Zylark

Off the top of my head, I got two hypothesis - I realize this is early career so not all goodie parts are available to you: 1: The radial SRBs are not strutted up, so their thrust vector veers off a bit as they are not held firmly in place. 2: The LFO engine, is that the LV-T30 that do not have Thrust vectoring or is it the LV-T45 that do? If the former, you have no way of controlling the craft as you got no engines that vector thrust, and the little reaction wheel torque on the capsule simply can't counter the force of the engines to adjust direction. If the latter, then I don't know. The LV-T45 should be able to keep three SRBs under control.

Mods isn't cheating - it is adding features and assets to customize the game to your own taste and preferences. Quite a few mods are actually just jumping the gun a bit and add stuff that is scheduled to be implemented by the devs at some point, at the appropriate junction, in due time. The short of it being: mods are great! And as others have said, to recover parts reliably - get Stage Recovery or DebRefund. Both do much the same thing, and both will save you a fortune in career mode, allowing you to spend your hard earned funds on more important stuff. Like going to Minmus and see if it really is made out of pistachio icecream or if it is just a silly rumour by Jeb...

JEB IS BACK! (and orange really is the new black...) Before moving on to the headline news, a little update on the Duna Sample Return mission. The ascent stage made it to a good 45km Duna orbit with plenty of fuel to spare. The plan of using the descent stage to get a nice horizontal launch platform worked wonders - though it did get a bit higher up than planned before staging. The descent stage made it back down in pretty good shape all things considered. A few struts broke, one spent parachute and a solar panel snapped off. But it is standing upright after some convincing, and is ready to send more data from Duna as needed. The captured asteroid, imaginatively named NuMun, is now eagerly getting hollowed out. KSC got plans for that rock - apparently it can eventually hold until now unimaginable amounts of fuel once reduced to what will result in a slightly discoloured and disfigured ping-pong ball in space. In the process it will give us some much needed substrate for the experimental food production back at the Research Station. Not much mind you, but that is not the point according to KSC spokesperson Walt Kerman. The big news of the week, is that celebrated test pilot and general good guy, Jebediah Kerman is back on Kerbin. He hitched a ride strapped to the Heavy Tug whilst in a tiny little lander carrying Experimental Pods with exciting samples from research done around Minmus, plus some surface samples from that tiny very pleasantly coloured rock itself. 'Hey, nothing got damaged, no-one gut hurt - why so many silly questions?!' Is all Jebediah Kerman had to say at the press conference. Mortimer Kerman from the KSC budget office however was all smiles and giggles. 'Suffice to say - if we can think it, we can afford it!' he commented smugly. --- What exactly will the KSC engineers conjure up next? Who knows, certainly not the chronicler of... Interplanetary Quest!

At my Mun Karbonite base, Bartrod Kerman goes out at irregular intervals, plants a flag by the stairs of the hab module, then gets a radio message from home that he just made between 60 and 70 thousand in sponsorship for the space program and then proceed to take down the flag again and re-enter the hab. About all he's done whilst there. 'Have an exciting career in space they said! See the solar system they said! Pfff, humbug!'

Hilarious ...and as usual when the dynamic duo gets in trouble, Bill is all "Oh F#&K!!!!" whilst Jeb goes "Weeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!"

My basic rule of thumb for landing on Duna, is to use a design I know lands well on Kerbin, and then quadruple the amount of chutes on it. Duna do come with one additional risk however - due to the thin atmosphere, you won't get slowed down all that much before the chutes fully open. And if all chutes open at once, due to the massive stress such rapid deceleration cause, your lander might very well rip itself apart - so set chutes to deploy fully in stages. First batch at say 1500 meters, next at 1000 meters and last at 500 meters. Just right click a chute, and you can set the altitude (above ground level) that they fully deploy at.

You and me both. I got the same obsessive refusal to have strut remnants on my pristine ships.More on topic, sending up payloads dry is pretty simple. As have been mentioned there are several ways of doing this. Empty the tanks before launch, or use payload tanks as fuel-source for your first stage by means of mods - like Goodspeed Fuel Pump that is a must have either way to cut down on tedious manual fuel transfers. Especially useful for when using in orbit Fuel Depots and such. Just dock, and fuel is transferred automatically according to how you've configured your fuel tanks. Now if only Goodspeed would include other resources like say Life Support and such...

For Space-Truckin' between the planets, only the LV-N is suitable of the stock engines. Reasonable thrust with a reasonable fuel consumption. Chemical rockets are so thirsty that you'll have to chug along massive amounts of fuel, and that is no good. Ion engines have very low thrust, so if your vessel have a mass of more than a couple of tonnes, you better have the patience of a very patient saint.

