MathmoRichard

Assume the rovers work 110%. They have loads of power (two big batteries, enough for a whole day of idle time at least), and in fact they respond the whole time, like I said they steer but don't move. I have test driven them and they work perfectly, they have moved that tank half way up the runway and back.

How do I upload it on here? Or must I use another site? (suggestions?)

I was just about to post victoriously about a successful base building technique in my old thread, and then whilst getting screenshots my rovers just stopped moving. To reproduce I simply decouple the rovers and switch craft back and forth, when I get to one I'll find it can't move (and the brakes are off and they should be controllable). The wheels appear to spin a small amount and the steering works, but I just can't move. Usually only one gets stuck. I wanted to upload a craft file but can't see how. Please suggest how I should if you want it.

I don't want MechJeb and have been thinking about this. Would be super interested in what you think DarkGravity

With the claw and possibly a cargo bay you can get almost anything back. I have used this one before: I suppose you've got a big problem if the ship is bigger than this, (size 2 and a bit) so you might have to settle to the claw without a cargo bay to protect it in reentry. So the easy/slightly cheaty way of doing it is to dock using the claw and transfer fuel. I don't like this though because the claw shouldn't be able to transfer fuel. It is also "boooring" to quote some Kerbals.

So I would love to give more updates, but this happens so much I can't do anything!! It just falls apart whenever I put it on the runway now

Thanks everyone for your replies! Ahhh so for intake air/sec it would be ÃÂAvcos(θ) and according to http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Atmosphere à= 1.223e^(-h/H) where h is the altitude, but what is the scale height H?? Do you think my plane is too big for just taking up a docking port and cargo bay then? Or I could put more in. I just tried aerobrake and it did help, although I don't really need them if I have flaps! Didn't know about that, that's brilliant. I also had problems taking off on the run way, I tried pointing the craft up (by sinking the back wheels), but it didn't help much. Proceeders are the single most difficult to understand part for me. What do they do exactly? I would have thought they take existing air from other intakes and cool it or something :S So are you saying they are just another intake with some fuel for some reason which will help with heat issues? I struggle coming in belly first because my CoL is so far back, it wants to come in forwards. Why? that makes no sense if they are just part heat sinks, maybe they really do cool the air?I'll control the RAPIERs manually and report back soon. Thanks again

Hi, I feel completely new to spaceplanes. After 6 months on the game I never even tried to do anything useful. Today I decided to try and finally make the leap. I read the tutorial on the first page of the tutorials section, and got into orbit on my 5th attempt (+ Mun flyby just), but I have a load of mechanics type questions now. First, this is my success/failure: No matter what I do, those RAM intakes keep overheating, I was lucky not to lose them all. Is this bad flying or design or what? Maybe I can solve the ascent but the decent is hopeless, then burn up every time. How were they not made for this? The second question is: how am I supposed to know how much air the intakes will give? The engine stats say 5.354 units of air per second for each engine. But then the RAM intakes say 1.0, what does this mean? It can't be 1 unit per second or all the tutorials would be wrong because we'd need 5 per engine (!!!!). Also in flight, when I right click an intake, it says 0 units on the green bar, but the engines are still functioning (in fact thrust is increasing). Confusion is rife. This is the main question of the thread, I'm the kind of person who can probably just get it if actually given the numbers. Next problem was actually designing the thing to have 4 intakes, the above is so ugly, and the radial intakes aren't good enough to just have 2 RAMs. Then it's the flight plan, I've read how to do it and it seems hit and miss when I try, sometimes I can't get up to speed, sometimes I burn up. Most frustratingly the RAPIERs like to switch to rocket power at 15000 or so, which is earlier than the tutorial says, and sometimes it goes at just 13000 - I know I can do it manually, but surely this means that the engines had lost most of their power quite early because I'm guessing that's how they choose when to switch. Angle of attack is a big puzzle. As I said before, the thing I just can't avoid is overheating, how to I do reentry??? Finally, the general structure, how much wing do I need? That is one of my biggest problems, I find it impossible to judge if I've got enough lift. Thrust you can judge by speed etc. I don't know how to work that out. And what proportion of LF to LFO should I use? One tutorial said half the entire weight of the craft should be LFO!? My theory so far is to have the CoL 10% behind the CoM with fuel roughly evenly dispersed and ideally the cargo and variable mass parts should go as close as possible to the centres. This good? I've just be guessing as best I can. Thanks in advance.

Once you have done ground scans of all biomes the narrow band will be 100% accurate. The 70% thing I don't know for sure but it's probably saying that there are no medium sized regions which have an average over 70% of the highest value found on the body. Try using dots, this is the most accurate orbital overlay.

