EdFred

I gravity hack on Mun when the rover just decides it's going to flip over spontaneously.

No Kerbals have died in my current career.

I never noticed that on the fuel tank, but on the science lab they have the dates corresponding to ISS and Mir

I finally finished MunBaseAlpha [TABLE=class: table1] <tbody>[TR] [TD]Kerbal Mun Base Alpha Located 1.4km NNE of the Armstrong Memorial The current outpost including the habitation complex, a fuel depot, and starboard and port lighting. The lights are approximately 200m from the base so when illuminated, habitation complex isn't blinding. [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Two screen shots of the habitation complex. Note the communications tower, science lab, and two rovers used to put everything together. [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Fuel Depot The light stack is the standard white, and that is a docked rover which seats 4 kerbals in the docking gantry. [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Starboard (as in prograde orbit from above) Lighting Stack [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Port(as in prograde orbit from above) Lighting Stack [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]There are also blue, orange, and purple light stacks waiting to be launched on Kerbin. Each module arrived individually with the exception of the tri-couplers and construction rovers, which docked to the bottom of certain modules. Several craft were lost en route to Mun due to the Kraken. No Kerbals were lost or injured in the construction of this base.[/TD] [/TR] </tbody>[/TABLE]

I would do it thusly: 3 man Command module ship (manned with a single Kerbal) w/chutes and 1 Two man lander can (with chutes) Go rescue the orbiting Kerbal as you would do any other standard rescue mission. Go to Mun, send down 2 man LC piloted by 1 Kerbal, leaving the other in the CM. Rescue Kerbal #2 Rendezvous with CM. Refuel LC. Rescue Kerbal #3. Return to LKO. Undock LC from CM. Deorbit CM and recover. Deorbit LC and recover. Of course the question is what if you can't leave Kerbal #2 alone with Kerbal #1 or #2 will eat #1, and you can't leave #1 alone with #3 or #1 will eat #3. THen how do you plan the rescue.... (fox, chicken, bird seed, river crossing problem)

Like Tortoise, I just eyeball it. If I'm a little ahead on my guess, I just push my apoapsis a ~5km higher (and round it out if I launched waaaay too soon) and let the other ship catch up. If I got a late launch, I bring down the periapsis 5km or so, and chase the other ship down.

If you know you are going to the poles, why not change your inclination (at the latest) when you enter the SOI. If you are intercepting on a prograde orbit, just make a burn at 225° or 315° even with the horizon on the nav ball until your orbit is polar. That's the cheapest dV you'll get aside from trying to change it well before SOI intercept.

There's no way I could have done what I did this career without Kerbal Alarm clock. Of course when you have 9 landers en route to Mun or Minumus simultaneously it gets difficult to juggle a periapsis adjustment, an orbital burn, a de-orbital burn, and a suicide burn all at once - especially when they start to overlap each other.

That's how I justify it in my head. Until money becomes an issue in the game, there's an imaginary Kerbal recovery crew that goes out and picks up all the debris and recycles it without me having to worry about the trash I'm leaving - well - everywhere. (I have debris set to 0) Well, I thought it was a valid justification. Although in future releases after currency comes into play I could see such an option available. A yearly contract for debris recovery - and you get Kerbucks back in your account for whatever the scrap value is.

Not how much time we spend on KSP, but do you keep an eye on the game clock? Do you just warp ahead to correct phase angles and not worry about all the "wasted" time? One career mode I noticed I was 46 years into it, and I thought that was a lot of wasted time considering I was only doing one mission at a time. Warp ahead to get Duna in position, warping while going to Duna, warping while waiting for Kerbin to come back into position. Well that was a few wasted years. Repeat for Jool and Eve. So I decided to start career mode over. I will now only warp the time it takes to get Mun. While waiting for the other planets to get into position for transfer, I'm simply constructing bases on Mun and (soon) Minmus. I'm only 30-some days into my career the tech tree is completely knocked out in 9 Kerbin days, and I have a Mun base with 23 or 24 modules (all a separate mission to bring each module) and two rovers. Once the Minmus base is complete, I will start construction on interplanetary ships, and try and run concurrent missions to all the planets. What's your approach to time? Do you do double duty? Are your Kerbals immortal?

Debris gets recovered without your involvement and sent to the Kerbal scrapyard for recycling - most likely as parts with the next release. Problem solved.

The other thing you can do with MechJeb is use the Maneuver Node editor. When MechJeb plans an encounter it puts you into the center of the planet. Pull up the node editor, and reduce the dV by 0.1 at a time (for prograde orbit), and you can get your periapsis to be above the surface. Sometimes it's still off after entering the SOI, but it's definite dV saved.

It's not that I don't know how. But when I end up 180 degrees from where I need to be it's easier to just spin the one around that I'm docking to. What's the point of going all the way around?

Found the issue. In the module section under the part DockingPort2 a couple of them had State = Acquire instead of State = Ready. CTRL+H in notepad fixed that right up. Still doesn't explain missing vessels however.

Even when I was using MechJeb, it still never gave me what I asked for on that - and I would always slow warp on SOI. I would ask for 100km periapsis (it would show it after the burn on map view), but after entering the SOI, it would be anywhere from impacting the surface to 300-400km.

The way I dock is as follows: Ship A is the one I'm docking with Ship B is the one I'm docking to Rendezvous ship A with ship B's orbit. Get within 50m of ship B Match velocities Target docking port on B and control from docking port on A. Switch to ship B Target docking port on A and control from docking port on B. Align Ship B with target indicator on navball using SAS (easier than trying to maneuver A to the correct side of Switch to ship A Align A with target indicator on navball. Switch to ship B and Re-align if necessary. Back to ship A Add a little thrust and slide on in. You don't even need RCS if done right.

When you enter the SOI, change the periapsis to 100km. Then circularize at the periapsis. Two separate maneuvers - just like biohazard said.

Yeah, but what about the lightest one departing from less than 500m elevation?

I tried that. The odd thing is, my rover which I use to move the modules around can dock with both of the "trouble" ports. I will put up some screen shots later - I'm at work, my laptop with KSP isn't.

Well, this weekend I dug through the persistent and quicksave files to see if there were any lines that prevented the docking from occurring, and can't find anything in the code that would do so. Any ideas?

The ones that aren't docking are the standard clamp-o-trons. In 0.23 I docked probably 8 modules in a row. Same setup here, anything beyond 4 won't dock.

I ran out of electricity, and had no way to extend solar panels, or dock to it to borrow electrical charge, so I went into the save file, and added enough electricity so I could extend the panels.

So, I'm building, or attempting to build, an extensive Mun colony. I had about 20 different ships/bases/probes on the Mun. I had performed a quick save, and of course being on the Mun, one of my rovers flipped over, because apparently that's all rovers are good for on the Mun - even at 5m/s. I reload the quick save, and suddenly I'm missing about a quarter of what I put up on the Mun. I thought it may have been classified as debris (I have my debris set to 0) but some of the units that vanished, were the same as ones that remained - and all the vessels that disappeared had probe cores. And of course the persistent file updated after the reload, so I can't even find the missing craft there. Another issue is I seem to only be able to dock a certain number of vessels together, and then I can no longer attach any more. I know the clamp-o-trons are at the exact same height, because I built a lower assembly to guarantee that, and some of the vessels that won't dock are multiple clones, so they have to be the same height. They will draw towards each other, suck together, but will not dock. All units do have a probe cores, maybe that's the issue? Anyone else run into this sort of thing?

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I always try to aim for 30-35km on reentry. However, on one return (I forget from where), even at that altitude, I had to come around a second time as I skipped out of the atmosphere.