I hoist mine back up to dock with the lander using KAS winches. Great for doing FinePrint mod rover contracts - and there is quite a few of them popping up.

From a recent thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/100322-Help-on-building-a-rover-and-rescuing-Bill-Kerman-from-the-Mun?p=1546458&viewfull=1#post1546458

You can with KAS, but not directly. First you'll need to plonk down some ground pylons and then attach the KAS strut end points to those. Like so: First of course get the gimbal on the Claw as close to center of mass of the Asteroid as possible, as when it is strutted up, that is where it'll stay with no sway. And even if pretty much dead on center, it is likely that it actually isn't all that perfectly balanced as one would like it to be. So whatever used to move the 'roid better have some torque power in excess. And even that may not be enough, so one will have to adjust power output of the engines to achieve a nice stable push. Like this: Naturally, then you'll also need an Asteroid pusher with an engine in each of the cardinal corners around the center of attachment to the Asteroid.

What mods take the most space on disk? All assets are loaded at launch of game, and the big memory thieves are mods that contains a lot of textures and/or sounds. Of that list of yours that narrows it down to Chatterer, SCANSat, Procedural Fairings and ProbeControlRoom. The rest is basically just some code with a GUI. Apart from RPM of course, but I find that mod so cool that it would be heresy to uninstall it. Besides, it is quite small weighing in at just a smidge over a megg. Which is nothing in the world of KSP mods.

As others have mentioned, RT soon become tedious. Played with it in my previous career - for my new career RT is out and instead I've included the Antenna Range mod which whilst not as comprehensive as RT, do give incentive for using a variety of antennas for various use. Much simpler, no need to put into place a plethora of communication satellites. Now, what I'd like to see in the game as stock to up the challenge a bit, is something akin to TAC Life Support. Doesn't add all that much complexity to the game, but do introduce a few features. From the simple - Kerbals can't live without snacks, soda-pops and air to breathe - to the more complex by recycling waste and even through in-situ resource utilization (with even more mods for the time being), close the life support loop and make far away stations and colonies self-sufficient. Also, Kerbal Alarm clock, make it stock.

PLANET PROBING PROBES! The Duna Sample Return mission is on track. Reports have come in that the Probe made a good landing. Some at KSC mission control was a bit nervous regarding parachute deployment possibly compromising the structural integrity of the lander - as it is a pretty big one. By means of staged deployment however all was good, and no excessive forces threatened to rip the thing apart during descent. The targeted landing site was situated deep in a canyon to take advantage of the thicker atmosphere down there. The first batch of parachutes opened fully at 1500 meters, the next at 1000 meters and the final batch at 500 meters. Touchdown was at a smooth 6.5 m/s. Well within safe limits. Only little problem is that the landing site was not perfectly level. Seeing as the ascent stage is fitted quite snug with the lander stage, this might cause problems if launched in its current position. This contingency have been anticipated however. The little dV left on the lander stage will be used to lift the entire thing a little, get it nice and level, and then trigger the ascent stage. In other news, it is reported that between 1.3 and 1.5 million in funds have been gobbled up to to develop and launch a trio of identical new lander-probes. These are set to visit Gilly, Dres and Moho. KSC spokeperson Walt Kerman explained that 'These are test missions to put a plethora of new technologies to use before heading off far away to the outer planets. Getting there requires efficient designs that do not rely on solar-power. With these new Argon-electric engines and electrical power supplied by a fission generator, we've reached new heights in packing plenty of range and speed into a tiny package. Well, tiny-ish.' All three probes are set to go at uneven intervals during the next two months. --- Will the Duna Sample Return mission manage to return a sample? Is Jeb finally sick and tired of eating snacks in zero-G? We might possibly get to know in the next exciting update of... Interplanetary Quest!

