ShadowDragon8685

1- Amateur airhogging. 2- The CoL is behind and above the CoM when the plane is full. the emptier the tanks get, the further forward the CoM goes. This is the Razorback, the second plane I managed to make by consulting this guide. It's more stable than the Buzzard (Jebediah knows how,) after some invisible struts to make it not flop like a fish. Yes, that is a nuclear reactor. I needed more weight forward because of the aft-mounted cockpit, and I figured I'd kill the bird of power supply issues (which plagued the Buzzard) at the same time.

Keptin - thank you. Thanks to this fantastic guide, I actually built something that wasn't strictly paint-by-numbers (the firespitter biplane) that I've managed to successfully fly. Here's a picture of it. This is a few minor revisions ago, but the basic principle is the same. I call it the Buzzard. It flies rather poorly and is almost uncontrollable without SAS, but it does fly, it takes off pretty quickly, and with the airbrakes on the back lands even quicker.

My advice is to use MechJeb to ride your gravity turn, and because of the very, very useful "Limit throttle to terminal velocity" setting that automatically throttles you down so you're riding the edge of terminal velocity, which is the most optimal speed. When you're riding the edge of terminal velocity, you're using as much of your thrust to get away from gravity as you can, without wasting any fighting against air pressure. You do not need to hit mach 8 to break orbit. It's flashy and showy, so you can if you want to, but you do not need to. Even if you refuse to do that, though, at least use Kerbal Engineer Redux to calculate your dV and such in-game. (MechJeb gives you your dV readouts too.) Anyway, 4,500 dV, puts you into basically any Kerbin orbit, high or low, if you do the gravity turn right. It does this whether you're launching a tiny ion probe of a gigantic space station.

That was awesome, and hilarious. The creator should do more tutorials as Jebediah. I really wanna know how they got Kerbspeak to work.

Just do be mindful - megahuge proceedural fairings rapidly get stupidly heavy, like in the order of tens of tons heavy.

Clearly, I don't have a fluent grasp on the English language despite it being my first and native tongue. Because clearly, that is not "anything negative" implying and insinuating that I don't know what I'm talking about. Oh wait, no, the other thing. That's right, that's exactly what that was - WhiteKnuckle telling me I didn't know what I'm talking about. Because, as I said, I clearly do know what I'm talking about. MechJeb can't design that thing, let alone the lift vehicle required to get this behemoth into orbit, transfer it to Minmus, and put it down on the ground. MechJeb certainly can't plot a biome-hopping grand tour of Minmus. It also can't give you a short suborbital hop, and it can't bring you to a good rest on a hill. All of that requires the player. You see that picture there? I think I've got fairly unimpeachable exploration chops. Oh, I'm sorry. Clearly, this is not a personal jab alluding to my being a know-nothing unqualified to speak on the topic of Kerbal Space Program. Oh wait, no, the exact opposite, because that's exactly what it is.

Okay, see, that? That would be nice information to have had documented somewhere! Preferably somewhere in-game, since they've decided to alter the function of a stock part in a very unintuitive way. >_< Very, very annoyed.

The best way to do science? Whatever works for you. This is what works for me. It's my tower of power, with a wet weight - that is, all four fuel tanks and the Kethane tank full - of fifty-two and a half tons. Kethane, KW Rocketry, Insterstellar, SCANsat and DMagic Orbital Science all feature heavily, and it's using an ALCOR command pod. Real Chutes are there to get it to the ground (ProTip: Flush the kethane tank and preferably the fuel before you try this.) I'm using it to hop around between Biomes on Minmus, refueling the fuel tanks from the Kethane tank, which I keep full before every hop, so it can refuel even if I hop somewhere without kethane deposits. It's quite efficient, and surprisingly stable even on steep hillsides, as you can see. I'm probably going to wind up doing a Minmus Grand Tour with this thing, just Jebediah, two janitors (to clean out the materials bay and mystery goo after Jeb has removed the experiments and stashed them in his hyperspace command capsule,) and a shipload of fuel.

Okay, so, the wiki doesn't have anything about this... I'm feeling pretty annoyed. KSP Interstellar decided to change the behavior of a stock science part, the Double-C Accelerometer, from being a standard "use it while landed, get science" part, to an impact detector. First off, it bugs me that the mod changes the behavior of a stock part rather than, say, adding their own. But it doesn't even bloody work! So, I set a satellite over Minmus - and not a lightweight, either, that thing had to be two tons at least - into a collision course with Minmus very, very near to where I had Jebediah waiting in a lander with the Double-C on. It was a quite quick collision, dropped right out of a stable 7km orbit onto Minmus. It definitely hit within 2.5km of him, because after it started coming down I switched back to Jebediah and made extra sure to start recording on the accelerometer. I targeted the incoming probe to watch it on the way down. It loaded into physics at 2.5km away, plowed into the Minmun terrain at less than 500m away. It hit so hard and so close I saw the thing blow into scrap. And the recorder didn't do anything. It didn't tell me I had recorded anything, when I hit collect data, the "log seismic data" button appeared for an instant and vanished. So, nothing. Nada. I deorbited a good, working probe, for nothing, and I can't collect science with the double-C the normal way, either. What the heck was the point?

