dire

Wasn't too bad once I discovered elevons. I was honestly more worried about getting it off the ground at Minmus than I was at KSC, because it turns out one SAS does not do anything much for this beast. The other epic battle was getting it to go from 1200 m/s at 30km to orbit. I packed enough rocket fuel to get me to 55km and 1600 m/s and from there it was all nuclear engines pushing about 100 tons at 240 kN thrust. Next round I'd like to streamline it a little, maybe drop a pair of Rapiers and a pair of intakes and increase the wing surface a little to compensate. If I can get it going 1400 or 1500 m/s before I have to light the rockets it will be much easier to get to orbit.

In high atmosphere I foolishly tried to steer this juggernaut with ideas floating around in my head about "angle of attack" and "bleeding off speed," and I paid for those ideas with all 4 of my LV-N engines that popped right around the 40km mark. Sure that this was the end, I turned off SAS and the craft began to tumble freely. Much to my surprise, almost as soon as I let it start tumbling the heating effects all went away; from 32km it fluttered to the sea as gently as a leaf in the wind, to land on the opposite side of Kerbol from KSC at 20% recovery rates for 40k+ credits. Clearly, this craft has great potential if I can only figure out how to fly it properly.

I just landed a Minmus SSTO with no dropped parts -- up, land on Minmus, take off, straight shot to 45km over Kerbin. Lost a couple of bits in the de-orbit but overall it came through OK. I think I'd slap a couple of drop tanks on it for eve, detach them when I completed LKO and de-orbit the drop tanks, getting to eve and back all in one piece is a little too ambitious for me right now. My rules: 1) No Kerbonaut shall be left behind. 2) Waste not, want not. 3) Always bring a little extra fuel. 4) To clip is to invite the kraken. Beware its wrath. 5) 255 parts should be enough for anyone. I can build juggernauts in deep space, but beware the kraken. 6) Kerbonauts should have at least two of food, living space, and company. 7) Keep space clean; that debris should be recycled!

What is Mach 1 at 20km? Like 300 m/s? So Mach 4 would be 1200m/s?

Contract: Place a station in solar orbit. The station must be a new station and have an antenna, a docking clamp, and room for 5 Kerbals. The station must have a viewing cupola. (Incomplete) Notes: Next run. Contract: Ferry a tourist to solar orbit. (Incomplete). Notes: Next run. Contract: Land a tourist on Minmus (Complete). Bring them home safe (Incomplete). Contract: Land a tourist on Minmus (Complete). Bring them home safe (Incomplete). Contract: Put a tourist in Minmus orbit (Complete). Bring them home safe (Incomplete). Contract: Plant a flag on Minmus (Complete). Contract: Transmit or recover science data from around Minmus. (Complete) This is a single-stage-to-everywhere craft I recently developed on its maiden run, bringing a pilot, 2 scientists and 4 tourists to Minmus. I would have liked to swing by solar orbit on the way home, but even with a Munar assist on the way to Minmus I was running on fumes. This will be a dead stick re-entry.

So the answer is "The klaw is broken." The kraken strikes!

I recently landed two Mk2 craft from high orbit; one hopped into a brief solar orbit, and the other one came back from Minmus. Both dropped directly into the atmosphere from their respective positions. The Minmus craft had a Large radiator on the bottom of its cockpit and nose area. The solar craft required 4 passes to burn off speed and a number of 'simulations' in order to get the de-orbit sequence just right without exploding. The Minmus craft required only 3 passes, was able to descend through the upper atmosphere going 300 m/s faster than the other without exploding, and splashed down on the first try, even though due to a design error it was missing a control fin. My conclusion is that the large radiator contributed a huge amount to the Minmus craft's success. Totally worth the weight. It also acted as a ski when I flopped over on Minmus touch-down.

For the rover, looking at the wheels from the top down, the left side (I think? Or it might be the right side) need to have their motors in reverse mode. The rear wheels need to have their steering in reverse mode (but the left has a reverse motor and the right has a normal motor). Don't put your wheels on in pairs; you have to mount each of them individually for the motor/steering settings to work. And as @bewing said, if your wheels are clipped they will break. And don't let a kerbal on EVA anywhere near your wheels; if you let Jeb touch them they are likely to kill him and the rover both.

