TanDeeJay

This is my Eve lander. The fuel tanks and rocket motors on the right are for the Eve transfer and insertion burn, the ship attached to the top on the left is the return craft... I too am not great at building ships that fly and I've gone for the brute force way too . This lands under parachutes, and then has full fuel tanks for the asparagus staged lift off. Yours is a little baby at 400t. Fully fueled, mine weighs 562t... Lol, I just looked at the mass when attached to the launcher - 2200t and over 1million kerbal bucks.

Wow! Your ship attached to the left end of The DREAM BIG looks somewhat similar to my Eve Lander . But if yours is an Eve Lander it is more compact than mine...

I called my space station the "1kk/k Space Hotel".... short for one thousand kilometer orbit over Kerbin, and then I've sent mining ships to several bodies, and called them things like "Munamina", "Minimina", "Dunamina", "Pol Poker", "Jool Juicer" (for a mining ship that is waiting to head to Jool to mine asteroids that I pull into orbit) I tend to use roman numerals for numbering different versions of a ship, so my asteroid catching and mining fleet are ACM-A VI and the ACM-C VI - where ACM stands for Asteroid Catcher Miner and I originally had 3 different ships A was for catching asteroids, B was for changing the inclination of A to match an incoming asteroid, and C's role was to convert the asteroid to fuel... But I did away with 'B' when I found it easier to catch asteroids in solar orbit before they hit Kerbins SOI than to try and change the inclination of an asteroid after catching it while already in Kerbins SOI... But my Eve lander is just called "Eve Lander" but it is still undergoing testing... it is currently on a full flight test from Kerbin to Eve landing and back again.... on its Kerbin to Eve leg where it is supposed to meet up with an ACM-C VI (which is called Eve Potato Farmer) in Eve orbit to fuel it before it attempts to land, but it will actually arrive at Eve about 3 years before the asteroid that is supposed to fuel it... (which is currently in a solar orbit with Eve's inclination and waiting for the Eve intercept...) So I guess it still has an excuse to not have any Roman numerals after it.

LOL! you're quite right. Never noticed that

Definitely! I have launched some loads that were unlaunchable until I installed fairings. This is part of the Habitat ring of my space station. You need to launch 3 of these to construct the habitat ring. The fairing was essential in this instance. That makes a habitat ring that looks like this on my 1kk/k Space Hotel (this was constructed before the dock rotate option was available in stock...

sometimes you need more than one separatron per spent rocket section... just make sure you stage them correctly.... annoying when you hit the spacebar on the launch pad, and all the separatrons fire as well. In 1.12 there is a stock alarm clock. Alarm clock is an absolute must have for managing multiple concurrent missions.... Although I find the Stock alarm clock doesn't work correctly when you select the "add burn time" option, especially when your trying to set an alarm for maneuvers other than the 1st one. But even if you are only flying 1 mission at a time, using the alarm clock to pause the game close to the end of a long burn can save your inattentiveness from overshooting ... doing a 1 hr burn with the Ion engine, I can go off and do something else and know the game will pause when there are 30 seconds of burn left.

Nope. the "Gilly Guzzler I" is now in LKO waiting for the next Eve transfer window ... in 1 and a half years... and it will get to Eve long before the asteroid arrives

Got it down to 850dv taking 3 and a bit years to orbit. 332 at AP to put the PE on eve's orbit, followed by 147 at PE to get an eve intercept, then 377 to pull into Eve orbit. some 3 years 139 days later. what's a few years between kerbals? The original 4 insisted they be the 1st to fly the eve lander to and from Eve. Only 3 will get to land though. the 4th one has to do a Michael Collins and wait in orbit...

