Ruthgar

Not sure, try the http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/73983- Science alert mod. It'll let you know when you have discoverable science in your current area for your unused equipment, and let you skip hunting for that last unused instrument.

I usually build my landers with multiple science modules of each type, and I think once you have everything unlocked in vanilla, there's actually 8 different science gathering modules (only 5 or 6 can be used in vacuum environments tho). My typical landers usually have 2-3 science jrs, 4 goo containers, and 8 thermometers, seismic detectors, gravity detectors, and barometers. Throw in the crew, eva, and surface samples, that's at least 400 science from a single biome (on the ground) As far as what I did in KSP today, loaded some mods (mostly informational and asthetic stuff tho the asthetics aren't quite working so UNINSTALLED for now, I did install the interstellar, and scansat mods) started a new career after learning a lot that I was doing wrong with orbital transfers and general interplanetary ship construction, and managed a Minimus landing in the new career with a ship that had about 1/2 the D-V of my original minimus landing mission, while only having about 1/3 the science that I did back in that original mission. Only managed one landing there with it, but managed to get the entire lander back to Kerbin intact. Actually finished getting into kerbin orbit originally with just the lander as my booster and transfer stages were.....inadequite to do the normal get it up to 5-10k then turn over. It got up to those heights easily, did the turn, kept going, but when the SRBs ran out, the central core just did not have the power to finish. Burned about 50% of the lander fuel stabilizing the orbit, but actually did the mission and made it back into kerbin atmosphere with about 1km/s left in the tanks burned about 800 for the braking after reentry was done, saving about 200 for the release/abort of the lander assembly if there was a failure to deploy of the 3 command chutes, the 3 science jrs also had 2 chutes each linked to the jettison of the lander assembly staging. First pic is of the Mk-1 with Jeb piloting there were some ...... problems after I burned out the downstages. Jeb knew he wouldn't make it into orbit with just the lander (damn thing was down to 20k meters and falling) so he decided to test the lander abort system...........at a perpendicular angle to the travel of the craft. Next thing I know is all the science jrs are flying free to the ground on their chutes, and there was only static from the command pod.........Jeb's still recovering from that incident.

Thanks AlexinTokyo, and thank you to everyone else for your help. Yeah, it turns out my main issues were an over-engineered design with design flaws (more engines than needed, decoupler stacks when I didn't need them, not enough RCS jets in the right places or not enough reaction wheels to turn the thing (took about 5 mins to do a 180)), or just plain forgetting to put alternate docking ports on (first one was 90% assembled when I noticed I had included no extra docking ports for the lander to refuel. Other main issue was making simple mistakes in orbital mechanics which is funny considering I've worked on/around SRBs for the last 20 years. So installed some of the informational mods MJ, kerbal engineer, etc.... along with the ScanSat and interstellar mods, and started a new career. Built a ship with about the third the science and that has litterally 1/2 the D-V of what I originally used to go to Minimus and just orbit in my old career. This ship managed to send a lander down to Minimus, get it back to Kerbin orbit, then successfully landed back on Kerbin, lander section fully intact. Had to use Bill to do it though, Jeb was injured during the initial prototype test flight. Damn thing barely made it out of kerbin orbit, without asparagus staging I pitched it over too early and then burned up a lot of the lander fuel just getting into a stable kerbin orbit. Didn't think I would actually make it that flight, but I did. Thanks again everyone for your help, I'm gonna go design some more over engineered ships, though with the information you've all given me, along with using those informational mods (that KES mod with the actual distance to surface, got me onto Minimus on the first try, without any bouncing, excess thrust to send me back up a few hundred meters, etc... there was however one moment of panic when the lander did pitch to a 45 degree angle and I thought I would have to retry, but actually settled down no problem.) ( and yeah I know I can only use that lander you see on the low grav worlds, but it's actually a lot of fun to use)

btw, how do you change the thread status to answered?