Try putting him in a service bay instead. Kerbals probably get unhappy if their internal body temperature gets much higher than body temp, and having them explode due to internal heating is probably not a desirable side effect of re-entry. Edit: Ninja'd

Nothing seems to happen when I unlock the joint, even if I turn off SAS and accelerate. I am pushing the load because I docked using mostly main thrusters and didn't have enough torque and control to be confident that I could flip the craft on approach. All those giant monoprop containers are over 95% -empty-. And I just tried doing a simple undock, flip, redock -- don't have enough monoprop for that. Am thinking about launching something like a Big Orange and like 5 SAS units and docking that to this mess just to give me a little control over my orientation. Or deleting them from the tracking station; each of those ships has completed its primary mission and while I'd -like- to dock them up with Mun Command and refuel them, it's not critical if I don't.

Your CPU and ram are fine. What sort of graphics card do you have? Assuming your computer has a graphics expansion slot of some sort (there are several sorts) and further assuming that it doesn't have a dedicated card right now, you could get a lot of mileage out of buying a cheap graphics card (like, for example quadrupling your frame rate with the cheapest card on the market). Just make sure it's the right type for your expansion slot.

My suggestion is maintain a low orbit over kerbin, and fly a 2.5m heat shield up with a klaw and stick it on the nose of your shuttle. I would bet that solves your problem. Obviously, the margins are more generous with a 3.5m or 10m heat shield. But 2.5 should reduce the incoming heat to your cockpit and increase drag enough to solve your problem.

OK, so a picture is worth a thousand words: Obviously, the center of mass for this craft is...a little off from the center of thrust, and at anything better than nominal thrust it starts spinning like a top. It -started- with a lot of RCS fuel, but it's mostly empty now and there isn't much by way of SAS on it....all things to add on my next design. Now, it's held together with 3 Advanced Grabbing Units, but I can only seem to get one of them to flex properly. In theory that's probably enough to move the CoM over the center of thrust but it would be a lot easier if I could get the other two joints to pivot. Is there some trick I'm missing? I've switched to other craft, reloaded the save and the game, changed control spots. I haven't tried decoupling the craft and recoupling (simply because it was so very painfully slow the first time to couple them). The simple way to test if the klaw pivot is working is to toggle torque off for half the craft, free that pivot, and then perform maneuvers. The expected result is that the parts with no SAS enabled should flop around almost at random.

I spent a silly amount of time yesterday getting a fairly simple Mk2 spaceplane splashed down on Kerbin. I tried to bring it in butt-first like a rocket but at 35km it would spin and the paper-thin cockpit would crush like a beer can, splattering poor Jeb all over his four passengers. I finally managed to bring it in with a combination of three factors. First, I had my resident scientist collect all the data of interest in the cargo bay and store it in the passenger compartment with him, and I opened my cargo bay door and kept it open for the whole descent (It turned out the science project had similar heat tolerance to the cockpit, so it survived after all! But I thought it wouldn't). Next, I kept the aircraft high for a long time, spending fuel to keep it around 60km for an extra couple minutes. Next, I spent even more fuel (the final stage entered the atmosphere with an almost-full tank) to hit 35km going only 1500 m/s, which turned out to be just barely surviveable. Jeb could've had a BBQ with the floor of his cockpit! The exact critical altitude and speed will vary from craft to craft; you may find that you discover several different altitudes at which you have a critical speed over which your craft explodes. I found that if I varied my AoA even slightly from dead prograde, the cockpit would explode, so I had to rely on anything else I could think of to make drag. Lower your landing gear if you've got it. Spend every drop of fuel retrograde between 55 and 35 km altitude -- it doesn't do you any good if you implode before you burn it. Save early, hit alt-f5 to name your save files differently and save often! I highly recommend making a named quicksave just before you hit the atmosphere or jettison your next-to-last stage so that you can try many different approaches to the problem.

That is a pretty cool rocket plane. Do you just point it straight up when you launch or do you do the whole spaceplane "500km run at 10km height" thing to get your speed up first?