Does the IRCinKSP mod support multiple IRC servers?

Right. Nobody's telling me to give up MechJeb, they're just snidely insisting that I don't know how to play KSP because I use MechJeb and that the advice I have for new players is, somehow, thus invalid. Get this through your head: Without MechJeb, I would not be able to play KSP. The only sort of orbit I can make reliably is the imprecise, inefficient, straight up-and-circularize-at-apoapsis kind. I wouldn't be able to ride a gravity turn, even if I had the inclination to do so manually, let alone would I be able to do it with the computer lagging all to hell the way it is wont to do when launching a behemoth 1,200 ton rocket. I would not be able to ride that gravity turn into the orbital inclination of my choice at all, let alone reliably put the most heavy, laggy loads with loads of stages into the inclination of my choice to within two significant figures. I sure as hell wouldn't be able to reliably change my inclination to within four sig figs, let alone do so efficiently, not would I be able to, say, launch a rocket any time and then match its inclined orbital plane to that of another inclined orbit with the same inclination but a different plane. I don't know what the heck an ascending node or a descending node is, except that when referring to a body you're orbiting, it's where your orbit passed the equator. But I do know that I can tell that wonderful little autopilot to make it so. And it makes it so! Because, though I don't know how to pilot those burns myself, I do know that I need them. I know what orders to give MJ to get the desired result, which has allowed me to focus on other things, like designing a behemoth 30-ton lander that incorporates all the kethane mining and refining equipment I could want, all the science I could want, a science lab to clean out experiments after I've used them, a nuclear reactor with a brayton cycle generator and enough heat dissipation facillity to do what I want with it, a refinery to reprocess my spent nuclear fuel if it's a long trip, and enough dV to do single-stage-to-kerbin and land intact on parachutes If I'd listened to the "Only lazy newbs who don't know what they're doing use MechJeb, be a real man and pilot your own damn rockets" crowd, I would have said "Arrrgh! This is so frustrating! Why am I wasting my time doing this?!" and deleted Kerbal Space Program. But I did not listen to those people. And because I did not listen to those people, Jebediah Kerman is grinning his little face off on Minmus, piloting a gigantic mobile lander, doin' Science and refining kethane. And anything that gets Jebediah into space is a good thing. So clearly, I do know what I'm doing. What I'm doing is running a successful space program. And like all successful administrators, I delegate the tasks I am not good at to those who are better at them and trust them to get the job done. (And yes, MJ is perfectly capable of landing in 0.23. MJ landed that gigantor lander of mine, quite reliably.)

Well, they are literally rocket scientists, after all.

This is not, strictly speaking, true. It is possible to break atmo like a boss and have insufficient TWR to circularize. Granted, the subset of designs capable of breaching atmosphere but having insufficient TWR to circularize is very narrow, but it can happen, especially if, say, you used a crapton of air-breathing engines to get above atmo and only have a single puny rocket engine (or Kod help you, an ion,) for out-atmo thrust. Practically speaking, though, anything that has an LFO rocket at all on it and can break atmo should be able to circularize - should be! If you think you're riding the razor's edge, though, it's best to test, test, test.

Knowing what MechJeb is doing isn't terribly helpful if doing it requires the kind of precision that you just can't get without an autopilot or being Scott Manley. Knowing the theory behind a Hohmann Transfer and intercepting a vehicle in its orbit and being able to do it on the fly are quite different things.

Only the Kerbal Space Program would spend a thousand tons of rocket fuel to put a Ferris Wheel on the Mun.

It does tend to make it awfully hard. I've said it before, I'll say it again: MechJeb.

Hoooo boy... I'm starting to wonder if I should do something stupid like, say, park a full Rockomax BIG with an LV-N under it at like, 80,000Km, just under Kerbin's SOI, then attach a probecraft to that. My initial plan was to to get my Ap above Kerbin's orbit, drop my PE down below low Kerbol orbit, do a swingby, flip back up to apoapsis, circularize, and do a hohman transfer at the window; insert back into Kerbin's SOI, drop my PE to about 30Km and fall back to Kerbin's soil like a gasoline-soaked, trebuchet-launched cat. Ih, and for the guy who chewed me out about being wrong calling it Kerbol? Boom. Right there in white and black, on the official wiki. Oh my goodness, I can't believe I couldn't find that! >_< Thank you. THANK you!

