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2 hours ago, Limonadd said:

What is the easier planet to land on after Duna?

Eve is the easiest to land on, though if you want to land and take off again, then I suggest that you visit Ike or Gilly.  Gilly is a little tricky to reach because it has an eccentric, inclined orbit, but its gravity is a joke (so much so that people frequently burn straight down in order to get to the ground more quickly).  Ike is very much like the Mun, albeit somewhat smaller.

If you were adamant that it be an actual planet and not a moon, then I think Eeloo is the easiest to land and return from.  Dres is next after that, followed by Moho (Moho can be difficult to reach).

For landings only, after Eve, Jool is technically the next easiest planet to 'land' on, though if you do go down that far, then it is very definitely a one-way trip.

If we're going to count moons, then I think Ike slightly edges out Gilly as being the easiest to reach outside of the Kerbin system, and then follow the Joolian moons in the order of Vall, Laythe, Pol, Bop, and Tylo.  That is partly subjective; Bop is the most difficult to reach of the Joolian moons but Tylo is the most difficult body to land on (where landing is possible) in the game.  Pol has the least gravity but is farthest out, Laythe has a lot of gravity but also an atmosphere that offers aerocapture and aerobraking opportunities, and Vall has middling gravity and is somewhat easier to reach.

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Thanks Zheetan!

So I just went on Ike but I had some issues with the landing lol.

I have have now I few questions about all those vectors, prograde, retrograde etc..

tmWcsre.png

So on the picture, my retrograde is on the middle of the nav, so I should be falling straight down right?

But still, I was falling down AND going a bit to the right, and more I was slowing down the lander, more I was going a bit to right, but my retrograde didnt moove. (it looked like i was "sliding" a bit to the right).

So I tried to counter that movement by giving a bit of thrust in the opposite direction, but it didnt work. The thing is, the navball wasnt showing that movement. So is there something i'm missing? I'm sorry I hope you can understand, I can't record because of my computer :/  because the navball I think was saying that I was going straight down but I wasnt exactly.  

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5 hours ago, Limonadd said:

What is the easier planet to land on after Duna?

First off, as I didn't see anybody saying this yet, you are doing AMAZINGLY well for a newer player. I didn't have a successful (as in land-and-return) interplanetary mission until I'd had the game for several months. It was a year before I'd been everywhere. You've had the game for 3 days and you're itching for more to do after Duna :D

As to where to go after Duna, I'd also suggest Eve. More specifically Gilly. It's like a Micro-Minmus orbiting Eve and if you can land there you should be able to navigate to anywhere. After that I'd send one mission each to Dres, Eeloo, and Moho just to say you did them and then do what many of the rest of us do, which is spend the next several years futzing around Jool :D

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Hey @Limonadd, congrats from me as well, I can only agree with @5thHorseman, amazing!

Regarding your question about the Navball: I see you're 7.5km above ground, but your Navball is still in Orbit mode, I'd think if you change it to Surface mode, you'll see the retrograde marker a bit off the center. :) 

Myself, I hate guesswork, KER gives me exact numerical values for horizontal and vertical speed.

Edited by VoidSquid
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8 hours ago, Limonadd said:

So on the picture, my retrograde is on the middle of the nav, so I should be falling straight down right?

As @VoidSquid already said: you had your navball in Orbit mode. (Click in the green writing where it says "Orbit" in your picture of the navball to cycle through the settings.)

One issue that you didn't ask about, but is important, is that the air on planets with atmosphere moves with the surface (there is no wind in KSP). So if you have a small heat-shield that's just enough to cover your craft and re-enter with your craft oriented retrograde according to the orbit vector, then you will hit the atmosphere at an angle and some of the onrushing air will hit your craft and not the heat-shield. Which can lead to a fiery surprise. Many brave Kerbals died before I learned the art of switching to surface mode before re-entering Kerbins atmosphere. :blush:(*)

P.S. (*) Well, most of them were tourists, so the loss wasn't too bad.:cool:

Edited by AHHans
Added P.S.
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Very true, @AHHans, yes. I made it a habit myself to switch to Normal orientation briefly before hitting the atmosphere, then stage to get rid of the remaining rocket parts (engine, tanks, ...), switch to surface mode and retrograde. At around 50k altitude I disable SAS, the landing part should be stable then. As I'm playing with plasma blackout, this is important with small probes in particular, else - lacking a pilot for control - their orientation during plasma blackout won't follow the changing Retograde vector.

Edited by VoidSquid
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24 minutes ago, VoidSquid said:

As I'm playing with plasma blackout, this is important with small probes in particular, else - lacking a pilot for control - their orientation during plasma blackout won't follow the changing Retograde vector.

(O.K. That's going somewhat away from the original question, but so what.)

For me the issue is mostly with crewed craft, the Mk1 crew cabin is not very heat tolerant, but light and cheap. But don't probe cores follow the SAS settings when they loose commnet connection? I.e. won't a probe without control keep orienting the craft retrograde if it was set to retrograde before blackout?

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7 minutes ago, AHHans said:

won't a probe without control keep orienting the craft retrograde if it was set to retrograde before blackout?

If SAS is on,  it keeps the orientation it has the very moment when it loses communication.

