WanderingKid

I'm not sure I understand the question. If you're asking why the component needs to exist, it's because of the game mechanics as to how KSP builds rockets. If you're asking why it doesn't have a decoupler built in, I can't answer that, I don't know why the devs chose not to include it.

Fairings, in stock, don't have a decoupling ability that I'm aware of. You have to stick something on the bottom of the payload between it and the fairing component to be able to decouple. If I've missed this ability somewhere in stock, please, someone tell where it's hiding.

A component of a craft (NOT a Kerbal) that has been to that body (landed, in orbit, whatever) returned and recovered on Kerbin's surface. An experiment can loaded with the local science fulfills this.

That means you're burning Retrograde, not Prograde. The symbol that has the bars like an inverted T, one on top and left and right, is Prograde. The one that looks like a Y was overlaid on it is retrograde. Take a look at the images on this page in the wiki, and it will help you: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Navball

This is absolutely correct. The angle of approach combined with the speed of the transfer is enough to send me interstellar depending on exactly when/how I do it. Due to the nature of the problem (flyby of planet only) the low vs. high science is of little consequence to me. This is essentially a funds run, not a science adventure. I want to thank you for your highly detailed walkthrough of using the AlexMoon's transfer calculator. I've used it before, but never to that detail level. It's going to take me a few read-throughs and some practice to fully understand the moving parts, yet I figured that was coming. XD I'll come back with pictures. This is the ideal scenario, but not the one that's occurring. It's all because I'm being inefficient with dV and energy to trade for time. If you want a simpler scenario, think of what the departing orbit for a 4 day Minmus transfer looks like after you leave its SOI. The mechanics are equivalent, just a lot deeper and lot less forgiving.

Hey all. I've poked around a bit and I'm having a hard time figuring out something, and I'm quite sure someone's pulled this off before. It's particularly about Duna, but it's a more generic question for roughly all the planets for a career mode. In career mode, I've got a Duna First World's Contract pop up. They show up eventually, of course, but as usual these usually include a 'and return to Kerbin' clause, so you can't pick up any more until you've swung past X planet, then came home. Now, my plan is to stuff as much dV into a probe as I can get off my level 2 Launchpad and fling it at Duna out of phase for as quick a possible flyby. The idea being when I'm ready to send a serious mission (IE: Land on Duna) I'll be IN phase (or closer) and the mothership I end up sending for that won't require over-engineering due to phase positions. That's not the hard part, it just takes extreme dV and really odd departure angles. Now, where I'm running into trouble is getting back in a timely manner. My best guesstimate forces me to establish an orbit (which I'm trying NOT to do so I can keep that world's first banked for a contract later) and then reverse fire myself at Kerbin, again at extreme dV cost and odd angles. As far as I can tell, no gravity assists or anything of that nature will significantly help, as I'm on the right Solar Periapsis for Kerbin, I'm just WAY off phase. EDIT: This was misleading. My periapsis may be on Kerbin's plane, but I'll be traveling out to Eloo before I come back, which defeats the point. I'm really hoping one of you will tell me 'Oh, that's easy, just do this!', and I'll have to noodle on it for a week before I understand it but I can get it done. I have this random idea that if I can bank myself around Duna, without actually orbiting but coming in for an Oberth, and then burning like mad at the right angle to push the phase around I might be able to pull it off, but I just can't figure out how that should be done.

If you don't have maneuver nodes, you most likely won't have upgraded the Tracking Center and thus won't have conics, either. However, you just get your apoapsis up to 11 million using the MunRise technique and you'll eventually capture. This will only occur in Career mode, however.

In truth? Originally because I needed a name that wasn't "Minmus Science Base Alpha", and I was staring at my Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 at the time. I've now come up with a fun joke for it at the end.

