Wemb

Fortunately, the map display makes it very clear which bird is the one which needs repositioning. As for those that are running low on fuel, I just de-orbit them - at speed, aiming for the KSC. For fun. Wemb

Oh dear - did you forget the solar panels? Or, if you didn't, did you put the littles ones on radially, and then point the nose of your vessel at the sun? That's what happened to my first interplanetary ship - the batteries ran flat and I ended up with a very expensive brick. I think the power came back after it got slung out away from Duna and the plane it was on changed, but by that point it was on a useless trajectory. I made sure the next time I used extending solar panels. And then I blocked them with my saddle tanks. Same result. Wemb

I was under the impression that you had to use entirely new satellites for each contract and that repositioning an existing one not work? Yes, for tourist/rescue missions, I normally send up two Mk1 capsules bolted together with a StayPutnik bolted to the top. and a couple of radial parachutes Usually capable of any tourist or rescue mission around LKO, or any mix of the two. Wemb

You can get stuck in early career game - but it's fairly easy to rack up a lot, and I mean a really large amount, of science by a couple of well-planned trips away from Kerbin. Basically, go to Minmus. Landing is so trivially easy, you don't even need to build a lander as such (you can 'land' a second or third stage rocket on Minmus safely even without landing legs engine first if you're careful; if possible, take a scientist with you to reset any science experiments on the way; and above all, use the delta-V maps to do it cost-effectively. And if you haven't already, get MJ or KER so you can plan the size of your rockets effectively. Don't go overboard with your designs. Most of my early career problems were caused by me repeatedly putting into orbit colossally over-fuelled 'satellites'[1] that, looking back, were all entirely capable of return duna missions. Consequently they used equally over-priced, over-large launch vehicles. Wemb [1] Meaning, putting an nearly full FLT-400 fuel tank with a terrier engine under a probe core. Completely insane.

That's normal - from the wiki page concerning the SC-9001 Science Jnr: "The measurements are only biome specific if on the surface. At all other altitude segment the measurements are always the same over the complete segment. It can gather science at all altitudes and environments." Same goes for the Mystery Goo container, though this isn't explicitly stated in the wiki. Crew reports do change when flying over different biomes though. Wemb

Do you get the sound back if you turn the resolution back down? That's a lot of mods - perhaps you're now running out of memory? (Sorry - stab in the dark, there - but I can't think what else to try other than selectively turning the mods off till you find the culprit). Wemb

Thanks everyone - glad I wasn't going mad... I'll give up on them till 1.1 now. Thanks! Wemb

One final comment, even if you can't get the CoM aligned perfectly, depending on bad the torque you have is, it's possible that you might be able to overcome it with reaction wheels, etc. but at a lower thrust - try reducing the thrust and seeing if your reaction wheels, etc. can compensate when your thrust isn't as large. Wemb

Playing with a few utility type mods such as MJ, RasterPropMonitor and Docking Port Alignment Indicator but nothing (AFAIK) that affects aerodynamics - and am having terrible trouble when using fairings. In short, most of the time, if I use fairings, my rockets tend to flip up and over early into the gravity turn - assume because the fairing is generating a ton of lift a the front of the rocket and it's pivoting about the engine. I would normally assume that this is because my rocket is inherently unstable - but this doesn't seem to be the case as generally they fly perfectly well without the farings at all.... What's the practical purpose of fairings currently? The added weight, control systems, etc to prevent them flipping out has made my rockets that use them more expensive to get into orbit, rather than less aerodynamic, but more stable launchers. Am I missing something obvious? Wemb

Yup, as above - I don't fly planes much, but whenever I've returned in a Spaceplane, I've always had success by coming in perpendicular as Evanitits says - wing first bleeds off a surprising amount of speed high up in comparison to what you may be used to when re-entering in capsules - and your angle of attack only really matters either when you're having to care about aerodynamics in order to glide/fly. Edit: Re-reading the OP, I'm wondering if he means his trajectory should be parallel to the ground, rather than his AoA. If so, yes, shallow is best - but also, as we say, come in as shallow as possible, but with as much drag as you can as high as you can. Wemb

Heatshield's aren't necessarily needed from LKO at all. Almost all manned vessels I have that return from LKO never bother with one - some lands with just the capsule, and some engine first. Generally the only bits that explode on re-entry are various science and solar panels bolted to the side. Wemb

There needs to be more 'like' buttons. I love slide rules, and own several.. Though I wouldn't dream of attempting to do anything with them I couldn't double check with a calulator (due to my ineptitude, not the tool's). I really would like to see some sort of hybrid between MJ's manoeuvre planning mode (which makes life too easy) and RasterPropMonitor - something akin to the real-life Apollo Guidance Computer - still needs a bit more work to use (so it isn't the default choice for doing Hohhman transfers, circularising, etc) but it capable of doing the heavy lifting when you need precision. or want to plan ahead a bit more. Wemb

No! Not like that - do it properly! :-)

Or, buy an SSD. Either work. Though I'm not sure this is the answer the OP was after :-) Wemb

Oh - looking at the map - yes, you're quite right - Okay - that's a surprise - It feels like it's a lot more - well, in that case, he should certaily go to minmus - he'll be able to do a lot more with the fuel once he gets there, though his lander's engine will probably be grossly overpowered Wemb

I'm utterly rubbish at planes, but the only time I did make a working SSTO, I had no problems at all during re-entry. Coming in nose first was a disaster - but having the plane pointing 90deg straight up - i.e. with the wing surfaces prograde bled a surprising amount of dV off the plane in the upper atmosphere - much more than you'd expect if you're used to seeing capsules reenter. And, while it was able to do that, there still wasn't enough air pressure to make the control surfaces and lift cause a problem. I can't remember when I had to put the nose down and start gliding in, but it certainly never blew up due to heat/stress. Wemb

