davidpsummers

The discovery of a "Space Squid" or "Kraken" on Bop has energized Kerbals everywhere. I have made a lander designed to fully study the Bop Kraken. However, I can't seem to mount it on top of my launcher. Nothing will "stick" to the bottom. (Picture below.) If I take a lander, I can't get a decoupler (or anything else) to stick to the bottom. In fact, in the third picture, you can see I'm not getting little green balls for attachment. Neither can I take a launcher and put the lander on top of it. If I take the metal sheet that is the frame for the rover part off, I can get it on top of a decoupler (though it stick through), but then putting fuel tank (and the rest of the lander with it) on top of that won't work. I've done this before with my manned rover (see last picture), which this lander is modified from, so I don't know what is wrong now. Any help?

I didn't quite follow this. Are you reducing the trust on them together so they don't flame out? Why not just cut back on the throttle?

So I had a failure on landing at Duna. I'm sure I'm not the first one who didn't quite realize the difficulty of landing on the high elevation spots, but it killed the crew. What was a bit more poignant was that I now have pilot an empty reusable booster back to Kerbin, the while the music the game plays is actually just a bit somber. RIP Ed and Wibble Kerman.

"It's stock now..." Myself, I suspected it was, but had trouble figuring out. Is there a list of the new stuff in 0.90 someplace?

"Infinite fuel isn't going to change the amount of thrust your ion drive puts out." No, but it will let me use the lander's chemical rocket.... - - - Updated - - - Some people (myself included) don't like "cheats". As I said in the opening, this is for those who care about such things.

Presumably they will also add heat shields as an independent part (for unmanned probe and things where the capsule isn't at the bottom)?

For those of use who care about such things... I have a probe in orbit around Laythe. It has an ion power booster (to get it to Laythe and back) and a ordinary lander that I want to be able to land (on land) and get back up to orbit. In order land on the "land", I've decided I can have a better shot in an inclined orbit. Now the ion engine just doesn't have enough thrust to do this in one pass (or even a few). Now if this were "really real", mission control could put someone low on the totem pole to sit and thrust a bit every time the probe is in the right part of the orbit. Over hundreds of passes, it should work. OTOH, I'm not willing to sit there and to that. So I'm thinking of turning on the infinite fuel cheat and doing it in one pass as a "game short cut". What do people think? Cheating?

I have an ion powered probe and I'm trying to insert into Laythe orbit. I have done my aerobraking and I now just need to lift up my perapsis so the next pass doesn't drop me out of orbit. I come around and don't come out of the dark side at my apoapsis (no sun, no ion thrust). But I just have to wait a bit so I'm "OK". But then I come out from behind Laythe and the whole moon is being eclipsed by Jool! And when you are eclipsed by Jool, you are ECLIPSED by Jool!

I'm trying out contract mode and one of the early contracts wants a report at a certain location? "Near Jebediah's Vision". Where the heck is that? And how near is "near".

I've played around with the fuel balance, making sure that the COM was ahead of the SOL (making sure by checking a plane in the hanger with the same fuel load...). If there is something wrong with the design, I have no idea what it is. It flies up into space OK. But when I'm re-entering, it becomes unstable, flips around, and breaks up. Here is the plane before launch...

I have a space plane that I got to work under stock rules. I started using NEAR and I have a problem even after solving some of the others (adding more struts and stuff). When I reenter, I always end up tumbling during heaving deceleration and breaking up. The ship is OK. There is some rocking now and then. And then it begins to rock harder and harder until it tumbles and then the wings get torn off and the ship breaks up. Any help?

Is playing in Hard Difficulty more realistic, or just harder? I'm making my first try at the new career mode, after paying for a year, so I figure I could handle more difficult games. But I don't want to do it just for difficulty's sake.

Watching the Orion lift-off. Nice that they used the Rockomax Jumbo-64 Fuel Tank. (They are orange, what else could they have used?)

I'm trying to land on Eve at a specific longitude. I'm getting weird numbers numbers for missions I've already landed. Like 463 degrees East. I assume 463 degree East is really 103 degrees East?

I started using standard, reusuable (refuel in orbit), boosters to go from Kerbin Orbit to other planets. I have two basic models. One for small probes using ion engines and another for bigger ships using LV-N Note, they are harder, but chemical work perfectly fine for interplanetary. Using chemical rockets, I sent unmanned missions to Eeloo and Jool on chemical rockets (I got LV-N late in my Career/Science mode) and manned missions to Duna and Eve. All my heaving booster to lift anything of any real size from KSC to orbit are chemical rockets (nothing else has the thrust). I'm just getting my first space plane working to lift small stuff up to orbit.

I've been developing reusability in my game. Shuttles to go back and forth between stations, reusable boosters to push out of orbit to other planets, etc. I've been looking at landers/rovers. The landers themselves are pretty easy to reused (leave them in orbit over the planet after you come back up and bring fuel for them next mission). But what about the rovers? At the moment I drop them from below the lander (picture below) and the are stuck at that site. I could replace the decoupler, but I would have to not have them "drop"? That means the lander would have to land with the wheel just touching the ground, but then you have to worry about the rover getting impact forces if your landing isn't perfect? Suggestions?

I've avoided NEAR and FAR because I am only dabbling in space planes. I wouldn't have bothered at all, except that I was moving toward reusable boosters than leave from orbit and it would have been odd not to want a reusable SSTO. If I were to install NEAR, what exactly would it do for me? Would anything I have now stop working?

BTW, if you can't go slow enough to land on grass, the solution is bigger wings. More lift means you can fly more slowly. Of course big wings have the obvious limitations.

All my planes landed fine on the grass around the runway at KSC. I generally find any "grasslands" to be suitable, though I haven't tried the extensively. I also have enough parachutes so I can land that way (in case my craft can't make it to a good landing place or something goes wrong).

Thanks guys.

I have a small module in a Mk2 Cargo Bay (stock). The problem is, how do I get it out? I put it in with decouplers (it seemed the only way to get it in there properly). But now both just give me "control from here" as an option and I don't get "decouple".

I also am interested in whether it works with 0.25. I had it, uninstalled it when I went to 0.25, and can't seem to get it to work. (It is easier to move a group of Kerbals with this).

Indeed. I think I have enough time to raise the apogee enough to get a cheap inclination burn. With aerobraking I only have to do one orbit. I definitely don't have enough time to wait until the orbitical plane lines up with Duna's orbit.

Not sure why I didn't think of aerobraking. Raise periapsis, change inclination, and then aerobrake for free. A 1000 m/s change for something like 400 m/s!

Some have talked about leaving from a polar orbit producing an inclination. Since any orbit can produce and escape vector parallel to the Sun's equatorial plane, the only inclination resulting from leaving from polar orbit is the small one the results from the fact that any escape is offset a bit from the planets orbit (because you have to swing around the planet a bit). The main restriction I can see is that you eave in a vector that lies along the plane of the original orbit, which will introduce a radial component to your burn.