turbine495

Hello all, Here is my newest creation, the Tiny Little Craft, or TLC for short. It is a very small drone, powered by one Ant Engine. I made this in KSP .25, with NEAR (not sure if it works without) and TweakScale (to reduce the size of the landing gear and tail fin). To not waste all the fuel, use short bursts of power (by the way, Squad implemented a new feature - Z for full throttle) when speed gets too low. It is essentially a glider. Happy flying! Also, how do I upload .craft files? I would do so if someone asks for it. -turbine495

Hello everyone, I want to make a simulation of a Mars Sample Return Mission in KSP, and one of my requirements is to make it fairly realistic. To do that, I'll need to make a reentry heat shield / capsule combo for my lander, something like this: (this is Curiosity's descent capsule, by the way) Are there any mods which I could use to make this in KSP? I could use Deadly Reentry, but I currently do not have it. By the way, my lander looks like this: The descent capsule will undock from the ion-powered transfer bus and use the shell-mounted retrorocket (probably a couple of Sepratrons) to dip periapsis into atmosphere. The transfer bus will remain in orbit, so that the return capsule can dock to it for the flight home. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. -turbine495

Greetings fellow Kerbonauts! I was playing 0.24.2 Career Mode, and I, to complete a contract and get science, decided to go to the Mun. My landing stage had too small of a fuel tank (an FL-T200, with an LV-909), considering that I had tons of science gear aboard. The landing used up about 1/3 of my fuel, and I considered myself screwed. After giving the ship the name "Mun Base A", I started using it to complete contracts (flag and Science). As I did not want to transmit all my science, I eventually quicksaved, and took off in the general direction of Kerbin. (I landed in the Farside Crater). I reverted to quicksave several times to get an optimally fuel-efficient ascent profile. Here is where I goofed. After a not-so-optimal launch, I wanted to revert to quicksave to try again. But no! My brain decides that pressing Quicksave right now was a good idea. I realize my error and attempt to revert to quicksave ASAP. After loading up my botched launch mid-flight, I settled for "attempting to escape the Mun and getting into a Kerbin orbit" . I burned for escape, and when the map showed my Kerbin orbit, I set up a maneuver node to lower my periapsis into the atmosphere. From here on I timewarped, happily watching the node coundown tick. The first indication of trouble came when I slowed down timewarp to grab some "high above Kerbin" science. When I tried to resume my previous rate of warp, the game told me I cannot warp faster than 'x' while below 'x' meters. (I didn't remember the exact values). Woah, so I am THIS close to Kerbin already? I looked at Kerbin in the distance. Nope. I went into Map View, and was shocked. My ship was in a high parabolic tragectory over the Mun and about to crash. I went into "Emergency Landing Mode" in an attempt to save Bill and some science. But alas, the ship crashed, and ~300 science was lost. Poor Bill. Can anyone tell me why my ship goes back into the Mun's SoI, when Map View showed it was escaping? Thanks!