DrLucky

Ah, that makes much more sense. I was thinking, "I didn't do a very good job this flight, and I still had oodles of fuel; not sure why this was a problem." Also: Challenge Accepted.

Great ship. As to re-orbiting - I built a modified version of this lander, and I was able to land on Duna, re-orbit, return home, and land within 13km of KSC. So yes, it's possible. My modification - well, to be honest, I rebuilt it from scratch, but used your layout - was to remove a few bits (wheels, etc.), stretch the outrigger tanks to 4 tanks each, and add a further detachable 3 tanks on each outrigger, feeding into the outriggers. I also tucked a half-tank of fuel above each Nerva, so it has a little delta-V after the final staging event. My core stage was capable of tossing this contraption out of Kerbin's atmo at about 1.4 km/s - I made up the rest of orbital V with the first tank or so of fuel on the Nervas. After that, and with some patience, I was able to reach Duna aerobraking only somewhat into the outriggers fuel supply. Because the landing, using the chutes, requires only a little fuel, I wound up on Duna's surface with more than 7.5 tanks of fuel left. I was able to launch easily to orbit using that, and once I'd dropped the non-Nerva engines and struts, I was able to do another transfer orbit back down to Kerbin, and then aerobrake to a landing there. I really didn't need the extra half-tanks at all, but I used them to land a little closer to KSC. I was not terribly efficient in either my launch or maneuvers. That lander, with a beefed-up launcher and another set of travel tanks is perfectly capable of a round-trip to Duna. I bet Eve is harder - I've landed there once in a different craft, and the atmo is much much thicker, and the gravity higher. Probably a LOT harde to escape. Some pics:

I just wanted to say that I think the way the kerbals handle on EVA is jaw-droppingly good. Yeah, I\'m sure there are rough edges to polish (please grab the ladder when exiting, Jeb?), but I\'ve played any number of mainstream games where navigating a level in third person feels clunky and awkward in the release version, and you really nailed it first go. The things that impress me most are: * you can find and navigate ladders on physical objects that are dynamically moving around a scene. I\'ve played games where I can\'t get on a ladder that\'s designed into a fixed level, for heaven\'s sakes. I actually chased a rolling plane down the runway and got back in. * you can transition from climbing to jumping to RCS to flopping to walking seamlessly * the low-G gait on minmus just slew me. That he waits for his foot to hit the ground before he jumps. Can\'t wait to see what high-G looks like. The devil is in the details, and well done getting so many of the details right. DrLucky

My first EVA on Minmus, much like Awaras: After a quick play around with what I could get, altitude-wise, I refreshed fuel in the pod and did this: I call it 'I can see my house from here' -- a 14.7km x 15.0 km orbit. And guess what? He stuck the landing. I wound up almost 4km from the lander, so I put a heavy object on \'W\' and waited more than an hour to get him back to the pod. The lack of a navball in orbit is somewhat disconcerting. But I just thought, 'What Would Jeb Do?' and carried on by eyeball. I bet if you shot for a very low (~8 km) orbit, you\'d have oodles of fuel left. I think the mesas on Minmus approach 5km, so much lower might be infeasible. DrLucky

So I went ahead and built the \'Krammer\' - the Jammer variant for Mun landings. As I planned, I removed the RCS tank and shortened the length of the plane. I also went back to one centre turbojet with two fuel tanks to lighten things further. After rebalancing and testing the plane, I built it in the VAB and added a booster under each of the outboard hulls. These sport landing legs for the Munar part of the mission, and provide thrust for the return trip. Two more small boosters (LV-909 & 2 LFTs each) provide thrust for the Trans-Munar Injection burn and for descent thrust to the Mun\'s surface. The result is a much cleaner look, and a lot more delta-v. The wider stance helped - even with the bigger footprint I snapped off one leg at landing. In this shot, you can see the remnants of the descent boosters which I ditched moments before landing: Ascending back toward Kerbin: The return flight was nominal and it was a simple matter to re-enter, descend and fly to KSC for a landing. DrLucky (Edit: attached the craft file)

Thanks! I think I\'m going to tweak it a bit to clean up the boosters / first stage - those are underpowered for the weight. I\'m also going to take another look at the plane itself - I built it with an RCS fuel tank since I thought that might be required for landing, but I wound up with no RCS thrusters, so that\'s 0.9t of dead mass in the topmost stage. However I can\'t just yank it because the plane will likely become unflyable without it I\'ve found aircraft are finicky that way. I eventually want this thing to be Mun-capable, but for that it needs significantly better delta-V (although it has delta-V to spare for Minmus), and a much wider footprint for the landing. Minmus has those lovely flat mares to land on, but the Mun nearly guarantees a sloped landing field, which would be a big toppling risk for the Jammer. Of course in an ideal world I\'d be able to land the thing on its wheels under RCS or something, but I find it hard to control since you\'re effectively landing it on its side, and the RCS thrusters seem to have a mind of their own on planes. Onward! DrLucky