I think the time warp thing is a separate issue. We need a big change to the MPL. Regarding the rest, you're right, most of the game should be with the tech tree unlocked and just exploring... but do you really think it should be unlocked without visiting another planet? I believe this is too soon, I think we should get the last part of the tree when we have done a decent job of Duna (so we've still only been to a small fraction of the whole system). Also, what if some of us are in it for the science collecting and want an in-game reward for doing it which isn't money (or reputation)? I definitely can motivate myself to explore the system and do the rest of the science without a tech tree to play with, but it would be EVEN BETTER with something else to aim for, something you can get your hands on. And again, if you really don't care for the tech tree then play sandbox. I suppose I can also tell myself to up the difficulty, but we need to get back to the point... What would be good is if we started discussing how the MPL mechanics should work. How can it have some impact on science without giving us unlimited science in this unnecessary way? Perhaps the MPL can be a little bit more of an experiment type part which interacts with the others somehow? Perhaps the MPL could just give you a finite amount of science, maybe only for experiments not already found. There was a comment about "we don't want to punish people for discovering the part later when lots of experiments have already been used up", well I doubt you'll have even done half the solar system's biomes by time you unlock it. I'm sure theres a huge number of ways to implement it.

The real world figures are fairly irrelevant since KSP's weights and forces are balanced differently. I just wish the tanks all had the same ratio and we had rocket shaped LF tanks.

I think if you want to explore beyond the Kerbin system with full tech you might as well go play sandbox. Really what is the point of career if you don't keep unlocking things for quite a while. I agree about needing big tanks and engine to leave the SOI and do something useful, but there is much more than that in the tech tree. Also, as discussed, there are so many ways to get lots of science that you don't need the whole tree to do a lot. Once you have size 2 stuff you can go to other planets, we're not even talking about half the science there. The tech tree science requirements should go up IMO, and I think what they've done with labs is neat, but needs rebalancing. One might say "well if you time warp and get loads of science out of the MPLs then you're to blame for taking fun out of the game" but for new players who don't realise, they might think more like "oh gosh, this creates loads of science, if I need this it must be really hard to get science elsewhere, I'll save up for a bit"... or something... And then the fun of discovering other planets (doing science there) is completely ruined when they complete the tech tree by time the reach Duna. Games are balanced to guide us to have the most fun and challenge us.

Great reply Snark! Something I've actually been wondering is this (I was gonna make the calculation but I might as well ask now): If you've accidentally put your apoapsis too high (ascent from body with atmosphere) whilst gravity turning, is is better to thrust sideways (to help #2 & #3) or should you coast to apoapsis and then thrust (to help #1, #3, & #4)?

Surely the problem is as simple as the ratio between full tanks with LF and empty tanks, and the difference in these numbers between the LFO tanks and LF only tanks. Full/dry = ratio: Different LFO tanks with oxidiser removed: 4.6/1 = 4.6 20.7/4.5 = 4.6 41.4/9 = 4.6 Avionic LF tanks: 0.9/0.2 = 4.5 (the smallest one) 4.6/0.6 = 7.666 28.6/3.6 = 7.9444 57.1/7.1 = 8.04 (the largest one) So first thing to note is that the discrepancy between the rocket tanks and plane tanks is massive. The second thing is, why do the plane ratios change but the rocket ratios are constant???

Thanks for the pointers. That is a fantastic tutorial, I think I'll do exactly that. It also crushed my overly pedantic way of insisting that everything should be upright. The tanks will go sideways so everything might as well do. I won't even continue the Mun base upright, I'll make two adapters which make it all the 'standard height'. As for my current situation, check this out! I can't believe how close the nukes came to the solar panels!

YESSSSS! That fixed it! So happy, thank you. - - - Updated - - - Yeah, it was a hard lesson and was learned, thanks. I do think it's a bit ridiculous with the klaw, it's completely unrealistic. I know the default answer is "use KAS then" but I'm all vanilla (but slowly turning).

As I said I already tried (about 4 times). Thanks I'll have a look! Definitely at the stage where I don't care about the solar panels, I just want it to dock!!! I have loads of gigantors on the other side waiting anyway.

I've tried my best for a while searching for an answer to no avail. I have just gone to great effort landing two vessels next to each other on a fairly flat piece of land on the Mun. I managed to successfully dock them using a sky crane (I was pretty chuffed). Whilst bringing in the third module I knocked the existing bit sideways. I don't know if they had already been technically undocked before I knocked them apart but they now are. Ok fine... but no matter what I try I just can't re-dock them. The one part is controllable and even has a good engine with Valentina, I've tried the obvious thing which is to fly away and go back in close. Still can't dock. Here's two pictures, one the general situation and the other is showing how close they can be made to align.

Fantastic thread, thank you so much to everyone for your time and effort, especially RoverDude. I think I understand most things, so correct me if I'm wrong, here's the mechanics in a nutshell (and all the mechanics really ought to be printed somewhere concisely): 1. Science experiments from the same spaceship may be 'processed' in the MPL without removing it from its origin. Question 1: What about EVA transfer of science? Obviously this would remove it from the origin, but then hopefully it is merely stored in the MPL in the classical sense of storing science? In this case do you still need to click to process? 2. Processing experiments adds to the MPL's 'data' counter. The amount of data depends both on the experiment and the current biome at time of processing Question 2: In what proportion? If the experiment is worth x science points what is the corresponding data in terms of x. And how does the biome affect it? Simple multiplier? 3. By researching the current data stored the data is transformed into science (as a counter in the MPL) in a 1:5 ratio. This decreases data at a rate and increases science at 5 times the rate. Importantly, the rate is proportional to the current amount of data (meaning the function of data decays exponentially through time if left alone). The rate is also proportional to the skill of scientists on the ship. Question 3: Do the scientists need to be in the MPL or just the ship? Does having two scientists help? Question 4: In what exact way do the star ratings improve the rate?