The ship has a 460ton asteroid attached to its nose. Thats why it is on such an inefficient intercept orbit. My previous version of this ship latched onto a 1300t Class E asteroid and I found it didn't have enough DV so I did the kerbal thing and hopefully made it big enough that no Class E asteroid could defeat it. I just found a reasonably large asteroid that had an orbit that sort of went near Eve's orbit and sent my Asteroid Catcher after it. I didn't think of using Gilly as a source of fuel. Hmmm... my mining ship is already enroute, and it is geared to asteroid mining not landing on a moon. I think I'm still within the Eve transfer window, so I could send yet another ship ... All to support my efforts to land on and take off from Eve. the problem I had with my Eve lander was that I designed it from an assumption that it was starting at a 110k orbit full of fuel (enough for it to take off) and then to get it to eve, I had to empty it of fuel... of course it would probably be much more efficient to build a space-plane, but I've never been big on creating aerodynamic vehicles, and tend towards the brute force approach And yes your right of course, just save the game and then experiment with different maneuvers. Thankyou for that reminder I will have a play around with maneuvers and save games and see if I can get a better burn... (although I think I have sufficient DV to do this the ineffecient way )

I've captured an asteroid which I am planning to pull into an Eve orbit. Now I've already pushed it into the same inclination as Eve, so all that is left is to get the intercept and then slow down to orbit. I currently have 2 maneuvers planned that will get the asteroid into orbit, however, the AP of the current orbit takes the asteroid close to Kerbins orbit. Would be really neat if there was a mod that would allow me to "save" a set of maneuvers so I could test out a different set of maneuvers and then switch back to the "saved" maneuvers if I can't find a better set. Here is what I currently have with a 145dv maneuver to get the intercept and a 1550dv burn to orbit. My ship has 6 Nerv engines and that 1550dv burn is going to take about 45 minutes game time. (last long burn I did was 26 minutes game time which ended up taking an hour and a half real time (frame rate is down a bit might need to upgrade my hardware... or stop tracking too many asteroids...) My question is would it be better to do a retrograde burn at solar PE to lower the AP, and potentially have a much shorter orbit insertion burn? but if I did that I'd be going much slower and would likely miss the encounter on this orbit? This asteroid is to provide fuel for my eve lander which is on its way and has a scheduled orbit insertion burn in about 290 days, so it is already going to have to wait for the asteroid once it gets there before it can attempt the decent. (I just hope I grabbed a big enough asteroid to fill the tanks on the Eve lander ) Cheers John

Well, they produced 1.12.1, and I thought I read somewhere that there would be bugfixes done after 1.12, so lets hope there aren't too many bugs so that they don't need to prioritize which ones get fixed, and our bugs get fixed in the next patch update

I've just been exploring my alarms, and have found that turning off the "Add Burn time to" option on a maneuver node alarm, it does start counting down. It seems that when I have more than 1 maneuver alarm defined, only the 1st maneuver alarm counts down. All other maneuver alarms seem to be frozen unless the relevant vessel is active. Disabling the "Add Burn time to" option seems to be a viable workaround, you just need to factor that in and add sufficient time to the event margin. Manual alarms and planetary transfer window alarms don't seem to be affected by this issue. (Haven't tested other alarm types...) I love using manual alarms when I start a particularly long burn... set an alarm to about 1 minute before the burn is supposed to end choosing to pause the game, and you can get distracted onto other things and not have to worry about burning for too long as the game will pause once you are near the end of your burn... REALLY useful when you have a 2+ hour burn of your IX-6315 to get your satellite out to a Jool orbit.

I have multiple alarms set. I'm currently in the process of getting a set of sentinal scanner satelites up, one to each planet, and I have set alarms for each of their maneouver nodes. (some have one maneouver node left others have 2 or 3. I also have a couple of ships in orbit waiting for their transfer maneouver which was calculated using the new alarm clock. I've noticed that only some of the alarms are counting down, and it seems like it if I visit the vessel of an alarm that is not counting down, the countdown starts, but one of the others stops. I also had an incident where while I was flipping between ships using the new alarm clock interface, the game crashed, and left a half saved save file. I was only able to recover the save by creating a new save, and copying the save directory, and the VAB, and SPH directories from the broken save to the new save, and then loading one of the persistent backups. Didn't think to go looking for any logs at the time though. Note, I also have KAC installed with the same set of alarms, not yet ready to trust the new alarm clock. Is it possible that the new alarm clock and KAC clash?

