NewtSoup

Yay - lots of dV is my speciality. I am not going to aerobrake at Eve. So, MOAR dV!.

I've decided it's Gilly. This piece of ridiculousness is my lander/rover combination. It uses entirely Vernor thrusters for 6 degrees of freedom flight. It's called the Joules Vernor. I just need to make a mothership now that can push this thing to Gilly and ideally bombard the surface of Gilly with something so I can make use of the seismic sensors. I've also just spotted the "Cargo" category in the VAB which I'd not realised was there. I may have to have a minor redesign to take some of this stuff with me. Addendum - the Joules Vernor now includes a selection of deployable experiments in a SEQ-9 container. I have no idea what I'm doing. I hope 3 stars on the scientist and engineer will be sufficient to deploy them ( apparently 3* can have 2 power modules deployed )

I am trying to limit myself to one science gathering mission per body to encourage me to visit more places as in the past I've maxed out my science tree just in Kerbin local. I've now made it to Duna with limited science gathering so by my own rules I can't go there again except to set up a base. I could go to Ike though. However that's a large place with many biomes and I don't want to "Waste" it. So what about Gilly as my second interplanetary mission? Since the Duna mission I now have ( extra ) The Magnetometer and a Medium Scanning Arm ( neither of which I know how to use ). I have a rough recollection of the Survey and Suface Scanners. I've also no real idea how to use the Seismic scanner. I'm thinking of Gilly because: Low gravity: I can potentially use a lander to hop from biome to biome. I only have Rovemax S2 Wheels available. Only 3 biomes: I can potentially visit all 3 biomes in a rover. It's very small: In my head this makes it easier to hit all 3 biomes. Though I realise Gilly can be a tricky place to land. If anyone has any advice on using the science apparatus available to me and which body to go to next then I'd welcome it

I don't like the format of that last post. It was an experiment. I won't do it again. A wish to the forum managers / developers - I wish it were possible to edit tables after creation - change borders, change alignment, add / remove rows or columns.

The Final Adventure. This will be the last post for this thread. At least the last one with mission pictures. It's departure day. Summer and Crew wave bye bye to Duna. It's a short burn to get back to Kerbin's SOI just 660m/s. The initial burn got the BO within a few hundred thousand Km of Kerbin. A mid course correction got that down to around15,000km A 460m/s capture burn at PE then put the Oaxaca into an elliptical orbit to the edge of Kerbin's SOI. From here a series of aerobraking manoeuvres were done until it was possible to decend to the surface. Much use was made of the monopropellant on board which had hardly been used to save as much liquid fuel as possible for the final burn that would land the craft gently on the surface of Kerbin The final approach. From here on in it was do or die! <insert re-entry noises here> Just a few hundred meters from crashing, Summer "Suicide" Kerman took control of the BO She had more experience of suicide burns than Valentina. Valentina was not useless though, her job was to keep her foot jammed firmly into the RCS controls to slow the descent as much as possible. <REDACTED> Success! Summer Suicide Safely Secures Spacecraft! The plucky little Kerbal has once again earned her nickname. She touched down in the Ocean east of the KSC with 0dV Remaining in the tanks. The engines flamed out an instant before they touched the water. The crowds went wild when the entire craft gently bobbed back to the surface fully intact. A low amount of science to be sure. But not bad for only their third science gathering mission. Nuts the image links dont' work properly because I used affixes to get smaller versions. Oh well

Due to Vertrey's monumental screw up with the parachutes it was realised soon that the lander, or rather just the re-entry pod would not be making it back to the surface alone. Thankfully the BO has a huge amount of fuel left and so the plan has changed. Ascend to orbit. Catch the next transfer window back to Kerbin ( 3 years 198d, 4h ), Capture into a highly eliptical Kerbin Orbit. Aerobrake down. Perform a powered landing on Kebin as close to the KSC as possible. Or just onto the surface. We have no idea if this will work. Atmospheric drag should provide most of the braking forces need. Should everything to pear shaped then all five Kerbals will EVA and parachute to safety. And Siglorf has to retreive the science data too. This is not a good plan. To maximise DV the lander was emptied and dumped onto the surface of duna leaving only the Pompegranate re-entry module attached to the BO. Bye Bye Lander. Rest In Pieces.