That has got to be Jeb isn't it, nothing can seem to phase him, and he's always happy

It is a great game. After you do your dual-fly by, it's time to do some landing on them. Current career save for me, I just managed to land on minimus, then moved the lander from the biome it landed in and set it down again in 5 different biomes there on minimus (didn't actually go back into orbit, was more of a lift-off/drift to next biome), then did a mun intercept with the same lander otw back from minimus, landed, then returned to kerbin. Would have managed 2 mun biomes, except it turns out I've been missing the optimum launch windows, and using too much delta-v for intercepts on all my ships, this was just figurative straw on my camel's back that broke me down to go ask for help the otherday over in gameplay. Now I'm reading/re-reading a player made tutorial and redoing a few things. Now putting up unmanned probes (using the ScanSat mod, only mod I currently have installed) and have managed to get mapping probes in polar orbits so far on Kerbin, mun, minimus, and Eve. Actually used the same type of booster for all the probes (4 SRB-kd25as, 4x3 stack of fl-t800 tanks, with 4 LV-t45 engines, and probe iself has an ion engine and 700 unit xenon tank) (4 at kerbin, 1 at mun, 1 at minimus, and 1 at Eve) only the minimus/eve probes had to dump their booster section and finish with the ion engine (eve probe had 2 more xenon tanks, and 12 SRBs)

Yeah, those approaches/returns were calculated with just the old calibrated mark 1 eyeball, and what looked to be the best time to leave. Having now looked up the exact delta-v's and approximate windows that I should have used and recalculated my old trips I was actually wasting between 20-40% of my fuel onboard making up the differences. That's what I get for being impatient, also figured that I was losing at least another 10% due to it be overengineered on the brute force method of planetary transfers. ps. This game is the first time I've actually had to use what I was taught about orbital mechanics outside of purely paper problem solving, even though I've spent the last 20 years working on and around ACTUAL SRBs, liquid fueled orbitable transfer stages, and reentry systems. Pulled out my old study materials on the stuff, and turns out I had messed up the equations slightly (was forgetting a number or two on the right side of the decimal points) Not so big a problem getting into orbit, but the error in my calculations was actually increasing exponentially the farther out I planned on going.

Developed the mk1 and mk2 'Lawndarts'. For some reason Jeb didn't want to be my test pilot for them, so I grabbed the 2 kerbals in the complex with the most courage at the time.......for some reason they were the stupidest too. here's the pic of the mk1 right before impact in the mountains and the mk2 again in the mountains Amazingly, the mk2 actually survived initial impact, and 2nd, however the 3rd impact onto the command pod was more than it could take.

Thanks Pecan, going to do my 'assigned' reading now

Been playing KSP for just a few months now, and having a blast with plain old vanilla KSP. However I seem to be having a problem with designing a reliable transport ship to get to/from other planets. My current designs have managed to get to both EVE/Duna (mostly due to luck in orbitable arrangements when I launched them.) My current design is quite inefficient 5 missions each with an asparagus staged central core to get into orbit of LARGE tanks/engines, then attach the central core to a cross frame that came up on the first mission with the command module/lander. Then usually 1-2 additional missions just to top the tanks off. Now aside from the normal issues I have such as forgetting to put on extra mono-tanks on the transport to refill the lander after it gets back into orbit, or one unfortunate mission to Ike where I had forgotten to put downward facing lights on the lander (Jebediah - hmmm, I should be seeing the dayside and my landing zone coming into view now, why haven't I seen it yet??..... as the lander smashes into a mountain/cliff that was completely blocking the sun) the issues I seem to be having are two fold. One is that I simply do not have enough delta-v right now to get anywhere other than EVE/Duna and get the transport back intact, and it's only reliable getting to EVE and back, of the 3 mission attempts to Duna I've had to eject the command module from it twice while docked to the lander and use the lander to get us back on Kerbin (one transport wound up somehow smashing into an asteroid retrieval probe that I had just put into orbit somehow *wish I had been able to take pics* before scattering debris throughout the planet, second looks like it's attempting to be the next voyager probe). Also had to abandon one otw back from EVE as I keep having cross feeding issues either from refueling the lander in between landings, and one or more of the outer rocket sets will go dry during a burn and the subsequent spin the ship goes into ripped/smashed one of the stacks off and destroyed parts of the others ( had two outer stacks left intact though only had 5-10% fuel left in them, no engines left on the inner stack, but had almost 80% fuel in the surviving tanks, and no way to transfer the fuel as I was down to vapors of mono, and central core was attached with a stack separator). So my question for you all is this, can you help me with a new transport design, that aside from whatever trips are necessary to refuel it, and replace any lost/landed probes/landers/rovers, is intact once it gets back to kerbin SOI, even if I have to send a ship to refuel it to get it back into close kerbin orbit. Also a design or mod suggestions (more along the lines of making transfers/intercepts easier while using the vanilla KSP parts) that won't force me to rely on the brute force version of a transport ship in interplanetary transfers. Also I'm assuming that my problems with refueling issues in past transports were due to the fact that I had stack separators with no crossfeeding in the design, would this be correct? Now I'm not looking for someone to tell me how to build it piece by piece (though I wouldn't object to such a design provided it does allow me to tweak it as much as I want to), but would prefer just some ideas/guidelines.

