moogoob

I like picking a task I'm not good at and building and launching a bunch of missions in Sandbox. You tweak and either you get good at, say, precision landing rovers on the Mun or at least get better at building vehicles to get rovers there. The below is part of a series of Mun landings, Apollo style that I'm doing right now as practice:

I do shuttles with tanks and boosters in dorsal/ventral symmetry. It avoids the off-centre CoM inherent in traditional ventral-only shuttle designs, and the only real downsides that I've seen so far is 1) can't really use a central vertical stabilizer so you need to have two (more mass) and 2) I think it wouldn't work that well in real life as the plumbing would be twice as complicated. It works for me, though!

Today I had the thought "hey, 3400 m/s is a lot, and it's spent pushing through the atmosphere. Imagine what I could do with that if I got a launch stage to orbit!" and did the obvious thing of putting a couple giant boosters on the Nastybird and sending her with a satellite to Duna. The tiny cargo bay isn't meant to deploy satellites when the external tanks are still attached (they're usually jettisoned after ascent before circularization is done) so getting the little thing out was a bit of a wiggling game, but it still has enough delta-v to return to Kerbin and hopefully aerobrake safely to get them home. I'll post updates if that's successful. (PS this is all in Sandbox) The last screenshot is of a nice little gravitational anomaly I came across in another save. And by gravitational anomaly, I mean "buggy ground scatter". I found it funny, in any case.

Played with Kronal Vessel Viewer. I love how it renders the Nastybird! Also, I've been doing a series of "Kerpollo" missions, which are exactly what you think - CSM/LM Apollo-style mun landings, using this guy, the Emperor I:

I like the idea of balloons. Heck, NASA launches balloons all the time for atmospheric studies. A rocket launched from a balloon would be ideal for these types of mission.

I've landed on Pol many times, never ran into any invisible mountains. One of my favourite moons! Just lucky, I suppose?

Because as humans our gut reaction is to dislike change, particularly if it's happening without our input or direction. We have difficulty not being in control.

I missed half these it seems. The only one I really supported was the "Save the Round 8" campaign. Because it's an awesome part and I used it all the time.

Went to the mun. Asked myself, "where on the mun haven't I been yet?" The poles sounded dreary, so I went for the Canyon. Apollo style, too. Kerpollo 7, the mission was called.

Nice visualization!

Still toying with rover landing systems, this time on Laythe, a planet moon I rarely ever go to. My practice in aiming landings is paying off, it seems! Disclosure again - I'm playing with lander design, so using Hyperedit to reach Laythe orbit. Seriously, I've done enough full missions to the Jool system that I feel justified! This one is a design that also worked well on Duna. I've stripped the ablator from the heat shield (don't really need it on either world due to low air pressure on Duna and low orbital veolcity on both) and use the parachute to help control descent. Final approach is handled with help of the engines to bring the assembly to a hover a half meter or so from the ground, then the rover is dropped and the skycrane flies away to go crash somewhere. It's worked well on two worlds so far - I might try testing it on Kerbin, or a version with more thrust and fuel to be sent to Eve.

1 - power, either cells or panels 2 - hatches/docking port 3 - cargo bays 8 - drogue chute manual override 9 - main chute manual / cut drogues 10 - abort Abort - eject fairing/ ejectable nose cone assembly

It's like Photoshop. I've been using it since 1995, still learning new things.

Tried making as light a munar lander as I could, which led to exploring making a lander without reaction wheels or any non-engine attitude control at all, for that matter. I'd actually forgotten the Spider engine has gimbal until recently, and used it to my advantage. My first probe landed fine, the second toppled. When coming in for a landing this way, you need to plan your approach as you completely lack the ability to turn whenever your engine isn't firing. Mechjeb's landing autopilot is no help with this (was mainly using it for the landing prediction) but the suicide burn countdown was. Just reduce thrust if the countdown starts going up, up if it starts decreasing. That way you don't have to cut your thrust at all and just saunter into a soft landing.

The final two or so minutes of a Mun landing. I love the craters - wish more bodies in the Kerbol system had the mun's procedural craters.

*hangs head in shame*

It doesn't do that for me anymore, but it used to. My question is, why does Mechjeb now attempt a 180 degree roll every ascent? That's only since 1.1!

Have you tried re-building the trolley? When I built mine, I just built it in order, like any other rocket - mini probe jet first, then built the trolley off of it. OR! Is the issue the decoupler? Have you tried putting the decoupler on the other side, the jet probe?

With my finding of that Mun Arch, I decided some more exploration was in order. This was a good opportunity to practice my precise landing skills! (Full disclosure: I was lazy and Hyperedited my rover with skycrane to Mun orbit.

Investigated that Mun Arch that I found. Bill found it creepy. After that, went home!

Went to Eve. Sandbox, but trying to get there with as much cost-cutting as I felt I could get away with. I settled on a Cargobird to orbit (low cost, recoverable except for the drop tanks and SRBs) , then a Justice-US (Terrier-powered transfer stage -simple and inexpensive) and due to a favourable transfer window and slight overestimation of required Delta-v on my part still had plenty of fuel left. Adjusted incoming trajectory to a 50km periapsis, and did a successful interplanetary aerobrake directly into descent. Sad bit? The Oscar B fuel tank and fuel cell broke on splashdown, so the thing was dead in the (explodium) water. Oh well! I don't go to Eve often, this trip might as well be eventful.

One. Went lightweight after the last update and two hotfixes.

Lol at my earlier post - now we have "don't ever use landing gear without tons of testing"

1. start new career. 2. custom settings - give yourself all the science, leave other sliders where you want/feel is appropriate 3. enjoy! That's how I've been running my current career save, and it's been very fun. You can use the science parts however you want - spend on parts, start a strategy, whatever. You have the freedom of sandbox to some degree, but still have to upgrade buildings and by the end game you better be collecting science en masse or you'll find the end of the tech tree to be pretty brutal to fill up.

For the first time in forever, I found a darn Mun arch! And by accident too! It's the one in the north rim of the Mun's East Crater.