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  1. Action Groups 1. Toggle 2x Reaction Wheels and enable 4x4 AWD 2. Toggle Gun Turret fire mode 3. Toggle Gun Turret turn mode 4. Place Gun Turret in loop mode (useful for cinematics) Video of Warthog in Action Steam Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1889849503 KerbalX: https://kerbalx.com/InterstellarKev/M12-Warthog
  2. This is spectacular. The visuals are amazing. Finally some producers understand what space is. Dark sky without stars in daylight, no ambient sound in vacuum, ballistic dust (no convection), and there is even electrostatic lunar dust, it's amazing. I'm just curious how is normal walking in the base explained, because that's not realistic.
  3. Hello! This is my first post on the official Kerbal Space Program Forum, Kerbal Space Program has unlocked a hidden creative side I haven't had in a long time this game has become one of my all time favorite! I want to introduce one of my favorite vehicles I have created. The Valencia GT This beautiful vehicle is a pleasure to drive and very light and stable. This does not flip hard on hard turns in fact I encourage hard turns. It handles them very well. High grip wide wheel base. Traveling over 35 MPH+ (56 KPH) (15.7 m/s) able to be taken into cargo unit and able to haul to other world's. 1k Electric Charge Seats 4 Kerbal's Small probe unit for autonomous driving Flip out Headlights with HID like lights and Brake lights Wheels fold in for better transportation Uses lots of parts from DLC especially the robotic pads to sustain accidental flips and maintain structural integrity. (Will not break apart but watch the front head lights) Download File: https://kerbalx.com/InterstellarKev/Valencia-GT
  4. I have created a launchpad in the VAB, launched it, and moved it to a different location in the space center. Now I want to launch rockets from it. The only problem is that when I launch, the rocket launches from the regular launch pad so I have to move the rocket to the other pad somehow. I have tried making many different rovers armed with claws, but none of them are very reliable and can't easily it straight up the ramp onto the secondary launch pad. Has anyone done this before? Would rovers work or would I need something else? Here is a screenshot of after the most reliable rovers moved a rocket to the launchpad: https://imgur.com/uVetFBH One of the two rovers is in the bottom right, Bill is standing on the ramp (to repair popped tires; I had 4), and the pad is the big thing in the middle.
  5. ISRO launched Chandrayaan 2 (chandra=moon, yaan=vehicle) aboard a GSLV- mkIII on 22nd July. Youtube link here. Unmanned Orbiter-Lander-Rover mission to Moon/Mun's South Pole. All upper stage modules should be be solar powered, Orbiter must be in a low, circular and polar orbit. Lander (Vikram) carrying the rover must land in a crater near the south pole. Rover (Pragyan) should be housed inside the lander and must have a drill and seismograph.(EDIT: surface exploration & science parts) For those wanting a challenge: As it is an ISRO mission, budget should be as low as possible! Chandrayan-2 will utilize the Oberth Effect for raising its apogee through multiple burns, to conserve fuel and thereby launch costs. Concept : Animation Video by ISRO Chandrayaan 2 Official webpage Realism mods such as RO, other aesthetic mods, mechjeb, kOS, KER, etc are allowed. Stock entries are also welcome. Take it as a challenge and try to replicate it OR simply just have some fun doing it, totally up to you guys! Feel free to post your screenshots, crafts, ideas, suggestions and comments. Enjoy!
