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I don't understand the difference between a hohmann transfer orbit and a bi-elliptic transfer orbit. Can anyone explain please?

I have a problem building a new unmanned satellite for a mission. I tried once launching the saved ship design i used for another mission and when the orbit was identical i noticed that the new unmanned satellite wasn't ticked. Then i even tried with testing new ships, built from scratch and different names, even flags but no result. I've found nothing that help in any similar case...any ideas? screenshot:http://prnt.sc/f5nqjm Thanks in advance

I haven't checked any of this out in the game because I just thought about it, and not at home. In my head, what I'm about to suggest shouldn't work (and I'm sure it doesn't) but I don't know why! Kerbin's rotational velocity is 174 m/s, and we all know the reason we launch East is because we already have that horizontal velocity, so why not use it. So even if you launch straight up, with no gravity turn at all, you still have that 174 m/s horizontal velocity. Now, presumably there is some (very high) altitude where the required orbital velocity is 174 m/s. So, if you launched straight up, set apoapsis at that specific altitude, and coasted all the way up to it - when you reached the very peak of your trajectory, your vertical velocity would be zero, and your horizontal velocity would be 174 m/s. And if you have a horizontal velocity of 174 m/s, and the required orbital velocity at that altitude is 174 m/s... then why wouldn't you be in orbit?!

Why does Kerbal tell me that I have recovered a vessel after sub-orbital flight even though I have clearly been orbiting? I am new to this game and recently launched my first orbital rocket, which I sucessfully orbited around kerbin for 15 days, but upon reentry and retreival of the capsule, it said that the vessel was retreived after sub-orbital flight. What am I doing wrong?

Im looking for a bda add-on that adds weapons for orbital combat. I was wondering if you knew of one.

Hi, i'm having some maths problems. Can anyone explain my error. I've ended up with relay stations with 32 HG-5 High Gains. (Based on maths, but i guess if this is wrong then that is too). Using the wiki I think the power of each relay is: (5*10^9)*32^0.75=6.73*10^10 As all relays are identical that gives a maximum link range of 6.73*10^10. Using the signal strength formula at a range of 2.20*10^10, i get a effeciency of: 1-((2.20*10^10)/(6.73*10^10))=0.67 0.67*0.67*(3-2*0.67)=0.75 (=75%) So, if I want a seperation of 2.20*10^10 in an equilaterl triangle arrangement I need an orbital radius of: (2.20*10^10)*(sqrt(3)/3))=1.27*10^10. I now have three such relays at a Kerbol Orbit of 1.27*10^10, yet not only are they not at 75% power, they are not linking at all. My initial hunch is that some of the measurements are from sun centre and some are from sun surface, but that only affects the third significant figure and smaller, reducing effeciency to 74%, not 0%. What is wrong with my maths (not just the aesthetic choice for the 32 antennae) Thanks in advance, RBS.

Hi guys, so I was flying my plane when i had something (a satellite) in orbit at 80 km. I believe I saw that satellite from my plane, as a fast moving object. Is this possible in KSP mechanics?

After re-installing KSP after a while, I noticed a strange bug where all oribts are displayed wrongly: planets are not on their trajectory and AP and PE signs are also off... I only use mechjeb, KIS, KAS and tweakable. Thanks for your help.

I'm using SCANSAT on a 1080 screen. The accuracy required to meet the contract is sub-pixel (aka impossible to eyeball). I have no idea how the heck I'm suppost to do this. Kerbin, above 70km, sub-orbital (I just drop my perapsis under 70km for a moment as I pass- works on the possible contracts.)

How low can you go? This is a challenge to see how low you can get a satellite (or other spacecraft) to orbit the mun. The orbiter should be stock, but mods are allowed for delivering the orbiter to the mun. The challenge is about orbiting the mun, not getting there. Post your apoapsis and periapsis heights, and some pictures of your spacecraft and orbit. The final orbit should be sustainable. Your score is the sum of your apoapsis and periapsis heights. Lower scores are better. I finished my attempt with a score of 12111 meters, and will be posting some images shortly.