A ton of recordings, a lot of time in my editor, and Part 1 of the Minmus Base Building Mission is complete, along with some story to make it more fun. Mission report over yonder:

Background: In my recent career game I restarted for 1.2.2, I was originally working out a tutorial series for Hard Career that was reasonable to follow. Then I got distracted, as I'd never built a significant base on land before. Between that point and the beginning of the career, I'd picked up the updated Camera Tools mod that @BahamutoD started and @jrodriguez has been able to recently maintain for us fellow Kerbal Lovers. Go both of you guys, you rock! So, in playing with Camera Tools, and then starting to build a base, I decided I'd try and make a fun story about the process and see if I can chase @Nassault630 a little bit in his cinematic adventures while showing off some rockets. That's for you guys to decide, but I'm having fun trying. On future attempts, as this is all already recorded, I'll have to not use auto-position so often when flying and use part lock instead of CoM locks... Anyways, without further ado, here's Part 1!

Hey, @Just Jim, just wanted to drop a line and say I've really enjoyed your story, and thank you for posting it.

A teaser for a new video I'm working on, the story of Jeb's bold great sudden plan to build Minmus Science Base Scarlett, and the Rockets that went into it.

Possibly a foolish question, but have you already BEEN to Mun?

Usually I'm more constrained by finances early than I am by science, since I play a slightly modified hard mode typically. My early science usually consists of a few runway/Launchpad research vessels, followed by a 'hop n pop' vessel for low/high altitude, then I get orbital equatorial, upgrade for EVAs, and grab some extra science that way. That's the really early science. Add in some first world contracts and I'm golden. From there, I'll usually do a non-upgraded flyby of Mun for free return, grab high/low science for Kerbin and High Mun enroute (whatever I can pile into the rocket), which will usually crack open satellites, which I'll get pad, admin, and tracking center upgrades from. From there I just start wailing away on Mun with whatever contracts show up for funds. Eventually, I ship up a reusable science lander for Mun and send up a few refuelers for it, then come back with a ton of science after hopping the biomes and just not care anymore. Most of the top of the tech tree is just for fun for me, and I've become really disappointed with low end flight since the changes, so I don't care about 1/3 of the tech tree until it's at the 'oh, why not' levels.

My findings were I was getting the best results dV wise when Tylo was about 30-35 degrees past Jool Prograde and when my burn point on Tylo was roughly 30 degrees after retrograde (both values in prograde orbits). However, I wasn't coming in retro to Kerbin, that's very odd to me.

So, I'm pretty heavily modded but nothing that should be game changing. Mod list: KAC KER Ambient Light Camera Tools Texturer Chatterer DPAI Eve - Medium Waypoint Manager My skycrane, Klaw + Docking Port + accessories, recently delivered a component to Minmus. Touchdown went without an issue, landed the unit, and instead of releasing I hit disarm instead. I thought I'd left without an issue, then I noticed this part is just hanging on in midair now: The component it came off of was this, which simply had a radial coupler (what's hanging off the Skycrane now) and a docking port at both ends originally. The docking port is listed as destroyed in F3, as well. There's no error so there's no logs to provide.

I'm confused, bear with me, it's not entirely a shock. I fired up a little ship and hyper-edited it into Tylo orbit. MK1, Parachute, Heat shield, decoupler, FL-T200, and a Terrier. Came in with about 1,298 m/s dV, so I figured it'd be a fun toy. Stuffed it into orbit around Tylo at 45k alt. Using Phase Angles and manipulating orbit departures, I can do a direct burn from Tylo to Kerbin orbital height for ~1,095 m/s. However, manipulating this requires getting the phase angle right. It takes 2 years + 110 - 230 days (roughly) for the return. A Kerbal year being... um... errr... 426 days. So, roughly 2.25 - 2.5 years to return. Which means the phase angle needs to be in the right position for the trip. I used this to get an idea where to have Tylo (and what side of Tylo) to figure out where to depart from it at, which is roughly 20-30 degrees just past prograde for Jool: http://ksp.olex.biz/ It's doable, but you'd have to spend a bunch of time exploring maneuver nodes and departure dates.

Nice find. Excellent when you have to fast forward to get the right launch angle for Minmus launches.

