and looking at the surface altimeter located on the instrument panel. That's IMHO clunky and distracting. KER does show this but you already have a big altimeter on the display so why not use it for landings. Stuff I added for fun/QoL: Chatterer and Chatterer+ adds lots of mission control style voice comms in Kerbalese. Portrait Stats adds icons and mouseover info to the windows showing you Kerbals. Real Time Clock helps with RL time management. Wernher Checker Adds a checklist to the VAB/Hanger so you don't forget to add comms or solar panels or whatever to your latest build. RCSBuildAid Shows the rotation that your RCS set up will induce when you use them in translation mode. Lets you reposition them or reduce one banks throttle setting to reduce that pivot to a minimum. [x] Science! tells you when you are in a position to learn new science and adds a window that holds buttons for all the experiments that will produce new science in one place. Kerbal Alarm Clock so useful when you start to run multiple missions/long term missions/stations/mining rigs/ISRU stations simultaneously.

Did you enable crossfeeding across the decoupler?

I seem to have spent the day swapping from ship to ship to ship ad nauseam. Running 2 mining vessels, 2 resupply runs, 2 stations an ISRU plus a couple of science missions to various biomes on Mun and Minmus kept me busy. So busy I still haven't started either moon base even though I installed the mod over a week ago. With the vastly increased manpower now deployed at both moons (16 kerbals in space as i write this) I am retiring my trusty Orbiter 3 resupply rocket. Using the 7 man capsule from Near Future mod series I will have a way more capable shuttle to ferry crew from the Moon stations to the LKO station. Plus it can land on either moon if an emergency occurs or Jeb gets the urge to try something new ... All dockings must occur at night IT IS THE LAW! The transfer window to Duna is getting close, preliminary work on the probes is going well. Once that is out the way it will be time to finally build some moon bases and expand the Minmus space station.

Save file for complete station here

Another very happy convert to this mod. New player, I had gotten competent at docking using the Mk1 Eyeball and patience. Watched a vid by GrunfWorks where he used this mod and made docking look soo easy. So I tried it. On my first approach was safely docked within 1 minute. No more bumping spaceships for me Thank you.

Since my last update I have placed an station in Minmas orbit. It was meant to be in a normal orbit but somehow ended up retrograde. Unfortunately I forgot that detail when the next day I sent a lander from it towards Minmas. I was following my usual launch procedures so started at local dawn ... or at least what I thought was dawn. As it was actaully dusk when I launched, my lander almost immediately entered the night side of Minmas at a height of 10Km and descending fast. I spotted the error when I swapped from Map mode and realised my lander was in the dark. Rude words were spoken, then I realised my AGL was 3000m and that I was in a region where there are taller mountains, full power to the engine in a desperate attempt to climb out almost succeeded but alas it was not to be. I clipped the top of a mountain, lost the bottom half of the lander including the engine and my poor Kerbal spent his last minute spinning madly in his capsule. Before it finally crashed into Minmas for the second time. Turns out you do not need much dV to flip a Space station in a low retrograde orbit in Minmas space. 3 burns later my staion is orbiting the right way. With that debacle sorted it was time to start exploring mining and ISRU. A lot of hours of building, testing rebuilding etc later I have prototype miner and a prototype ISRU working on the surface of Minmas. Though it turns out I can land easily enough on Minmas but flying a 15t ISRU to land next to the miner not so easy. My initial landing was about 90m away. 30 minutes later I am only 30m closer and starting to turn the air blue in frustration. It took another 30 minutes of me bouncing over the miner many ... many times before I got to within 30m. Which was close enough to link the two vessels for resource transfer (using EVA Transfer mod) Two of the ugliest craft I've made so far. The image also shows the nice flat landing zone I picked to try out precise landings for the very first time. Future plans: I am 40 odd days from first transfer window to Duna followed 2 weeks later with a window to Eve. Currently planning on sending ion drive probes to both systems, let some robots test out my nascent interplanetary skills. However whilst they are en-route I will need something to occupy my kerbonauts. Moon bases look fun and there seem to be a couple of well liked mods to choose from. Will also need to develop a big refuelling station in Minmas orbit for the eventual manned missions to other planets.

I only started playing KSP a few weeks ago. I learned to get into orbit with the demo version. Once I had the full version I decided to go career. Not looked back. Anyways getting to the thread subject one thing not yet mentioned is the bonus you get from achievements. Even if you dont have a contract to land on Minmus, doing so will generate rewards (funds, cash and rep) the first time. Enough to pay for the mission. Also stick a thermometer on everything you plan to leave in space. My major revenue stream is the reoccurring contract to take a science measurement in < location>

I spent the day resupplying my Mun Orbital lab and hopefully fixing a few issues as well. This was a process not with out an issue or two, including a rocket design that without struts bent 30deg of true during launch, it didnt snap but it was so uncontrollable in flight I used up all my fuel reserves getting it into orbit. So after a quick redesign I tried again, way more successfully this time. Only a few struts: In hindsight not sticking the little tug in the middle might have been a better design choice. The Front section is a the fuel resupply, the middle is a small tug for extending the range of the lander, so that reaching the polar biomes wont be an issue. I hope - already had one close call where I ran out of main engine fuel during the landers reorbit maneuver. luckily had enough monoprop to complete the insertion. A busy little station: Just need to fully man the lab then it will be time to focus on Minmas. Give it a full relay network and then place a lab/lander setup in orbit. Plus rescue some poor soul stuck in orbit there.

