NewtSoup

Try and think of these missions as the bread and butter work you need to do to get the money. I agree though I tend to avoid the "Test" missions unless they're particularly easy. If you get "Rescue" missions they will be the type of mission you want and you get a free Kerbal too - you get to keep them above the limits of your Astronaut Complex. They're also very good practice for rendezvous prior to learning to dock. Be careful just x'ing away missions you don't want - each time you do you lose some rep. The higher your rep the more lucrative the missions you are offered. You'll notice that each mission has an expiry date - this is the time left before it vanishes naturally off your offered contracts list. I made most of my early in game money doing ferry missions as they are the most common and usually quite well paid. I still do them. I'm ferrying tourists to The Mun and it's surface. Station building is also quite lucrative, just watch the requirements though! See my thread "Going to The Mun" - I had to have 6000 units of liquid fuel on board which was quite an ask at my tech level at the time. I actually completed a second contract to put up a station around Minmus before I completed the first one. Upgrade Mission control too. That way you can take more missions, specifically the ones you know you can do "later" and sit on them for a bit. Most of them have a long long completion deadline. Took me a whole game year to do a "survey" mission I took early in the game, I thought "above 17,000 meters would be easy. Nope!. What I ended up doing was putting a satellite in a polar orbit with a thermometer on it and waiting until it passed over the mission waypoints. It took me a long time to complete as I kept forgetting about it I know this is more encouragement than an answer to your specific question but keep at it. As far as mods go then have a look at this thread: It also lists a load of contract packs that can be installed with this mod. The latest version, according to github was released 11 June this year so it's going to be 1.3 compatible.

I have a mining vessel with a Convertotron 250, four drills, four ore tanks, some cooling, some batteries, some solar cells and a load of other stuff which you will see in the picture below. My question is - why is only one of my drills at 45% load and the other three at around 2%. The ore in the local area is 14.5% average. I don't fully understand mining and drilling yet so could somebody explain what's going on here? Even more confused. They all say ore rate 0.22 now and I stopped and restarted them and instead of a load they just say "Operational".

Nebin getting some badly needed experience! I've just realised that most of my crew are in fact rescues and have not done the full rounds of possible EVA's so next they're going to see what Kerbin looks like from outside a capsule as that's a cheap journey to drop down and come back to Mun

Oh my word, I had not noticed the necromancy going on here. So Sorry. But also glad it sorted out an issue for me.

Yeah that's quite neat. You really pick up some speed doing that. Minmus is indeed going to be my refuelling station. it's very small at the moment but I have just started planning a base there. I'm not sure if it's the most efficient way / cost effective way but it is a fun way and I have built a sky crane to drop modules at the base as I expand it. I may also make a tug that can move modules between kerbin and minmus.

@Cpt Kerbalkrunch I did the thing. Dropped down from Mun to Kerbin PE 75,000 then burned to Kerbin escape and then waited until the EVA situation was "High above the sun". I EVA'd all 3 Kerbals and then burned back ( took more dV and time to get back than to get out lol.. 16 days out 60 days back to mun ) On the way back instead of going all the way to kerbin I just entered orbit outside Minmus and then set up a maneuver for a Mun intercept ( possibly why I took me so much longer to get home thinking about it ). All crew were one star when they went out but only got to 2 stars when they got back though.. No 3 stars for me it seems. I must have done something wrong.

Oh, just to clarify I did not re-root the lifter to the docking port jr. Just the drill module. But I loaded the Lifter first, then merged in the re-rooted module.

I will give that a try..... Yes that worked. It seems you can only connect to the root part. Once it's connected other nodes on the merged assembly become available. Which will be why the lifter had no nodes available as it's root part had all the nodes occupied.

I've had issues with merging ships / modules that I designed specifically with merging in mind. Take, for example, my sky crane and the drilling unit I've just merged into the sky crane. The crane has a docking port Jr on the bottom and the Drilling Module one on the top. Yet the ONLY node available is the one on the bottom of a micronode. So I thought I'd try it the other way. Load the drills first and merge the sky crane in - This way the sky crane has no attachable nodes at all. Merging seems to be buggy to say the least. Incidentally I get the same effect if I store the drills a sub assembly. In order to test the above I had to "launch" the two seperately and dock them together in orbit around minmus.

