nremies1

I redesigned the lifter for my little multimission science ship to work in the 'new' atmospherics, since I haven't played in months. The core ship carries 3 Kerbonauts and a lab and has been to Eve, where it dropped a probe, Duna and Ike, where it deployed a Kerbaled lander, and Jool, where it just orbited. I had built this big and undoubtedly over-engineered lifter which was working satisfactorily before the patch, but can't make orbit post-patch (flexing and wobbling problems). So, I redesigned it and it puts the same basic payload in LKO despite being cheaper, smaller, and with more delta-V left over. Now I need to start working on the payload itself, to add a service bay and some other doodads. Still not really sure how to mate the lander to it since in the old atmo I just perched it atop the command pod with no ill effects. There will be a payload fairing involved but still trying to plan it out while I'm at the office allegedly 'working.'

So, this is a weird thing: I was putting a space station in orbit of the Mun when all of a sudden I lost all input controls on the vehicle. The unit was nothing fancy, and was being controlled by an Okto2. I launched, made my initial burn, and warped along the route until the Mun capture burn. Nothing at all amiss. Then I came out of timewarp, throttled up...and nothing happened. Ship also no longer responded to any w/a/s/d/q/e commands. Solar panels are deployed, batteries have plenty of juice, SAS is on, reaction wheels are online...nothing. I went back out to the tracking station and then back to the ship, and the engine works but I still have no SAS and only minimal attitude control (pitch and roll authority were ok, yaw was nonexistent). The autopilot stability control icons you usually see to the left of the navball simply aren't there. I get it in a lopsided orbit and quit to desktop, then re-load. Hop back into the ship and presto, everything's fine. All icons there, responding to commands, etc. Has anybody else experienced something like this? Is there some 'break everything' button I accidentally hit without realizing it?

Launched a ship to the Mun to do a bunch of contracts including gravity scans, samples, visual surveys, etc. Put it in a polar orbit so that I'd eventually pass over every location. Was going well until I actually landed it; I missed the designated LZ by a few km and figured no problem, I'll just hop over there. Simple, right? Well, I forgot to put the pilot back on stability hold rather than retrograde hold and we crashed into a crater. All that survived was the big command pod. Well, that sucks, but it's not a total disaster. I quickly put together another ship with a Hitchhiker can on it to go get them. I again miss my intended LZ by several KM and the fuel situation is not looking good because like a dope I also put this one in a polar orbit. The first three Kerbals will just have to jetpack over to the rescue ship, no problem! Unfortunately Doodson was a little too aggressive with his jetpack's throttle and ended up not being able to slow down fast enough, so he overshoots the rescue ship and splatters himself into a crater wall. The other two guys managed to make the trip without killing themselves in the process. We all lift off, watching the fuel gauge. The rescue ship gets to orbit but comes up just short of delta-V (thanks, unnecessary plane-change maneuver!) so we park it and fire up a *second* drone ship to go get them. The RV goes fine, although we do it in the dark on the far side of the Mun, and everybody EVAs over, climbs aboard and goes home. So, my potentially very-profitable trip to complete 3 contracts with one launch turned into three launches, one wrecked ship, one abandoned ship, and a KIA. But the Kerbals were grinning like idiots the whole time.

Big Three are in Duna orbit. Three others will be heading to Minmus. Anticipating that the off-duty pilots will probably cluster around the launch pad and fire off several RT-10s.

Exactly what happened to one of my Duna probes like two days ago. Restarted the game and only that one ship had been nuked, though. Everything else was fine.