Hi! Some friends and I are trying to fly to Minmus manual mode IVA without map view. We're therefore needing to plan out all our manoeuvres ahead of time. One that is giving us difficulty is the plane correction. We launch equatorial, but need to correct to a 6deg inclination to match Minmus. The burn itself is easy enough, but getting the timing right in order to be co-planar is problematic. We are using telemachus to give us telemetry (aka API access!) and so can see our various orbital parameters. We know that we need to burn at the ascending node - and we have the longitude of this relative to an arbitrary reference line. However, we're not sure how to see our vessel's own longtitude as measured from this same reference point. The longitude offered by the api/telemetry appears to be relative to the orbited body's prime meridian, which of course is rotating in inertial space. Looking at wikipedia, it seems that the way to do it is to take our argument of periapsis, and when our true anomaly is the negative of this, we make the plane change. We'd do this twice: once to correct launch errors (using the vessel LAN, INC->0), a second time to match minmus (using the minmus LAN, INC->6). Does that sound right? Is there any way to time a launch such that we can insert directly into a minmus plane (applying our inclination burn during launch)? Without an orbit, we'd not have a true anomaly or AoP, so we'd not know when we were at the LAN/when we were coplanar with minmus....

How do people ever figure out where other planets and stuff are going to be? Help? Haven't even been able to get to the moon cause of this

Rules: 1. No Dirty Cheating Alpacas (no debug menu)! 2. No mods 3. no kerbals required 4 post screenshot of craft on launch pad, and one for each stage and in orbit right click on tank to show it is full 5 Impress me E.g post videos post screenshots below

For this challenge, you must put a vessel into Kerbol (sun) stable Polar Orbit, between 26160 km and 1500 km. RULES: No mods are allowed, except for informative mods that doesn't provide a real advantage. Only stock parts allowed No tricks like infinite fuel, disabling heat, edit cfg, etc, are allowed There are limits in cost, parts or stages, you can even assemble your vessel in space if you want. The vessel must be able to transmit data, so it should be able to generate power and it should have an antenna If you want, you can use a refuel station or mine resources, if you believe that it is necessary. OPTIONAL (I do not know if they are possible) : You must turn back to Kerbin, to recover some scientific data You have to carry a crew of 3 Kerbin (a Pilot, a scientist and an engineer) and transmit a crew report from Kerbol Recover all parts of vessel, except for consumable parts (like parachutes, heat shield, stack decoupler, fuel ...)

Hello everyone! Today I was wondering how one can know the speed of a craft orbiting a planet, after a certain amount of time. For example, if I'm at the periapsis, what would be my speed after 2min? If I'm going at 1500km on a certain orbit, what would be my speed after 5min? It would be easy if the speed would change linearly while going from the apoapsis to the periapsis or from the periapsis to the apoapsis, but I feel like it doesn't work that way. Bonus question: How does the speed change in an elliptical orbit?

Your goal is create Solid Rocket Booster SSTO and upload it here. No RCS system allowed. But you can use reaction wheels. Your SSTO must to be a plane. And if you can, it must deliver tiny cargo (300-500kg) You don't need to de-orbit ship. Just get the Kerbin Orbit Good luck!

This post is invalid. Looking back at it, I realize I didn't achieve ACTUAL orbit, just a temporary orbit, which would have died if I had cut my engines.

You Only Go Around Once Fastest Lap of Kerbin Wins! Rules: Stock Parts Normal Difficulty No Gameplay Mods No Cheating One complete, equatorial lap of Kerbin Runway/Rolling Takeoff Landing on KSC Runway (or close to it. The craft may slide off the runway so long as it touches it once) Must have at least 1 Kerbal. Pilot Must Survive! Craft does not. Time based on mission time. Clock stops when craft stops. No limits to stages, fuels, altitude, mass, cost; but these will be noted. Submission: Video is preferred; Imgur album is acceptable. Show SPH with vehicle mass, cost, etc. Show resources tab during flight. Show Flight Results (F3). Albums must show key moments. Standings: 1.) Eidahill - 24:52 - Crunchy Landing - 3,587m/s - 81,591m - 10 Stages - 1,481.48t - 577,118 2.) HarrySeaward - 40:56 - Intact Landing - 2,092m/s - 76,074m - SSTO - 9.9t - 24,430 3.) 4.)