Kerbol. Kerbol! Not the planet, the star! I'm trying to dip a sundiver probe down low into Kerbol's SOI so I can get some sweet science out of it. It looks like it'll take a massive amount of dV, though. I'm not sure how in the world I'm going to do that, without some ridiculous craft with eight ion engines that takes forever and twenty days to burn anywhere...

I've managed to get a probe into interplanetary space. That's not new for me, since I dipped Jebediah and Bill up in a rocket to take some measurements once before. I want to send this probe on a sun-diving trajectory to get some Science! from Low Kerbol Orbit and then bring it back up to rendezvous with Kerbin. But I can't for the life of me find out what altitude actually is a low Kerbol orbit! >_< I guess I can just quicksave and experiment, but it's quite frustrating. Does anybody know?

If weight's an issue... I hate to say it, but a Landercan might be your best option for a "window facing outwards to survey the landscape around me" approach. If you have Raster Prop Monitor and the ALCOR capsule (though the ALCOR itself doesn't work for me for some reason,) you can put cameras everywhere, too, and enjoy that IVA feeling using the cameras instead.

I have almost all of those and a few more besides. You're definitely needing the active texture reduction pack.

In my experience, MechJeb's kill rotation (KILL ROT) button is much, much more useful than SAS. SAS tries to keep you pointing in one direction come hell or high water, MJ stabilizes your vehicle so it doesn't go out of control, but it doesn't fight you when you're trying to input commands. Frankly, the stock SAS is bollocks compared to it. I don't think docking would be possible for me without MJ's KILL ROT function. To actually do the dock, you need to touch the parts together slowly. They have a lot of docking part magnitism compared to real-life docking clamps, I understand, but even then it's very, very small compared to actually doing it. Expect to get it wrong and wind up nudging your docking partner where you weren't expecting, first time or two. Does this remind you of anything? As with that something I won't mention by name, the trick is to take it slow and easy. Line up the docking ports, get them drifting together from as near as head-on as you can, and if it's slow enough and close enough, let the magnitism take care of the rest. Also, technically, only the lighter participant in the docking actually needs RCS thrusters. The heavier one you're probably not going to want to be maneuvering around the lighter one, so just use its reaction wheels to get it pointing the way you want it to go. My first thought was to point it above the plane of the solar system and point the other one down, but that proved much less practical than pointing it prograde.

When I do it, I find that the most practical method is to do a circular, equatorial Kerbin orbit (6 degrees if I'm heading to Minmus instead,) launch for the satellite of my choice, and when I have my encounter, adjust my inclination immediately, then circularize at the desired height.

That panopticon probably isn't going to do what you want it to do. From the IVA, the kerb inside is looking straight up - think more "TIE fighter viewport" and less "train car observation bubble." You might wanna deep six it, or radialize like, four of them, facing outwards, maybe with a Damned Robotics rotating thingy to mount them on so they can swivel and look around.

