NewtSoup

My personal solution to this is: Given that the best source of fuel to Kerbin is Minmus Greater Flats I just build a mining base on Minmus and a "Fuel shuttle" that is basically a large orange tank that can land on minmus and dock at the mining base. My last version used robotics to rotate terrier engines such that it could land flat on wheels and then scoot along the flats to the base. Then take of vertically. pitch up, rotate the terriers to flight mode and thrust away. I don't have that save any more though or I'd demonstrate. This time I have added a mod that gives me large Vernor engines to achieve the same thing via RCS controls.

Off the top of my head: design your ISRU ground truck with whatever you want on it. put on the truck a servo to rotate in the ground plane. Then on that put a piston that can go up and down. Then on that put a piston that goes forward and back. That way the end of the second piston can describe a cylinder when moved through all it's possible positions. On the end of the piston put a docking port jr. Make sure ALL your craft to be refuelled have a similar docking port jr that can be reached by the one on your truck. Why a docking port Jr? because it allows fuel transfer and is small and light. It might even be possible to use an engineer to connect a fuel line from storage on the truck to a tank on the craft and save messing with robotics.

Sorry for being slow here and thanks for answering guys. I have worked it out - Jimmy's answer gave me the correct clue. The dropped parts had changed vessel type when I moved focus from my engineer doing the building to the ship in order to move a kerbal. I think to rebuild ships in orbit you have to plan it very carefully.

As the title says - How do I make use of the JSI External Radial-Mount Cameras? Is there a key binding I have missed ? I tried the group actions but there's nothing other than same vessel interaction to toggle. I I tried pressing V multiple times hoping it would add camera angles to cycle through. I tried pressing V while in cockpit view but it just took me out of cockpit view. I have discovered that it is not a stock part and was added by Raster Prop Monitor. I will figure it out - sorry this isn't in add-on discussions. I had no idea it came from an add-on. I thought it was a breaking ground addition.

I am experimenting with constructing ships in orbit. I have no docking ports available yet so I was looking into the practicality of launching individual or groups of parts into space and then using an engineer to assemble a vessel in space. This was working for me until I dropped a fuel tank and was then unable to pick it up again in construction mode. I could move everything else on the rig. Just not the fuel tank floating in space. Is this because I switched Kerbals mid construction? I found out that I cannot move the root part of a craft. What are the other limitations of orbital construction?

I still find this very useful. I have worked out that often the orbital period is more important than precise AP and PE when you want satellites to stay in roughly the same positions relative to each other. Resonant orbits are very handy if you have stack that you can place in one go to get the positions roughly correct ( it's NEVER perfect) after that it's Orbital Period that keeps them looking tidy. Also when deploying sats - have some engines on them to adjust the orbits and set your separator force to almost nothing.

One thing that's not been mentions is the Ascending and Descending Nodes on your orbit. There are on the "mid point" of your orbital inclination and are the easiest ( least dV ) points at which to change your inclination. As you experiment in orbital dynamics you will get a feel for this.

I have found a mod by @Smeagol Bigger Vernor RCS. It has the functionality I want.

Hi Guys, I am kind of back again at the moment. Planning a new "lets play" in KSP to get my eye in again before KSP 2 comes out. One thing I've always wanted to do is use LF engines ( not Vernor - they are weak ) as more powerful RCS thrusters. Has anyone managed to do this with action groups? I did once write my own mod which took the engine parameters of the Terrier and made it into an RCS thruster but I couldn't use the terrier model. I had to use a scaled up Puff engine model for the mod to work, it did work very well and I had supreme control of one of the old orange fuel tanks ( it became my fuel barge from Minmus Surface to a station in LMO ) I'd like a more practical way of doing this. In my head canon tying in full LfOx engines into the RCS system is a very Kerbal thing to do so I have no issues in trying to remake my mod if it's not possible any other way. If people remember the Eagle ships from Space 1999 - that's basically what I want to recreate in KSP with their 6 degrees of control ( or if you prefer (or haven't seen Space 1999), think of it as an LfOx drone )

It's been a while since I played so I figured I would start a new career game to learn some of the new stuff that I haven't really used. I have Kerbin's SOI all Networked up with 8xRA2 relays. They are upgradable via docking ports of course ( though I realise I can do limited builds in orbit now ). I've repaired a rover on the surface of Minmus. That was quite fun. They said put a Satellite in orbit of Minmus - so I did. Quite pleased with the minimalist nature. Though it was BONE dry by the time I made the correct orbit and I didn't think it was going to make it. They said build a new station around the Mun. This one I played with some of the new robotics parts. I didn't use a controller. But I did put Sparks on Servos so they can be simply rotated to get reverse thrust and I put solar panels on modular girders on hinges to pack them in the fairing and to make them look cooler. The transfer stage had an abundance of fuel left as well as full tanks in the station itself so rather than ditch the transfer stage onto the surface of the Mun I undocked it to break the struts and then docked the station back with it once I'd extended the solar panels.

Just a post card so please don't move this to mission reports

I have realised what happened. I had reloaded to a previous save to check something before exiting the game last time. I realised this because I noticed my Mun Lander had full fuel when it should have been bone dry. So now I have built the Sat Net and Drone rescue ship for a ship that technically doesn't need rescuing right now. Oh well. I guess I shall send the Kerbals down and up again now that they are pre-rescued.

Absolutely sure. I'm not new to KSP. I had my scientist collect the data and reset the experiments so I could re-run. The only thing I can think of is that I must have loaded a save prior to the science being done. ( It took several attempts to get to orbit as I was Very light on fuel ) I guess I am just going to have to do the mission over.

I have sent my Kerbals to the Mun Valentina, Arbert ( Engineer) and Helnand ( Scientist) They did science on the surface, collected samples. Temperature logs, Air Pressue, Science Junior, Goo. They took off from the surface but only had enough fuel to achieve orbit (* my bad ) I sent a second drone ship to rescue them When I use Helnand to retrieve the science from the command pod there are no longer any stored experiments. ALL the data from the surface is gone! Has anyone got a clue what happened? When I right click on the Command Pod with Helnand All I get is the option to look at the inventory. When I put her back into the pod and right click there is no option to "review stored experiments"

Of course I know how to do mining. A Convertotron 250 A Drill Some Ore Tanks Some Fuel tanks Some Power Some Cooling What I want to do is fine tune this though. Given a surface percentage of 13.6% ( my spot on minmus ) How many drills do I need to feed a convertotron 250 doing a single conversion? I think I can ignore the level of the engineer as it's just a multiplier and affects both convertotrons and drills equally.