Oafman

Yeah i could not have hoped to do that without alarm clock. It was 15 ships in very similar orbits, which I had tried to space out pretty evenly. I set up all the burns (a couple needed to be pushed back one orbit as they clashed), orientated all the ships correctly, then had a frantic half hour of burning-switching ships-burning. It was unusually intense for KSP but good fun. Importantly, I gave every ship a kerbodyne KR-2l, the big 3.75m engine. They're not the most efficient, but I needed to keep burn times under 90 seconds as some were barely more than 2 minutes apart No idea what will happen at the other end, but I'm guessing the subtle differences in the nodes and burns will mean they'll get to Jool weeks apart from each other. If they all get there together I'm really going to struggle with the aerobraking...!

Looks like I need to spend more time in the MJ options screens. Thanks

Actually, the issue with MJ's autostaging is that, as I understand it, it's only an option if MJ is flying the whole ascent. I want to do the ascent manually, but just have the fuel tanks drop off automatically the second they are empty. John, thanks, I'll check that out. I notice it offers "Autostaging Controller to activate stages on engine flameout", which is great, but isn't quite what I need, unless it can autostage at an empty tank rather than just at a flameout

The great advantage we have over the likes of NASA is that, whilst they have to conduct through and expensive testing, we can just prove the concept in KSP, and it is bound to work in the real world....

Thanks. I just needed to know I wasn't missing something. With these videos, I don't see the MJ menu bar, though of course that doesn't mean it's not being used. I guess it's just the post commentary thing

Yeah, I sometimes spend ages trying to think up clever ways to get large rovers into orbit. Then eventually I realise I'm not that clever, so I just find the centre of mass and strap them to the top of a big rocket. And when all you're doing is strapping a rover to the top of a big rocket, absolutely nothing can go wrong...

Well, 6 hours is plenty. If you know how to RV, even to the most basic level, there's no reason why it should take you more than 10 orbits to get close enough. Apparently you can take control of the stranded kerbal once you get within a couple of kilometres, and EVA them over to your ship, so there's no requirement to get a very close RV, and no need to be able to dock.

I always hit space bar to stage. I'm not aware of any alternative. So when I have an asparagus ship, I'm constantly hovering over fuel tanks so I know when they're empty, and when to drop them. This can make things tricky if you have a complicated asparagus set up, especially when you need to concentrate on steering and making your gravity turn etc. Yet I see some videos where people aren't doing this. And sometimes they act slightly surprised by tanks being jettisoned; "oh, there goes the first set of fuel tanks" etc. It's as if they have it automated in some way, so it stages with no input as soon as the tanks are empty. Am I missing some incredibly obvious feature, or are these people just hitting space to stage, and the 'surprise' is because it's post-commentary?

Superb idea. I can't help with expertise, but I can contribute a little cash. With this being a KSP community endeavour, I think the mission needs to be as kerbal as possible. So, a huge chance of dramatic failure, and possibly explosions....

The Jool window opened. And because motherships are so passé, I sent a convoy: Umm, they're all supposed to be going to the same place. Looks like I messed up a couple of the burns...

Yeah I quickly get bored driving rovers. But what I do enjoy is the engineering challenge of getting them to places, so I tend to land them then barely use them.

I'm interested in the options that allow you to switch off reverting to launch etc. I was looking at my career mode the other day, and thinking it wasn't so impressive that I haven't killed any kerbals, on the basis that I just revert/F9 every time one dies. Maybe I'll try a brutal reality save in .24, and see how quickly I can work my way through the kerbonaut corps...

On a related note, does anyone know the impact velocity range at which the claw will grab? I've made it work at around 1.2m/s, so that is definitely within the range

Maybe disable the magnets, allowing you more chance to line things up on each docking port

I use radial burns to correct my interplanetary trajectories when I've failed to launch in the transfer window

And once you're tracking it, you get it listed on the tracking screen as 'First discovered on ....' which is pretty cool

Yeah i noticed the same recently. The button seems to do nothing for the LV909, it just disappears after you've tried to press it

