MaverickSawyer

Well, I finally did it. I landed on Duna. Okay, "landing" is kinda inaccurate, more of a "splat". Aaaaand the ascent stage doesn't have enough torque to tip upright, it's too heavy for the Kerbals aboard to try and tip it up... Yaaaaaaay. Now I get to earn the rescue tab on my salad bar.

Quick test reveals that they kinda work on Eve. Very low thrust, so the TWR at sea level is abysmal, but it does technically work.

Is it possible to make it packable/deployable? I.E. you go on EVA and deploy it with an engineer?

How well would these work on, say, Eve? Has that been tested at all?

So I've run into a problem with my current save where it's behaving... strangely. I'll send a rocket to the pad from either the VAB or the KSC menus, and it'll spend nearly 15 seconds frozen, run for less than a second, then freeze for another 15ish seconds. It took me nearly 10 minutes to go through 30 seconds of game time, and it never once showed the yellow time clock for "sim speed". Always the "real time" green color. This issue has not happened on previous launches, and only triggers above a certain part count on a vessel that I'm still trying to nail down, but is probably around the 80 part area. I've tried multiple different rockets, but the only commonality seems to be that the vessel in question has inventory space on it that has cargo loaded. What files and/or info do you need from me to help figure this out? I'd really like to fix this issue so I can continue with the save...

My God. It lives again.

Me, too. Yeah, it's a little harder to get to, but it's so much easier to land there, and setting up bases on the flats is an absolute cakewalk. Not to mention the higher multipliers for science.

Some really old stuff, but useful payload nonetheless... Some vintage spaceplane shenanigans to deliver a solar-electric debris removal tug to orbit.

Docking ports can be used as a control point to make handling easier. Right click on the docking port in question on the active craft, and select "Control from here".

Had a busy day yesterday... Found the Green Monolith on Minmus... Made it to "In space Low above the Sun"... Made a screaming flyby past Moho... Launched a space telescope... And pondered the majesty of a comet from the night side of Minmus.

Talk about a precision landing.

Completed the transfer of a bunch of science from the surface of Minmus to Skylab. Skylab is now fully stocked with science data and is cranking out frankly ludicrous amounts of science. Following the transfer of the science samples to the station, the sample return probe was destructively deorbited.

Ooof. That is a hard one. That's why I tend to run a 10% margin over what I expect to need, minimum. Longer range missions, like to Duna or further, I will usually do 15-20% buffer. Better to have to launch more payload/fuel than to find out that... yeahhhhh, that wasn't enough.

I run mod heavy, so the rockets are reskinned Vectors by Restock, and I don't remember what the jets are. Yeah, I noticed the off-axis thrust issue as I left the atmosphere under rocket power. Not sure how I can fix that while keeping the aesthetic I wanted. Will look into it. Other quirks are that it's not very stable in yaw. Might change out the vertical stabs and shift them more upright.

Reviving this one with a recent addition... Decided to use the Delta parts from Bluedog Design Bureau to make a Delta III lower section to toss a crew capsule into orbit. Nothing tricky, done it plenty of times before. Everything went great until I hit the first set of boosters burning out. The SmartParts sequencing I use to trigger the next stage a bit early to avoid the thrust tailoff of the BDB boosters triggered correctly... and then the entire bottom of the rocket came apart. Cue LES triggering and dragging my crew to safety, followed by a revert to VAB. Double checked all of my parts for clipping, checked the timings, added a half second delay between the first and second trio of groundstart boosters, launched again. Same point, rocket came apart again. Right at groundstart booster burnout. Huh. Revert to VAB again. I start checking all the staging events in detail and find I had swapped one of the sets of radial decouplers to the wrong point. Instead of ejecting the spent boosters, it was ejecting the lit airstart boosters, which then promptly slammed into the core and caused everything to go kablooie.