While looking for a suitable asteroid to pull into Eve orbit, I found I was in need of better sorting/display options for asteroids in the Tracking Station, so I went searching to see if anyone had written a mod to provide the functionality I was looking for, and found Tracking Station Evolved that seems to almost provide what I'm after. Specifically, what I'm after is a tracked asteroid "management" facility available from the tracking station (would only be available from a lvl 3 tracking station in career mode) options available: ability to display asteroids by class (size) (optional) ability to colour asteroids by size ability to display asteroids that pass within a specified distance of the orbit of a celestial body (for example: I could view only those asteroids whos orbits pass within 100000km of Eve's orbit) ability to be able to add asteroids to named watch lists so I could view all asteroids in a watch list. Here is my reason for wanting such functionality: (now which of these asteroids is going to pass close enough to Eve to make it worth my while to push it into an Eve orbit? ) Happy to ask this question in a separate thread if this is not the right mod for thinking about this feature. Regards, John

Discovered a fantastic use case for KAC! Was launching a fleet of sentinel satellites, 1 for each planet, each with 18k dv with the IX-6315 "Dawn" electric propulsion system.. Getting from near kerbin orbit to each planet requires a series of burns from 5 minutes to 4 hours, and I was wondering how I could do the longer burns without missing the end and then realised KAC could set a raw alarm. Perfect! Now when I start a burn I set a raw alarm for 1 minute before the end of the burn based on the burn time next to the navball, and set the alarm to pause the game and now I can go off and do something else while the 4 hour burn is occuring and not worry about missing the end, the game gets paused by KAC and even if I have a frame rate issue, I never miss the end of the burn. Another reason this mod is so indispensable! Thankyou for this great mod (Now the only thing I have to worry about is that my maneouves for different ships don't overlap.)

Oh yeah! already had lots of explody test failures My ship that invites kraken to a kerbin launch has some special order of action required for entry... As it was the landing component of an eve mission I was testing, I was starting by setting orbit to 110k Eve orbit... (getting to eve would have been the next level of designing after proving I could take off...) so once in orbit, I would first decouple from the 'return to kerbin' stage, use a small amount of RCS to move the 'return to kerbin' stage out from amongst all the struts, girders and heat shields, then rotate the lander to retrograde, and fire the poodle to lower the PE to 72500m. this would burn a bit over half the DV in the deorbit stage. then decouple the poodle stage, and activate the parachute stage. next, deploy the heat shields with action group 1. then wait.... (safe to warp until altitude is 95k, then you have enough time for the SAS to re-orient to retrograde), then wait... everything starts to heat up.... altitude will continue to drop as the heatshields get hotter... around 35k, one of the mamoths starts to display a heat bar, but that only displays for a few seconds, as by this time, speed is starting to drop significantly, continue to wait until the drogue chutes deploy. at this point activate action group2 to decouple the top heat shields. (Do not wait until horizontal movement has been eliminated, as the heatshields will come crashing back through the ship with destructive force when the chutes open and slow the ship right down... discovered this one the hard way... for some reason, after decoupling the upper heat shields when horizontal velocity is eliminated, the heat shields continue to fall in a very stable formation, so that when the main ship slows right down, they return with avengeance...) Now it is just a waiting game... the main chutes will deploy at about 5000m. Continue to wait... the drogue chutes will then fully deploy at 2500m, and then the main chutes at 1000m at which time speed will drop to around 6.5m/s now it is safe to activate action group 3 which will decouple the lower heatshields, and the structural members holding them in place, and they will fall straight down. you can watch them fall and they should all explode to non-existance when they hit the ground... if they don't they might get in the way of landing... but so far in all my tests, they have been successfully destroyed. then don't forget to activate the landing gear, and the landing lights if you are landing on the dark side of Eve. Rotate the ship so that the north/south axis on the navball is horizontal so that when you take off, you only need to worry about 1 axis... as long as the ground isn't too steep, you should be good... I have yet to achieve a successful take off test from eve with this ship, however with all the excellent advice received in this thread, I will be re-designing...

