Anquietas314

For short burns or where you're aiming (anti-)radial/normal you're generally better off following the maneuver target. For very long burns (say 3-4 minutes - break it up if it's longer) I generally get better results following a point roughly half way between the maneuver marker and the prograde marker (particularly when the maneuver marker is close to "towards the planet")

Tbh, for stock they're not really worth it. You can get home with a stupidly small amount of fuel OP: Here's what I've been using in my career save: The design is reasonably early game and the fairing isn't strictly necessary (but helps with efficiency and overheating issues with the rebalanced reentry heat mod), with a pretty decent margin for error (I screw up far more than I'd like to admit ). Depending on what you have available you can obviously just swap nosecones/tanks as appropriate. Lander legs used are the ones intended for probes - they work just fine as long as you don't hit the ground too hard

impyre: sure, it's a complicated problem, although given this is a suicide burn we're talking about if you're going to leave it to the last second you had better be pointing retrograde with full throttle. That makes it possible, in principle, to predict your overall trajectory pretty accurately, assuming you don't screw up too badly during the burn. I think the main inaccuracies are when the ship isn't pointing perfectly retrograde the entire time; in other words, pilot error. As for the computational cost, I can't imagine this is anywhere near as complex a problem as projecting your path through an atmosphere in real time; the trajectories mod managed that just fine even on my old computer back in 0.90 with FAR installed.

I usually just go by the "Suicide Burn dist" readout; I try to hit Z as close to zero (but still above it) as possible. Hasn't failed me yet . If that number drops below zero you're pretty much toast, short of a miracle I'm in the same boat, although I have used it for fairly aggressive mun landings (in excessive of 400m/s) without issue. I have heard of it being unreliable though, but then again that could easily be PEBKAC issues

Did you by any chance have either the RCS ports disabled or the monoprop tanks locked? Also maybe check your keybindings for the linear RCS controls? Other than that, must be a bug. I have no issues getting RCS to work with level 1 pilots

If you're launching a probe, check you're not running out of electric charge. That generally applies to manned craft too but it's somewhat less of an issue.

Does this answer your question?: Don't worry, this is just my sandbox testing save. They were safely magicked back to KSC 1 Mk16XL chute and 3 Mk2-R radial chutes and an (almost) stock vehicle (I have a mod that makes heatshields a little heavier than stock). Be aware that there was significant necksnapping when the chutes fully deployed . Seems to me parachutes are more or less just as effective in 1.0.2 as they were back in 0.90

That's Kerbal Engineer Redux. Forum page could do with some screenshots / information, but it's a very nice mod. There's also a crapload of in-flight information available.

You need to click the "start research" button on the lab's right click menu. That'll slowly generate science from the data, which you can then transmit; you can't transmit the data itself.

Well, you could apply the same logic to a decent variety of animals - quite a few species more or less all look the same to us. Most of those don't have limited gene pools, they just happen to look like that . Obviously with Kerbals they do look the same because they all use the same models, but saying that the models/textures aren't super detailed .

Yes, but that wasn't the cause. The issue was that the airbrakes raise the center of lift above the center of mass, which I'm sure everyone knows by now is a very bad thing for rockets . In any case, I almost always fly a fully hands-free gravity turn with SAS off, so even if pitch/yaw were enabled, it wouldn't have mattered.

You're going to need a lot more than two kerbals to have any kind of reasonable gene pool... even aside from the obvious "family friendly" issues that brings up

While I'm not playing strictly stock anymore, I did design and successfully use this reusable launcher in stock before adding the mods: The payload fraction is pretty terrible (it lifts at most 9 tonnes to orbit, without much room for error when you consider the deorbit burn), but it works. Interesting behavior I discovered: if the airbrakes (used to survive reentry) are not inside the fairing, the rocket is very unstable

Those mods for the most part don't affect gameplay much, maybe with the exception of ForScience, but then that just takes the tedium out of science collection EDIT: DERP! While doing that test on Mun, I accidentally timewarped through the contract deadline, so.... I guess it's not happening . Still, good to know it is at least possible for the next time I see a contract like that .