MJ is a really good learning tool - and I certainly would suggest it's worth using it (at least a few times) to do the actual burns so you can sit back, relax, and watch what it's doing from the map view and get a nice understanding of what it's doing, why, and how it does it. MechJeb is generally very good at performing discrete manoeuvres, and won't do what we've all done at some time which is occidentally mash the z key at the wrong moment, or have the ship pointing in entirely the wrong direction without realising it. It's timing is a lot better than mine too! I pretty much always fly with it onboard, not because I need it to tell me how to fly my ships, but because it's a lot better at more accurately performing the manoeuvres I need than I am. Well done on getting the satellite into orbit though - timed launches into a particular plane can often be a bit tricky. Wemb

As others have mentioned, if you're not very experienced (at landings, anyway), you may want to consider a minmus mission instead. There are some different challenges - you'll need to launch into a different plane, and your injection burn will be much, much bigger... ... But Minmus's gravity is sooo low, that assuming you can get there, you'll have a much easier time of it - for a start you don't even need a traditionally shaped (e.g. with legs) to safely land on minmus, and even if you do topple over on landing, depending on your ship, you may find you can right it with the reaction wheels alone. Finally, and the kicker, is that the gravity is so low, you'll be able to hit much more than just two biomes. Minmus is so easy to land and return from, that, eventually, it's well worth sending a mothership/lander combo to it - I think my 'grasshopper' lander can land (or take off, can't remember which, it's been a while) entirely on the RCS thrusters it uses for docking, and barely uses the 'spark' engine it has except for circularising it's orbit and the deorbit burn arround minmus. Wemb

Alas! Obviously I should have known that were that experienced and weren't, for instance, someone who only started playing KSP two days ago. I understand it must be annoying to get replies from people who clearly don't automatically know how many hours you've put into the game. Especially when your described problem would probably indicate that either the mod has not been properly installed, or that you've not entirely understood how to use it. In both cases, it might indicate that you might not have fully grasped how to use it. But I'm glad you've dispelled me of the notion that you don't knowwhat the mod is supposed to do. Thanks! In which case I assume you have probably not installed the mod properly. I would suggest rechecking what you've done and re-reading the manual. Good luck! Wemb.

Which cockpit are you using which doesn't got the monitors? You know the monitors are only visible in the IVA (cockpit) view? Push 'C' to toggle between the IVA and normal view. Wemb

Okay - forget about MechJeb for a moment - it'll help in doing the burns, but it's really not necessary for this. There are three things you need to do to get the orbits to match: 1- Get the Pe and Ap to match between your sat and the desired orbit - you can eyeball this easily enough in the map, and sounds like you've done this. 2- Get your planes to match - if you've done 1, then go back into the map and spin the display around and look where your orbit and the desired orbit's cross (the ascending or descending nodes) - you need to put a maneuver at one of these to adjust the 'up' or 'down' of your orbit so it matches the desired plane. Note - if you're orbit is on a wildly different plane to the desired orbit, this is probably going to be a very expensive maneouvour - you should try and launch such that you a) fly in the right direction, but also b) so that you're flying into the right direction at the right time. Try popping your rocket on the pad, and then watching kerbal spin under time acceleration on the map - you should launch into the right direction when the KSC is right underneath the desired orbital path - otherwise, you'll be starting off in the wrong place entirely. 3- And the most annoying one that everyone has screwed up from time to time. You need to be going in the right direction... Look at the map - you should see dots flying around the desired orbit - that's the direction that your satelite needs to be travelling in. If you're going the opposite way, you need to a perform a maneouver to do a 180 degree turn. The amount of dV to do this should be twice what your current orbital velocity is (since you need to be going in the same orbit, but exactly opposite velocity) - it's cheapest to do this at the Ap. MJ can do all of these for you, but I'd try and have a go manually - you don't need to be horribly accurate for sat missions - eyeballing it is entirely good enough most of the time. Wemb

Actually, I think an even better example of an uncontrolled reaction would be the Demon Core - the components of what was going to be the third bomb dropped on Japan - which, at Los Alamos twice killed in entirely uncontrolled and unconstrained nuclear reactions when it was accidental made critical during experiments. (An A-bomb and (even more so) H-bomb's need to be -very- controlled to produce a 'bang' rather than just a ton of radiation). Still a bomb, and still death's - but no explosions (or leaks, etc - the components were later used in a bomb test). Wemb

I think that given this is a society that developed the technology to put a Kerbal on the Mun before they invented the ladder, then judging them by our standards of technological development isn't particularly enlightening. Having said that, Kerbal's appear entirely unwar-like, and certainly there's no indication of waring factions on Kerbin. My guess is that they absolutely did invent thermonuclear explosives (probably before the steam engine) but they did so because they made a really big bang and though the faint green glow they left afterwards was pretty - they mostly use them for fireworks displays. Wemb

Yup and once you have the tech to put decent satellites up (not exactly sure which item on the tech tree unlocks this, but it's not just the stayputnik), they you will get a lot fo satellite launch missions - and for this it's definitely worth the time to develop an optimised launch vehicle that puts one (or more!) up into LKO with the minimal amount of rocket. Satellites can be very lightweight compared to a manned mission and with a spark engine and a sensibly small fuel tank can pootle around Kerbin and it's moons and are a cheap (if dull) way to acquire cash. Wemb

Ah, I wondered what had replaced the imperial f*ckton. I thought it might have been the shedload, but I'm glad we're using a more sensible unit now. Wemb (edited for the wiki giving me the delightfull replacement unit of 'loveton' instead..)