Better still. My original design I needed 3 kerbals because I was taking down a bunch of mining gear to fill the tanks. Wanted pilot, engineer to increase efficiency of mining and scientist to reset some science, was even trying to get the engineer to build a rover but found parts were too heavy to use. Didnt think to cut down on the number of kerbals after I abandoned the miming idea.

F3 showed that the first failure was when the connection between two of the girders failed. I had the top heat shields so high because I kept having stability issues while enterimg Eve's atmosphere. I like your idea with the stability fins. I had the top heats hields so high due to stability issues. Your way would mean no need to put the top heatshields so high. I also had problems when jettisoning the lower heatshields, they'd always destroy something critical if I got rid of them before the parachutes had fully deployed, and then if I jettisoned them after the descent speed had dropped below 10m/s they would often fall straight down and end up getting in the way of landing, so I had to add 12 sepratrons for each heatshield to get them out of the way. And how did you get away with so few parachutes? Mine kept getting destroyed by aerodynamic forces until I added a whole bunch of drogue chutes as well. What I've got works for landing on Eve, but I've yet to prove it can then get back into orbit....

Thanks. Will have a look tonight.

Actually I would be interested. If my behemoth with only the Eve lander invites kracken to the launch, whats going to happen once I start trying to launch it for real? My son suggested I might need to break it up and launch in bits and put it together in orbit.

It got big trying to get enough DV for eve liftoff. Only 3 kerbals can go down. I initially started off landing with empty tanks and taking some mining equipment to fill the tanks, but then found I didn't have enough dv to get to orbit, so changed to this design where I carry all my fuel down. How do you make a smaller eve lander?

(Mod list: KER, KAC, DPAI, Dock Rotate, Transfer Window Planner) I have been developing a ship capable of flying to Eve, landing, taking off and then returning safely to Kerbin. So I've been working backwards, and started with the "return to kerbin" module which is a small craft with a Nerv engine and enough seating for 7 kerbals and enough DV for a good transfer window (determined by Transfer Window Planner) (un-tested - assuming I have enough DV based on Transfer Window Planner). Next I have been working on the ship that can land on Eve, and then take off again and dock with the return craft. This one I have been doing extensive testing by using the set orbit cheat. Now, it is not quite there, and last night I was going to do another test, but by the time I got to the computer, I figured I didn't have enough time to do a full Eve landing test, so thought "what the heck, I'll just launch it from kerbin" Well...that didn't go too well, after several failed launches where I returned to the VAB to add more struts, and update the auto strut, I go to launch . As I have configured the staging for the Eve landing and launcing, the Mammoth engines are not staged for a kerbin launch so I had to manually activate the mammoth engines, then activate SAS, and then increase the throttle to about 50% well, again the ship breaks up, but this time I watch what happens to the grizzily conclusion, but then things started going strange. so tonight I tried again and videoed it... the really interesting things start to occur around 2:41. Ths reminds me of some videos I've seen of early versions of KSP

