Kryxal

MechJeb on hearing that Jeb wants to try this stunt: "Just what do you think you're doing, Jeb?"

I'd probably just solve this the easy way ... delete all the decouplers and SRBs but one which you know to work, then either click on the decoupler, modify symmetry, and re-place, or alt-click to duplicate, and place each other one. For that matter, you could easily do two sets of SRBs that way using pull-symmetry-place then alt-click-symmetry-place.

Additional effect, as the planet rotates under you, you're going to be angling MORE westwards...

I'd suggest Jeb get some safety lines, but then I remembered, these are KERBALS, where does safety come into this!?

It's not actually a bug, it's an undocumented feature ... you know how it goes.

I don't have FAR or NEAR, and I remember seeing that functionality...

To see how well each surface will do at each job, turn on your CoM in the SPH. Pitch is turning the plane on a side-to-side line through the CoM, thus the front or back placement. Note that if your CoM ends up well back on the plane, this might imply front-mounted canards will work better. Yaw is turning the plane on a vertical line through the CoM. Front or back SEEMS to make sense, BUT front-mounted rudders can suffer from some problems, where rear-mounted tend to fly straighter. Roll is turning the plane on a front-to-back line through the CoM, so as far out to the sides as is reasonable. Also note that you generally want the control surfaces to be parallel to the corresponding axis they're working on, and shut off for any axes they won't work well with. You could probably manage otherwise, but this is starter stuff. Oh, and you said "elevon" ... you're using delta wings, I'm guessing? Be aware that you MAY (or may not) have less pitch authority that you'd like.

I'm sorry, but ... ludicrous speed? "Spaceball one ... they've gone to plaid!"

I find myself wondering where the CoT is, and more on the vertical than anything else. Given the CoM-CoL placements, it should have some nose-down tendency, but not THAT much. More speed would help a great deal with that, of course...

Don't forget that the cupola isn't exactly the lightest thing around, I wouldn't reduce thrust TOO much. Once you're down, you can probably just come to a hover or near-hover, trigger the decoupler, and watch that thing sail away (till it clears physics range, then it's coming right back down...)

There's a reason why the first approximation of a good ascent trajectory is "go up 10 then at a 45 degree angle", that clears the worst of the atmosphere, then starts building speed sideways to turn it into a real orbit while still getting more height to let drag keep dropping.

I thought it was ... maybe it was unstickied?

Sometimes you have to place a node elsewhere on the orbit and drag into place ... sometimes you can't place one ANYWHERE and have to exit to KSC and return. Oh, and sometimes you have to zoom in to see two different orbits so you can place the node on the right one. It usually helps to focus your view on the sun and adjust your zoom so the two orbits are WELL in the foreground.

As a workaround, can you effectively control the mothership via RCS? If so, you can probably get your other ship on approach and just do fine adjustment from there ... and even if not, you can at least hold the ship steady with SAS.

Don't forget to make use of any excess fuel from your circularization stage, if you have an excess ... I routinely have maybe an extra 500 delta-v, so use that for my first apoapsis kick, and it's likely to have a better TWR. I make a point of getting that stage to then go into atmosphere for clean-up purposes...

This is the same old problem with remote troubleshooting ... we can't see what you're doing, so we can't see what you're doing wrong. Give us a specific part that you're testing and is failing to complete, walk it through in great detail (and pictures might help) and MAYBE we can point something out.

I was thinking it was the issue where, even using physicless warp, you'll shift your heading relative to a maneuver node's marker. It's really annoying, line up half an orbit early, find you're a fair bit off when you come out of warp...

For the small stuff, add the parachute first ... they seem to automatically end up in stage 0, but they don't bump other stuff down, so if you've already added something else, bad things can happen. Of course, if you're over 23km when you stage to it, the chutes won't open, and you could always just add a stage and move stuff.

We've been seeing quite a few necros lately, haven't we? I'd suggest adding it to the stuff people should read first, but it's probably already there, and it's the people who DON'T read those that generally cause problems.

If you need to stage the part, you CAN use it beforehand if you activate it the FIRST time with right-click or action groups. For that matter, re-staging parts for the activation tends to work eventually if you add a few extra stages along with what you need staged.

How about this: it looks like the second ring is mounted a bit higher than the first ring, so run fuel lines from the outer ring to the center tank, then out again to the 6 inner ring tanks. Your center rocket will run out of fuel, of course, but you'll still be thrusting on 6 ... or you could lose the center rocket entirely, whatever works. On second thought, that would run into the multiple fuel lines in AND out issue, maybe just accept that you'll need to do things differently ... maybe cut the center tank out of things entirely, dial the center engine down to 50% or use a lighter engine, and just make it work that way.

You might want to kick in the nukes as well when you go to rockets, it's not like more thrust is going to be a bad thing and they'll be more efficient. Do you actually need 4 nukes, or would 2 be enough?

There are several hard and soft limits ... you can only get so much from transmitted data, though that may or may not be capped in one try. If you're running stock, though, don't worry about the losses, there's enough science to be had on the Mun and Minimus.

[spaceNazi] No space for you! [/spaceNazi] Semantics fights are never pretty...

Often enough, I find a single sepratron mounted on the bottom, pointing straight up, does the job pretty well ... it accelerates the detached part clear sooner, and gives some rotation to counter the force from the radial decoupler ... and if the rotation should happen to be somewhat too much, it's going to also end up pulling outward as it spins.