With a dull thunk and a soft hiss, Summer undocked the Lander from the BO. The docking port itself made no sound at all as it detached. She then slung the lander into a J-Turn to end up facing the other way and began a de-orbit burn. The next few shots show the descent of the lander through Duna's atmosphere. Nothing exciting happened. There absolutely didn't need to be several reloads to randomly find a spot that wasn't so steep the lander fell over and exploded. That never happened. Not once. The lander touched down. Rather precariously, but stayed upright! And Siglorf got out to make footfall and pose, staring off into the distance. She was the very first Kerbal on Duna ( at least in this universe ). Science was done and experiments were run ( on the Kerbals who were still alive ) and so Summer and Vertrey joined Siglorf on the surface. Vertrey, the Mission Engineer decided to take a look at the parachutes for Kerbin re-entry later. It was her job after all and the sole reason she'd been selected. However it turned out that maybe she shouldn't have faked her resume. She knew nothing about parachutes and was unable to re-pack them. She hoped that this wouldn't come back to bite her later. After casually stuffing them into their storage she joined the others on the surface for snacks and a photo opportunity.

Duna eventually hove into view. The excitement aboard the BO was palpable. Bezoar announced that he would be first to make footfall onto Duna's surface. The crew had different ideas however. Vertrey and Summer joined him in the crew section of the lander and sang Christmas Carols to him until he left for the hitchiker container to join Siglorf. Siglorf however chose to EVA and joined the others in the Lander at which point they closed the access to the docking ports. Valentina performed a capture burn into Low Duna Orbit and parked the vessel 65/70km cicularish orbit. Close enough.

A suitable time mid-journey was randomly selected for Valentina to fine tune the Duna encounter. With a little jiggling she managed to get the encounter to a more-or-less equatorial PE of just 89km above the surface. As the Mission Scientist. Siglorf decided she should show imitative and actually do some science while in a Solar orbit. A space walk was required to safely retrieve the data gathered and store it in the Lander. She took a moment to stare directly into Kerbol's gaze. As the light bored into her brain she realised that her next mission would have to be to ... her mind went blank! Where would the next mission be to? Answers on a stamped and addressed Edam to: Siglorf Kerman C/O The Astronaut Complex Kerbal Space Centre KS1AC

It's time. Time to burn! A roughly 1050m/s burn got the Blue Oaxaca to a Duna encounter with a periapsis of about 16,000 km. Not too bad. A course correction or two along the way will fine tune it. In other news Valentine, Summer, Siglorf and Vertrey have all taken up residence in the Hitchiker Storage container and Bezoar is "Piloting" from the Duna Lander for the duration of the mission. Vertrey (Mission Engineer) has disconnected all controls in the DL so that Bezoar can practice to his heart's content.

Oh I think I get it now. It's one of those things that "must be". If I've managed to plot a manoeuvre that gets me to Duna's SOI then the ejection angle will be 160 because it can't be anything else. There's probably ways to finesse it but I'm sure the manoeuvre node will be close enough.

I have a question on orbital mechanics for those that might be reading this: The transfer window planner has given me the following information: Departure Year 18, day 281 at 4:48:00 Arrival Year 19, day 115 at 3:07:12 Time of flight 259 days 4:19:12 Phase angle 33.80° Ejection angle 160° to prograde Ejection inclination 3.87° Ejection Δv 1,066 m/s Transfer periapsis 13,328 Mm Transfer apoapsis 20,408 Mm Transfer inclination 0.18° Transfer angle 160° Insertion inclination -1.42° Insertion Δv 607 m/s Total Δv 1,673 m/s Most of it seems fairly explanatory. What I'm not clear on is Ejection Angle. Can anyone explain what it means by 160 degrees to prograde? My plan was to wait until an hour or so before transfer departure date and time and then just mess around with a manoeuvre node until I saw an encounter with Duna. But if I wanted to do it as accurately as possible how do I read the information I've been given? Linky to the entire page showing what I see when I ask for a transfer window.