  6. I think I finally got this working reasonably well. There are some odd bugs. If you timewarp, the program rearranges his eyeballs, and for some reason the mouth is positioned properly in the SPH but a bit off when loading. Oh, well.. minor stuff. Despite the fact I actually am not at all a fan of Twitter, it was still quite cool to have the KSP folk post both this and my Milo plane. Thanks for the support you all! The frog is up on KerbalX here: https://kerbalx.com/Klapaucius/Aristophanes-the-Frog
  7. My latest effort has been to re-create the suspension on the Mars Curiosity rover in stock. I've gone through many versions and further tweaking lately isn't adding anything so it's time to publish. This one's for you, @Majorjim! K, it's not quite a replica, but we're focused on the suspension. The rover splits into many (13? 15?) separate craft. Here's a terrible drawing of the relationships of the different craft. Pairs of elevons push and pull on the wheels on each side via RCS balls. It's the only way I could think of to control a craft that's detached. When the wheels are pushed out, landing legs glitches them forward, center is neutral, and sucked in is glitched reverse. The wheels had to be big enough to keep the gear teeth off the ground. The legs had to be positioned to not touch the ground AND follow the wheels as the suspension moved. All the pivots had to have tight tolerances to function properly. Making the craft larger/heavier also was working against me as stuff flexed in an unwanted way. I did have to add weight to the rear wheels to keep from dog-legging from weirdness I couldn't figure out, which was only amplified by the low gravity. The rear suspension is independent and detached from the front to realistically mimic Curiosity. So how can it be manipulated? When the front end is shifted left/right a separate craft in the rear is also pushed and THAT pushes and pulls the rear 4 wheels. And those wheels have landing legs that follows them. I tried to make a terrible diagram but couldn't. So essentially, stuff floats in tubes that rotate on an axis and that stuff is shifted left/right by elevons. The rover turns by making one side go forward, the other reverse. I took an early version to the Mun to test. It did not go well. qzgy and selfish_meme suggested testing on Kerbin by lowering gravity. Fantastic! I'll design it specifially for Duna like Curiosity. A week or two later I took a version to Duna. Duna is not Mars. The two places I visited where very flat. But getting to Duna was an awesomely difficult challange for me. Highly recommended. This version I took had probe cores on every craft. I was hoping I could switch to other craft and return. Nope. This is one-shot kinda thing . I don't actually recommend taking it to Duna, but here's a video so you can see the suspension in action. Gravity set to .31, which I think is close to Duna's. Not sure how enjoyable this craft is going to be to others, but it's available for reverse-engineering on KerbalX
  8. using only rover wheels get into orbit around any body, secondary thrusters can be used to keep the craft on the ground longer but not to increase the craft's acceleration directly. the tiers are: easy: use rover wheels on a moon to get into orbit around a planet medium: use rover wheels on a planet or moon with atmosphere to get into orbit hard: use rover wheels to generate enough speed to get into orbit around the sun good luck to all, this challenge may be impossible.
  9. The goal of the Lief Erickson program is to establish a permanent Kerballed Outpost on Duna The Mission will consist of four main missions Stage 1: support Infrastructure The first mission will be the launching of an unmanned refueling depot into orbit of Kerbin: This will allow the crew transfer craft (which will be launched later) to remain in service for virtually forever. The second phase of Stage 1 is to launch a communication network into orbit of Duna and Ike. The mission will contain four of these satellites. Stage 2: Crew The First crew will be sent in small space station complete with an artificial gravity ring and a fish tank to feed the crew of 7. The next mission will launch the Standard Crew Transfer Vehicle (SCTV) which will enable crews to transfer from LKO to LDO thus allowing replacement crews to be sent quickly. The design incorporates a nuclear reactor and three magneto-plasmatic engines for high efficiency space travel. Stage 3: The base The final step will to place this base on Duna. it has a hydroponics garden, crew capacity of seven and is fully mobile with a full science kit, designed to host a crew comfortably for long duration missions. The crews will first train and get used to Duna's gravity in the space station before reliving the rover crew when their mission time has expired. The next phase of stage 3 is the launch of the Duna System Shuttle (DSS) to allow crew to transfer from the surface of Duna to orbit. It is equipped with drills and an ISRU to allow to make fuel wherever it is. It will also include a modified com sat during its mission to scout for ore veins. it has an HAL thruster to enable it to travel anywhere in the Duna system without refueling So that's it for now. Please stand by for the next post where I show you the actual launching of all the hardware. This is my first forum post ever so please don't go to hard on me. Also this is the first time I have ever showed off my designs so please, tell me what you think! (mods used are NFT for anyone wondering)
  10. I made a rover delivery system and have a rover as sub-assembly - the root part of the rover is a docking port (jr), but when I want to attach the rover by its port to a specific port on the craft in the VAB it just floats around the port when I want to attach it. It does not "snap on" as it should. Help please! https://imgur.com/a/UG1kOmK
  11. RJ Willys Jeep Download here:https://kerbalx.com/KAS/RJ-Willys-Jeep
  12. This ship is designed for Duna exploration. The lander has two rovers for exploring the surface. Fuel in each stage is generous for the tasks each stage is designed for. Craft download and flight profile notes can be found at KerbalX
  13. Near my Minmus base, I have a Malemute rover equipped with a Klaw attached to a Resouce Lode. I left my base doing something else, then landed near it again. Now, if I switch to the rover, or if going on EVA with a kerbal and coming closer than 200 m, the rover explodes. In order to find out what's going on, I focused on my base and zoomed out until I could see the rover close up. It's lying on it's side, the rescorce lode seems gone (I guess it's already consumed) and it seems the Klaw is facing the wrong way. How can I fix that?