After a whole days thought, I think we were all a little wrong and a little right. With a certain interpretation of "Oberth effect", you are right Khaur, in that our gain in energy is directly proportional to our speed. Many (not you) people think it's an altitude/gravitational thing, but it isn't, except than on free orbit the highest speed is at periapsis and lowering the periapsis counterintuitively gives you a bigger maximum speed and it turns out more efficient that way. I was wrong and right I think because unless I've got it all backwards, (the Oberth effect is irrelevant as long as your circular orbit is low) in fact the delta-v required is the same, ​which is really nice if true don't you think? That's all based on high acceleration and low thrust time and low orbits as I said. If you need a large circular orbit, you will lose significant delta-v by Oberth. If you don't have the thrust to get up the escape velocity quickly going straight up will always lose because of gravity losses, and that is exactly as I stated before. The gravity losses will be the integral of the gravitational strength with time, or simply gt. Basically the t needs to be really small.

I won't do that, I'm just too paranoid about other programs messing with my computer. I know it might sound stupid but it's just the way I am. What I'd be happy with is reinstalling etc. Can anyone advise me on the benefits and how to preserve the saved data (unless the saves could possibly be the problem) please?

And if you ever wonder why people tell you to do any launch eastward it is purely because of the small boost given by the fact that the body is rotating eastward (counterclockwise).

The best way to work out the angle McKermack is with manoeuvre nodes. It is actually the best way to understand all this. Try setting one up in a circular Munar orbit with a set delta V of 300 m/s say, and then slide the node about to see which gives you the smallest Kerbin periapsis. I use this technique every single time, it's the only way to be most efficient without mods.

Sure I can try, so I hope this helps anyway. So the first thing to understand (and this is really important in general) is that in general* to lower an orbit you must lower the the energy of the orbit (and vice versa). The physical reason for this is that energy [= kinetic energy + potential energy] is conserved, and the lower your potential energy the lower your altitude. Beyond those two sentences it's a little Maths heavy, but I'll happily explain later if you want. The only way to lower your total energy is to lower the kinetic energy of the orbit, which equals 0.5mv^2 which means your speed needs to decrease. Now we need to think about how speed changes and what it is. Speed is the magnitude of velocity, and if you change the direction of your velocity then your speed doesn't change, this means that any addition to your velocity in a perpendicular direction will change direction not speed. Thus to change our speed we must accelerate directly along our velocity vector direction. To decrease the speed, we do this in the opposite (retrograde) direction (same line but 180° away). That was all ignoring the Mun. Now imagine you've just magically escaped the Mun's SOI and haven't changed velocity much, then you're travelling in the Mun's orbit so you have the same retrograde direction that the Mun has. Then to get back to Kerbin we need to accelerate in the direction opposite to how the Mun is travelling. Now let's think about escaping the Mun. The position you burn can vary so let's just consider the direction you're travelling as you are leaving the SOI. If this was along the Mun's retrograde vector, we have basically put all of our extra escape speed along the retrograde direction so we more or less got the maximum beneficial effect of the escape. If we hadn't been going in that direction then (with Pythagoras in mind) you will have a smaller component of velocity going retrograde, and the other component of the velocity went towards or away from Kerbin (or possibly perpendicular to the plane) and that part is wasted because it will just make the orbit change shape just as we said perpendicular meant a change of direction. The practical point here is that it's about the direction you leave the SOI, not the direction you burn. But the time you burn will be more or less on the prograde side of the Mun, and you should burn along the prograde direction of Munar orbit. Entirely because of gravity losses. Put simply, this is the loss of fuel efficiency which is the same as burning on the launchpad without enough thrust to go anywhere. Put precisely: the portion of thrust fighting gravity (i.e. along the direction of gravity's pull) is completely wasted. This is why to escape you should gain merely ground clearance and then burn horizontally. *Disclaimer: again this is complicated and on some occasions radial burning can do more, but only for much more complicated situations, and only when considering the periapsis since when ever you burn perpendicular an increase in the periapsis will decrease the apoapsis and vice versa.

Firstly, I know the maximum for my Mun is no more than 11.7% after many hours of the NBS, no worries there. Secondly, This is wrong or you need to state it better. Perhaps the averages are defined per biome but they are not constant in biomes. I want to make this very clear. On my Mun, if we trust the NBS, the polar regions had the very worst concentration on the whole of my Mun, but the orbital (for non-dot-modes) showed it to be extremely high on average (red using red/green at the highest cut off level for which anything was coloured). I'm super happy with the 11.564% at my base Will be jumping for joy if on other planets I can get >15%.