Dyslexic brain can never properly remember that. I mostly only spell correctly because of the wiggly red line :D. I do like to get it right though, so thank you. Corrected it. All I have to do now is the actual transfer. I was going to do it right away but I've been distracted because on a whim I applied to do a 3 year degree in acting. I passed the audition so I've suddenly had to deal with preparing to be a student again at 50 years old

It's launch day for the Duna Lander. Just a few hundred days before the Duna Transfer Window! By the way I am using Alex Moon's Launch Window Planner online since Kerbal Alarm Clock and Transfer Window Planner are out of date. It seems to be quite a nice tool. I'm not sure how to read the graph exactly as it's a 3D graph of Flight Time vs Departure Date ( from epoch) vs dV needed. But it automatically works out the least dV needed for your transfer anyway. I think you could in fact use it to plan any transfer from any orbit. The Duna Lander (DL) sits atop it's lifter inside the fairing. At launch the boosters and the twin boar engines lit fine. At around 2000m the lifter rolled left 90 degrees to facilitate booster separation. A the boosters burned out it was discovered that a mistake in staging lit the second stage Cheetah engine in addition to jettisoning the boosters. This burned out the actual stage separator leaving it's shroud intact. This was not a huge disaster as there was plenty of fuel on board the lander which could rendezvous with the BO under it's own power rather than being delivered by it's own lifter. So the DL separated and circularised on its own. Summer then began working on the manoeuvre to intercept the BO. Finally docked. The Lander and the Oaxaca were topped up with fuel from the re-fueller.

Suddenly, a wild re-fueller appears! Re-fuel rocket. Blasts off into the dark night, Also it has snacks The re-fueller provided The Blue Oaxaca with the needed snacks and fuel to make the interplanetary journey to Duna. Originally the BO had been designed to have a swappable engine cluster such that the Mainsail Lifter engine could be replaced with a Poodle for the higher efficiency. However, it was found out that even with the Duna Lander attached to the nose the BO would have more than enough dV to do the job. The engine swapping plan was therefore re-directed to /dev/null for secure storage. One more re-fueller would be needed to complete the job and that would stay attached to a side docking port until the the Duna Lander had been launched and made rendezvous with the BO.

I had that when running in fullscreen. I switched to running in borderless window and not had any problems since. ## My advice - Try borderless window.

First of all - Modded Install [x] Science! Continued (xScienceContinued 6.0.0.8) 6 Crew Science Lab (SixCrewScienceLab 1.2) 6 Seat Mk3 Cockpit (SixSeatMk3cockpit 1.2) BetterCrewAssignment (BetterCrewAssignment 1.4.1) BetterTimeWarpContinued (BetterTimeWarpCont 2.3.12.9) Breaking Ground (BreakingGround-DLC 1.7.1) ClickThrough Blocker (ClickThroughBlocker 1:0.1.10.17) Distant Object Enhancement Continued (DistantObject v2.0.2.0) Distant Object Enhancement Continued default config (DistantObject-default v2.0.2.0) Docking Port Alignment Indicator (DockingPortAlignmentIndicator 6.9.2.2) Environmental Visual Enhancements - Stock Planet Config files (EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements-HR 2:EVE-1.2.2-1) Environmental Visual Enhancements Redux (EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements 3:1.11.3.1) Kerbal Engineer Redux (KerbalEngineerRedux 1.1.9.0) Making History (MakingHistory-DLC 1.12.1) Module Manager (ModuleManager 4.2.1) PlanetShine (PlanetShine 0.2.6.3) PlanetShine - Default configuration (PlanetShine-Config-Default 0.2.6.3) Precise Node (PreciseNode 1.2.11.2) PWB Fuel Balancer Restored (PWBFuelBalancerRestored 0.2.1.6) RasterPropMonitor (RasterPropMonitor 1:v0.31.4) RasterPropMonitor Core (RasterPropMonitor-Core 1:v0.31.4) scatterer (Scatterer 3:v0.0772) Scatterer Default Config (Scatterer-config 3:v0.0772) Scatterer Sunflare (Scatterer-sunflare 3:v0.0772) SpaceTux Library (SpaceTuxLibrary 0.0.6.1) Toolbar Controller (ToolbarController 1:0.1.9.6) Zero MiniAVC (ZeroMiniAVC 1:1.1.1.1) Problem: No new kerbals seem to be spawning for me in the astronaut complex. I've had a few client restarts and the game has advanced 18 years in total but I only have 4 kerbals hired. 5 assigned and Jeb Bill and Bob available to be hired. I don't think I have any mods that would interfere with Kerbal creation. I have created one Kerbal myself "Bezoar Kerman" and modified one other kerbal in the save file by simply changing their name text and specialisation from tourist to scientist. This isn't necessarily a problem because it's a science game and I don't mind creating the kerbals I need via the menu but it would be nice to have some available via the normal route if someone knows what I've done wrong and it can be fixed. thanks in advance Ruth