  14. This will be the most ambitious payload "Ministry of no better things to do" (MONBTTD, for short) has ever sent to the blast furnace world of Ablate, the sungrazing dwarf planet. Here's Bill Kerman working on thermal insulation of the prototype in the engineering laboratory. Rover was named Lemon because of the initial yellow color which later got replaced with silver. The name stuck, just like the new insulation glue on Bill's fingers. As Kerbol's rays will be hitting the thing mainly from above, top was made white and sides dark, to manage heat away more efficiently. New, metallic wheel tires were used. Most instruments are inside, except the ones that inspect the soil or influence of Kerbol. Rover will be delivered by an ion engine relay probe, but will land on its own, using four monopropellant engines. Launcher is nearly completely made out of stock parts. 5 m first and second stage with four bipropellant 3.75 m boosters. Third stage is 3.75 m and on top is a fourth stage, a 3.75 m liquid fuel tank and a LV-NB nuclear engine. Fifth stage is xenon ion engine powered on the relay probe.
  15. Decided to try the Elcano challenge, built a mad max-ish rover and set off. After like 3km I rolled of a hill, prior to which i tried to repair my solar panels. Not giving up. Second attempt, rolled it 4km further. REDESIGN NEEDED. After a pause. Pictures are here
  16. I am wondering if there is a mod for 1.4.x that adds an Apollo-style rover that can be assembled on the Mun via KAS and that doesn't require Making History? Thanks in advance for any answers
  17. This is a up-to-date collection of wheels that I have worked on previously, namely for the Rollkage and Better Wheels mods (credits: @electronicfox and @angusmcbeth) which are now more or less abandoned. The reason for reviving these is simply because I wanted to use them in my game, and there are very few wheel mods for 1.2. I would have done this earlier if it wasn't so annoying to update wheels from pre 1.1 to the new system, since there is hardly any documentation on how to do it. On the other hand, the new wheel physics system is much better and allows easy tuning so I no longer need to tediously tune the buggy phyx suspension and tire model in unity. I will update this with additional wheels as I convert them. Direct Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/195-I0gaTJtNfmp8IuCGuv7yv_GiO5AC3/view?usp=sharing Spacedock: http://spacedock.info/mod/1027/Wheels Collection (formerly rollkage %26 better wheels) GitHub: https://github.com/zitron-git/WheelsCollection Also available on CKAN Kerchelin Small Rover Wheel: 0.5m wheel for light rovers RollKage Kerchelin Extreme: 1.0 m off-road wheel for 2-5t light vehicles RollKage Kerchelin Sport: 1.0 m off-road wheel for 5-10t medium sized vehicles RollKage Kerchelin Jumbo: 2.0m wheel for 10-50t heavy vehicles
  18. Hi all, The following post is related to suggestions regarding more/better rover ideas. I have been wanting to design rover in Kerbal Space Program ever since I heard of it (which was before I even purchased it). I see now that it is very hard to create rovers in KSP. I can build better rovers now, but when I was a beginner trying to figure out how to get to Duna with a rover name Kuriosity, I found out quite quickly that building a rover in KSP is extremely difficult. I do understand that there is the Probodobodyne RoveMate™, but it is still hard to build rovers. I would really value a tutorial implemented in a further update that walks a new user through making a rover. I understand that with the Making History Expansion that Missions can be downloaded, but not everybody has the DLC required to use the Missions. And although there are mods made by the Community (Some especially good ones from SQUAD member RoverDude ), some people like to use a stock KSP.Perhaps some new rover parts can be added alongside a new tutorial? Thank you for considering this, Skywalket Kerbal Enthusiast and Elon fan
  19. So I am making a Mun rover and when I went to test it on kerbin, the wheels move in the wrong direction. Instead of pressing the w key to move forward I have to press s. I know this isn't a real problem put it could get confusing. Here is the rover:
  20. here it is my little rovy ready to explore https://imgur.com/a/6bD9l1i
  21. The Mobile Base Challenge Not open yet, looking for feedback on rules before going live I've always been fascinated by large mobile bases and the even larger rockets needed to launch them. To this end, I've decided to have a go at creating a challenge involving them. The rules are designed to create large, self-sufficient mobile bases. Preliminary Rules 1. Stock parts only. This includes any part editing via ModuleManager or otherwise except for as defined below with adding approved modules to capsules. As much as I love mods, it's much simpler to score and share craft files if everything is stock. If there's enough interest, I might consider adding a modded craft category later since there are some pretty cool wheels/tracks/etc in mods. 2. Information and autopilot mods are allowed. MechJeb, Kerbal Engineer, Throttle Controlled Avionics, and other information/autopilot mods that don't alter the parts are fine. If using MechJeb (or other information mods that require parts to function), please use a module manager config (like MechJeb and Engineer For All) to add it to the command pods instead of using the MechJeb parts. 3. Stock solar system only. There's some cool alternative solar systems out there that provide a lot more challenge, but I don't want to have to come up with planet score multipliers for all of them. If someone else wants to extend this challenge to include modded planets, go for it. 4. Mobile base must be able to drive on the surface of a planet using electric rover wheels. Additional rockets/jet engines/landing gear are fine if you want your base to be capable of higher speeds on appropriate terrain or be amphibious. 5. Mobile base must be self-sufficient and include power generation, ISRU, drills, ore tanks, and at least one of each fuel tank type (for refuelling other craft if the base doesn't make use of the fuel itself). There should be enough energy generation/batteries to allow 24/7 operation (drilling, refining, science research) on the target planet. If you need to use fuel cells to get through the night, that's fine. 6. Mobile base must include the following parts: At least four electric rover wheels At least one science lab At least one ISRU refinery module At least one drill Enough space for at least 8 kerbals At least one of each fuel tank type LOX capacity should be at least equivalent to the 1.25m long tank Monoprop capacity should be equivalent to 1.25m inline tank Ore capacity should be at least equivalent to one 2.5m tank Xenon capacity should be at least equivalent to one 1.25m tank At least one probe core At least one of the largest comm antennas 7. Mobile base must be launched into orbit, flown to the planet, and landed on the planet. No hyperedit/cheat menu shenanigans outside of testing. Orbital and in-situ assembly is acceptable for very large bases. Preliminary Scoring (Please help with this based on relative difficulty) Point multipliers based on target planet: Minmus: 0.5x Mun: 1.0x Eve/Duna/Ike/Dres: 1.5x Laythe/Eeloo/Moho: 2.0x Tylo: 3.0x Bonus points: Base is capable of short range powered hops on target world: Multiplier based on world (help with this) Base is amphibious on Eve/Laythe: Help me determine this Base is capable of launching into orbit from target world and flying to another planet: Lots of bonus points, based on world (if you manage this on Eve, you win). Submission Requirements: Pictures of your craft in a VAB, on the launchpad, after each staging event to orbit, doing the interplanetary transfer, doing the landing deorbit burn, just before landing, and once the rover has landed. Extra pictures and video are always welcome. If your rover is built using multiple launches, have pictures at each of the above stages for each distinct craft up until they're added to the main base. Craft file is also required to validate entry. If you rover requires multiple launches, include all craft files. As you can see, this challenge is still a WIP. Any and all help is appreciated with ironing out these rules. Later this weekend I'll put together my own craft to demonstrate the challenge.
