tsotha

The problem is hard isn't actually harder. It's just more tedious. The way they set it up you can't do the big contracts at all because you can't build a big enough ship. So you have to grind out a bunch of "science from Kerbin space" contracts before you can do anything interesting. I like not starting with maneuver nodes and targeting, because you can still do everything, it's just harder. But it shouldn't take so long to raise the cash you need to loosen restrictions on mass and part count.

Yeah. The early building upgrades need to cost less.

Usually when I decline a contract I get the exact same contract as a replacement. The only thing that changes is the company name.

I did this one last night. Turned out to be much easier than I anticipated. I was able to hustle him aboard without targeting or maneuver nodes, and it didn't take much more dV or play time than normal. The one change I made was spending a lot more game time - IOW you want your orbit to be very nearly the same and then compress time until the rescuee is very close. As he gets closer try to match the orbits more exactly. I was able to get him within 1.5k with a very manageable closing velocity.

I'm getting these contracts long before I can build a plane or a rover. Fine Print didn't used to release them until you had the technology.

Odd. When I used Fine Print I could not get contracts to complete without turning off SAS. Maybe that changed when they integrated it with the stock game.

I couldn't find your post. Did you push or pull? The recommendations I've seen have all been to pull to avoid the problems you're describing.

800 I can do. The contract lasts for 34 years, so I guess I'll keep searching for the right rock.

Bahahaha. So I captured an asteroid, all 2000 tons worth. My dV went from 6000 m/s to 350 m/s as soon as I attached to it. On a ship about as big as I normally build them. Oy. Does anyone know the mass range of class E rocks? Do they get much smaller than this?

No landing on Tylo?

I suspect Zwer.ch is probably on to something. You don't actually get credited with the science until you recover the ship (assuming you didn't transmit it). Particularly if this is high orbit/low orbit stuff it's easy to do the experiment more than once, and when you actually turn in the second one you won't get full value. The question is are you getting something? Because for goo containers I think you have to do the same measurement four or five times before you don't get anything at all. If you're getting nothing there probably is a problem. What mods are you running?

Right, but it will be a good diagnostic. If he decouples one manually and the SRB remains attached then the SRB isn't attached to the decoupler. If not... well, he could always put them on a command group.

Aside from staging, the other possibility is the second set of SRBs is actually attached to the main stack instead of the decouplers. When you stage them, do the decouplers fire and not eject the SRBs, or do they not fire at all?

The funny thing is Kerbal ion engines have waaaay more thrust than real life ion engines. Usually ion engine thrust is compared to the weight of a piece of copier paper. IRL ion engines are valuable because they have an enormous ISP. Newton's second law and all - the faster your fuel gets shot out the back the more efficient it is. The problem is ion engines are used for days or weeks at a time. Or they're used for a few minutes on every orbit for months. As a game mechanic this just doesn't work - nobody is going to sit and do a burn for a week. So the developers tried to give you the ion flavor (low thrust, high efficiency) without trying to be too realistic.

You can "deploy" them before you even enter the atmosphere, so you have, like, a year to do it as you come back from Duna. In stock, anyway.

Well, if you're gonna do it you should land it at KSC first and then launch it again

2,316,737 money/3154 science/4320 rep on the default "hard" settings. If I do it that will be the end of the science tree for this game

Duna is not that much harder to get to than the mun. Your lander has to be slightly better than a mun lander, but not much. You'll need more juice to get back into orbit, but you can parachute down. If you wait until the right launch window you can do it all in one shot without any fancy (nuclear or ion) engines. If you give your lander a little bit of extra dV you can easily use it to return to Kerbin. Don't forget to repack your chutes.

The reason I say "outside of sandbox" is I have a limited amount of money. Clearly I can build a giant ship, refuel it, send it to Jool, refuel it, and put it into Bop orbit. I'm not sure I can do that with the 7.4MM I have, though. But even beyond that I was wondering if anyone had actually tried this, or if that's a contract people just turn down. I just did a class D system eject, and that was pretty brutal.

Show of hands - how many people have done this (or something like it)? Is it even possible outside sandbox?

I've always resisted installing Mechjeb, but I might do it strictly for that feature. The porkchop plot tells you everything you need to know about going to another planet.

I've had pretty much the same experience as OP. Every time I design a space plane for a purpose it always turns out cleaner if I mix jets and rockets instead of using Rapiers. I don't care about aesthetics at all, though. You might be able to make better looking ships with rapiers.

I'm not a fan of either LV-N or ion engines for a Duna shot. If you wait for the optimal window (and you're not using DR) the dV you need isn't that much more than what you need to get to the Mun. Fancy engines make a lot more sense if you're somewhere you need the extra efficiency.

Or a another ship. You can transfer fuel through it as if it were a docking port.

Isn't this one of those strategies that only really works when you max it out?