TrooperCooper

One of my first design attempts after I got the full game. No firework explosions at all. It just fell apart like a card house on the launchpad.

Very helpfull info. Thanks for that!

Yesterday I created a mess. Upon releasing a ship from its launcher, I had to realize that I must have had the stages messed up and the whole lifter vessel desintegrated into many pieces right at my 100 km orbit around Kerbin. So I designed this little bugger to go at the debries and clean up. Ugh, docking is one thing. But catching large debries that spin and rotate like crazy is a different story. I think it took me like an hour just to catch this one piece, which was then brought to a lower orbit to dive into the atmosphere at some point. I decided to take it one step further and start my first asteroid redirect mission. Pic below was taken shortly after take off as the launch boosters came off. Lotsa fireworks but thats normal. After reaching the orbit, the lifter accelerated the package on a rendezvous course to meet up with the targeted asteroid in interplanetary space, since I intended to avoid a stressing intercept maneuver within Kerbins neighborhood. It took several weeks to get out there and meet up with the target. But finally contact was made and the redirector managed to grab the B-class rock, which was much bigger than what I had expected. With some gentle maneuvering, the asteroid was put on a course that would drag him into Kerbins atmosphere. One month later, the mission entered its final stage. As the package came down on Kerbin with an insane speed, the now unnecessary equipment was jetted away. Firestorm raining down on the planet... I was worried that my chutes wouldnt be able to hold this big rock, as I anticipated a much smaller asteroid. But the chutes stayed intact, and even though the thing was coming down a little fast with 10.7 meters per second, it did not brake down. Though it did land in the water. And the reward for the mission. Is that really it? Maybe our scientists dont like wet asteroids. Or I need to do something different with it. I probably should have watched a tutorial before doing this mission. Well then, the next mission will be to not just crash the asteroid into Kerbins atmosphere at a random location, but to get it into a controlled orbit and then maybe bring it down savely. For this I have a bigger and more powerfull machine on the drawingboard. Will see how it goes...

Another Megatron test during nighttime. Dropping the launch boosters in perfect symmetry. Pegasus tanker disembarking from its lifter... Monoprop hauler on the launchpad. I realized these would be excellent docking training vessels for obvious reason. My first docking ever.

Whats that? A giant space based laser cannon? Did the Kerbals turn violent and put arms up there? No, its just a fully illuminated 500 tons Pegasus-class tanker beeing moved into orbit by a medium lifter. I m getting ready to do my first babysteps at docking. *excited*

Jebediah has been stuck in a crashed solo-seat moon lander on Mün for 13 years in my game now. One of these days I got to figure out a way how to save him.

Thanks for all the input guys. Good food for thought. To bad I cant see a consensus on wether to move reaction wheels to the center or not. I guess I have to run some experiments for myself.

Are there really no controlling enhancers for the largest hull size? I was hoping to unlock them in my career but it seems like there are none. Do I really have to control vessels consisting of the huge components by using medium sized wheels that have the radius of the Rockomax parts? I understand that bigger wheels dont increase their controll bonus, but stacking Rocko controllers into Kerbodyne hulls causes many difficulties. It looks ugly if one squeezes them inbetween there directly. And I could imagine that the narrowing of the stack at this spot would cause stability issues. I could use the Kerbadyne=>Rockomax adapter at the top and at the bottom of the Rocko sized wheels, but it would still cause a narrow spot in the stack. Furthermore, it would stretch the size of the ship a lot, especially for larger vessels with the requirement of multiple controllers, further adding to the stability problem. Building quite large ships based on Kerbodyne hulls, I am running into serious problems. Its perfectly reasonable to expect less maneuverability etc. with larger ships. But beeing pretty much forced to put all reaction controlers at the top end of the rockets, faaaar away from the center of mass, is kind of strange. I am new to the game and maybe I am overlooking something. I am using RCS already on my ships as well as including the vectoring help from the main engines. But the controll wheel placements / the lack of a proper large controller really baffles me. So any input would be welcome. Is there maybe a mod for such an item?

Automated science ship coming back from the Jool area, on landing approach to Kerbin to return all the good data. The atmosphere is going to do the rest... Fuel tanks detached, coming in hot... Getting rid of the main engine. Nobody will care about it beeing dumped into the antarctic, right? How about some fried Mystery Goo along with baked Science Junior? Chutes open. Just in time for a save ocean splash down of the datacore...

Putting more work into the Megatron Lifter System. The problem with staging and decouplers has been fixed it seems. I added a set of launch-booster packs to help get it off the ground. Currently facing some minor high altitude control issues which is probably related to the fact that I have not unlocked the large reaction wheels in the career yet. Aside from that, it looks promissing...

Just for cross-refference... I did a bit of googling and in case anyone else is running into the same or similar problems, Kasuha has posted a way to hotfix it yourself here: I tried that and it seems to work for me. Now on to test that fatman again.

Thank you very much! That fully explains my problems with the largest components set (yeah, the stack decouplers were not fitted into the wrong direction as one can actually see on the image I posted). To bad, I guess I will have to wait untill it gets fixed to build something that big. But thanks a lot for the info. Saved me a lot of testing and re-trying.

Thats not a moon. Its a space station!

I spent several hours to build this thing, just to realize I fitted all horizontal stack decouplers facing the wrong direction and not detaching from the upcoming stage. At least I think thats whats causing my staging problem... Now probably going to start from scratch.

Finally tweaked out a 100 ton lifter that can get me a better lander to the nearby moons. More Mun exploration. Working on an automated landing probe for atmospheric planets. Test-drop on Kerbin. Love the new high alt brake chute that R&D got me. Maybe a bit to many regular chutes. But I have no idea how bad the lesser atmospheres out there will affect em... Deployment....

Catastrophies with style - every day. Engineering testing the Kerbel way...

Fair point... I will name this one "Little Boy" when its done.

Thank you! I got the full game just in time with the discount. I started with the career mode. Didnt want to take the shortcut through sandbox mode yet to keep the fun of getting new stuff as rewards for achievements. After some basic fidelling with all the stuff, I started to design me a new workhorse lifter. Based loosely on what I did in the Demo, it of course turned into a booster monster as well. The first tests with the extra large fuel tanks were not very encouraging... So I went back to the normal sized tanks, but they didnt want to behave either... Well... at least we are sending SOMETHING into space. After a few more tetsts and improvements, I finally figured out how to turn her into a stable launchcraft. And there she is, in all her beauty: the RX-2b Colossus Take off... Last booster pack jettisoned off. Did I mention that I fell in love with Sepratrons? With the help of the last start-stage, its going into orbit... And the actual spacecraft that can be used to travell arround Kerbin. Here Jebediah is doing his first trip arround the Mun to run some experiments and get us some much needed science progress. He seems to be enjoying the show. Return-craft entering the atmoshphere. The bomba is coming home. Later on the ship was also used for an unmanned mission to Minmus.

Hello everyone. I went to the Mun and back with Bob, using the Demo of KSP (will prolly get the full game one of these days - its amazing ). After a couple of failed attempts, I finally got the landing approach right and landed in one piece... well... just ignore the two landing legs that came off. It remained a stable platform. And this is the monster that brought me there. The Titan 1b. Probably a slightly outdated design by todays standard. But using the old demo, one has to accept compromises to get all the gear to the target and back. Shortly after take-off... all those boosters make my computer yell and scream at me, while going at 0.5 FPS or so. In orbit, gaining speed for the trip to the Mun...