Form IR102a Incident Report Please fill in all relevant details of incident and attach photos if possible (Form should be filled in by pilot if available, or if not available then the engineer, and if the engineer is unavailable then the scientist. (Tourists are not to fill in this form due to the technical nature of this report) Ship: Munamina IV Nearest Space Station (including orbit altitude): Mun Orbit Station II - 340k Pilots: (names of all pilots on board including their current status) Coruki Kerman - alive Engineers: (names of all engineers on board including their current status) Sanfrod Kerman - alive Scientists: (names of all scientists on board including their current status) N/A Tourists: (names of all tourists on board including their current status, and insurance policy details, and beneficiaries) N/A Location: (please describe location of incident) East Crater, Mun Incident summary: (please briefly describe the incident) I broke 2 of the solar panels. Its ok though, there are still 7 more. Incident details: (please provide detailed description of the incident and events leading up to the incident - attach photographic evidence - additional sheets may be used if more space is required) Sanfrod and I had just completed our first fuel supply mission for Mun Orbit Station II. We had successfully taken the Munamina IV down to the East Crater on the Mun, filled the fuel storage tanks on the Munamina IV, and then successfully returned to orbit and docked with Mun Orbit Station II. This first mission went without incident. and took the Mun Orbit Station II's fuel reserves to 1/3 full capacity. After the fuel transfer, I noted that the Munamina IV had 850dV fuel remaining in the fuel tanks. As this was the 1st mission completed for this new class of Mun mining ships, we immediately reported to the Kerbal Space Engineering Corp. The KSEC was pleased their new design appeared to have sufficient fuel to run the 9 Nerv engines for lifting off the Mun and returning to the space station with a full load of fuel, and what looks like sufficient fuel remaining after unloading to return to the Mun. KSEC were keen for Sanfrod and I to return to the Mun as soon as we could without taking on any additional fuel so they could provide the final test results to the KSP on the effectiveness of the new design. So without taking any rest periods, Sanford and I returned to the command module on the Munamina IV, and undocked. I performed a Mun-retrograde burn to lower our orbit to 8k, and then another burn at the PE to circularise our orbit at 8k. As the East Crater is known for good ore quantity, we wanted to return to the East crater, so when we reached the appropriate orbital location I performed a short retrograde burn to lower our PE to 4500m above the East Crater. our aim was to burn all 9 NERV engines at 100% to break for landing in the crater, with start of burn as we passed over the rim of the crater. Sanfrod was monitoring the altitude and noticed that maybe 4500m might have been a bit optimistic as our Mun surface altitude as we approached the rim of the crater was hovering aournd 200 - 800m. I said, as long as we make it over that crater rim we will have a good 2k of altitude to land. looking out the window we were arguing about whether we were going to make it over the rim. Sanford said I should have allowed an extra 1000m. but I was concerned that the small amount of fuel left might be cutting it too fine if we had more altitude to kill once we started the final decent burn. Its Ok though, we didn't hit the crater rim we missed it by a a few meters. Scary when the altitude scanner drops to single figures and your still racing along at 550m/s. so safely past the crater rim, I hit full throttle and start to kill our speed. All goes according to plan, and our decent profile ends us up at around 100m altitude going down about 20m/s but we are headed directly for one of the smaller craters on the floor of the East Crater. I adjust the throttle and put us down neatly on the ground. but I noticed that we have landed on a 20 degree slope. Sanfrod suggested that we do another small burn and move closer to the flat bottom of the crater, and I agree, so open the throttle again to move us. I then hit the retrograde control on the SAS to again descend but this time landing on level ground when Sanfrod calls out to me that he just noticed the fuel critical alert going off, and just then the engines cut out. We are still 20 meters above the surface of the mun and not going straight down and no power to the NERV engines. We hit the ground hard at an angle and I try to use the reaction wheels to keep the ship vertical, but the reaction wheels just aren't responsive enough, and the Munamina IV tips over onto its side and slides along the ground for about 50 meters. Sanfrod and I climb out and cant see anything wrong with the ship except for the fact that it is lying on its side. So I jump back in the pilots seat and again try to use the reaction wheels to get the ship upright. But nowhere near enough force is available in the reaction wheels to affect the ship. Then Sanfrod clambered back into the engineering station and pointed out that maybe the landing legs might be able to spring us back upright. So, Sanfrod toggles the landing gear selector and we are pleased that those landing struts seem to be moving the ship considerably, but unfortunately not enough to get the ship upright. So, there we are, sitting on our side looking at the empty fuel gauge, when Sanfrod says, "hey we still have full RCS tanks" and then points out that the designers knew the RCS would need to be able to move the ship when it was full, but that now it was empty, maybe there was sufficient power in the RCS system to stand us upright, so I activate the RCS system, and low and behold, we are back upright within 5 seconds. Phew! that was close. As our fuel tanks are now empty, and the RCS will not be able to get us back to orbit, we decide we may as well do what we came for now that our drills are pointing at the ground, so Sanfrod extends the solar arrays, the cooling system, and the drills, and activates the surface harvesting. The monoprop program on the ISU soon has the mono propellant tank full again, and Sanfrod enables the LFO program. Then Sanfrod noticed that Solar Arrays 3 and 4 were not producing any electricity, so I decided to step outside again to have a look, and this is what I saw: Number 3 and 4 solar arrays have been, how can I put this, um, removed? Its Ok though, we still have 7 other solar panels and they are well up to the job of running the drills and the ISU. Nothing else was damaged. And we didn't crash on our low Mun orbit. Report Completed by: Coruki Kerman Report verified by: Sanfrod Kerman

