Paul G

The decoupler worked, but I think you are right about the clipping - that is the source of my explosions. I will se what redesign I can come up with that puts the engines on the outside as I could do with the stability - especially when landing on the Run, things get very dicy on touchdown.

Running the following on MacOS: Kerbal 1.9.1.2788 Making History 1.91 Breaking Ground 1.41 I'm reasonably advanced in the Tech tree - I have unlocked the bits necessary to build a rover, but I'm struggling to come up with a reliable way of getting a rover to my destination. My lander shown below, will land me on the Mun or Minimus, and allow me to leave the base of the lander behind (with a scientist), and return the science I collect back to Kerbin. My rover is secured via a docking port, and whilst I can get to my final descent quite happily (politely ignoring the slight plume impingement on my rover if I manoeuvre the wrong way). I've tried slowing my descent to single figure ms at low heights <50m, or even landing and then undocking the rover, but the undocking is so energetic my rover is flung to the floor and explodes, or tips my lander over (on Minimus) if I release whilst landed. There must be a more elegant way of getting a rover down safely., but I can't see how I would release it - should I be looking at using hinges to make doors/ramps to a space in my lander where the rover sits until I'm landed, or should I be building rovers as landers in their own right? Thanks Paul

Maybe a one line install guide - copy RocketEmporium subdirectory to GameData? The readme file would be a good place.......

I purchased Making History tonight as a direct download and have received an order confirmation email that directs me to the KSP store and tells me: click on "My Account" to find your product purchase. Your product purchase will include a download link or a Steam Key, depending on which item you purchased. If you purchased a download, click on the Download arrow and save the installer to your hard drive. The trouble is, the only download link is for KSP, not Making History. I have checked things like making sure that I have actually logged into the right store account, and everything seems ok, but still, no download link. What am I missing? (other than the download link......) Paul OK, so the link has now appeared. Off to play

I have done a fresh install of Kerbal 1.2.2.1622 Mac OSX with no mods, and been able to replicate this - hurrah. At least I know that I wasn't imagining it. The root cause definitely seems to be when you do not start building from the very top down (i.e. start with a core, build your comms relay and then then add a coupling on top of the stage, building the probe from the bottom down (e.g. start with an Ant engine, then a tank, then the core and comms equipment). Once you are out of comms range to Kerbal for a Communotron 16 or HG-5, as soon as you stage the final probe, it cannot see the relay dishes plastered all over the stage that is floating a dozen feet away from it. I've saved my game, and logged a bug. Thanks for the advice Paul

It looks like there was something strange about the way I built my ship. I built it with the intend of it being an orbiter (with core, relays, science etc), and as an afterthought added a landing probe (another core, heat shield, more science, and comms etc) on top of my original rocket. Despite having all the bits needed, when I separated my landing probe, the probe lost all comms as soon as I staged, despite the stage I had just left behind being in comms with Kerbin due to the relay dishes I had kitted the stage out with. A rebuild of my rocket *starting* with the landing probe, then working down through the orbiting stage (with relay dishes), core, and power, though to the boosters solved my problem, and I have now landed my probe and happily communicating through a relay. Of course now I have discovered that I don't have enough power to actually send any science..... Sigh. Back to the probe drawing board. Thanks for your suggestions everyone.

I'm trying to send probes to Eve, and am having trouble being able to communicate with my landing probe once I separate from the stage that got me to Eve orbit. The stage that remains in Eve orbit has 2 RA-2 Relay Antennas, and my Kerbin DSN Ground station has bee upgraded to L3. I obviously want to have control over my probes during re-entry, so a big dish is out of the question, but when using a Communotron 16, or even the probe core (a Probodobodyne OKTO), as soon as I separate from the stage that has my relay antennas, I loose all control over the probe. I was expecting that the probe core, either via its internal antenna, or the Communotron 16, would relay via my stage and its RA-2's back to Kerbin, but no. The only antenna that give me any kind of connection is a DTS-M1, and that shows as communicating directly back to Kerbin, rather than through the relay. A DTS-M1 is not going to survive Eve re-entry. I don't think its a range issue, as I loose control of my landing probe as soon as I separate, I have extended antennas, and even tried re-orienting the stage with relays just in case the stage body was occluding the signal from my probe to the relay antenna, but no luck. The KSpedia show a table that gives ranges for different combinations of antennas - Class 0 (Probes) unto class 5, as well as the different upgrade levels of the Kerbin Ground Station, but I can't see in the parts guide what class a particular antenna would be. I am using KSP 1.21.1604 on Mac. Any thoughts/suggestions? Thanks Paul

Thank you that is exactly what I needed. Paul

Hi, I'm trying to understand the fuel delivery overlay, and what the different number are telling me. I assume that the orange 'cubes' resent fuel tanks, green cubes engines, and the green wavy line represents the direction of fuel flow, but I don't understand what the effect is of changing the flow priority on different tanks, as changing them up or down does not seem to make much difference. Is there any documentation explaining what tweaking these settings is supposed to achieve? Thanks Paul

I read on a 1.0.2 tips and advice thread that the orange tank overheats easily and that a lone strut should be placed on it to help with heat absorption. Paul

Are you in orbit? Thought you had to be 70k ish.