My multi-ship mission to Duna and Ike arrived in orbit today. Well, most of it did. I tweaked the maneuver nodes for the final approach and the first probe came screaming in wayyy too fast (because I am still a nub at interplanetary flights), so the aerobraking was almost completely ineffective. Had to burn all its remaining fuel to get it into a lopsided but tolerable orbit. So, that one's not going to be able to be positioned to complete a "satellite around Duna" contract. No matter. I have others. Well, *had* others, because the second, better probe with more bells and whistles was apparently eaten in transit by the mythic Kraken. Loaded into it, got a black screen and "nan" and after I restarted the game, there it was - gone. Sigh. Probe #3 - ironically the first one launched, but the least-useful - is going to have to finish that contract for me. Wait, the encounter that I had apparently vanished in transit and it has hurtled past its target. So I burned like 80% of its fuel getting it an intercept like 250 days from now, sigh again. But it should have enough fuel left to capture and establish the desired orbit. I also flubbed the trajectory and aerobraking for the tanker drone, which delivered one of those Rockomaxes that's half the size of an orange tank, but it's in an acceptable orbit. On the plus side, Jeb, Bob and Bill arrived as planned and we used the experience gathered from the not-so-good piloting to make sure they captured correctly. Jeb landed on Ike, lander-hopped once for double the science fun, and then they returned to Duna where he landed again. Wasn't planning on landing on Ike - the Flying Dutchman probe was supposed to do that before it vanished - but we should be okay to return to Kerbin without needing the tanker, which was put in place as a contingency anyway. I don't have Alarm Clock installed and really dislike juggling multiple flights at the same time. But we got there in the end.

Thread answered. I'm not particularly interested in strapping a tiny probe to an SRB to cut costs.

High 3/low 4. Munshots are a trip to the grocery store, and most launches work as planned, but I don't meet the rest of the L4 criteria.

The satellite contracts seem profitable enough at this point, I just sorta wondered if 105k to land three guys, goos, a materials bay, etc, on the Mun was about what other people were spending. Nice to have points of comparison, is all. I think I'm getting better at cutting waste from the actual rockets (thanks Flight Engineer!) but since I haven't spent much time in Career I'm only now starting to consider cost.

Just curious: how much do your missions cost? Not really interested in a "who can execute a mission to X the cheapest" competition but rather simply in knowing how much people are spending since I started my first career save after the patch. I've got a direct-ascent Mun mission that costs 105k funds, about 17k of which are recovered upon return to Kerbin. If the mission completes a "plant flag" contract and an orbital science contract it's usually completely paid-for, but not profitable. The same vehicle goes to Minmus because I haven't built something specifically for a Minmus shot just yet. I'm designing a Duna mission - and this is really where my interest in other people's mission costs comes from - which in my old sandbox game was about $250k. I'm seeing if I can trim that down without sacrificing capability but am not happy with the design yet.

It's very odd to me that no experience is awarded for EVA. I guess the obvious answer is that there's no difference in an EVA over Kerbin as opposed to the Mun and so it's something you'd award XP for exactly once no matter where in the universe it was done. But still...it feels like a thing that should be logged.

I put two satellites, the Kerbosat 1 and the Kerbosat 2, in orbit to fulfill contracts. Quite a bit harder than I thought it would be without maneuver nodes and using an SAS-less Stayputnik core. But it's pretty cool that satellites and stations have purposes now - contracts to return science from orbit are as easy as push buton, receive funds. I also fired up my pre .9 save and got like 300 brand-new science from my lonely little Eve probe, which has been beeping and booping in orbit over a biome-less planet for months, waiting. Going to have to blow the dust off the Duna Explorer and send the boys back there for another round of landings, too.

Oh, almost forgot - I was also glad to discover that you can transfer Kerbals between modules without EVA now. About time!

Returned my two interplanetary missions to Kerbin today. I had near-simultaneous expeditions to Duna and Eve. Learned a few lessons for future missions, mostly regarding the necessity of nailing those optimal phase angles. The returns both turned into minor Charlie Foxtrots because of sloppy flight planning but were ultimately successful. The Eve mission was just an orbit-and-observe while the Duna trip was landing #2. I wanted to do an Ike flyby as well but fuel consumption wouldn't allow it, because I still suck at this, heh. Only had to reload a save on the Eve aerocapture once after the first attempt got a little *too* captured and was about to turn into the first permanent settlement. The boys are taking a little break after having been in space for so long, and a probe to Dres just left LKO.

Bill and Bob are sitting at KSC waiting for their next assignment. Jeb is treading water somewhere out in the ocean, I think, after a slight reentry mishap with a spaceplane.

