Wemb

If you had some dV left, you could also, probably come back higher, burn to slow down and make it without a heatshield. Wemb

It's the right-hand rule (which if you've done vector calculus or electromechanics, you might remember. Imagine your right hand is orbiting Kerbin counterclockwise (the usual direction) - point your forefinger in the prograde direction, your middle finger, at right angles, toward kerbin. Normal is the direction your thumb points upward in. Wemb

Nice - first of all, get into a circular orbit - not strictly necessary - but makes life easier. Do this by burning either exactly retro at the Pe or pro-grade at the Ap nodes (though not so much to re-enter Kerbin's orbit). Slow the burn down when it's getting close to circular - when it's just goes beyond being circularly you'll notice the Ap and Pe nodes flip around - when that happens cut the engines. Now check your inclination - set the Mun as your target (right click on it) and look at the AN and DE nodes - or just eyeball it by rotating the map - is your orbit in the same plane as the mun's? If not, but normal or antinormal (up or down) at the AN or DN nodes - where your orbit crosses the mun's plane. Use the manoeuvre node to plan it. Note you may need to re-circularise your orbit if you have to make a big change. Once you'e circular and coplanar orbit - make a manoeuvre node anywhere, and drag the prograde vector out till your Ap node meets the moon's orbit - that's the point when your ship will reach the moon's orbit. Now all you have to do is work out when to make that burn so you get there the same time as the mun does. Drag the maneaouver node arround the orbit till you get it to hit the mun - you'll see it when it does. That's when you should go. Once you arrive there, though, you'll need to do a another burn which will have the effect of a) circularising your orbit arround kerbin and causing you to orbit the Mun as well. This is called a Hohmann transfer. Good luck! Wemb

Possibly my 'Grasshopper' lander which collects science from the surface of Minmus and returns it to the orbital lab? It needs to have RCS to dock anyway (well, I do) - so I ditched the rocket fuels tanks and engine. Landing is fine - returning is more difficult due to the low thrust - but doable. Wemb

No, it's even than that now - from a LKO, coming in on a reasonable shallow re-entry in nothing but a Mk1 capsule, you need about 700m to fully deploy to landing speed. A new ship should have it set to 1000 by default, but old ships created and saved before (I think 1.0.2) will have it set to the old 500m which is fatal in most cases. Wenb

When you do wait till you're under 250mps before deploying your chutes, when do they fully open? If it's a Mk16 parachute, and it's appearing to fully open at 500m (you can right click on th part to check this number) then you will need to increase this above ~700-800m (make it a 1,000 to be safe) - the length of time needed for the mk16 to slow a capsule down changed recently - and new ships built with the Mk16 have a new open altitude of 1000 set - perhaps the ship in the tutorial is still set to 500m. Wemb

Be careful with flying - it's deceptively easy to end up going very, very fast horizontally and end up smacking your head against the side of a crater. Mind you, not as much 'fun' as falling down a slope on Minmus... Wemb

If there isn't already, there should be a mod for adding an in-capsule stereo. Possibly with the option to play selected tracks during particular events or triggers. Wemb

Did an an approach and docking to my LKO station entirely within the IVA with no GUI and without switching back to the map or external view and nothing but the RasterPropMonitor MFDs and the Docking Alighnment Indicator mod - that really felt special. Wemb

I thought an Apollo-style LOR mission profile would be the best way to the fly to the Mun and back. Took a while before I gave up and did it the von Braun way. Wemb

When you're sending a rescue mission, always check the seats are empty. - - - Updated - - - Play with MechJeb - a lot. And then do it all again without it - or at least without clicking on any of it's buttons. It's a great bit of tech, can save a lot of tedium and watching it do it's thing can teach you a lot about how to perform the manoeuvre you want - but it's no subsitute for knowing what you're doing.

The NavHUD mod might be useful? It projects a navball onto the view as if you were inside a giant NavBall. Though you really shouldn't need it after a while - eventually you get to just recognise how things are orientated. http://kerbal.curseforge.com/ksp-mods/220889-navhud Wemb

Having any sort of solar panels is, AFAIK, enough to satisfy 'generating power' - perhaps you also need a battery? Though I'd have thought any sort of command pod or core would satisfy that requirement. Certainly a solar panel should satisfy that. Wemb

What he said - get ready to face a long, -long- walk back to your rescue ship - you should remember to set the lander as a target when you're controlling your kerbal so you can work out which direction to trudge in back to your rescue ship. Also if you're flying an unmanned probe out there, and haven't got solar panels, add some more batteries - though you'll probably be fine if you're not using the transmitters. Finally, if you're having problems staying upright when landing, have a play with the rotate tools in the VAB - you should be able to angle the landing gear outward a touch to give you a more stable lander. Wemb - - - Updated - - - Oh - also note - falling over like this is bad, but not necessarily a disaster - depending on the geography of where you fell (e.g. on a edge of a slope forming a natural 'ramp') you might (might) be able to recover it - though it's a terrible risk. On Minmus the gravity is low enough you can easily take off and use the capsule's reaction wheels to pull you upright - the Mun, less so, and the friction may just cause your ship to explode before it can get off the ground. Sometimes toggling the landing gear can provide a bit of impetous to help as well.