That looks like a very handy plane! In the example I showed I have a probe in the cargo hold for all those pesky "Take 4 gravimetric readings on the surface of the Mun" missions, but just getting the plane there is an accomplishment.

Hi folks, I don't know if this is possible and I don't have an "entry", but I'm wondering if any of you have created low-tech spaceplanes before getting the last upgrades to the facilities. Restrictions on the plane: Must be capable of getting a payload to LKO. Small payloads are OK, large payloads are better. Realistically, 14 tons to orbit given the mass restriction would be fantastic. Must be capable of returning to the Space Center after deploying its payload. Doesn't have to be SSTO, but the less you drop the better. SSTO would be ideal. Doesn't have to take off on the runway, but c'mon, it's a spaceplane, not a rocket. I've already seen some very impressive SSTO rockets. No tech that costs more than 300 research to unlock -- that means NO: Rapiers, Whiplash, Aerospike, Ion (on a spaceplane?), shock intake, engine pre-cooler, or quad adapters (although bi-adapters are available and you can make a quad with 3 bi-adapters). That probably means Panther engines. Not more than 255 parts or 140 tons total weight. NO Mechjeb or WiseASS. The planes should be human-pilot-able, because hardcore stock If you really want me to score them, I will, but I'm honestly just wondering if it's even possible at this point. I am -working- on an entry but it decided to spontaneously fall out of the air at 6km and 600m/s just after the panthers started giving me 174kn thrust. And yes, that is two different flights with the wings and engines set up a little differently.

It sounds like your best bet might be to land the base in stackable sections at whatever tonnage you're comfortable lifting. For example, first drop a set of 2-4 rover bottoms, then drop the bits that go on top, and finally hook them all together. I like using claws rather than docking ports simply because it simplifies the connection a lot, and it also seems to be a lot less laggy. The contract probably specifies one docking port, but you don't have to use it for anything.

Someone was asking for the .craft file. After fixing the most glaring errors on the landers (solar panels, fuel) I was over my 255 part limit so I took off the probes to get it under. But I added another 3 lander seats to compensate; this should now get EIGHT recruits safely down to the moon and back. Use at your own peril and watch your staging carefully, I also swapped the big orange tank in the center stage out for a smaller, less massive tank; it now has a higher payload and there should be less fuel left over once you get to the Mun (or wherever you're going). Similar craft and payload Also it bothered me to have to fly one stage backwards, so I fixed that. If you at any time are flying backwards you are probably doing something wrong. Edit: The new, improved payload is too fat to fly. I linked a similar craft that is actually going to Minmus with a similar payload, but I haven't tested the landers on the Mun and I have no idea what their munar performance is like. Also the cupola landers start short on fuel, so to land on the mun you may want to transfer fuel to them after your trans-munar burn is done.

I'm very tempted to get KER, but I want to play through to at least the end tier of the tech tree in Career mode all-stock first so I can say I beat it . Last time I seriously played KSP there was no such thing as career mode. It turns out the second stage is very over-engineered; I completed my Munar burn with almost 2/3 of the tank left! So in its present configuration it's definitely a candidate for some sort of interplanetary expedition. The top two stages, including the 2.5 ton fairing, come in at 67.164 tons, 152 parts and 110k credits. That means the cost to LKO is 95k credits and 403.036 tons. I could send 5 light ships to the Mun each with 1/5 of my current payload and I guess the cost per ton comes out about even, but this saves me 4 launches and lots and lots of things that can and will go wrong. If your 100-ton cargo ship is reusable it's probably cheaper in the long run; I could have tried to salvage most of the bottom stage but I was more worried about getting it into orbit.