  22. (A.K.A. BILL AND JEB'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE) TL;DR: TODAY I LEARNED THAT "CHECK YO' STAGIN'" APPLIES TO DOCKING PORTS. I am new to Kerbal Space Program and going through career mode. After the crew of my second Mun landing returned to Kerbin with 1,859.6 science on board, I decided to get ... ambitious greedy. I started by unlocking Very Heavy Rocketry, its associated fueling needs, the long-awaited NERV, and Composites. Initially I just wanted to use the NERV as any upper stage, since it was so efficient. But there was a contract for mining ore, and I already wanted to land, so why not try to make a refueling lander? It turned out to be a lot heavier than expected, so I went with 3x engine symmetry (2 would have been enough power but 3 made better symmetry and I was used to high munar TWR from my first two landings), and packed a bunch of the baby airplane fuel cylinders next to the engines since they have the best fuel-to-weight ratio of all the liquid tanks—which also gave me a place to mount landing gear that could actually reach the ground, and a better place to mount drills than some very sneaky girders. Then, since I had the power, I upgraded the converter since the small one's ore-to-fuel ratio is garbage. I didn't have the Gigantor solar panels unlocked yet, but looking at the energy requirements I decided to use the last of my science to do so. I wanted to do a bunch of contracts. I had several around the Mun, for which I needed a rover and a satellite, and I wanted to mount them both on the nose. Hmm. I decided to put clamp-o-trons on the rover and nose, then put the satellite in the middle. I added RCS to the rover so I could, in theory, detach in spaceflight, launch the satellite, and then reattach to the lander. I've never docked anything before, but how hard can it be? (Backup plan: carry the satellite down, drop the rover, launch satellite after takeoff.) [edit: TinyPic is dead; long live Flickr. Original link for insanity posterity: http://i68.tinypic.com/2pqqj3a.jpg ] Speaking of docking, on this mission I plan to try it for the first time again—ship to ship this time. My middle stage should make Mun orbit, and if the lander refinery works as well as hoped, I can potentially come back up, dock, donate a little fuel (I put modest L+O tankage on the nuke with this hope—contents donated to the middle stage, of course—plus I could refine more ore after docking), then transfer crews, land again, collect science and fuel again, and did I mention both crews still need a Mun landing under their belt? Now all I had to do was figure out how the heck to lift all this junk. Fortunately I had just unlocked the Mammoth. Even so, I still needed to attach some Kickbacks to give me what I consider decent launchpad thrust. For the middle stage, a Skipper might be adequate to the task, but I thought, "Hey, the Rhino gets better ISP anyway, right? And it will keep my burns short. Let's try this sucker out." Plus it let me keep my rocket fatter; this thing is much taller than any rocket I've made before. Looking at what I'd done in the VAB—what I'd done to the VAB?—I named it the Abomination. The fairing covered 45% of the rocket. It's over 100 tons heavier than my previously biggest rocket, which was almost 100 tons heavier than my previously biggest rocket. And it's not too far shy of double the cost, though a lot of this is tied up in stuff meant to be recovered. [ http://i66.tinypic.com/2m7vkg1.jpg ] I had just accepted a contract to test the aerospace decoupler at 51-55km while going 1110-1890m/s, which put some constraints on my flight profile, but it actually worked pretty well with a reasonable gravity turn. It took me a couple of tries to get it right, but I don't feel too guilty about reverting for that sort of thing. They aren't terrible fins—or at least they looked the part. The Rhino performed beautifully, too. It started up well in the upper atmosphere, so I'm sure it was at least as efficient as any other upper stage could have been, and the extra power let me carry more fuel that the main lifter would have otherwise been using (at less effiency). The downside is that if the Mammoth was allowed to use that fuel I was confident of recovery; this way, I didn't even try for this mission, though I may if I find myself with a similar lower stage in the future. On the last Mun landing, I caught a Minmus intercept completely by accident while planning the trip home, but didn't have the fuel to do it. Not this time, my crew thinks. Not this time. As it turns out, the main difficulty of reattaching the rover—other than that I'm terrible at docking—was that it really wasn't designed with docking in mind. First, the lines of