You know that glitch that sometimes happens where you can't place a new maneuvering point at all? Might have had a mission or two where that's happened, and no amount of reloading/restarting will fix that particular mission until the state of the vessel changes (orbiting - flying - landed-etc....) If that happens, and I can get the ship close to it's intercept position/speed, and still can't place a maneuvering point, I have on occassion edited the save file to clean up the orbit slightly (roughly the equivalent of 50-150 m/s of delta v worth of clean up, usually about what I wasted putting the ship into the intercept position without the maneuvering point(s). Also have edit launched a few massive constructs simply for testing purposes (ie don't want to spend a few hours trying to get some massive thing into orbit just to find out I forgot to strut something critical, or didn't place any docking ports on the now deployed refueling station tanks but rather on the isolated maneuvering tanks only. Then once the edit-launched construct is tested, re-edit its' orbit to send it crashing down.

try putting launch struts onto it. If one pieces is sitting too low and intersects the landing pad (KABOOM)

Don't have a good picture of the lander, but from my post before Roastduck's, that mission actually brought back almost 2k in science (hit 6 different minimus biomes with the lander w 3 science juniors, 6 goo containers, and 8 each of seismic, thermal, and gravity detectors, plus made a mun stop on the way home as I lifted from minimus straight into a free return trajectory to kerbin that intercepted Mun) Did this without a rover, just a lot of jetpacking with Bob, then having Jeb and Bill fly to him when he found a new biome. Then again, I'm kinda late game with my current career save, so even without a support ship to dock with it's easy to do something like that if I haven't really explored a place yet.

Once sent my dedicated planetary EVA explorer Bob off on a Minimus exploration EVA in just his suit, didn't think about slowing down till he had 0.2 left in his tanks. Think he slid, bounced, rolled about 5-10 km's, at one point looked like he might bounce into orbit. Bill and Dounian (Jeb was recovering from his latest test pilot accident (how exactly he was able to get that plane into the air after ripping off all but one wing part on the left side and then keep it in the air for 5 mins I'll never know)) didn't quite have the fuel left in the lander to come get him and then all return back to Kerbin. So Bob wound up walking about 20km back to the ship. Then jumped over it a few dozen times trying to get back in. (Bob be nimble, Bob be quick, Bob jumped over the rocketship) Was actually a very successful trip. Just learned a few things not to do. Dark Force Engineering - Launching Kerbanauts into space since early 2014 Engineer to Mission Control - You know, maybe we should think about getting them down out of space at some point ​Mission Control to Engineers - Why, they seem happy up there?

Just got back from a multi biome Minimus trip with a stop at the Mun on the way back along with Bob and Bill. Thinking of a ship redesign so he'll be going up again soon as he's my dedicated test pilot........yeah, better go make sure his personal hospital room is ready. Dark Force Engineering - Launching Kerbanauts into space since early 2014 Engineer to Mission Control - You know, maybe we should think about getting them down out of space at some point ​Mission Control to Engineers - Why, they seem happy up there?

Went and found my first anomaly in my current career mode as a part of latest trip to Minimus Yeah, initial landing was a little off roughly 40 degrees east, and 20 degrees south of it, so I sent Bob (my goto Kerbal for planetary EVAs) to go scouting for it and as he would find unsampled biomes, would then wait for the landing to come near him so he could resupply. Accordingly he has now been renamed to "Super" Bob Dark Force Engineering - Launching Kerbanauts into space since early 2014 Engineer to Mission Control - You know, maybe we should think about getting them down out of space at some point ​Mission Control to Engineers - Why, they seem happy up there?

Currently on my 4th variation of Mun/Minimus landers. Current setup can go hit 4-6 biomes on Minimus, get 1 sometimes 2 biomes on the Mun on the way back, then have just enough fuel left over to drop down to kerbin. Keep forgeting to put lights on it though, makes some interesting landings on the mun, takeoffs even more so. Picture on the launchpad is the explorer mark 1, retired after one flight due to strut issues (missing) between the asparagus core and the transfer stage. Mark 2 has boosters and the missing struts added. Have fun all Dark Force Engineering - Launching Kerbanauts into space since early 2014 Engineer to Mission Control - You know, maybe we should think about getting them down out of space at some point ​Mission Control to Engineers - Why, they seem happy up there?