Edited by VoidSquid
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4 hours ago, AHHans said:

won't a probe without control keep orienting the craft retrograde if it was set to retrograde before blackout?

Depends on the game setting. I currently use one that gives probes a bit of independence, they can point to a node and burn 100% of engines. If you disable that, the probes just sits there and prays to the Kraken

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12 hours ago, Limonadd said:

Thanks Zheetan!

You're quite welcome.  We're all here to help (though you seem to be doing quite well on your own).

12 hours ago, Limonadd said:

So on the picture, my retrograde is on the middle of the nav, so I should be falling straight down right?

But still, I was falling down AND going a bit to the right, and more I was slowing down the lander, more I was going a bit to right, but my retrograde didnt moove. (it looked like i was "sliding" a bit to the right).

@VoidSquid and @AHHans got the answer by telling you about orbit versus surface modes, but in the interests of a complete answer, when you are in orbit mode and your retrograde vector is pointed as it was in the attached picture, you are indeed going straight down towards the centre of the planet.  The 'sliding to the right' is actually the surface of the planet moving to the left under you as it rotates, for whatever values 'right' and 'left' have in space.

The important thing to note is that because it is a rotation, the velocity involved varies with your distance from the axis of rotation.  In practical planet terms, that means both altitude and latitude, so be aware that the navball's surface mode displays the velocity relative to a point on the surface directly beneath you--i.e., directly between you and the centre of the planet.  The altitude does not affect much because the altitudes involved are a tiny fraction of the total planetary radius:  a surface point at sea level on the equator rotates at 174.943 m/s and a surface point at 8,000 m (roughly the height of the tallest mountain) also on the equator rotates at 174.945 m/s (the difference is two millimetres per second, or about 50 metres per day).  The latitude affects a great deal:  the surface can rotate at any rate from 175 m/s at the equator to zero at the poles.

The values naturally change for other bodies, but the good part is that you don't need to worry about it because the navball can handle the calculations for you while you do other things, such as land the rocket.

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Hey guys!! I come back with new questions! xD

First, I have a question about antennas:

wn0ZE0n.png

Here I was on Ike, and I had this little antenna at the top of the lander. But when I clicked on "Send data", i got a message "Unable to use the antenna" or something like that. But why? Maybe I was too far and I need a more powerful one?

Second question: 

I built a rocket to go to Eve. The rocket was fine, and suprisingly stable, but I had issues to enter into the atmosphere. Same issue than before, the lander flipped over:

RhG45qy.png

At the beginning it was great, but after a few minutes:

xZOH5YE.png

it flipped over and expoded :/ I tried to do what you said about heat shields, but obviously I did it wrong xD could you guys maybe show me an example? Because I dont really know what to do xD

Edited by Limonadd
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Hey Limonadd,

You're making progress at light speed, it seems :D 

Regarding the antenna question, I try to avoid speculating, do you have a screenshot of that error message?

And about your craft flipping, a shameless self quote from another thread:

This is my first successful EVE lander, ready to descend:

screenshot3-png-Windows-Photo-Viewer-201

Things to note:

I'm using 2 x 10m-inflatable heat shields, the lower one is for deflecting the heat, the upper one is turned 180 degrees and prevents the craft from flipping. Lots of parachutes for the last part of the descend, saves fuel.

Your craft, my take here, simply does not nave enough drag on the upper part, hence it flips. The beauty of this 10-inflatable heat shield is its shape, with the two heat shields oriented this way, the craft automatically becomes stable during descend.

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13 minutes ago, Limonadd said:

sadly I didnt take a screenshot

Some speculation then:

Is the antenna strong enough to reach the KSC directly? If it is a direct connection, maybe the communication is blocked by Ike/Duna/Kerbin itself? Do you have Relay Sats in place? Enough electricity? Is the science you want to transmit suitable for transmission?

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No i dont have any Relay sats, but I think I forgot to put batteries on that lander xD i had solar panels deployed on it, but no batteries I think, so maybe it was the electricity. And how do you know if the science that you want to send is "suitable for transmission"? I wanted to send Science Jr, Mistery Goo, Thermometer, Barometer, and I also had EVA and Crew Reports, and a Surface Sample (but you cant send that I guess xD)

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In general, all of the science can be transmitted. But (of course, there's a but, lol):

Say you have a surface sample. As per the wiki, the transmission efficiency is 25% (https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Science). That's 75% science lost :(
Now you take another surface sample to get the remaining 75% science. But to get those, you need to bring back that sample to Kerbin (or process it in a science lab), you can't transmit anything as the 25% are already done.

In general, I prefer to get all science processed by a science lab, for that purpose I have my little space station with four science labs orbiting Kerbin. When my little green guys return from an expedition, they make a rendezvous with said space station and deliver all science there to be processed. Much, much more efficient, usually by factor of five.

Edited by VoidSquid
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Ah, before I forget, a little tip: transmitting science costs a lot of EC, and sometimes even with full batteries, your stored EC isn't enough and you will get a message that the transmission has been canceled due to insufficient EC. As a workaround, you can set the antenna to allow partial transmission. Yes, you'll loose a tiny bit of science that way, but not much, but this way, you can transmit even huge amounts of science. Took me a good while to find this out, back when I started my career, I felt so totally stupid ;) 

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