Jeb successfully flew a spaceplane to LKO and docked it with a space station. The plane is definitely not optimized (confession: it's the stock spaceplane with some slight modifications) and docking it was a chore because the RCS system placement sucks and I hadn't built the station with docking the plane in mind. But it fit, mostly, and so Jeb refueled, undocked and prepared to take her back down again. Of course we were close enough to KSC that I foolishly put it in a very steep reentry and came in at about a million miles an hour - first mistake - and then figured I'd just fire up the jets and fly home. Engines toggled, no thrust though. Uh, what? Meanwhile we're falling like a rock rather than actually flying, turns out I pumped the fuel into the wrong tanks or something and the fuel wasn't getting to the engines. I figured that out at about 2000m ASL and realized at about the same time I had no decoupler + parachute for just such an emergency. So Jeb pancakes into the sea and hasn't been heard from since.

Tried exactly this plan the other day - I'll just land here, collect science, driver over there and collect more! Terrible idea. Had to figure out how to carry the thing there in the first place, then get it down on the ground safely, then try driving carefully to a different biome. Wrecked it after an hour of driving. Time to toss the rover in the "failed ideas" pile behind KSC and just lander-hop instead.

Playing a science-only save which was a career game before the patch. I'll start a contracts career mode eventually but I didn't want to have to deal with it since I am still just trying to learn how to build stuff that works. Penny-pinching can wait.

Decided that I'd put my Ike mission on the back-burner for a while and dedicate the next few missions to finishing up my Mun landing program. Want to hit all the various spots there and I'm about halfway through the list. On a whim I decided I'd take a rover this time despite having no experience building or transporting a rover. So, in the finest tradition of KSP ("hey Bill, hold my snacks for a minute, will ya?"), we decided to throw it together, stick it to the top of the lander with tape and see what happens when we got it there ("Test it? I thought that's what we were taking it to the Mun for!"). So we stuck the tiny, badly-designed rover to the roof of the MM with a clampotron and drop the whole thing on the munar surface. Turns out the only way to get it on the ground was to unclamp it, at which point it teetered on the roof, and then thrust the whole lander up for a moment and drop it back down, hoping that the jolt will make the rover fall off the roof and land nearby. Attempt #1 at this maneuver resulted in the rover landing right-side-up (yay) and then rolling about 2km away on its own (nooo) while Jeb chased it with his jetpack. Attempt #2 began with setting the parking brake, then repeating the maneuver. Rover landed upright next to the lander and Jeb hopped aboard. Success! Despite some careful driving it inevitably flipped over; Jeb's field-expedient solution to this problem was to back off about 20 paces, activate his jetpack, and fly full-speed into one of the legs, flipping the whole thing back over on the third or fourth attempt. I ended up reverting to the save I made at touchdown and calling it a night, preferring to try to drive this contraption later.

He's eating snacks and taking a short nap after a two-year mission to Duna, immediately followed by the launch of a new space station into Kerbin orbit. Of course, as soon as he'd gotten Skylab II into orbit he wanted another assignment, so we sent up another crew and brought him back. Chopper from the recovery ship took him straight back to the launchpad for a Mun mission. I think he's going to Ike soon.

I've accomplished two things recently that I was pretty stoked about: #1 was my first manned Duna mission...brought back about 2500 science, including the lander can. I'd designed something with a smaller payload but same basic configuration that *almost* worked, then stopped working on it and grabbed a ship out of a tutorial instead...turns out that I was on the right track with the original design, made some changes to the lifter and presto-changeo, it worked. The notable firsts were an aerobraking maneuver (I was shocked at how effortless the capture was) and the use of the mobile processing lab to actually clean and re-use experiments. #2 was the launch of version 2.0 of a space station on Kerbin orbit. It's very simple and is more a proof-of-concept than anything really useful, but it has a full orange tank for refueling. It has twice as much fuel and better part positioning than version 1.0, which was damaged during a docking maneuver when somebody "accidentally" nudged the CSM engine throttle open. That was a fun mission...the whole CSM blew up, requiring Jeb and friends had to get out and push the naked command module to prevent it from de-orbiting (somehow even the parachutes on the CM were destroyed...), then wait for rescue. However, Jeb had no misgivings at all about piloting v2.0 into orbit, probably because he thought the cupola module was cool. In between all of that, we ran another Mun landing - #7 or 8, I think - this time dropping a lander in one of the big craters I hadn't visited yet.

