Landing on Ascension

[lajoswinkler]

This tiny world's orbit and its relatively large size (accounting for the fact everything is 10-11 times smaller in KSP universe) reminds of a huge comet. Unlike comets, Ascension has a high albedo.

My approach was catching it while it's going towards Kerbol. Rendezvous is fiddly but manageable. dV requirements are high. I forgot to take account about dV for raising apoapsis, but braking took around 3.5 km/s.

The ship was so overengineered that the tug use to push the lander's carrier still has lots of fuel.

Changing orbital parameters is easy, the gravity well is rather shallow.

What bugs me is this.

Once I lowered lander's orbit, the whole body became pitch black. I don't know exactly when, because I was in map mode.

Just for laughs, I tried to land it and smashed into the surface. Some 850 metres at Mach 1 speed. It's like approaching a void in space and then boom.

So, anyone having the same problem? Solutions? Graphics were all maxed except resolution.

[Captain Sierra]

Well . . . Ordinarily I'd ask if you were on the dark side, that'd do it, but your ship is clearly illuminated. Does your lander have lights you could use to try and see the surface? That can narrow it down between either a lighting glitch or a texture glitch.

[lajoswinkler]

It's pitch black, textureless void regardless of the position. Yes, I do have 4 long range reflectors on the lander, but landing is very hard when you have absolutely no points of reference and the reflectors are pointing towards horizon. I know, it was a mistake.

It's like standing over a creepy 2D punched hole in the fabric of space. I could try going down at 50 m/s - lander is the third stage of the whole ship so it might survive the impact. I don't know how variable is the height of the surface.

The only mod I have is KSPX and as I've said, graphics are at maximum, except resolution. It runs at 10-15 fps, enough for missions where I want to capture nice screenshots.

[Kragrathea]

I finally found this bug. I plan to release a new version tonight with the fix.

[astroadrian99]

Is that small planet part of a mod?

[pxi]

Is that small planet part of a mod?

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/60318-Krags-PlanetFactory-Updated-Jan-22