Aight - Building Rovers is not that hard, in the SPH. Building rovers that are useful whilst low on the tech tree, is a bit more challenging. So to help out the OP a little, an example of a little basic rover and delivery vehicle designed for stock early career and fulfilling the mission the OP set himself. Rescuing Bill on the Mun. First pop off to the SPH and get the Rover going. Start with the Docking Port, and then add a few parts like in the picture. All this using 1x symmetry. Next up add wheels, batteries and solar panels. Use 2x symmetry. Mind you, this design got a pretty high Center of Mass and not that wide a wheel-base, so it must be driven with care. All done, select the Docking Port you started with, and save as a Sub Assembly. Next, go to the VAB, and get a basic little pod going. Start with the Stayputnik, then a 1 man Capsule, next a reaction-wheel and on the bottom an upside-down Docking Port. Then load up the Rover Sub-Assembly and attach to the Docking Port. All you then need to do, is to build your fuel, engines, landing legs and so on around the Rover. Something like this: Add a decoupler at the bottom of the Rover and a 1.25 to 2.5 adapter if you intend to use Rockomax fuel tanks for your rocket. Apply plenty of Space-Tape (Struts), and then make a rocket that can haul it all to orbit and preferably also to Mun orbit. From below: Obviously, under the adapter goes the rocket. The actual lander with Rover attached got enough dV to land on Mun, get back to orbit around Mun and return to Kerbin. Actual mission profile: 1: Get the entire contraption to Mun Orbit, with -one- Kerbal. 2: Land near Bill 'Bungler' Kerman. 3: Undock the Rover - the struts keeping it to the lander will remove themselves automatically. Oh, and apply brakes before undocking. 4: If not already in the Rover, move your Kerbal there. 5: Drive -slowly and carefully- to Bill and nudge his lander-can over. 6: When free, get Bill to the Lander Capsule. 7: Now the tricky part - position the Rover directly under the Lander, so that the Docking Ports align. Maybe practice this a few times on Kerbin before embarking on your mission. 8: Switch to the Lander, and retract landing legs. The Rover and Lander should now dock, and the entire thing rests on the wheels of the Rover. As soon as docking is achieved, give full thrust and get to Mun Orbit. Now, I don't think landing back on Kerbin with the Rover slung underneath is entirely safe. It may just detach as the chutes open. But sending up an unmanned capsule to bring down who is left in the Rover should be easy. This design can naturally be embellished upon and made more optimized for whatever your needs is. With plenty of mods and late in the Tech-Tree, using much the same design philosophy, I made this for my own career: My little MunBuggy is however hoisted up back on the Lander using winches from Kerbal Attachment System. And features RCS for handling going up or down steep hills, all the science gear I could cram into it and all kinds of little things to make it useful for fulfilling FinePrint mod contracts rover missions.

Not sure how the applicants are generated, but it seems to me to be a function of crew capacity in service (how many Kerbals all your active craft can hold). From a certain minimum up to a given maximum of available applicants. If my little hypothesis is correct, then send up your station empty, let a little time pass and then go see if new recruits are available.

My cute but rather large Munbuggy: It handles really well. Front steering and rear braking. RCS thrusters for keeping it on the ground should it hit a bump, and also for braking when going downhill or give some extra oomph when going uphill. Slung underneath is an Advanced SAS module which doesn't see much use, but do add some much wanted weight and also keeps the vessel stable should it go flying for some reason - and turn it right side up if having an 'accident'. Structural panels all around to absorb any impact-forces in case of an unfortunate twirl. Have been put to good use in my current career, and is my most sturdy rover built yet. It's not a speed racer though. I don't like driving it much above 6-7m/s. Comes with glowing recommendations from Bob Kerman - the Stig of Mun!

