Wemb

Well, imagine you're in orbit - you're travelling forward in (some) direction - that's the pro/retro grade axis determined. The direction between you and the centre of the (local) gravity field is defines the pro/anti radial vector. The last one is the normal vector - and that's orthogonal to the other two (i.e. at right angles). You might now be asking 'but how do you know which direction it goes in?' - that's a rule of thumb - literally. It's a convention from mathematics called the right hand rule. - Stick your right hand's thumb, first and second fingers out at right angles to each other - Thumb up, forefinger forward and middle finger pointing from your palm outward - that defines the polar space you're in - so if you know where the source of the gravity is compared to you (middle finger), and which direction you're moving in (forefinger), then you always knew which way the normal vector is (thumb). Wemb

Oh, that's nice... Wemb

The UK Government's official figure was 4 mins between detection and impact. Note - not four mins from launch, but four mins between detection (by radar or satellites) and detonation. And, of course, the time between the public hearing the sirens starting to wail and the explosions would probably have been substantially less. Wemb

To get a slingshot. But getting the timing and trajectory right to do without having to do more expensive corrections afterwards? Might be more difficult than it's worth. Sorry - edit - not a slingshot - forgot that they're not the same thing. But still - getting the end tradjectory right might be too difficult to make it worth much. Wemb

Yup, I'd say minmus too - easy to get to, low dV to move fuel up from the surface - big flat open areas for landing on, low dV to get out of it's orbit, and when you're there, you're already most of the way out of Kerbin's system too. Low gravity can be a problem with things moving about - but the good news is that reaction wheels can generally be enough to correct anything that's beginning to topple over when you land - and, if battery and solar power allows, can be enough to keep a vessel perched in some every funny angles even when landed on a slope. You do have to be careful eva-ing - I've pushed rockets over by accident myself.. Wemb

Yes, I have, barely - and them only by duplicating a design of Scott Manley's in his recent Career mode tutorial video - and even then, he had to post an update video showing how to fly it in 1.0.2 as it was so much harder to get it into orbit. But, still, it does get into orbit, and enough to take a small T-400 based probe with about 1/2 of it's fuel left. Almost no fuel left to deorbit with though, let alone for a powered flight back to the KSC - but most times I'vebeen able to land it on the coast, or even ditch it in the water without loosing too much of the craft. Wemb

This is a thing - but don't forget, if you're far out, you'll only need tiny dV changes to tweak your intercept. You may well be able to do it without a node at all - just thrust limit your engine, use the navball markers to get into the right directions for what would have been the node handles and do small, small burns and see how changes your intercept. It'll probably be a enough to give you a handle on the (probably) two different vectors you'll need to make adjustments in, and I've often found doing the burn manually with a limited engine gives much more fine control and is therefore easier than trying to adjust the node handles - once I know which direction I need to thrust. Wemb

The only thing I'd add, is that ^^^^ is cracking advice when you're learning - just because Apollo went all the way down in the Lander doesn't mean you need to - put on an excessive transfer stage - my first landers were de-orbitting dropping down to within a km or so from the Mun's surface on the Munar injection engine before I separated to leave just the lander - and even then I could well be ditching it with fuel still in it's tank. You _will_ make a hash of landings, and you will want to make sure you have all the spare fuel you want when you take off and want to come home. Wemb

The Rocket Equation always applies - what may put a spanner in the works of the spreadsheets when looking at the nuke is that it uses fuel in a different way - or rather, it uses different fuel. Or,to be exact, it only uses fuel, but doesn't consume any oxidiser. So, if you match it up with the normal rocket tanks, any oxidiser you take with you when you're running the nuke engine has to be counted as a dead weight, rather than fuel. The fuel/dry mass ratio will also therefore be worse. The calculations all work the same, though. If you want to use the nuke's efficiently, use the spaceplane parts, some of which accommodate only liquid fuel rather than oxidiser - or install some mod that lets you change the oxidiser for fuel in the normal parts. Wemb

Should do - can the OP do a picture of what sort of thruster's you've installed and where you put them on your ship? In theory, you could have a ship that could only thrust in one axis ... in theory. Wemb

Which, if you're not a mathematician may seem like a strange and arbitrary number. It's not - e (Euler's number) is up there with 0, 1, À and i as being amongst the five most important numbers in the universe. Not least because of Wemb

Dumb question, perhaps - if you do this to slow down, you'll be orbitting in an opposite direction to that of the rotation of the Mun - so landing will require more dV to become stationary wrt. the Mun's surface - does this cost more or less dV than use lose by coming in that direction. Wemb