sight were very bad, and second, I didn't realize I'd offset the docking port so that a little bit of it was blocked by a girder. The magnetism seems to be holding it in place for now, so hopefully that will hold up until I land. If it falls off upon landing that will just save me the trouble. [ http://i66.tinypic.com/2hrhm6t.jpg ] The satellite was then on its merry way after reaching the correct altitude to turn on its engine to fulfill a contract. I was careful of where the main ship was, after having read many horror stories about inattentive launch collisions! It has tons of delta-V, which is good because it needs to fulfill two orbital requirements; it may have enough to spare to do something useful. Even if it doesn't, three contracts on one small satellite that at worst will be a half-decent Mun relay antenna isn't bad. The orbiter (the Rhino) is another story. By my calculations at the time, it did have enough to get into my preferred capture orbit but it's tighter than I thought back in the VAB when I was doing gross estimation instead of precise engineering. I hoped I would be able to get into my subsequent planned lower orbit. (To make a rendezvous with the mining ship easier—the refueling might be more than a novelty now.) Alternatively I could have just bailed out and tried for Kerbin immediately after the capture, but I wanted to stick to the mission plan. Apparently, magnetism gets weaker during time warp. I wanted to orient my vessel in a certain direction to ensure the orbiter didn't get in the way of the lander's maneuver. I knew that the maneuver node could sometimes move around a bit on you, but I was totally unprepared for one that meandered across a 45° swath of the navball! I can't help but imagine the loosely attached rover had something to do with it, but even so, that was ridiculous. Every time I thought I was close, it dashed back in the direction I came from, sort of like the way SAS autocorrects. Speaking of misbehaving maneuver nodes, apparently the satellite was small enough, and the antenna big enough, that the engine was significantly offset from the center of mass. At least, that was the hypothesis I formed as the thing bucked like a bronco for the nearly two minute burn despite the fact that I was only packing a Spark. Or perhaps too much of the weight was in the back? I will keep this in mind for more important future missions. The rover, in the meantime, had gotten loose again. Fortunately I cought it before it had gone more than a couple meters. I was becoming concerned. I wondered how it would behave under deceleration. At least, I reasoned, it would be only compressive forces, not pulling the clamps apart, but it's off center—that's the whole problem. But although the clamps are off center, the center of mass (as I eyeballed it) looked like it should be right over the center of the rocket, so maybe it would be fine. I had plenty of monopropellant, even without being able to transfer any from the ship. As long as it waits until landing—or perhaps even the final approach—to wobble off the ship, I'm golden. But, a pessimistic voice whispered, if it's not docked then you can't undock it. what if it sticks through the landing and doesn't want to go? Will the monopropellant be enough to push it loose? Almost certainly yes, I thought. I was glad I thought of the possibility, but I was sure it was not a true concern. After another repetition of the rover escape and a couple more times it seemed to be threatening to, I think I've figured out the behavior. Whenever "normal activity" is suspended, either from time warp or from leaving the area (to adjust my satellite's orbit) the half-on, half-off docking port starts to freak out. Possibly the game is trying to make it fit correctly, but running into a conflict with the girder that's in the way. It wasn't a problem when it was built that way but it looks like detaching it was a one-way trip, at least for this particular rover. There seem to be one of two "resting states": one where the clamps are together but offset as in the picture above, and one where the clamps are perfectly aligned but being held apart by the girder. If I leave the area when it's in the first position the rover wants to go to the second position, but if I leave the area when it's in the second position then it wants to lose the connection and drift away. Anyway, I lined up the target on the ground, giving it a little lead for rotation and overshooting a bit on purpose because I usually end up short of the planned line. In this case I had to stick to the plan more than usual once I got close to the finish line because if I turned the ship too fast the rover would definitely lose its connection, and I didn't want to