I just downloaded a bunch of mods and started a new Science World, and I launched a small laboratory into orbit. The launch was successful, and I detached my final upper stage. I did some experiments, and transmitted the science back to the KSC. I was going to then go back to the space center to unlock some more parts. However, I was stopped by a alert that said, If I was to go back to the KSC my game would not be saved past the point where I launched the laboratory. I could have done a quick-save, but loading would just take me back up to "in-flight" mode, with no way of going back to the space center without losing my science, orbit, and my save. I've done heavily-modded science worlds before, and I could always go back to the tracking station/ Space Center, when my Vessel was in orbit. Does anybody know if I can go back to the KSC without reverting to a "pre-launch save"? (Sorry, I still haven't been playing that much Modded KSP yet.)

someone tell me how to launch a satellite properly and what maneuvers to do to have it orbiting kerbin for stupid people

Why can't we adjust our maneuver nodes by just dragging the orbit into the shape we want? I would suggest just grabbing the PE and AP markers. Maybe hold down mod key to apply normal adjustments to the maneuver node directly, or maybe you would still have to apply normal/anti-normal via the handles. Seems like this would be much more efficient than fiddling with the little handles to get the exact orbit you want. Can't seen any reason it wouldn't work...

Godspeed John Glenn. This is my first time submitting a challenge but I felt that this would be a great way to honor a great man. The challenge is this, launch a one manned capsule into Kerbal orbit using a launch vehicle with restrictions inspired by the Atlas that John Glenn used in Mercury. 1. All of the capsule's liquid fuel engines must ignite on the ground. 2. The capsule needs to complete orbit and de-orbit with solid rockets 3. The capsule must sit atop a liquid fueled rocket that is not separated into verticle stages and must have extra engines that stage off during ascent (basically no verticle staging, but the rocket must have a "half stage" with one big tank and staged off engines like an Atlas). 4. Capsule must return to Kerbin safely and splash down. Screw scoring. Let's just honor John Glenn. If you honored Glenn you go on the board. Tributes thus far (in no particular order). 1. @tg626 2. @Jestersage 3. @Rhomphaia 4. @JacobJHC 5. @Chiron0224 6. @illectro <- Scott didn't respond directly to this challenge but I added him to the board of tributes for having the same idea and doing it on his channel here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9OQOgMg80s No cheaty mods obviously and no Bluedog (you can't just build an actual atlas). Let me know if I need to tweak this challenge at all. I don't imagine it will be all that difficult for many of you, I'm mostly just doing this as a community salute of sorts EDIT: finally did my submission https://imgur.com/gallery/LEiBn

So kinda my first post here, going to make an intro thread shortly but this was kinda exciting and I couldn't really wait. I was doing a stream last night and listening to music, and the song, Monody by TheFatRat came on right as I lauched a probe to go to the mun, and I started making some actions that were lined up with the song. What do you guys think?

I'm a rather new player and I accepted a mission to put a satellite into a designated orbit around the Mun. So I built the sat and put it into orbit and all mission critical circumstances were fulfilled except the: Reach the designated equatorial orbit around the Mun with reasonable deviation. The Periapsis is supposed to be 241,665m and the sat. is at 241,653m, and the Apoapsis is supposed to be 252,929m and my sats is 252,958. In my book that is a reasonable deviation. Especially since in all the videos I watched on youtube they usualy had far greater deviations. The orbit is pretty much spot on with only a few dozen meters difference, yet it won't let me accomplish the mission. Is that a bug? or is there something I'm doing wrong?

Hello everyone, I already posted about this on reddit, but no-one was able to help, so I hope you are able to. https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/5aepbl/rescue_mission_orbit_of_vessel_not_showing/?st=iv12tvg2&sh=dbb5a093 In career mode I accepted the rescue mission so save Nelner Kerman. Unfortunately the vessel isn't visible in the tracking station or map. (That visible vessel is Kimny's vessel who I already rescued and didn't terminate.) Also Nelner is not showing in the Astronaut Complex as other Kerbals do, who you have to rescue. I found old threads of other people with the same problem, but no solution for the problem. See here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/106870-cant-find-the-kerbals-in-orbit-i-need-to-rescue/ Is there any solution to make Nelner's vessel visible? I don't want to cancel the mission or cheat via editing the save files. Currently I only use MechJeb. I used to use HyperEdit, but I dont have the current version for KSP1.2 so that's inactive. HyperEdit files are still in the GameData folder tho. Here is a screenshot: Those are the data from the persistent save file, if that helps: