WanderingKid

Not really. Switching to a polar orbit is just a matter of adjusting your Munar approach to come in 'high' instead of 'around'. It's usually easy to do as soon as you're about 400-500k up from Kerbin and on Munar approach with some normalization and radial adjustments. The real trick is timing it so that you're coming in at a reasonable angle to your polar orbit. You'll typically arrive ~1-1.5 days after your departure burn from Kerbin, so you'd want the polar orbit somewhere between perpendicular and about a 1/3 ahead of where you'll be when you actually come in. You'll have to learn to play with conics and focusing on foreign bodies. It'll also take some practice. Some things just aren't easily explained in a forum without a ton of pictures and examples.

Depending on your orbital accuracy, it's usually easier to slap a probe core on your lander and fly into the sat orbit, correct, get that contract done, then finish landing. This will, of course, depend on lander size and available dV.

Just to put another option on the table, I did an 18t Mun Landing with discussion on how to do it with no upgrades in my Let's Play. You can find that video here: Additionally, there are a number of YouTube Tutorials out there already. You can find them most easily here: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=KSP+Mun+Landing+Tutorial There's a ton of options there, and the first one up (to probably very few people's surprise) is by Scott Manley.

I can't personally see where your ship is in that image. It's going to depend a lot on where you are relative to the Kerbal when you cross orbits. First I'd push my Periapsis up near his orbit. Then I'd wait until I was nearing it and determine if I was 'ahead' or 'behind' him. If I'm orbiting in front of him I'd keep the other side of my orbit above him, otherwise if you're behind you need to bring it below him so you go faster. A lot depends on your relative position in orbit.

I already left a comment, but I feel it's necessary to add a bit more weight to my opinion earlier. If you're leaving Beta to go to 1.0, this should NEVER happen again: Until it does, you're just asking for trouble. This is an incredibly common 'minor' glitch.

If you insist this is a 1.0 release, my opinion is then it must be bug fixed, and it should get a series of balance passes. 1.0 should be a shining glory to the world of a well oiled machine that does what you say it does, rather then a list of a thousand neat features that work sometimes and is horribly 'off' when it comes to how things compare to each other. Again, this is my opinion. The bugs need squashing before more goes in. I signed on to an alpha/beta test way back, and I'm good with that. However, when I get a 'release' version of a game, I seriously wonder about the competence of the game makers when I feel like I'm Beta Testing Balance (*COUGH* Final Fantasy XIV *COUGH*).

I have not read this entire thread, I'm sorry. This is more a response to the earliest and latest posts, in particular Claw's request. If I'm duplicating or saying something that got hashed and destroyed, my bad. As a few of you know, I'm running a Hard Career as a Let's Play. Much of my experience is documented there, though I don't show the 'grind'. And my gods, there's a lot of grind, so, to the specific questions on contracts and administration: Administration is both overpowered, and useless. As mentioned, the elephant is Outsourced R&D. It's far too powerful a strategy and lets you clear the science tree in just a few missions until you rebuild the funds to upgrade the actual R&D Center. Outside of that particular strategy, it's a useless building. The only time you really find yourself going back into it is after you've completed the tech tree and you might as well get SOMETHING useful out of your continuing science intake, so you flip on Science->Funds at max%. Up until this point, no other strategy is useful or strong enough to be worthy of consideration, especially with REP being weird. For contracts, a few things. Some of which I brought up in another thread for quality of life improvements for contracts. You can find those suggestions here and they're mostly interface/removal concerns to strip out undesired contracts and for organization: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/112723-Quality-of-Life-Improvements-for-Contracts Contracts, generally, need to be decided what their final purpose is. If they're meant to be a means for fund generation, they need to actually do this better. Getting disposable parts tests (separator contracts) that are worth less than the part is pointless. While yes, this is a sliding scale where on Easy they pay more and on Hard they don't, they simply shouldn't show up in Hard then. If contracts are meant to be challenge generators, then they actually need to be challenging, and an alternate form of Funds income needs to be investigated. As an example, I currently fish for Solar Stations simply to send up 5 man suicides, destruct them, and do it again, just grinding for cash. If I can wing it around the Mun for an extra contract, even better. In the end, though, I don't want science to be based purely on biome research. I want contracts to generate science. I personally don't think science gear should be attached to anything unless someone actually needs the particular data. Simply Science Bombing Mun is quite doable, but silly. Now we have tons of data that no one actually cares about. However, I'd flip the current technique. Create Science development contracts that are different than the funds generation ones. The primary purpose of science is to create new equipment. We have tons of these 'worthless' parts testing contracts. Use those as science generators. Rover missions for temperature data on a foreign planet, science data. You want a comms satellite in Keosynchronous orbit? Cough up da Funds, baby. In general, though, there needs to be an expectation review from the dev team as to what THEY want these things to do. Right now they're simply a mashup of an idea that seems like a test for "Huh, I wonder what will work?". It's hard to make recommendations that AREN'T an overhaul when we don't know the direction they want for simple tweaks.

I know this is considered answered, but I did a no-upgrades career 18t Manned Mun landing using Jet Engines as an initial stage. While the majority of the episode is really based around how to get around and pull it off with no conics and nodes, the liftoff stage of the design might interest you:

There are three vectors I can see challenging a player in KSP. Currently, none of them really exist. 1) Time challenges. Currently the only time challenge is the transfer burn times for efficient rendezvous with other orbital bodies. These optimal burn times can be ignored with enough dV. There is no other cause for time to be considered, in stock. TacLS gives you a realistic issue for your crews, but that's self-imposed at launch time, it's not an external challenge of the game itself. Again, with enough dV, you can overcome it by over-supplying any particular mission. Because there's no pressure, this is not a challenge vector currently. Even an 'Oh My God the Asteroid is coming on x date!' type of pressure might be useful. However, that's a Kerbin SOI level of difficulty, and not solar system level. 2) Knowledge vs. Execution Similar to Dwarf Fortress, once you know what you're doing, the challenge is in execution. However, execution does not ramp up in difficulty to proceed. If you take, for example, a side scrolling shooter, then the difficulty is increased against this by adding more versatile enemies, bullet storms, etc. KSP does not lend itself to this type of challenge vector. Unless you have invading aliens or something... Knowledge gained is kept, and once learned doesn't need to be applied much differently at the end than at the beginning. Land once on Mun and Kerbin and you have the basic knowledge tools you need for landing anywhere (besides on Jool). While it may require different variables (Eve's gravity vs. Gilly's, for example, require a different approach) the execution method doesn't really change as a challenge, unless it's self imposed to "Do It Better". 3) Limited Resources This is currently a vector in career mode, and is the cause of the 'grind'. Science, similarly, is also a vector in this category. Additional to this is the need to upgrade your buildings at the KSP to get access to useful tools and/or large enough ships for the dV required. All of these force you to perform tasks with less than optimal setups. However, this challenge is avoided due to contract declines and contract churn. Said declines and churn however are necessary, as the contract system is far too variable and procedural to allow for it to be enforced. I offer you the following scenario: All you have is part test contracts worth less than the part costs you. You have three satellite missions and they're all at Tylo and Lathe, and a good transfer window won't open up for 2 years. Unless the contract system is made less procedural and more coherent and consistent, it's not a valid vector to enforce as the only path to the challenge. A similar idea to this is the competing agencies, causing either auctioning of contracts for lowest bid or competition of the limited resource of a contract pool.

Your SSTO should only need 50-100 dV to circularize if you push it to the limits of the atmo (in stock). Either you're not carrying enough fuel (highly unlikely) or you're not building enough speed before you need your oxidizers. Might be a flight profile issue, might be a craft design issue. Hard to tell with so little description.

I, too, am a vanilla advocate under most circumstances. That said, I have Kerbal Engineering Redux, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Docking Alignment Indicator, PlanetShine, Toolbar and Ambient Lighting installed. Keep in mind you're in a beta (and for a long time it was alpha) so a lot of the polish you need for proper controls just aren't there yet, as they were much more worried about the mechanics under the hood than the interface. The mods really just add that polish for you. But, I understand your preference. Good luck to you!

What in particular seems to be the trouble? Generally, what you do is rt-click the docking port on your ship, and control from there. Next, on the target, rt-click the target docking port, and target there. On your navball, it should say target on the top. Click it if it says orbital or surface. Next, on your navball, turn the ship towards the pink circle in a circle. That's towards the target. If you have RCS on your ship, touch h/n to go forward/backwards, and ijkl for translation. As you get near, line up your ship so the ports will face each other for a flush contact.

I can confirm you can 'multi-dock' ships, but they both need to be linking at the same time. The Ares Helm in my current Let's Play does it. I do, however, recommend the Docking Port Alignment Indicator, in particular for rotation control. Even just a hair off 0/90/etc can set one as non-linking (which caused me serious roll issues on said interplanetary craft). If you're incredibly curious, you can find me playing with it here: The redocking procedure for the right engine starts at around 13:00. Hope it helps.

I've yet to find a need for Vernier engines. Even my Orange Tank dockings for one of my craft simply used the RCS thrusters. I don't find them worth the value in dV once in orbit. Pricing of the equipment aside, it's a dV cost once I'm up that I'm worried about. On the flipside, the 0-10 engines are awesome engines when you want to leave liquid fuel + oxidizer off a lightweight construction. It may just be a matter of building techniques and expectations.

This doesn't seem to have any nay-sayers: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/112723-Quality-of-Life-Improvements-for-Contracts