Hi folks, Long time, no post! With 15.2 out, I took a shot at constructing a stock spaceplane capable of runway landing from a Minmus surface mission. No funny business here; it\'s a stock craft built entirely in the VAB (though I did my spaceplane testing in the Spaceplane Hangar, of course.) I went with a two-engine plane to permit central attachment of the launch vehicle. The Minmus landing is accomplished using the trans-lunar stages attached above-and-below the plane fuselage. It lands on its \'tail\' for that part of the mission. The first stage / booster-fest combo is inelegant but does the job. Careful staging the last set of SRBs... they tend to detonate the second set of SRBs if you light em up instantly. There was oodles of fuel left, so I used the cross-range capability the fuel provided to pass near the KSC, and then flew the plane back to a runway landing. Sadly I erred on the side of caution and let the vehicle run off the side of the runway rather than use the brakes, so it wasn\'t a *perfect* mission, but the plane is perfectly reasonable at taking off again, and with 4 x 150-unit tanks (the centre fuselage is empty) and 2 engines it\'s effectively a trans-continental airliner. The plane is responsive except at high AOA, where the canards tend to weather-gauge you. Don\'t flare too hard on final! Here\'s my gallery: http://imgur.com/a/WyyQR#0 Sorry about the lack of early-mission pics, but this was the first real test flight and I had no idea it would work as well as it did. Oh - I\'ll attach the craft file as I flew it, but you\'ll need to adjust the staging - move the decouplers from Stage 1 up to Stage 0 or you\'ll lose the landing stage as soon as you light it (luckily I noticed that before I staged to it!) DrLucky

For what it\'s worth, the \'seas\' on Minmus are solid. I landed on one with great trepidation. The highlands seem to be about +2000m or so immediately around the seas, so there\'s a lot of relief. The return flight was uneventful. I had beefed up my lander for the longer return, but as someone pointed out, it actually takes less energy to return from the surface of Minmus than the surface of Mun.

If your rocket is built as described, you *are* using the VTOLs. They\'re similar to other liquid-fueled engines. They activate with their stage and thrust proportionally to the throttle. So you\'ve got one \'up\' engine and a couple of \'sideways\' engines. That\'s going to be tough to fly. DrLucky

Ah, ok, thanks! That info will save me a lot of time experimenting. Until then, everything gets an RCS. Should be doable with the weight savings from not including SAS. Actually, they\'re small, skip the engine and fuel, too. And thanks for the fun toys and all the work. It\'s appreciated.

Hey, I\'m back again. Thanks for the advice about the invisible connector; I\'ve since managed to orbit a few nice stations! I\'m on to troubleshooting a different part of this set: The BACE Unmanned Control Unit. The UCU allows you to select and control what would otherwise be discarded parts of your ship. I\'ve been experimenting with lofting a constellation of satellites using Probodobodyne. I\'ve been having some control issues with them, and after some fruitless experimentation, I thought I\'d appeal to the hive-mind. Here\'s what I\'m doing: Each unit consists of a UCU, a Probo SAS, a Probo Fuel Tank, and a tiny Probo engine. A few cosmetic parts were added. They get deployed one at a time, and all the parts are staged before they\'re separated. That is, I could use the engines prior to staging if needed to alter orbit slightly. After separation, I go to the tracking station and select a satellite. After I take control of it (this works, yay!), there are a few issues. The throttle works fine, and I can toggle SAS to stop a tumble, but I\'m unable to use the SAS to point the ship with WASD. From other experiments, RCS works ok. Originally, I thought that it was the absence of an SAS unit that prevented control, but that doesn\'t seem to be it. Any tips on making the probes steerable other than RCS, which is pretty heavy for what I\'m doing? Another problem, which I think stems from how KSP handles stages, is that if I cut loose a stage with unactivated equipment, it all gets collapsed to a single stage in the resulting vessel. I was wondering if a plugin would be capable of recording and recreating the stage info in the separated vessel? Mind you, Harv will likely have to deal with this when he tackles undocking, anyway, so perhaps it\'s premature to ask. Thanks!

Going to de-lurk for a moment here to ask - what is the source of the cubic 6-port adapter that I see at the core of these various space stations, etc? The one with crew tunnels often stuck to it? Thanks!

FTFY. But the diving bell thing is right on the mark. Speaking of the oncoming multiplicity of fuel types, what with plugins and all, has anyone given thought to establishing some standard tables of Isp and how it ought to vary with engine size and sophistication? I haven\'t heard discussion of the sophistication angle, but it might make sense with the whole \'price\' thing to establish that a early model kerosene engine would have efficiency X whereas a second generation one would have Y.. it would give us something to stand on when mods/plugins have a tech tree behind them and we need early or late tech. Silisko\'s ion thruster got me thinking in this direction, and I suspect more fuels are coming.

Nice. My experience with Mun landing was like your first: I\'m sure I was less than efficient. I set it down very gently, but the uneven terrain tipped it over after it slid a bit, and that popped off the capsule.

Okay, I modded Sarfoggy Larpinz for the goal of Munar interment: Removed all but 3 ASAS (yeah, only need one but I was having trouble finding a good spot to mount just one. Remove all but 3 SAS. Both of these units are on a mid-stage that gets dropped before orbit. Removed the stack decoupler under the capsule - landing on Kerbin would be thrust-assisted parachute with lander. Cut RCS back to 4 units and added RCS tank Removed the stack of 3 central SRB/LFE stages and replaced with a set of 3 4-LFT 1-Vectored LFE that burn for most of the orbit to provide steering once the fins fall off. That\'s most of it. Results? You judge: ..2..1..Liftoff! Of the mighty Sarfoggy Lipinz II, on a journey of exploration and likely lithobraking to the Mun! Here you can see the LF core stack peeking out amidst the SRB glare: A couple of stages later, nearing orbit: Somewhere around here I think I lit an SRB before staging the LFT stack. There was a bit of a boom. Be nice to use that wasted deltaV; have to fix it. Fast forward to the Mun. Coming in for landing on the engine; trying not to break it off. Flawless victory: Now use the RCS to pop the nose up and take off again... At this point I\'m down to vapours in the RCS and main LFT. We\'re not leaving Mun orbit again. Can you hear me Major Jeb? So, moral of the story is that if I fix the deltaV I suspect I\'m wasting by exploding the LFTs and not getting most of the burn from 3 SRBs, it might be Munar return. Anyway, craft file attached!