RocketBlam

My last mission to Jool was the same way, so don't feel bad, even though I've been there several times in previous games. I sent a Laythe lander with a transfer stage that I thought could bring it back (since it would be a lot lighter after returning from the surface of Laythe) but I badly misjudged the fuel I would need. And I mean badly. I ended up sending an ISRU unit to Vall, and having to a) send fuel to the Laythe lander/transfer stage in Laythe orbit, since it couldn't even get out of orbit with the fuel it had, then doing another round to fuel it up for the return to Kerbin, and even then I didn't have enough. Man, it's kind of embarrassing.

I prefer small myself. I find it much more difficult to build a small SSTO than a large one. Still trying to make a single-engine Laythe lander... hmmm....

I keep having this problem too. In fact several contracts I've had lately fail to complete even though I have fulfilled the requirements. Sometimes verifying the game cache in Steam fixes it, sometimes not. The description says "fly a vessel anywhere near Jool to complete the contract." I've done that and it doesn't complete (in the most recent case).

I always assumed that Kerbals all lived underground, and their only above-ground facility was the spaceport.

I made this thing, it was supposed to be an ISRU rig, but then it just started freaking out.

The last one, that almost ended my career, is a bug that prevents contracts from completing. I was supposed to get data from space around Gilly, and no matter where I took the data (high over Gilly, flying at Gilly, whatever) it would not complete. I've had this bug before and I've been able to confirm my game cache with Steam to fix it, but that didn't even work here. Luckily I found that you can force complete contracts with ALT-F12, which I normally wouldn't do, but in this case, it's a bug, and I did what I was supposed to do for the contract.

As far as joint strength/rigidity goes, I wish it was a little more rigid too. Patched conics... never had a problem with them. I don't know what you mean when you say they're a nightmare. The one thing I think the game needs, though, desperately, is some way to know when a planet is in the right position for an intercept. A launch window, basically. This isn't something you should have to download a mod for.

That inflatable heat shield is the shizz...

I actually landed on a couple of the Joolian moons before I figured out there was a save feature. You want to talk about nerve-wracking...

Agreed, and their primary limitation is that you can't turn them off. So unless you're just trying to get into any orbit, no matter how imprecise, they're of no use for the final burn into orbit.

The short answer is, you don't. SRBs are boosters, they are intended to augment liquid engines during the boost phase. This is because a) you can't turn them off, and b) you can't steer their exhaust. Now, I'm not saying I've never boosted just with boosters, but... they're not suitable for the final stage of getting into orbit.

Putting wings on the top of a vehicle (I assume that's what you mean) always results in instability. It happens on Kerbin, and I assume it's worse on Eve.

Since you want to minimize drag, and don't need much lift, you'll need much smaller wings on Eve than you do on Kerbin. That's not your big problem, though. If you're trying to return a Kerbal from Eve, you're talking about a very big and/or very well designed craft. You need roughly 9,000 d/v to get back to orbit even from Eve's higher elevations. That's more than double what you need for the same vehicle to reach Kerbin orbit. Also, you need a TWR of about 2.0 (on Kerbin). So, built a rocket that has 9,000 D/V, and a TWR of greater than 2.0 on all the stages, and that gives you an idea of what you need to get off of Eve. As far as getting it into orbit, I generally put the lander into Kerbin orbit on one rocket, then the transfer vehicle on another. Both are probably going to be very heavy. This is a good resource to look at for Eve ascent. As far as Duna goes, I find the atmosphere to be so thin that wings aren't very useful. You're better off just landing on the tail and hopping to the next spot.

So now that Kerbalstuff is gone, is there a new place to get this?

My understanding is that since Kerbalstuff shut down, and that's where CKAN got all its files, CKAN is not going to work until Kerbalstuff comes back up, if it ever does.

Is this where I can demand that you change the aerodynamics in 0.7.3? Because if it is, I'd like to demand that.

I don't get what people mean by engine butts... What are they?

Other: landing. Always.

Well, I sent Jeb and Valentina there, and Jeb... lost his Kerginity.

It's OK, nothing wrong with reviving a thread that is still relevant.

I always thought it was because your ship rotates around its center of mass, which is somewhere near the middle. But your cockpit, where the node measurements are being done, is out on one end, so while rotating, the node marker location is changing because the distance between the cockpit to the node is changing, slightly. Note that it stops moving when you stop rotating. I bet if you designed a ship where the cockpit was very near the COM, the problem would mostly go away. Something to test maybe.

Nnnope... sure don't.

You're the only group of people I know who understand why the SpaceX first stage landing is an entirely different deal than the Blue Origins landing, because you understand how much different "in space" is from "in orbit". I don't have to explain it to you. You all know already.

Well, I reloaded the game, to a point before I achieved this mission completion, and it failed again. Checked my game cache, another file failed the check. So something is wrong here.