Couldn't seem to find a thread about this, but there's a number of quality of life improvements I'd love to see made to the contracts interface. 1) Filters I'd like to be able to simply filter out certain contracts. Just have them not even accepted by the administration team for review by Gene. Examples: Anything regarding being in Kerbin Atmosphere. Anything under 75k in Funds. Anything in Duna SOI. (More complex) Any parts test outside Kerbin LKO worth less than 100k in Funds. 2) Sorting/Grouping It'd be great if I could simply sort the contracts. Say, group all satellite contracts together, or everything in Duna SOI together. Would save me a lot of random scrolling around when I'm trying to figure out what to group up together for a mission profile. Even grouping under a header in the lists would be helpful, though that's the next step after sorting. 3) Permanent Decline It'd be nice if there was a third option to permanently decline a mission type. I am never going to test some of these parts, ever, I'm not rescuing Kerbals anymore in Kerbin SOI, and I really have no intention on sending a manned mission back to Mun to plant a flag. A permanent declination of these types of contracts (Ex: No more MK16 parachute tests in Kerbin Atmo) would be just lovely. It would remove my need to continuously decline the same mission which repeatedly pops up (Save kerbal, no. Save kerbal, no. Save Kerbal, no. Test Mk16 parachute, No. Save Kerbal, No. click click click click) 4) Explore contracts no longer take up 3* spaces. Contracts appear to be limited at 15 in number, total. 4 1*, 4 2*, and 7 3*. Having Explore missions take up those slots seems counterproductive, especially when launch windows are part of the concern and you're trying to build up funds (read: 3* are your best choice) to send said mission. 5) Remove contracts that cost more than they pay/impossible contracts This has been brought up elsewhere, but removing parts tests that return less than the part purchase seems an obvious no brainer removal. As does impossible contracts, like scans on Gilly that are too high. 6) Have contracts more in line with their * requests. An example: I'm staring at a contract to test a Mk16 parachute in flight on Kerbin, and this particular game has been in solar orbit. This being a 1* contract I'd expect, but it's 2*s, coughs up a whopping 800 funds, and is simply not in line with what I'd expect at that level, considering right next to it is Minmus Temperature Scans. The entire contract matrix would need to be reviewed for #6 though.

Mods installed: KER, KAC, and InFlight Waypoints. Edit: My Bad. Version is 0.90.0 and is 32 bit. As best I can tell, a Modular Girder which is holding my landing gear which was gizmo'd into the wing is causing significant issues during takeoff. It's 'locking' the wing into a particular angle or less during takeoff, until a certain ground speed is reached. Same plane with the girders simply moved out of the clipping scenario works just fine. Planes in question: Albatross 3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jm76bxdab2ve2ly/Albatross%203.craft?dl=0 Albatross 9: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wzdmji8gwd9yxvf/Albatross%209.craft?dl=0 YouTube Video explaining problem in more detail:

Same plane, ripped off the wings and rebuilt it, just as low. Tail strikes like a king (and blows it the heck up). So, no, it's not skidding the tail engine. Albatross 5: https://www.dropbox.com/s/b877z9w6hzkcyfp/Albatross%205.craft?dl=0 Edit: Also, at ~115m/s it's able to achieve AoA for liftoff. If they were dragging they'd kaboom.

Well, that's fair I suppose. Not having KSP installed?! SACRELIDGE! ... I digress. I've adjusted the first post. It includes a video about what's going on and a change of what I believe the problem is. The 2nd Tier Runway exacerbated it, it didn't cause it. I believe, in the end, this is a part clipping problem.

Apparently not. The wings change orientation because the elevators push the plane in different directions. The wings themselves aren't moving, except in relation to the ground. Pic: Of course, you could just grab the craft file, too. What you see above is what I mean by 'wheel locking'. It's locking in place in the air about a 1/2 meter over the runway. It won't move past that, on a Tier 2 runway, until the ship self destructs. I'm putting together a short vid now to help explain this. A moving picture is necessary here, I think.

I'm not sure you understood what I said above, or I didn't phrase it well. The ship rolls just fine. The wheels are not locked. The wings get locked into a particular orientation as best I can tell until suddenly they 'free up' and the ship goes out of control.

If it helps, a video I did on getting to the moon with no mod assistance and no upgrades to career mode: While you may not want to use the particular ship involved, I also walk through how to get there without maneuver nodes and the like.

Edit: Ah, you mean the sticky Tier 2 Launchpad affects the Runway as well? There's nothing noted about that. That particular bug lists for T30's and T45's, mostly, and simply offsetting on the Launchpad can remove that problem.

Well, that's quick and helpful, thanks. You wouldn't happen to know the bug report's name or where it's being discussed, would you? I couldn't seem to figure out the right keywords to locate it.

Complete rewrite of post: I've been playing with the planes involved, and realized it's not the Tier 2 runway. That was just exacerbating the problem with the minor imperfections. Somehow, the gizmo'd Modular Girder segment being gizmo'd through both a fuselage and a wing was causing some kind of screwy result. My guess is this is some sort of clipping bug causing the wings to act weird. Albatross 3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jm76bxdab2ve2ly/Albatross%203.craft?dl=0 The craft file I've left here for reference. If you pull the modular girder segments out of the wing, and adjust the front wheel appropriately (Albatross 9 is a 3 with these adjustments) you don't get a liftoff 'lock' of the front wheel. The plane doesn't sit in a particular alignment while attempting takeoff. Albatross 9: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wzdmji8gwd9yxvf/Albatross%209.craft?dl=0 The video explanation of what I'm seeing is here (video is unlisted, so only relative to this discussion): http://youtu.be/szgCzyfyFFA I'm hoping you guys can see, or find, something I can't. The best I've got so far is that the girder is causing the wing to freeze somehow. (Good grief YouTube takes forever to process a fricking video sometimes...)