I'd suggest you pop on something like Kerbal Engineer when you're learning - the data it produces will really inform your experience. As for doing plane changes (especially major ones), the higher your altitude when you them, the cheaper they'll be - so you might want to try getting into a much larger orbit, doing the plane change, and then transfering back to 500km altitude. Though, as others have said launching north (or south) from the start is the way to go - you won't get a perfectly polar orbit cause you're moving sideways due to the planet's rotation - but it'll be near enough. Wemb

What's the mission parameters - i.e. what Pe and Ap's do you need to achieve - I'm fairly sure I had a sun orbit mission, which when I looked at the numbers and compared them to Kerbin's orbit was something like 10x larger - the UI couldn't scroll out far enough to see the orbit. Needless to say, I cancelled the mission, paid the penalty and walked away laughing at the contractee. Wemb

Last week - getting a useful class C asteroid near Kerbal and managing to capture it and slow it down to a sufficiently good, near circular co-planar orbit to arrange a hoffman transfer to Minmus where the contractors wanted it delivered. Then realising I was orbiting clockwise..

I second this - it's a pain to get a bunch of rescue missions and having to jump back to the ships to work out which ones are empty and wihch aren't. Thought next I do this, I'm going to see if I can do something fun with the KAS explosives packs. Wemb

Yup, if you take a scientist with you they can reset the one-shot experiements like the sci-jr and goo canistars. (and you know about 'storing' science in the capsule, right?). A few hops there will give you enough science to put a Science Lab into Minmus orbit - coupled with a very lightweight landers and you'll have more than you can eat within a couple of surface hops - what will be limiting you then is not the lack of science, but the amount of time it takes the lab to reprocess the data and convert it into useable science. And even if you don't send a lab out there, you can do repeated trips to minmus and quickly max out the science that way too. Wemb

Nah - docking isn't boring. Rendevous is dull - but docking? Do it inside the capsule with the IVA view and KSP's gui turned off and using nothing but RasterPropMonitors. Switching back to the map or external view is cheating. Makes it exciting every time! Wemb

I'm wondering if the OP has mucked up his staging and has managed to deploy his parachute while in orbit - in which case, yes, you're doomed and the parachute will be destroyed. Like others have said, unless you're coming in parachute first, then it won't burn up. If you're flying just a Mk 1 Capsule and a Mk16 parachute, then you don't need SAS on reentry - the weight of the capsule will keep you orientated in the right direction and you should be able to make it back safely without steering at all. Wemb - - - Updated - - - BTW, to circularise your orbit - wait till your ship is right at the lowest point (periapsis) in the orbit (assuming it's above 70km) and then burn retrograde - this will reduce the position of the opposide point of your orbit (the apoapsis, the highest point) while leaving your peri mostly unchanged. Use the shift and ctrl, or right click on your engine to thrust limit it, to fine tune it as you near circular and you should fine it easy to get a near perfect orbit. The trick is to a) have the mid-point of the burn as close as possible to the periapsis burn in exactly the retrograde vector and c) get the burn done as quickly as possible, without overshooting it too much.

Is his name Hal? If so, leave him there.

Hangon - my science generation rate (e.g. the speed at which data turns to science, drop as % of data capacity used drops from 100%. If data capacity hits infinity, your rate of conversion might decrease to zero. Or the Kraken will consume the universe. No-body wants that, do they? Wemb - - - Updated - - - I'm not sure the cap is a major problem - the speed at which it converts data to science is the key limiting factor for my Kerbals - A few trips (3 I think) to biomes on Minmus has produced far more science that I can process in several years in my orbital Minmus science lab - okay. I've only got three Scientists working there, and none of them are superqualified - but the only thing the data cap is stopping me doing is returning the processed experiments back to Kerbal,and that's only because they're mixed up wth the unprocessed science awaiting data storage. If I could choose which data to take from a module, I wouldn't need to worry. Wemb

You're in good company - Gemini IV had the same difficulties. The whole 'aim at target and thrust' isn't going to work unless you're already on top of each other and have, relatively, little different in velocity. Wemb - - - Updated - - - What he said. But also, you know that you can't really talk about 'up' and 'down' in space? But pro and retro grade (and normal, antinormal, radial and anti-radial) are the nearest things you've got, and the only way you can describe what direction you're going. Basically - Prograde means 'forward' and retrograde means 'backward' (based on the direction you're moving, *not* the direction you're pointing). Radial and Normal are directions that are based on your direction of travel compared to the body you're orbiting - radial is the direction toward the center of your orbit (e.g. if you're flying around Kerbin, it points to Kerbin) - anti-radial is the opposite direction. Normal is a bit more difficult - but if you get your right hand, point the first finger in the direction you're flying, point your middle finger to the center of kerbin, and stick your thumb up in the air, then the thumb is the the 'normal' direction - and antinormal beng the opposite. Wemb

It is, in fact, rocket science. Wemb