Well, I'm sure you checked the transfer window planner, but the best dV transfer in Alex Moon's setup is 4,933 or so, figure rounded to 5k. So there's certainly no obvious way. Thinking it through, you would usually need ~1,200 - 1,400 to circularize at Kerbin. Assuming Aerobrake, that gets you down to ~3,600. If you can pinball wizard yourself to a grav assist from Tylo, then intercept and grav assist again at Laythe during your outbound trajectory, you could possibly spin up enough dV to make it, but I have absolutely no idea how to aim that double boost intelligently.

I've found the list to be frustratingly stagnant once you trigger a contract for World's First. In particular, there's a "Dock around Mun" one that comes in almost always after the Minmus contracts start up, somewhere after orbit and return and lander. It forces you to return to Mun, progression wise, if you don't clear it before it shows up. I don't know why it does this, but I understand the OP's frustration with it.

Unfortunately, this is the entire section for World's First Contracts: Progression // World First Contracts and Milestones { DisableTutorialContracts = False // Whether World First ignores first launch, reach space, and orbit home DisableProgressionContracts = False // Whether World First ignores the line of contracts after the tutorial MaxDepthRecord = 750 // The maximum depth to reach in the depth record track MaxDistanceRecord = 100000 // The maximum distance to reach in the distance record track MaxSpeedRecord = 2500 // The maximum speed to reach in the speed record track OutlierMilestoneMultiplier = 1.5 // What to multiply rewards by on hard requests like returning from atmospheric landings PassiveBaseRatio = 0.2 // What base portion of the total World First contract reward is granted passively PassiveBodyRatio = 0.3 // How much the body multiplier affects passive progression RecordSplit = 5 // How many intervals are in the speed, altitude, and distance record tracks Funds { BaseReward = 80000 // The base funds reward of a progress node including passive and contract income } Science { BaseReward = 8 // The base science reward of a progress node including passive and contract income } Reputation { BaseReward = 16 // The base reputation reward of a progress node including passive and contract income } } You can't control the contracts themselves, unfortunately, only the modifiers.

Similar to the transfer crafts world's firsts, they have to have two different grandparents or it won't count. I disagree with the launch/land/return, however, but that's because in Hard Career I milk the heck out of those contracts. My first lander is usually some piddly little thing, not meant for long term arrival. My biome hopper, however, is a different animal that needs crew sent to it, refuelers, etc.

These are part of the World's First contracts. The way to avoid them is to do it before they ever come up. At some point I end up getting satellite contracts. I just send them up with a DP Jr. on the front and rendezvous them with another one eventually before they matter. Ultimately, my biome landers usually need refuelers, so I just complete these then, if not beforehand. However, no, you can't shut them off, they're hard coded, at least in stock. Contract Manager MIGHT have something you can work with, I haven't explored killing off the world's first contracts with it.

Under most circumstances, a Tylo/Laythe Grav Assist (depends on which one is easier to hit) + Jool Aerobrake if needed after is my preferred entry method. Particularly with the new overheating, it gives you more room for error during the aerobrake and you don't have to go as deep. You can get away with a decent solar panels if you're not doing anything intensive, like orbital/ground research MPLs or mining. Probes will be fine with a pair of 1x6's, just put them in hibernation during warp (advanced tweakables). If you're mining, you'll want Fuel Cells for sanity purposes, but you can get away with a monstrous solar array if you wanted to. If you're doing research, just bring a good sized solar array and do it in orbit so you don't have to worry about a large battery array for overnight processing.

EVA and snag the science out of one of the Science Jr's. You can't keep multiple copies of the exact same experiment in the pod, so either use the Science Jr. for another experiment somewhere and keep that, or ditch it. From there, head home. As to @Aegolius13's concern, it looks like you have a heat shield on the back of the Passenger cabin. That should be round enough to keep yourself aimed retrograde and be able to bring it in safely. On a side note, I know how frustrating it is to do something and not get it quite right, or doing the things you want. Rebuilding the mission over and over through trial and error is actually part of the core game design and the designer's vision for the game. There are many mods and tools that can help you avoid having to do that once you learn what the moving parts are, and there's tons of information on the wiki once you've learned what you even need to know (like how much electricity it takes to transmit data, or that SOME science has different transmission values than return values). However, we've all been there.