I launched a space station into Kerbin orbit. It was my first one and more of a proof-of-concept/design than anything else. It's not going to serve any practical purpose in Kerbin orbit other than something to be proud of. Jeb rode it up himself in the cupola module and successfully placed it at a 100km orbit. Bill and Bob launched in an Apollo capsule with an empty seat to go get him and do a little docking practice while they were up there. Their flight goes very well and I get some good rendezvous and docking practice in. They fetch Jeb and all three head home. However, the second stage of the station is floating about 10km away and not really going away...so I reconfigure the crew bus slightly in the VAB and launch again, this time with a grappler and the intention of grabbing that big spinning tank and getting rid of it (mainly for more RV and grappling practice). By the time I get back up there, it's drifted off further than it had been, so I shrug and make some mock rendezvous runs with the station...no docking clamp fitted to this vehicle so I make a few runs but don't make contact. Eventually I scrub the rest of the mission and start my deorbit...except I'm overtired and not really paying attention, and my deorbit burn smashes me directly into the station. Two Gigantors kersplode off the station and it goes tumbling away with the autopilot burning the RCS madly to regain control. Meanwhile the crew bus has blown into tiny pieces and the command pod is tumbling away with no engines (service module is still burning and spiraling crazily away) and no parachute - I saw it break off and drift away. Crap. Orbit is decaying. Periapsis is now like 59k. Jeb and friends get out and push to stabilize the orbit slightly above 70 and we quickly fit out another crew bus with a hitchhiker mod and lift off. Jeb and friends are playing cards in the CM when the rescue ship arrives and pulls to a stop about ten meters away. They hop outside and EVA over to the rescue ship. Success! All are aboard. We begin deorbit burn. Just before we start reentry I release the last stage to trim things down for splashdown. Wait. This capsule is awfully small now. Where are Jeb, Bill and Bob sitting? Oh. Right. I didn't re-arrange the last decoupler to account for the hitchhiker and just jettisoned them. I saved them and then killed them all two minutes later. Derp.

First post! Pulled off my first successful LOR (MOR?) mission to the Mun! Technically my fourth trip there and second landing, but this time it was done mostly according to plan, lol. Trip #1 was a simple orbit-and-return mission with my shiny new Apollo command module. Trip #2 was a little more interesting...built a lander and brought it along, and was pretty proud of the way I'd staged it. Sadly the rocket was flexing severely during launch from Kerbin and the RCS thrusters were fighting to compensate. We made it, but when I got to the Mun and undocked the lander, I discovered it had no RCS fuel left because of the order in which I'd staged it (and hadn't put a tank on the lander itself). I decided not to risk it so I dumped the lander and went home. I redesigned the rocket for Trip #3...perched the lander at the top as if I'd already docked with it in Kerbin orbit and blasted off...oscillations went away and we got to the Mun with no problems. Separated, made a pretty white-knuckle landing on the Mun, and had Jeb do all his sciencey stuff. Having never actually even attempted an orbital rendezvous (but read and watched a few tutorials on the topic), it was pretty tense as he lifted off and linked up with the command module...but it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. He ran out of fuel for the main engine but had already made the rendezvous, so the CM took over and attempted to complete the docking...I spent ten minutes trying to dock before realizing I had put a docking clamp on the CM but not the lander...derp. So he spacewalked over and we went home. Trip #4 went very smoothly, with a few tweaks to the rocket and modules to include things like more RCS fuel, rendezvous lights, and bigger batteries. Landed, lifted off again, linked up in orbit, docked, burned back to Kerbin, splashdown. Mission accomplished. Such a fun game...it's a nice change of pace from the PVP stuff I've been playing lately.