that's a small delta-V for a 90° inclination change. But how much DV would I need to get my asteroid to that initial eliptical orbit? For that to be effective, the periapsis/apoapsis, would need to be on an equatorial plain. But the 3600 tonne asteroid was coming in well below kerbin with a periapsis below the south pole. An apoapsis burn would just rotate the polar orbit, and not get me that equitorial orbit?

I thought about that, but my question is that for this 3600T asteroid. I would need to convert enough fuel to fill my ships tanks about 4 times to get the DV I would need. and my ship consists of 1 x Mk3 Liquid Fuel Fuselage Long, and 6 x Mk3 Liquid Fuel Fuselage Short for a total of 25000 units of liquid fuel. that's a lot of fuel to have to generate. Although that calculation I put in my post for required DV was to pull the asteroid into a circular orbit about half way between Mun and Minmus. so maybe that option would actually be quite viable, because once I have achieved an eliptical orbit, I then have as much time as I need to generate more fuel to circularize. from a timing perspective, I've given up hoping to capture this asteroid on this orbit. In fact, I had totally abandoned the idea of ever capturing this particular mega-sized potato and was going to stop tracking it, however, as you mentioned its orbit might eventually bring it back within coo-ee of Kerbin, I may check how long it will take and then consider setting an alarm to the next encounter. I'm not running a life-support mod, so time is not of the essence, and this particular asteroid is not relevant to my planned Duna mission, I was just testing out a tweak to my asteroid catcher while waiting for the Duna transfer window I think my wording in my post is slightly misleading. I said "this asteroid was coming in low to kerbin" What I meant was that it was on a trajectory that would take it below the south pole of kerbin, but it was still quite a ways out, the PE was at a distance that was closer to Minmus's orbital distance than Mun's, so would still burn a lot of DV just to get the asteroid to touch the atmosphere. how much velocity will a 3600T asteroid be able to throw off in a single aerobreak? Imagine being a kerbal on the surface of kerbin for that event unfortunately this beast is coming in on a polar orbit well below Mun's orbit, so I would need to burn most of my fuel to get it near mun's orbit. Will have to consider aerobreaking but I'm not sure I can pull it off for this particular rock. how much DV is needed to change inclination by 90 degrees at the upper limit of kerbins SOI on a highly eliptical orbit? Just doing a 160ish DV burn with my current ship attached was going to burn 20000+ units of fuel That was my plan too. Initially I started out with the aim to capture asteroids just after they entered kerbin's SOI, and so I started my ACM fleet (Asteroid Catcher and Miner) but soon ran into the same issue you have with each asteroid having a different inclination inside kerbins SOI, then I found that with a ship in my current configuration with 1 x Mk3 Liquid Fuel Fuselage Long, and 6 x Mk3 Liquid Fuel Fuselage Short, and 6 nerv engines, I hadaround 11k dv which was plenty to catch the asteroids well outside of kerbins SOI giving me time to push the asteroids before they hit kerbins soi, and then my mining ships could stay in an equitorial orbit, and the asteroid catcher could head out for the next after waiting for the mining ship to refuel. I've grabbed half a dozen asteroids with my ACM fleet now, but this 3600 tonne beast has found a flaw in my system this particular asteroid I latched onto not very many days out from kerbins SOI. I guess if I detected it a lot sooner, I might have been able to catch it earlier, and affect its orbit with much less DV? still doesn't leave much DV to get even an eliptical orbit though.