Well the shake down flight on MunLabOne revealed one or two issues. The big one being if you are going to use a remotely piloted tug then a you really really need a relay network with 100% coverage. Not one with 75% .. And the Mk1b lander only has one ring of RCS blocks and the rotation this introduces before the reaction wheel corrects makes docking so much fun ... NOT. I couldn't understand why I was making such a hash of docking, of course realising its a design error on something a long way from home is bittersweet. FYI when plotting a landing point for your lander it helps if you don't turn off landers on the map screen. Otherwise you might end up landing only 5km from your unmanned probe Bringing the pilots home leaving the plucky scientists with their research. Gained a pilot for the return with a fortuitously timed rescue mission, took a whole 12m/s dV to pick him up. So I need to launch two relay sats into Mun orbit, decide on whether to replace the Mk1b lander and resupply the station with some monoprop. And possibly deorbit MunLabOne from its current 51km to 15km and maybe alter its inclination from zero.

Hmm, getting my Mun Lab into orbit turned out to be trickier than i expected. The lab weighed 10t plus 6 tons of tug to get it from LKO to Mun Orbit. Shoving that much mass through Kerbals atmosphere proved too much for my fledgling Space Agency. Got to about 2.5k ASL and it tipped over, many attempts later I was able to reach 15km before it it tipped. At this point I decided that boosting both items in one launch was too much. Splitting the lab section and the tug proved much more agreeable. Though the lab was still a pig of a launch with it ending up in a 135km/90km orbit. Once the tug was in orbit a major design flaw emerged. The reaction wheel inbuilt into the probe body was simply too feeble to handle the fully loaded tug. Turning was a nightmare. Engaging RCS solved that but it did burn through a lot of monoprop. Plotting a rv between the tug and the lab was a bit of a nightmare, I do not think it could have aligned their respective orbits worse. After an hour of faffing about with nodes (made bearable with the mod Precise Maneuver cos trying to be accurate when your mouse scroll wheel has died is not fun). The best I could do was 20km separation with a 220m/s velocity difference. The actual rendevous and docking (my 4th) were surprisingly straight forward. One lesson I did learn from my first lab was lighting. Placing lights pointing at the approaches to the docking clamps helps prevent those embarrassing bumps in the night. Getting ready to leave LKO heading to wards an encounter with Mun Currently its now in Mun orbit, and I am rotating out the crew from my Kerbal space lab so that they can man the Mun mission. Today I will launch the new improved lander and science crew to MunLabOne

After my previous attempt for a first landing on Mun was foiled by a minor technical hitch [could not separate lander from the return vehicle] I returned for another go. Separation went off with only a minor hitch, the decoupler ended up wrappped up amongst the landers engines. The actual landing went well though I still need to work on picking flat landing sites: Returning back to orbit went well, I only smacked into one mountain But F9 fixed that ... Couldnt get a contract to complete in Mun orbit but aside from that glitch everyone retuned home safely Next Goal is to launch a lab into Mun orbit and research the various biomes with a lander.

I docked two ships for the very first time Arty screen shot to commemorate the occasion. Wasn't as hard as i expected just took a very long time. My first approach failed as I hadn't realised the station was slightly rotating so when I finally got the docking clamps together my ship was now at right angles to the station. By this time we were in the shadow of Kerbol and I hadn't turned on the station lights. Ooops So a quick retreat, swapping to the station and turning its lights, RCS and SAS on. Then switched back to the supply ship and 15 minutes later success. Took Jeb off the station, gave the scientists some data to research and transferred excess fuel over. Then it was a quick trip home which had to be repeated as Val exploded when she exited the landed supply ship to obtain a soil sample. Later that night launched a mission to Mun with a orbiter and a separate lander. After some practise launches I finally got into a decent orbit with enough dV to finish the mission. Deploying the landers legs early ( didn't want to repeat the mistake I made at Minmas of forgetting to lower them) I suddenly realise that the extra fuel I had added late to the lander design meant that the legs would no longer reach the surface ... Decided it was time to go to bed.

Just started playing KSP this week, so far I have learned to: Successfully fly rockets into orbit. Place satellites into orbit around Kerbal and Mun and Minmus (once I realised Kerbal had two moons but only one Mun ) Crash Land probes on Minmas and Mun On Minmas Kerbals can easily tip their lander over when trying to crash fly back to the hatch. Service module doors make excellent impromptu launch devices (at least on Minmus) 10 units of Mono prop has enough dV to place a capsule in LKO on a return trajectory in extremis. Too much dV can be a bad thing, you might get cocky and think that after orbiting Mun you still have enough dV to fly to Minmus and crash land. Unfortunately getting back was not so easy. Ended up not sure what would happen if I re-entered on my Lander with over 3k orbital speed. My previous highest re entry speed had been with a simple capsule coming in @ 2.5k. Now I had a much bigger lander coming in @ 3.3k iirc I did panic when using the service doors didn't simply tilt the lander up but actually threw it up 15m. A panicked full throttle burn for far too long straight up wasted dV and placed me on an even higher orbit to eventually return to Kerbal from. So playing safe I decided to aerobrake. First braking was successful but left me with a 25,000km apoapsis. However my orbital velocity was still over 3k, so I repeated the aerobrake for a new apoapsis of 15,000km. Over a day of in game time later and more aerobraking manoeuvres than I care to remember I finally felt brave enough to go for it ... sucess and a ticker tape parade for Jeb. Now I've got to learn how to successfully rendezvous in orbit with another craft, my first attempt got me within 700m and with a target velocity of 140m/s empty fuel tanks and a valuable lesson in the uses of monoprop.