Well, you can read my previous post about the mishaps with the mk1, still don't have enough struts between the asparagus core and the transfer stage, but it is flyable now, and I made it to Minimus, unfortunately I was still having a bit of the mk 1 curse. Managed to land safely, and sent bob out to collect some eva reports and surface samples. Then once he got to a region where he could get data I flew the lander to go and get him as he was down to .8 eva fuel. That's where the problems began as apparantly on my 3 man crew, Bob happened to be my best lander pilot, as Bill and Doodwig managed to do this about a dozen times. and then once I reloaded for the 13th time, and managed to get Bob there minus the rest of his EVA fuel this happened more than a few times. (Bob be Nimble, Bob be quick, Bob jumped over the rocket ship) Then once I did get him into the ship, accidently decoupled the four landing rockets, reload again Dark Force Engineering - Launching Kerbanauts into space since early 2014 Engineer to Mission Control - You know, maybe we should think about getting them down out of space at some point ​Mission Control to Engineers - Why, they seem happy up there?

So, here I am at the spaceport, looking at all the 550 science points required items I still have to unlock and 2 300 pt items as well (in unmodded KSP) and I'm thinking to myself where should I go to get more science. Kerbin itself, yeah, my planes and rovers tend to blow up, tho the rovers do last a few hundred KM before catastrophic failure, planes I think I can measure their travel distance once airborne in maybe the hundred of meters. EVE, yeah plenty of unexplored area there still, but only been having 20% success rate with flights there. Duna/Ike....... yeah, let's not talk about that. the Mun, hmmmmm damn, there's a dozen flags there and I've been there at least 3 times that, keep landing in the same biomes. *blinks* Wait a sec, there's only one flag on Minimus, I know I've only been there twice very early in this career. Let's go there, use the lander to hope around, and get more SCIENCE!!!!!!! So I decide to build an entirely new rocket as my last Minimus trip was pre-mainsails. Decide to use my deep space command unit/lander with it's multiple science modules, that I add some extra fuel to for my hops, change it from 3-4 landing engines/struts platforms and to get everything back home, and proceed to build. Now I've learned to test each section of a rocket design as you put it together for potential catastrophic failures. Lander, no problems. Transfer stage, hm lander looks a little wobbly, add some struts, no more problem. Core section of the asparragus boosting stage no problems, not enough thrust to lift on it's own. Out ring of the asparagus boosting stage no problems, sits on the launchpad just fine. Let's launch and test it out. Damn, it's going up really well. I might not need boosters on this thing at all, let's try to go to Minimus without adding them. (Unknown to me at this time there's a problem, actually there's a few problems, all of them minor(non flight affecting) but one, can you see it?) Ok, did pick up a slight roll as I jettison sections (1 revolution of the rocket about every 90 seconds), but it's the smallest roll of any of my large scale rockets to date, have no problems what so ever with controlling it, setup for final orbital insertion burn soon, along with the last of my asparagus outer rockets jettisoning. (can you see the big problem I'm about to have) Ok, I'm down to the core rocket, and I have a problem. I forgot to add struts between the core stage and the transfer stage. I have gone into a flat spin (Did this twice with the same setup, second time was strictly to get pictures, first time I was doing loops and not spins) Spend a few seconds trying to save this, when I decide, ok it's time to cut the throttle, eject the asparagus core, and try to save this ship (the screen shot I took of this doesn't show it, but I had a 90 degree bend between the stages almost) Ok, running my transfer stage engines, along with my 4 outer lander engines finally stop the spin (had been doing 1 revolution about every 2 seconds) burning the engines at full throttle trying to get it into orbit, but I have no more luck coming. So, not really sure where on Kerbin I'm coming down as it's the darkside, but decide to test out the lander without using parachutes until the last minute if necessary. It turns out that I'm actually landing in the ocean, and by the time I hit the surface my lander has actually slowed down to 8m/s and successfully splashes down without the chutes (which had been tested in last night's initial run) Forgot to take a screen shot of the lander just bobbing up and down in the ocean perfectly fine and vertical. Explorer 5 mark 1 (name of the ship) you will not be going into space today, perhaps your descendant (the mark 2) with added struts and a few boosters will succedd. Dark Force Engineering - Launching Kerbanauts into space since early 2014 Engineer to Mission Control - You know, maybe we should think about getting them down out of space at some point ​Mission Control to Engineers - Why, they seem happy up there?