There's just not enough dV in your designs. To quote Jeremy Clarkson: POWER! Refer to this. Bookmark it. Hell, I'd be glad if someone made a mod to display this DV map in-game. That second vehicle of yours has a total dV of 6,588. To get to the Mun and land, you need a minimum of 6,250. You're cutting that to the wire for a one-way trip, forget about any inclination changes and Kod help you if you come down in nasty terrain (which the Mun has a lot of.) With that rocket, returning to Kerbin might as well as much of a fantasy as the Starship Kerbaprise rolling on by to beam up your poor stranded Kerbonaut. First off, mods or no mods? I assume you're okay with modding, since you're using MechJeb. My advice: Get KW Rocketry. Their engines are much better. By which I mean they are more specialized, not that they are simply overpowered compared to stock. And they have better sounds, too, less OH GOD EAR ****! Once you've done that, basically divide your rocket into two sections: Launch and Mission. Build the Mission stage first, though it will itself be divided into transfer and lander stages (more on that later.) Assume you're starting from the very edge of LKO (you won't be, set MechJeb to at least a 100km, preferably a 200km launch,) and count up your dV requirements. 680 + 180 = 860 to do your Hohmann transfer to the Mun, 80 to correct, 230 to circularize. Plan for the worst. And by that I mean plan your transfer stage to get all the way to a circularized orbit of the Mun and then turn around and go home without jettisoning anything. So count it back again: 230 + 80 to get back to Kerbin's SOI, 180 + 680 to get to low orbit. That gives us a number of 1,170. Don't stop there, though, if you're making a shot at one of the satellites of Kerbin, you want an inclination change buffer. Make it at least 1,500, preferably 1,800 or better, and no matter what you do, if you find yourself cutting down to the mathematical wire, turn around and head home. You don't want to find yourself planning impromptu rescue missions. Now, your lander stage itself will need a lot of dV. Fortunately, it's light, so what would barely qualify as an engine and fuel supply for a transfer stage qualifies as beefy for a lander. The bare minimum, for a Mun landing, is 1,160, unless it's a one-way trip. Again, see my advice about not planning impromptu rescue missions: It's very possible for a planned two-way trip to become a one-way trip by accident. "We ran out of fuel" should not be one of those accidents, however, so plan that stage with at least 1,500 dV again. You may want to hop up and have a look at another biome. And lastly, the launch stage. Once everything's together, this sucker should have a minimum of 4,500 dV. You won't need much buffer on this, if you're using MechJeb, since it can put you into the orbit you want on exactly 4,500 dV with a ridiculous degree of accuracy. If it doesn't have 4,500, you're automatically scrubbed. Ideally, you want light-weight, high-atmosphere-ISP engines. You won't be in atmo the entire time, of course, but again, don't cut it down to the wire: if you have 4,500 atmo DV, you definitely have all the DV you need to get into orbit. So, build it from the top-down. Build your lander stage first, and don't plan on bringing any part of the damn thing home. It is fully possible and practical to build a lander capable of landing from low Munar orbit, doing a few biome-change hops and then returning to the mothership as a single stage. There are advantages and disadvantages, though the biggest advantage is that if you do so successfully, you can easily vamp the lander's fuel tanks and RCS tanks for any remaining fuel. Every little bit helps, especially when you don't actually have to bring the lander's mass home with you. Okay, you're planning to fly the satellite of your choice (more on that later.) You're going to go down, do some Science (Science!) and come home. Ideally, you want to bring a lot of Science with you. You know what you don't need to bring back? Those heavy goo containers, and those even-heavier Science Jr. materials bays. I didn't realize that at first and made a stupid lander designed to take off, do science, return to the mothership, transfer the kerbonaut back, and then jettison the landercan and fuel tanks, leaving the Science Jr. and goo tanks still attached. You can leave those on the Munar surface to increase your DV. attach them radially, have your Kerbonaut cuddle up to them, rightclick on them, take the Science out of them,get back in and discard them. You also don't need landing legs on your return trip, so if you're going to decouple something, might as well attach the things you won't be needing to the heaviest things you won't need. So build it low, squat, radialize the engines and radialize the Science! bays onto the engine pylons, and radialize the goo onto the Science bays, along with the lander legs. If you're so inclined, of course. It's just my way, but I like to plan my landers and mission stages as if everything is going back with me. Remember, the only cost to taking fuel home with you is the cost of going up in the first place, and fortunately the Kerbal race are so space-happy that KSP currently enjoys unlimited funding. (Enjoy that while it lasts.) So, the short version: Build from the lander down. The lander needs 1,500 dV. The transfer stage needs 1,500 as well, though I wouldn't go without 1,800 minimum myself. And the launch stage needs 4,500. If you don't meet these numbers, don't launch. Or if you do launch, use a probe core in there somewhere and have your learning experiences without a Kerbal's life on the line. You can always do what the Apollo program did, take it one step at a time, test each step and come home before moving on to the next. Now, my personal trick for launching heavy payloads? It's as simple as it is reliable. Build out, not down. Radialize, radialize, radialize. Six identical rockets firing at once will give you far, far more dV than those six firing in sequence, jettisoning when the stage above them is complete. And if you have to use a dozen or two dozen fuel stacks to get you up, so be it. Also, keep it simple. People here swear by asparagus staging and mixed engines. I'll have none of that, personally. If it works for you, go for it, but my strategy is identical engines connected rigidly all the way. Even if it lags, so what? You've got MechJeb, input lag and lag in general are no concern of yours. Launch the sucker at the sky, set of MJ to auto-stage if you attached SRBs (just remember that SRBs are bottom stage only,) and go make tea if you have to. One other thing: that much mass doesn't adjust its course easily if your only sources of control are fins (which do no good whatsoever above the atmosphere,) and the reaction wheels in the mission and lander stage. Put some reaction wheels in the lower stages. KW has a nifty one that can be radialized around a Rockomax fuel tank as two halves though using regular old inline reaction wheels works just as well. Lastly, launch from as high up as possible. Attach rocket holders to the bottom of your rocket, hold shift or control (I forget which does which; alt copies the part,) as you click on the bottommost bit of your rocket, lift it as high up in the VAB as you can, attach the rocket holders, set them to decouple when the first stage launches. It's not much, but every little bit helps! And don't forget to check "Limit to terminal velocity." Going past terminal velocity isn't doing your DV any favors, even if getting atmospheric re-entry effects going up is hella sweet.