The savings aren't marginal. Nuclear engines are by far the most efficient interplanetary propulsion, and if you need to move a very large ship, then you're stuck with a very long burn, even if you use loads of nukes. I recently had a 30 minute burn, which clearly needed to be broken down (into 5 burns). With such a big ship, the only way to have made this quicker was with bigger engines (not moar nukes, i already had 24), which would have meant a very significant loss of efficiency. There are a couple of things you need to be careful of with such long burns: Firstly, watch your periapsis if you're moving to a solar orbit outside of Kerbin's (ie your node is just after dark). If you're burning from a low orbit, looking to capitalise on Oberth, and you start burning some time before your periapsis, you'll push it down. The equal burn you make after periapsis pushes it back up, but you just need to make sure that you have room to avoid going into the atmosphere. eg, if you're making a 6 minute burn from a 75k orbit, the 3 minutes you burn before the node will probably push your periapsis into the atmosphere. So either start from a higher orbit, or split the burn. Secondly, if you're doing a really big burn, split into multiples, then you need to think about starting well in advance of your node. Possibly days in advance. People have talked about getting into an eliptical orbit coming close to that of the Mun, and of getting as much velocity as possible without reaching escape. If you do this, bear in mind how long your orbital period will become. Orbits out there can take days to complete, by which time you may have missed the most efficient transfer window.

Thanks for the info. It seems I need to download some software to be able to open .sfs files, so I'm starting to think it might be easier to remove the mod and reinstall. The one slight concern I have with doing so is that I've already put a couple of ships in orbit with TAC Life Support parts, waiting to be crewed and sent on missions. If I remove the mod and re-add it, will those ships survive?

I recently downloaded this fantastic mod. It asked me if I wanted to initiate it in my current save, and I declined as I had a bunch of lads en route back from Jool, and it seemed unfair to suddenly introduce the concept of hunger into their lives. And indeed thirst and breathing. The boys are now back home, and I'm ready to start sending resources out into space. So how do I now initiate it for my save? Since I initially declined I have not been asked again. I guess I could uninstall and reinstall, but I wondered if there was a more straightforward option.

I guess the delta v I'm most interested in is what you get from the LFO engines when pushing out of the atmosphere. I can never really get my head around the huge dv numbers associated with jets.

There are a small number of us in the KSP community for whom all of the gobbledegook and strange characters found in the oddly-named files in the KSP folder are just meaningless gibberish. As far as I'm concerned, the game runs due to magic. Sadly, the magic which runs my KSP has been weakening of late. I get more and more crashes, particularly when switching between ships, or reverting to launch, or just clicking on a KSC building. I am reliably informed that a combination of the mods I'm running (a number which increases fairly often, but rarely falls) and a computer with a limited capacity for magic, is the cause of this. So am I right in thinking that, counter-intuitively, this mod works differently to all the other mods, in that adding it will actually improve my game's performance? Patronising and/or offensive replies (within reason) are acceptable. Oaf EDIT: I use MJ, AC, KAS, B9, KW, TAC, Better Atmos, Crew Manifest, Spaceplane Plus, + a few random parts mods

Very nice. To be clear, it gets a full orange tank into LKO and still has additional fuel left over? And could you share some dv/mass stats etc please.

Well, maybe the walls are thick, and there is just enough room between inner and outer doors for a little kerbal to squeeze in. Or maybe they just went with depressurising the whole cabin to create more space for snack storage.

It sounds like 2 things are required; a lander/ascent vehicle with more dv, and a vehicle to return from orbit with more dv. Are you able to rendezvous and dock ships in orbit? If yes, great. If not, it's probably time to learn! Because sending a ship which can land on Duna (close to your kerbals!) launch from the surface, reach Duna orbit, and then return to Kerbin is much harder than building a ship with a detachable lander, which can return to the mothership in Duna orbit, dock, transfer crew, ditch the lander and return home. (it's certainly possible to build a single ship to do it all, but is a much bigger engineering challenge, and may not be possible with the parts you have available). You could go for a design along the lines of the below image, which I recently sent to Duna. It had plenty of dv (way more than was necessary to get back into orbit), mainly because it had aerospikes, which are very efficient. If you have unlocked them, they're a good option for Duna. If not, there are alternatives. This craft was actually for 2 kerbals to return. But you could easily replace the materials bay with a MK1 lander can - it has plenty of dv & TWR to spare. Note that the extra fuel tanks on the sides detach half way to orbit, and of course the rover is left on the surface, so the ship has quite low mass by the time it is circularising its orbit. One issue you will have is getting the new lander close enough to your Kerbals. Jetpacks do work on Duna, but they won't get you too far. And walking kerbals for miles is a miserable experience, especially one at a time with 3 of them, so you want to land as close as possible. And trying to do that by eyeballing it is difficult, and takes practice. So I think your best solutions to this are (i) get Mechjeb to land it for you - it is very accurate, or (ii) take a rover, land manually, as close as you can, then drive to collect them and bring them back to the lander. The problem there is you'll need a bigger rover than I took, as mine had a capacity of only 1 kerbal. But it can be done. Good luck.