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Most important lesson you've learned in KSP?


Tassyr

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I've learned that we've been lied to all along (or not been getting the entire story) You know the common "if you push an object it will keep going in that direction.." well they neglected to mention the part where you'd have to be away from any gravitational interference.. That said it completely ruined a lot of movies for me now that i'm applying that fact.. one of them being "Gravity" with the stations and satellites being at different levels yet colliding and falling back to earth. All i could think of is NO THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN UNLESS THEY SLOW DOWN THEIR ORBITAL VELOCITY.

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Even then following the rule you are not safe. I sent an rover on a test run to Mun, it was a probe rover build around an small fuel tank and a 48-7S so an drop tank took it from LKO to Mun.

Now on an rover you only add solar panels on the top, as I was burning toward the full Mun they was in the shadow and out of power then I wanted to do an correction burn. It was on impact trajectory.

Another manned mission had a solar eclipse all the way to Mun a minute of sun light before I went into Mun shadow, as it was manned I was able to burn and got into high orbit.

I had a similar incident when sending my first rover to Duna. My solar panels were only on one side, which turned out to be the wrong side. It is forever trapped in heliocentric orbit, only powered up at the wrong times.

One of my lessons is: Thouroughly test anything that is going on an important mission. (Not following this caused many mission failures.

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Be patient and think before you act. I've had too many times where I try some fancy orbital maneuver that I think will help me, then end up running out of fuel with my peri just outside atmo. Nothing worse than having a Mun or Minmus flyby mission come home with lots of tasty science on board, only to leave it out of reach in orbit.

And GOAP doesn't always work, especially when you're impatient again and run out of EVA fuel before getting back in the capsule.

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A few lessons...

1) Don't forget solar panels

2) When in doubt, add more struts (Like seriously, MORE struts) I have a space station which must have over a thousand struts :P

3) Always carry more fuel than is needed, just in case

4) Make sure your kerbals can get out of their pod, I have had a few instances where I would be sending Kerbals to another planet and then they do a lot of science and return only to find they can't escape when I land on said planet... therefore resulting in less science AND having to try and bring all the science stuff back safely instead of collecting it all and bring just the pod and a bit of fuel (to deorbit, slow descent etc.) back to kerbin... trying to land about 1/2 tonne - tonne of stuff on a nuclear engine and single parachute is not a situation you want to be in :P

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Most important things I've learnd about KSP:

Panning the camera. (middle mouse button)

When using MechJeb, custom windows are more useful than a lot of the standard windows. Spend some time playing with that feature.

When landing away from the KSC you're going to come down on a hill and probably fall over. It doesn't matter where you go or how flat it looks on the way down, it's a hillside. Plan ahead for it.

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When in doubt. Don't try to build like Whackjob. Think small and simple. Also remember to open solar panels before power runs out as well as make sure the extendable ones are no where close to the EVA entance spots. Quite easy to brake them off by mistake when EVA Jet packing back. Also don't use the 1x6 solar panels as a plank where you jump off of even if they can support the Kerbals mass.

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The fact you can "land" on Gilly doesn't mean that's what you're going to usually be doing. (Bouncing off is much more common.)

My last landing on Gilly was with RCS thrusting my ship down against the ground after the bounce.

Injudicious use of rover brakes at high speed may cause endo-flips, depending how high your CoG is. I may have to learn to drive using RCS thrusting down.

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