Your basic "To the Mun and back" rocket. Made with all stock parts - no extras included. It's pretty early career, though a few unlocks are needed. The Lander and return vehicle: Top to bottom: Parachute - you'll need this later. Capsule - one kerbal only. If rescuing anyone, add an okto probe between top chute and capsule and send off unmanned. 2xInline Parachutes - you'll need this later --- Decoupler Fuel tank - can never remember what they are called, but holds enough fuel for the return trip and then some. 2xBatteries - power you will need, but not much. 4xSingle cell solar panels - for recharging batteries, probably not needed but just to be safe. 2xRadial decouplers - also doubles as girders to widen your craft a bit. 2xTiny Fuel tanks - for Mun deorbit and landing. 4xLanding legs - for, well, landing. 2xLV909 - for Mun deorbit and landing. LV909 - for taking off from mun and return to Kerbin. Now all one need is something to carry this thing up to Kerbin orbit, say 100km, and get it towards Mun. This booster will do nicely: Again, top to bottom: The lander and return capsule from above. Decoupler Advanced Stabilizer - probably not needed, but makes everything much easier to control. Fuel tank - the long one that holds 360 units of fuel. 4xSingle cell solar panels - probably not needed, but again... 2xBatteries - electricity is good. LV-T45 Engine - plenty powerful enough for our needs. Decoupler Tri-coupler 6xFuel tanks - the long ones stacked two tall. 3xRadial decouplers - for hooking up those Solid Rocket Boosters 3xSRBs - again, the long ones, not those tiny short ones. 6xSepatrons - 2 per SRB. Without these you'll have a sudden disassembly when separating the SRB stage 3xLV-T45 3xLaunch Stability Towers - strictly speaking not needed, but I like them. Staging (parachutes and stuff to recoup launch costs removed for clarity): 6: Fires all booster engines (3xLV-T45 + SRBs) and release the rocket from the towers. 5: Release the SRBs and fires the Sepatrons. 4: Release the lower booster stage of 3xLV-T45 + Fuel tanks. Fires upper booster stage. 3: Release upper booster stage. Fires 3xLV909. 2: Release 2xLV909 + Fuel Tanks 1: Release LV909 + Fuel Tank 0: Deploys capsule Parachutes. Schedule: 1: Stage 6, 5 and 4 will get you to Kerbin orbit, with fuel left over in the upper booster to get you well on your way to Mun 2: When stage 4 is dry (upper booster), release it and finish whatever maneuver you were doing. When done, transfer fuel from middle tank to top off the radial tanks. 3: Orbit and then land on Mun. If any fuel is left over in the radial tanks, transfer it to the middle tank. 4: Do your Mun business. 5: Take off from Mun. Once the landing legs are off the ground - release the radial tanks and engines. 6: Once in Mun orbit, plot a course directly for Kerbin. Aim for a Pe of 0 to 10000 meters. 7: Before hitting the atmosphere of Kerbin, point capsule prograde, release LV909+Fuel tank. 8: When in atmosphere, point capsule retrograde (doesn't matter but looks better). 9: After the worst of the re-entry fires, release parachutes. 10: Happy landing. --- That lander and booster setup can be embellished on to do some science as well, by simply strapping a Science Jr pod under the capsule and then bolting on various science instruments and such to the Science Jr pod. Though, to be certain of a happy return, Id also add an inline Parachute or two to the Science Jr Pod. Good luck and have fun

There is always MechJeb. Get your craft to orbit, then select Minmus as target. Next up go to MechJebs Maneuver Planner, select Match Planes with target and then create and execute. Once that is all done, select Hohmanns Transfer to Target. This time though, just select create, not create and execute. OK, once the maneuver node is created, select it and pull out the radial (blue) node a bit and adjust the prograde (green) marker a bit. You want to jiggle about with the blue and green adjusters until you get a good Pe (around 50km or thereabout) for your intercept of Minmus. Once you're happy, hit the execute next maneuver node button. Once in Minmus Sphere of Influence, select the Circularize tool of MJ. Select to create node at next Pe. Hit Create and Execute. A little while later you should be done and in a nice orbit around Minmus. After seeing how MJ do it a few times, it gets pretty easy doing it manually. Though I must admit to my sins, I still let MJ do the plane change and circularization bit. The transfer burn I set up manually however, as doing it directly is faster than fiddling with a MJ created maneuver node.

SINGLE STAGE TO PROFIT! New technology tested that promise great savings. Some at KSC think Rockets are big dangerous things - despite very few mishaps so far. If one disregard the initial phase of testing the by now standard lifters in service. Which by the way comes in three sizes, 5 Ton, 15 Ton and 45 Ton payload to at least 150km orbit. The smallest of these standard lifters now seem to have some competition however. The SP Seagull just delivered 7 Tons of machinery to the Research Station orbiting Kerbin up at 200km. It reached the Station with a good 200dV to spare. The engineers back at the SPH was pleased, but looking over the data they noticed quite a bit of mismatch of LF to Oxidizer. Plenty of the former, not very much of the latter. Back on Kerra Firma, another slight snag revealed itself - the Center of Mass might just be a teeny bit too far back once this new Spaceplane is empty of cargo. The engineers assured KSC program managers that this issue will get resolved. It is quite dangerous as it is. Standing with the tail to the ground when sitting still is one thing, but the approach was a bit hairy. Several rounds at full throttle had to be done to bleed off enough fuel to be able to pitch it down at all before landing. In other news, and as many from the Kerbin Press Agency had guessed from the previously released picture of Bobs' new mission, he was indeed sitting in a Rover - the first so far. The mission was to check out some anomalies detected on the Mun. It all went pretty swimmingly until a rather steep hill had to be negotiated to reach the last two checkpoints that was inconveniently situated deep inside a crater. The engineers back at the SPH however had anticipated such scenarios, and indeed using RCS as retro-thrusters made certain the downhill speed was at all times within safe limits. Mission accomplished, and the Rover, creatively named MunBuggy, got hoisted back onto the BaseLander ship for a return to orbit and future missions. Bob later transferred to the Crew Shuttle Anton, and will get back to Kerbin soon. Meanwhile, the first of two Cyclotrons got delivered to the testing facility around Minmus, where Jebediah is overseeing operations. This is a shakeout mission to test all relevant parts before a major mission to Duna and quite possibly the outer planets. Essentially, in due time, the entire thing will be pulled apart, two Cyclotrons will dock with the protoype Interplanetary Ship - seen here in the forefront - whereas the Station Core itself will be shipped off behind the Heavy Tug. Before then however, Minmus will be sucked dry of science and plenty of experiments will be performed whilst in orbit there. Last, but by no means least... Is that something red we see in the background there? Indeed, our Duna Sample Return probe is getting close to its' ultimate goal. --- Will Jeb have the patience to miss all the action by merely orbiting Minmus for months on end? Will the next Spaceplane have less balance issues? Will the red planet finally get a visit? This and - quite possibly but not entirely certain - more, on the next Interplanetary Quest!