So, I built a Sky Crane / Lifter for my Minmus project. In the video I broke a solar array with the nose cone ( should have just nudged it out of the way instead of going full Kerbal at it ) so I did it again afterwards. Recorded with "Record My Desktop" for Linux but if someone knows a better recording tool please let me know. The lifter has a TWR of 60 in Minmus gravity and over 1300 dV so I'm confident it can lift and land some pretty heavy stuff :).

Thank you for this mod. A Munar Survey mission was driving me nuts as I had to keep turning the craft upside down to see the "boots" marker for where I was supposed to land and then guess where to land on final approach. I guess I should be happy I managed to land within 500 meters of the zone. But this Mod. This Mod made it all OK again. I now have a visual marker to eyeball the approach!

Hi there. I've noticed that none of my batteries in game have any mass. They are all listed as 0.0, even the 1K rechargable I am running KSP 1.3 in Ubuntu Linux My game was started in KSP 1.22 The mods I am running are: Kerbal Engineer Redux Maneuver Node Evolved X Science Kerbal Alarm Clock Lab Upgrade Mod - six Kerbals instead of two I noticed the issue before I installed KAC and the Lab upgrade I can find no setting in the cheat menu that would be causing massless batteries nor in the game difficulty settings. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this? Actually - I have just worked out part of the issue - The batteries DO have mass as the KER registers an increase in mass each time I add a battery. However the interface is telling me they are all 0 mass ( at least I don't feel ultra cheaty now and it's just an interface bug )

I'm considering naming my Minmus Base Rura Penthe and populating the habitats with hapless Kerbals from lowest profit tourist missions. "Hey, wanna go to minmus? It's the holiday of a lifetime, I guarantee it!"

Thank you. I'm building a level-up bus, 1 command pod, 1 crew cabin - which does have a 2 hatches, one at either end. so to take advantage of that I'm sticking 2 fuel tanks on either side of the crew cabin and a pair of sparks for moving. I'll slap on some batteries and a couple of solar panels and it will be good to go and has about 2k dV which I can easily reduce to a more appropriate level by not filling up as much at Babylon K ( my Mun Station )

@Cpt Kerbalkrunch I have just installed KAC and I will definitely build a ship to go to solar orbit and back! Btw how much dV do I need to go from Mun to Kerol's SOI and back to Kerbin @Tex_NL That sounds good. I had wondered about the extra space in the lab. @OhioBob thanks yes, I've been using it to record the xp gain for Kerbals in the station that visit the Mun's suface. Next will be Mun to Kerbol SIO and back to Mun ( preferably ) followed by a level up in the lab.

Ok. The lab has almost full data. ( 740 ) @steuben - the date is from The Mun and is being processed in a station in orbit around The Mun The Lab has produced a further 2.9 science while I was out so it definitely is producing science while not focused. It definitely didn't do last night though - the only thing I can think of is the last thing I did before sleeping was turn sound down to 0. The game was definitely not paused over night because I left it paused before when I meant to leave it running so I made a mental not to do that this time but I have to wonder if the lab somehow didn't unpause until I checked it this morning. I may have to put this down to "just one of those things" Thanks for the info @Cpt Kerbalkrunch I gather from that that having 2 labs on the same station would just mean they are filled up with different data rather than working in conjunction to produce science faster from the same data. I wasn't planning on trying to fill a second lab with identical data to the first. I just have 2 biomes worth of experiments from the Mun and the lab is filled up before the data from the first few experiments in the first biome My best scientists are only 1 star at the moment but I'm still only early game and haven't finished unlocking the tech tree yet or been beyond Minmus. I already have a Lab around Minmus which is just waiting for a couple of scientists. I will send them there and then when my Minmus base is built they will go down to the surface and work in the lab there. I will get Kerbal Alarm Clock.

Yes I did, which is what was surprising me. I woke up this morning and the lab had just 0.3 science in it after being left running for 8 hours ( non accelerated ). Since I've been focused on the lab it's produced a further 1.6 science. I will go back to the space centre while I'm out later and check it again when I come back.