It's to do with the trade off between how long you want to fight gravity (going straight up) verses how much air resistance you have to fight when gaining speed. Getting into orbit is not so much about going high, it's about going sideways fast. Below 8,000ft you are in the thick bit of the atmosphere, so you want to get above that before speeding up (othwise you are wasting effort pushing fast through the atmosphere). Remember, if you go straight up, unless you can gain escape velocity, you will just fall down, not going into orbit. Once above this height you can make better use of your thrust by turning, so you are spending less effort fighting gravity, and more effort going sideways to gain enough speed to get into orbit. That's how I imagine it anyway. Paul

In map mode I've recently discovered the ability to see my arrival trajectory relative to my target, this is a great help when trying to ensure that I enter the right prograde, retrograde, or even a vaguely polar orbit as required by a particular contract, saving much fuel and swearing. But sometimes the distances or angles between my manoeuvre node and target are just too great and I end up loosing focus on my manoeuvre node, and then moving it by mistake, or pulling on the wrong vector whilst trying to keep the 'view from target' on screen. Basically I get in a mess. Once a manoeuvre node has been set and a target selected, it would be great to have the option to have the manoeuvre node on one side of the screen and the target (and my intercept path) on the other. Then I can tweak the manoeuvre node vectors and easily see their impact on my intercept path. Both sides of the screen could have independent zoom controls, and the level of zoom on the manoeuvre node side would determine the scale of adjustments - zoom out for the basic 'rough' setting of the intercept, zoom in to fine tune. Or does this already exist? Paul

Tests can also be done by right clicking the part and selecting run test I've successfully run tests that required an escape trajectory away from Kerbin, and ran out of fuel before I stage. I ended up with the stage that required the test being out of fuel, but by right clicking on the stage and running the test, the test was successful. Rgds Paul

I had not thought about any performance hit, good point. I guess I was more focussing more on the mission structure, rather than the craft left behind at the end.

I'm in two minds as to whether this is a tech tree suggestion, or something that would be covered in the future 'missions' area of KSP, but how about making satellite constellations a requirement for orbital outposts (or planetary bases) e.g. providing comms, or imaging. They could be an alternate source of science to goo. Also deep space probes, telescopes etc could aid asteroid discovery. Rgds Paul

I like the idea of different launch pads at different latitudes, so you have to launch with different inclinations.

AMD FX 4350 4.2 ghz costs £94, about $160

It was the booster dropping whilst still going straight up that made me start to question this. I read (or watched) somewhere that even going straight up results in a slightly parabola shaped flight path relative to someone on the ground due to the spin of the planet, but even so, it would seem bad form to drop a whole stage back down on the launch pad

I'm still very new at this, I have a couple of lunar orbits and returns under my belt, and have looked through a fair few YouTube videos, but haven't got a huge amount of flight time under my belt. Now I get the point of what a gravity turn us, why you would use them, and that without some mods, the manoeuvre I'm doing after takeoff is not a true gravity turn, but all the faq's and YouTube clips consistently say that the manoeuvre that we know as the gravity turn shouldn't be started until after 10km. My question is - why so late? Photos of real life launches show that things start moving away from vertical much sooner. The photo below (borrowed from Cmdr Chris Hadfields twitter feed) shows what i mean. http://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/status/435808451973758976/photo/1 I don't think the rocket nose is following this arc (at least not at the start), as this shot really just shows the arc that the engine flame travels, but there is horizontal travel occurring much earlier than on Kerbal. Is this a limitation of the physics engine, or am I missing something? Thanks Paul

Welcome may you have many soft landings in the future. From another newbie just starting out.

Brilliant, thanks for the advice and the welcome, hope I will be able to help others as I progress. In the short time I've been using KSP, I've learned the answer to 2 questions that have bugged me for years: Why don't rockets go straight up, send Why do rockets coast. Being able to visualise ballistic paths, and how they can evolve in to orbits has been a real eye opener! Soooo much to learn.

Hi, I'm just starting out with KSP, and have managed to get myself up in orbits (of varying quality) , however I'm having less success with EVA's when I try to recover science. Sometimes when I exit the capsule, let go, and activate the jetpack, my kerbalnaught orientates himself face down (he pitches 90' down) and I cannot get him upright and parallel to the rocket. Even if I use left click and drag to adjust pitch so that I'm facing the rocket, using any keyboard controls just resets the pitch so that I'm looking down the rocket again. I can't work out what I'm doing that sometimes let's me do EVA's without this 90' pitch down problem - can anyone tell me what I'm missing? Thanks Paul