Entertaining series so far, good work. Best of all, no Scottish accent As for your money woes - yes doing those test missions is tedious - have you looked into Stage Recovery or Deb Refund to save a big chunk on the cost of lifters by recouping 80-90% of the cost? Also, on the other end of the budget, gaining barrel-loads of funds by means of Station Science mod doing experiments in all kinds of interesting places? The latter also gives an even better reason to build stations than Fine Print. Not long now, and you should see some contracts using DMagic Orbital Science mod popping up. In particular doing this, that and the other on Eve and Duna and their moons. Those are *really* profitable

Slap on some Sepatrons. Use two pairs, one pair near the bottom one pair near the top. Make sure the nozzles of the Sepatrons don't aim straight for your central fuel tank, so set them up in a V configuration. Then stage them together with your radial decouplers. If using a mod like Stage Recovery or DebRefund, also slap on some parachutes that deploy with the decouplers and Sepatrons.

I like my gas-stations up high. Around Kerbin that is 300km. It might be high for stuff coming from Kerbin, but since the fuel is coming from mining Karbonite on the Mun and most vessels visiting it are incoming from any other place than Kerbin, that do not matter much. Other advantages include doing the burn to other places when fully fueled from a higher orbit, no need to burn up ~200dV getting from say 100km to +300km. Your Tug probably got plenty of fuel when incoming, so that can just rendezvous with your new payload in LKO, then haul it all to the Gas-Station, top off the tanks and then get to wherever it need be. If you need to refuel stuff that struggles to get to low orbit, much less high orbit, just have a roaming refueler. This can also siphon off fuel from lifters that is a bit over-dimensioned for the payload. Waste not, want not

If playing with mods such as Stage Recovery or DebRefund, the cost of launching a rocket isn't all that great. You get back about 80-90% of the cost provided you've slapped enough parachutes on your lifters. What I find SSTO Spaceplanes useful for is transferring crew and various supplies and small payloads to and from LKO. My Spaceplanes at least have quite modest cargo-capability. If I try to go big, the part count alone puts me into the single digit framerate, making the things impossible to fly. The great benefit of Spaceplanes is the obvious, only cost is fuel. The downside is that they require constant baby-sitting. From take off to landing. Which if a lazy MJ (ab)user like myself can get a bit tedious... They're fun to design and tinker around with though. Making one that handles well _and_ gets to orbit is almost an achievement in itself.

Look up! A new Moon have arrived! The latest press release from KSC goes into a lot of technical details on how they finally managed to wrangle the large-ish piece of rock who was about to hit Kerbin into a nice stable 300km orbit. The short of it being they had to send up something with a bit more control. Since the Eve landing provided plenty of new funding, a brand new Heavy Tug was sent up to take over for the Fuel Lander with the job of pushing the Asteroid around. Even with massive reaction-wheels, some adjustment with thrust had to be made to keep it all nice and steady. Once parked in its new orbit, a capsule with plenty of science instruments to probe the rock got sent up. Bill later hitched a ride on this capsule back to Kerbin for a heroic welcome. A truly massive achievement that not only saved the lives of millions, but also gave all of Kerbalkind something pretty to look at - assuming one have a pair of decent binoculars... In other news, it is reported that the first probe to Duna is getting close. This is followed by two more probes and even a two-man crewed mission to investigate the little red planet. Meanwhile in a mission where not many details are known yet, KSC released this picture of Bob Kerman hitching a ride to orbit in a strange new craft. He do not look overly confident. --- Will the probe to Duna arrive safe? Exactly what is Bob up to, and what is that thing a rocket got strapped to? Where is Jeb by the way? This, and more, in the next installment of... Interplanetary Quest!