Not interested in cheating unless I have to (e.g. contract doesn't work properly) I can confirm the plan should work:

An update: testing the concept on Mun: "Mostly" stock - pretty much only utility mods - the only part mod I have is stupid_chris's NRAP payload. There's also modular fuel tanks but I'm not using that for this particular contract. The main reason I have it is so I can have large fuel tanks for the LV-N without the rocket looking ridiculous The idea for eve is to use a similar rover, but of course the actual transport'll be a couple orders of magnitude larger (as in the screenshots above). Will edit when completed (this could take a while.... it didn't occur to me during the design phase that I would need more solar panels than that... lol)

How about nice big crosses for eyes and a sad face with their tongue sticking out?

Well, according to this, life support hasn't been confirmed for stock, though I don't know how reliable that page is now that 1.0 has released. In the meantime there are several life support mods out there - TACLS, USI Life Support, Snacks (not updated) to name a few. Welcome to KSP and the forums though

In that case I think the debug menu's "complete contract" button and a bug report would be quite justified ; the contract doesn't say I have to mine the ore with the same ship I deliver it with - though technically if I docked a drill and converter to the ship it would be the same vessel.

Nononono, you misunderstand; I meant a craft that can SSTO from Eve Anyway, here's something I came up with based on your earlier design that "should" work, although it's not quite as efficient as the one you just posted: So far untested, but the launch TWR from eve is 1.45 at sea level, or 1.86 if launched from a more reasonable altitude of 3km. I have been able to test the ship's ability to launch itself to LKO though; it passed the test! (though without much room for error and it's a touch wobbly) I already have plans for a refueling system based at Mun, so in theory if it works Eve-side this should be good to go. My eve transfer window isn't for another 90-odd days in my career save . I'm thinking I should be able to just land a rover setup nearby and dock via the clamp, and then have the rover mine the ore directly into the main ship, with an ISRU converter on the rover for refueling purposes. I've yet to test whether that fits the conditions of the contract though (how exactly would I go about testing that...), but it should be interesting

Hmm okay, that's good to know I guess, although it doesn't sound like your design is far off the mark. Here's a completely insane idea; is an Eve SSTO possible? If it is it'd solve a lot of the problems with getting the darn thing to eve in the first place, with the added bonus of nearly eliminating mission costs - I could just return the thing to Kerbin once the job's done.

Absolutely no idea . So far I haven't even accepted the contract; I'd rather be sure it's doable first (testing designs in sandbox for now). Realistically I think the only serious option is going to be to lift it empty and then refuel it in LKO. Once that's done, getting it to eve should be straightforward just using the main engines. Dealing with reentry heating and landing it is another story though . Of course, that still leaves the question of how to lift such a heavy rocket to orbit in the first place.

Last I checked Eve's atmosphere didn't contain oxygen, so jets are useless. I can't see a way of making a spaceplane viable otherwise - certainly not one that can lift 32 tonnes or so to orbit.

The design I've come up with so far (note: not finished) comes in at a little over the advance payment for the contract; maccollo's rocket (assuming it works) looks like it'd be considerably cheaper. So that leaves a fairly tidy profit. Technically I'm at the point in my save where I really don't need huge amounts of money for anything; the only building I haven't fully upgraded is administration, so as long as the mission pays more than it costs to do I'm not too bothered about the money - more the challenge .

What's the surface TWR on that design? The best I've came up with so far is 1.38 (in atmosphere), although with slightly excessive deltaV (I had a fun idea: use LV-Ns late in the ascent. No idea if they'll overheat in 1.0.2, but it does make the rocket quite a bit smaller ). One not-so-insignificant problem that occurred to me after building it: this thing has to make it at least to Kerbin orbit on its own... I've never tried to lift something this big, even empty (I can't just use it to launch itself - the early stages burn out far too fast). Heh, nice. Yeah I've seen a couple absurdly difficult ones, but I think this one in particular might just be feasible enough to attempt - but I'm not sure, hence the thread .