I have my station ( Babylon K ) in orbit around Mun and I have a few questions about labs. 1) I left my Lab running over night but the game was at the space centre and my station produced no science despite a predicted 4 science per day. Does the game have to be focused on the lab to produce science or is there away to leave it unattended while I work on another project? 2) I gather that only Scientists in the lab itself contribute to the conversion rate ( I forgot to add a scientist to the lab and now it's producing 9.8 sci/day ), Is it worth having a second lab on the station and two more Kerbals? Will they work on the same data or will the second lab fill with data once the first is full or will the second lab simply not function?

I'm sorry you can't see the pictures. They are on imgur and the album is public so I have no idea why. Yes I will have a dedicated lander for ferrying fuel and as you say an orbital fuel depot.

Thanks, I'd looked for an appropriate place but hadn't realised there were sub forums.

I shall replace it as and when I can with a 250 then

Ubuntu 16.04

It looks like it's time for me to set up a Minmus Base, I wasn't planning to but I went and accepted some Minmus contracts and one of which was to return a sample of ore. Easy enough I thought, clicking away. Now Babylon K is in orbit of the Mun and has it's own mobile mining base I thought I'd revisit the Minmus contracts. I've already got a station in orbit and a survey sat out there. Errr, that Ore Requirement - I'm sure that said 50 units of ore not 3050 units! I'm going to need a bigger boat!. So like I say I am going to have to build a full on Minmus Base. Me being me I can't do anything simply and I've decided on a modular, expandable form for the base and I've already done a little bit of research right here on Kerbin. As you can see from the picture. It's based on a cross shaped module made of a micronode, girders, docking ports and wheels. Each Module is a rover in its own right and the docking ports, when modules are arranged in a grid do indeed interlock!. An amusing side effect is that the entire base can be driven like a rover itself. I may need to unlock a few technologies before continuing though - Rovemax M1 Wheels might be better. I thought about waiting until I could unlock the HubMax Multi Point Connector but I believe the micronode and strutting will suffice.

In the beginning there was the word and the word was Snacks. Actually there was the Great Snack Tray. So in the very beginning there was the Great Snack Tray and it was held by the Heavenly Hostess. Ok, Ok, In the very, very Beginning there was the Heavenly Hostess. She carried The Great Snack tray through the empty snackiverse. Realising she needed a light so that she could see the people who would need her snacks she said "Gi's a light pal" and there was Kerbol. Kerbol was good and it was warm and burned if you touched it so she hung it very carefully at the centre of the snackiverse. Next she took a great courtesy pillow and from it fashioned first Kerbin and then the other planets. Finally she took one of her snacks, it was made of green cheese, probably some sort of Sage Derby or overly ripe Stilton. This cheese she gave arms and legs and as an afterthought a head too and set it upon the surface of Kerbin along with a second for company. These cheese forms just lay there and showed no interest in the snacks she had to offer. Displeased she cast a rock at Kerbin which created great storms for many centuries. By and by a lightning bolt hit the cheesy constructions and they was given life. They looked up at the Heavenly Hostess and said "I'm Hungry!" Satisfied she bestowed her snacks upon them and named them Kerbals. Before leaving her creations she gave them a mission to explore strange new worlds, seek out new cuisines and to boldly go where no Kerbal has gone before.

So here we are, at the final installation of my Going to the Mun, the question is long answered and I've posted a lot on my progress. I've learned a lot along the way. Rather than build a base I cobbled together a mobile mining unit that can again travel with the K if necessary. Getting it to orbit was squirly to say the least but it finally made it. It has a 125 ore processor and 4 junior drills. Though you can't see it it also has a mk 1 lander can, a probe core and a ton of batteries. The core of the machine is a Rockomax fuel tank and it's powered by four Terriers. It has a docking port fore and aft so that it can be stuck on to the K inline for interplanetary travel if it become necessary. And there we go. With the Mobile Miner docked at the K the additional fuel in the tank has completed the contract to put a station around The Mun and I leave the story here. I may continue it in a different thread out of the Gameplay Questions section. Addendum : I had also put a survey satellite in orbit around The Mun - this too can be docked, though it has to go on the side or a docking port Jr. It's fairly light but I'm pretty sure the engines and reaction wheels will be able to cope with a small amount of off centre mass.