Update to my earlier post, rebuilt the transfer ship, anchor the command section, FORGOT to anchor the lander, added a few fuel tanks, FORGOT to add anchors to the very bottom engines, all in all not too bad I said after I had gotten this thing back into orbit. Docked up to the refueling station, topped off the tanks, and went on my way. The upgrades I did do have improved handling immensely (still turns like a wounded cow tho) Now I'm currently finalizing my approach transfer, when I realize that I forgot to add additional monopropellent tanks to any parts of this monstrosity and the lander only has enough for me to do 2-4 rendevous with the transfer section (based on my current level of skill). Well, I'm just going to go for it, and if necessary, send a second transfer ship loaded with nothing but mono tanks instead of a lander module

Just found this thread the other day and have been laughing at some of the stories/pics people have posted and thought I would share a few of mine. First one is from early in my career game. I happened to notice that it looked like that kerbin, eve, and moho should be lining up in what would be a low delta v capable orbit around the sun. So I add a few science modules, fuel tanks and engines to my mun/minimus capable craft, throw Jebediah into the seat and off he goes. Did a deceleration burn to start dropping towards the sun and managed to reach eve and pass through there no problems, had to do an adjustment burn in Moho SOI otherwise I would actually pass too close to it and throw off my orbit. Now I'm on the far side of the sun, and amazingly enough, only need to do a burn of 150m/s and I'll be on a path back into kerbin's SOI, so I use up the few drops of fuel left in my current engines, drop them and then realise that when I had redesigned my command section from a kerbin returnable mun/minimus lander to this stellar explorer that I had upgraded the fuel tanks slightly, but had forgotten to put on engines. So quickly send off a few disposable probes to get some quick science so that I can make a rescue craft. Got enough science, built the rescue craft, but by this time Jeb has gotten so close that i would need a 4.5-5k m/s change to intercept him, and having never done an actual intercept before decided to use the rescue craft on a few asteroids to practice interception on them. Unfortunately this has left Jeb on an orbital path that brings him back close to kerbin every 3-4 game years. Next time he's close to kerbin I go out and try to catch him, but burned too much fuel, and had not quicksaved so back to kerbin goes the rescue ship. It turns out however, I should have gotten into Jeb's ship just to check his orbit as he would come to encounter Eve once again this orbit, and I don't know if it was just a close path, or if some aerobraking occured, but Jeb left the Eve SOI at almost 90 degrees to his original entrance path. A path that terminated inside of the star. Now along comes today. I've built and launched this new ship with the intention of intercepting ike and duna, and landing on both, and from there heading out to the next planet out from the sun to at least do a fly-by. so get the ship up into kerbin orbit without any significant problems, aside from securing the lander & command sections with supports to the engine sections. Aside from those two sections flopping around at times like a wet noodle in the wind when I go to full burn on my engines and making my HUD gyro go nuts, it's not that bad actually. To make things simple for the initial travel I had attached the lander to the command module top using a stack separator and would then dock once the lander was back in orbit to refuel. Turns out by doing this all my kerbals were in the lander, and none in the command module, so once I get into Duna SOI, I transfer the command staff into the command module leaving bill in the lander. However I'm leaving something out about this. when I had entered Duna SOI, I happened to be on an intercept path to Ikeso I burned the last of the fuel left in my initial transfer engines (the ones I started with from kerbin) and actually get into a 60/180km orbit of Ike. Burned a little fuel to tighten that orbit to a 50/55km orbit and I'm now ready to send Bill on his way. Detach the lander from the command & transfer engine section and as I'm on a nearly perfect polar orbit through the night/day side equally, I do my initial burn from orbit and I'm all set to touch down right in the middle of the day side in about 20-25 mins, so about 15 minutes later I know I'm about to reach the dayside of Ike and start preparing for my braking burn, when I notice something on the ground of ike passing underneath me. Not thinking much of it, I decide to turn on my lights just on the off chance I was actually close enough to see anything there on the nightside. Turns out I was as about 2 seconds after I turned them on, I plow into a mountainous cliff there on the darkside/dayside border that had been blocking all the sunlight as I got closer to the ground. No problem I thought, I'll just go ahead and restore my quicksave as I've now been quicksaving everytime I've done a MAJOR transfer between the planets one as I enter a planets SOI, and once prior to leaving it. usually also did a quicksave prior to getting out of my landers just incase there was a problem with my guy getting back in. So I go ahead and restore the quicksave and yep I'm back in orbit........Kerbin orbit...... At this point I yelled in frustration and quit the game for a few hours (this happened this morning) Now I'm debating on deorbiting this vessel, adding those support struts I forgot, as this save is prior to my refueling station rendevous