I played KSP for about a year before i found out you could do this - yes, once you're on your way toward your intended target, put in a manoeuvre node somewhere along the way, and then right click and 'focus view' on your target - assuming you've upgraded your tracking station enough you'll see the dotted line indicating your predicted path toward that target. You shoudl then be able to (gently!) tweak the node to change the resultant trajectory and approach to your target. Note - a manoeuvre node sufficiently far away from the target will only need very, very tiny changes to have a huge effect on your resultant path - I'd suggest using a mod to do a fine tune of the node if you find doing it with the mouse is too tricky - or, if you have plenty of fuel, an even easier way is to severely thrust-limit your engine and play with slow, short burns in the pro-retro/normal-antinormal/radial-antiradial vectors and watch what happens. As long as you're not ham-fisted and are far away, you can do this very safely. Wemb

Also, RasterMonitorProp for in-flight MDFs which make it possible to fly significant bits of a mission from the IVA view; Docking Port Alignment Monitor (which plugs into RasterMonitorProp as well as being standalone) - an essential for safe docking; NavBall HUD for when you need to walk somewhere over the horizon; Chatterer for the bleeps; Kerbal Alarm Clock, which if you're running multiple missions simultaneously, is a no-brainer. Wemb

Docking Alignment is very useful- I've also found that, if you can work comfortably without the exterior view, the docking MFD display in RasterPropMonitor gives even more useful data - displaying, numerically, both the lateral and rotational error and currently velocity - this is very, very useful and can really help fine tune a heavy close approach to a docking port. I generally use the exterior view to get on the right side and get my apporach sorted out - my target will have MJ on and so will be rotating or doing something stupid, I retract any at-risk solar panels, and I get within 30-50ms, and switch to the IVA mode, and finish the docking on RCS using the above mentioned MFD panel - I don't need to 'see' where I'm going, and flying with those numbers, if I'm in a good starting position and you're not too heavy on the RCS is normally very easy, even if it feels hairy not 'seeing' what's going on. But, as others have said, i) Docking Alignment Mod, ii) Fine Control iii) if you're using MJ's Smart-ASS to keep your craft pointed at the target, I'd suggest turning it off when you're very, very close and about to connect - I've had MJ's SASS end up 'fighting' the magnetic clamps. Wemb

The downside of the Hohmann transfer is that because your new Ap just 'touches' the orbit of the target, timing is even more important - so a Hohmann transfer will be cheap in terms of dV and an important and useful side effect will be that when you do meet the orbit of the target ship - and, hopefully, if you've timed it right, the target itself - circularising your orbit should put you into a matching orbit as that of your target - meaning that minimising your relative velocity with the target can be done in a familar and easy way. So you lose the flexibility in choosing a more complex intersect (as in your original picture). You may need to orbit a few times before you and your target are in good positions to allow a Hohmann transfer. MechJeb is good for demonstrating this. Wemb

Also, looking at your picture, and in case you hadn't tried it - play with the rotate and translate buttons in the VAB - those big-ass landing legs your using go down a long way - you can add more stability by angling them outward and so getting both a wider base and lower CoM when you touchdown - that'll help - but like SourSource says - make sure you don't destroy the engine by bouncing it on the ground when you land. Apollo 15 did that - but the LM didn't have to use the landing engine to ascend. Wemb

Kerbal Engineer Redux or MechJeb so you can get some numbers in the VAB. You can probably work out what sort of engines are most suitable based on the total weight of your base and looking at tables of the Mun's gravity and doing the maths - http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Cheat_sheet For some of the basics - but KER or MJ will give you useful, really useful figure in the VAB about how much dV different engines will produce on different landers/rockets. Wemb

Given the low gravity it's well worth flying your lab out to Minmus and work there - the extra dV to get the fuel to get it out there compared to getting the damn thing off Kerbin is pretty cheap compared to the results. Wemb

Nice tip - not a problem 633 squadron had - they knew they were flying over level, err, ground. OTOH, they did have fly to stay at 18m while doing 108 mps sideways. In the dark. Being shot at. And their 'reaction wheel' was spinning at 500 rpm and contained 3,000kg of high explosive. Would put Jeb to shame. Wemb

Another tip, if you're not flying with some aids, it can be hard to judge how far the ground is - keep an eyeout for your shadow as you get close to landing. What can also help with this is adding some lights, just like they did in this famous space-movie (at 1.43) Wemb

Also, you get more science per day the more data you stuff in it - when you get close to the 500 data limit, you'll maximise the rate of return. Alternatively, add more/better scientists. Can't explain why your research rate is so apparently low though. Wemb

Yup, but I meant if he didn't want to do multiple braking orbits. The only time I'd bother with a heatshield in the early missions is if I'm bringing back a science Jnr pod - which had a tendancy to make my capsules spin over and come in parachute first. Then the heatshield was more ballast than protection. Wemb

Building an early-tech Duna probe using asparagus staging with small tanks and spark engines - and only realising while entering Duna space that the fuel takes pretty much completely occluded the 1x6 solar array unless I went pointy-end sun-first - which was a problem when trying to enter orbit. Wemb

This,, which I shamelessly stole from 633 squadron after watching The Dambusters works a treat if you don't want to fly with mechjeb or are landing (eek) in darkness. Angling them so they converge at a point directly below your main engines can really help with judging the vertical height above the ground. Wemb