do that too far from the actual landing zone. [ http://i65.tinypic.com/vz9652.jpg ] After what is by far the most fuel-wasteful deorbit I have ever done (possibly partially because of the unusually steep orbit I'm coming down from), I was slowly decelerating into the landing zone, and I noticed I was drifting a little bit. As said before, any sudden course corrections would cause the rover to get squirrely, which is a complication I didn't need, so I quickly switched to it at a couple dozen meters up, mashed the RCS, and just let it fall to the ground, where it bounced very nicely without exploding even a little. I eased myself down in the most cowardly possible way, RCS blasting, secure in the knowledge that as long as I made it to the ground intact I would be taking off with full tanks. [ http://i65.tinypic.com/289kfi9.jpg ] I'd like to say Jebediah had a fine old time roaming around the countryside on the rover, but it turns out Bill neglected to install any seats. Not that that little detail would stop Jeb, but unfortunately his crewmates managed it. OKTO sighed a little sigh and dutifully went off alone in search of temperature readings, and maybe love. [ http://i64.tinypic.com/zufbwh.jpg ] Well, like many would-be lovers, OKTO forgot which way was forward and went 20 kilometers in the wrong direction. But the detour didn't cost much more time than it took for the mining and refining to finish completely. Then I just burned for orbit, trying to get one that was easy to match to the orbiter (I went polar because of the landing zone, so rotation was a factor.) Getting into AN obit wasn't so bad; getting into a MATCHING orbit was a little more of a chore. But that, I think, is a mission report for another day. TO BE CONTINUED...
  23. This thread is about my rover trip around Jool's moon Vall. This is meant to be an Elcano/Elkano attempt where I carry out a polar circumnavigation of Vall. Here I intend to provide enough screenshots to document that I actually do the complete circumnavigation and to show the beauty of Vall scenery. Also I allow my self to use f5/f9 as much as is neede. Why to circumnavigate a celestial body by land in KSP? I will have to admit that a land circumnavigation of a celestial body in KSP is very lengthy and tedious process. Nevertheless I have wanted to do so ever since I heard that the Elcano challenge exists. I have former experience from a lengthy rover science gathering mission on Mun. Despite hours of tedious driving around the gray landscape of Mun, I did find the mission quite fulfilling and rewarding. Partly just because it took a long time to get anywhere. I expect this mission to be similarly rewarding experience. Why Vall? Previously my goal was to perform a similar circumnavigation of Eve, since is Eve my favourite planet in the stock Kerbol system. My plan to perform this circumnavigation in reasonably short time and fun way, was to use the Rovemax XL3 wheels, and exploit the fact that they can accelerate the rover to extremely high velocity if you tap the keys "a" and "d" while pressing "w". Unfortunately the challenge maintainer of the Elkano challenge was adamant, that this is cheating and not allowed. After trying out a rover that obeys the rules on Eve I felt that it was frustratingly slow and couldn't climb the hills and mountains of Eve. So the circumnavigation would take a very long time and be more frustrating since I couldn't scale hills and mountains. Vall was the next best option. A lot smaller, but sill reasonably beautiful celestial body, whit low gravity to make rover faster and better at climbing mountains. Relevant mods Voyage to Vall This is the rocket at launchpad. It devotedly follows the design principle "There is no such a thing as too much deltaV!". It has several thousands extra m/s of DeltaV to make sure that Vall is actually reached without shadow of a doubt. This was my first ever manned flyby or orbit of Jool. :-) Successful landing! The land voyage may now begin. The blue flickering is from the Sci-fi visual enchancement mod. I'll soon make a new post once there is progression to show. Thank you for your time!
  24. I've been trying to bring a polar surveying satellite and a scanning rover to Duna in one payload. It's all good until I decouple my satellite with 2 Communotron 88-88 and the rover with a HG-5, a Communotron 16, and a Communotron 16-S suddenly goes "limited probe control". Isn't the rover supposed to have relay connections to my satellite? Or am I still supposed to have direct Kerbal link? Here are pictures of the satellite ,rover and the final stage: Album EDIT: Thanks for reminding me that there's a difference in antennas....
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