Launch Day! Blue Oaxaca blasts off with Valentina and Bezoar aboard. Currently Mission Tourist Bezoar has the hitch hiker container to himself although Valentina may have got the internal comms stuck on "I'm a Barbie Kerman" by mistake., And the BO settles into a 100km parking Orbit. It may be more than a year to the transfer window but it's widely considered that it would amuse everyone on kerbin be better for the mission that Bezoar should "train" in orbit in a real environment. In other news the KSC has announced that all orbital communication is to be shut down for maintenance.

Having Realised that the KSC is up and running again, Kerbin's most infamous Billionaire, Bezoar Kerman has commissioned his own vessel to take him to Duna. Under his kreative guidance the KSC has produced a vessel to his specifications. The Blue Oaxaca! The pilot of this vessel will be Valentina Kerman. Once in orbit the BO will be refuelled and a Duna Lander vessel attached to the bell on the end. Blue Oaxaca has space for six Kerbals aboard although only five seats will be filled. The remaining space will be filled with snacks and video tapes. Given that if only one cassette were sent it would probably be worn out part way through the mission it has been decided by the KSC that 10 copies of "The Invisible Kerbal" should be sufficient at an average of three viewings per day.

Thanks for the support guys. Time to end this thread and design a mission to Duna.

Thanks. I did load an old save in 1.12.1 but I found out that Kerbal Experience was broken and I kind of needed that for my style of play. I'm currently using the latest version of 1.10 where experience was working. The August patch notes seem to say that XP is fixed now so I think I will update my KSP to the latest version.

I am not junking my satellites. Even though the mission has somewhat failed each satellite has a docking port jr on it. They will become the foundation for full on relay stations and I will simply upgrade them via the docking ports. Also I've not played in so long I've missed most of the content of the DLCs. I can see that Kerbals can carry cargo now. I think they can add things to craft if need be?

I am doing it at the moment. I am setting up 4 sats in a 17,340Mm orbit between kerbin and duna I have 3 x 4RA2 satellites in orbit around Kerbin and I just realised what's wrong. Only the KSC has DSN and I have extra ground stations turned off. The two sets of 4RA2 are not strong enough to talk to each other as they can only do 5.8 million km between satellites. I'm an idiot. I thought for a second that I could just turn on ground stations for the time being. But I'm going to have the same issue on Duna. RA2 are not good enough for interplanetary coms. RA 15 will do the trick. It's going to be easier to send Kerbals rather than probes to Duna in terms of Coms networking. However I'm still going to set up relays and at least Valentina will have a nice chunk of experience after 7+ years orbiting Kerbol and dropping useless satellites. Good practice of course.

I did read that. The section finishes with: "The game always favors a direct connection to Kerbin even if a more powerful relay is nearby." Meaning that if I have a mothership in orbit of say Duna and that has a 4% direct connection but I have my solar-orbit RA2 arrays midway between Duna and Kerbin orbits the game will still use the 4% over the stronger relay. This is why I'm wondering if my vision of a fully connected Kerbol System is a waste of time. Of course if I were to destroy my hypothetical mothership and the ground vehicle / station could contact the RA2 network then the game would favour that as the ONLY connection. I suppose I could just make sure my spacecraft are never capable of a direct connection to Kerbin and then that would force them to use the satellite network.

I have recently started playing again and I was considering undertaking one of the projects that I had started previously. This was in fact a communications network. In my head I had powerful satellites in orbit around Kerbin all with LOS to each other so that the KSC is always contactable. Then I was going to have similar satellites around planets and possibly a few in solar orbits to bridge gaps. However reading up on the Wiki it seems that the game will only use a single hop. My questions are then: Is there any point in trying to build a communications network to cover the entire system? Is there any mod that will make such a huge task worthwhile? How do people get probes to places like Eloo?