Hi all, I just launched a 470-ton beast with 231 parts in order to get 30 tons of landers and probes to high munar orbit (hopefully with a bit of fuel left over, I don't have -any- mods that would tell me how much delta-V I have). This is an all-stock ship; I know people -love- to brag about their modded designs but all-stock ships would be most helpful to me as a campaign-mode kind of player. I just about have nuclear engines unlocked, but I can either unlock those -or- the mk2 and mk3 aircraft pieces, but not both at the moment (something this mission should help with, actually). Am wondering if anyone has a really efficient and minimalist design for this? I could definitely see myself building interplanetary ships in munar orbit, but in career mode 200k per launch hurts I actually haven't finished this run yet so I don't actually know if this ship is too much or too little. It's got (3x2("Kickback" SRB) + (3xLV-T30 "Reliants) + 3xMk-55 "Thud" + 1 mainsail) in the bottom stage, plus one "Poodle" in the middle stage and actually a FL-T800 + LV-909 "Terrier" hidden away under the (2.5 ton) fairing just in case. Depending on how much fuel I have left over, I'm going to dump fuel into Mun Command in high orbit, and hopefully de-orbit and land the entire payload en masse with the terrier. If I don't have that much fuel left, each of the landers actually has as part of the payload its very own FL-T400 and twin "Twitch" engines that I am hoping to use to rotate the duty roster on my grounded base. Lots of untried designs, I'm sure there'll be a failure cascade somewhere in the mission. Which is why I'm asking what other people are using, so I can compare xD Edit: The bottom stage got me into LKO just fine, even though I don't like starting turnover until the kickbacks are done and gone (at 20km or so) and spent a good 200 delta-V making my orbit pretty. I still have 400 units of fuel in the tank (out of 5600) to contribute to my lunar burn; if I'd thought to put a command module on this stage I could de-orbit it with that and probably recover a chunk of my 200,000 credit investment. Next time, maybe. Instead that fuel is going towards trans-Munar burn. Edit 2: It turns out the second stage is a little over-engineered; I completed my Munar burn with almost 2/3 of the tank left! So in its present configuration it's definitely a candidate for some sort of interplanetary expedition. The rest of that fuel is going into the orbital storage in Mun Command. Edit 3: Got 1280 fuel units into the storage at Mun Command. Used most of my onboard monoprop to dock, but Mun Command has all sorts of surplus to refuel it. I only had 75 units of default rover tankage for monoprop anyhow -- just enough! The extra 150 parts made a pretty big impact on the lag for my simple back-country command outpost. The real payload for this mission is 3 scientists who were undergoing astronaut training at Mun Command, as well as two tourists who are along for the ride. The scientists will each plant a flag, hopefully each in a separate Munar biome, collect a bunch of data, then return to Kerbal with their intel and plant another flag. Then they're to be deployed each to a separate science facility. For RP purposes I'll probably shuffle out Maree and Grajorie when their replacements' training is complete, as well as the guy on the munar Far East Crater base. That'll also let them flag on Minmus and return home to level up.That'll give me six level 2 or 3 scientists and enough data to really Science! Edit4: Hah, forgot solar panels on my probes and landers. And it turns out the landers have enough gas for a suicide burn landing, and then just barely to get into orbit again, but not back home. So they'll need to dock with something and refuel for the homeward leg.

I was intending the RCS fuel for final deorbiting maneuvers over Kerbin (and keeping the pods from flipping and then blowing up, which has been a problem)., and docking with the previous pod. I also used it for a little extra thrust in landing. Even assuming the cans were full, they presumably wouldn't have more delta-v than the liquid/oxidizer and engine on the other craft (especially considering i'd also need to haul the other craft). My rovers should definitely be up to the job of moving fuel, although it might become a little tedious because their tankage is tiny. I just landed a refueling tanker and I'm moving these two over to haul it about a kilometer to the Munbus. I think I'm just going to abandon their science mission; I cannot for the life of me find area XPC-N Alpha, even though I know for sure it is within 2 Km of this screencap. They are literally right on top of it and the navball navigate isn't working with the rovers. So I am going to miss out on like 5 points of science :\ Bewing I like your refueling rover. It looks like it would be very slow and heavy but more stable than my rovers because the wheel base is wider (these guys tend to flip and roll very easily at speeds more than about 8 m/s). Edit: And the refuel run continues apace. A snail's pace, as each rover only holds about 72 liquid fuel units and for some reason those tiny cans take a crazy long time to fill. However, I can easily dump 500 or so units of fuel from the refuel pod into the stranded tour bus and be on my way home. And yes, the refuel pod is missing its lander engine. It wasn't a hard landing, it was the rover shenanigans getting it to stand upright so they could carry it after it found a small patch of especially not-flat terrain. Also, it turned out those landing legs were -just- too short to stabilize a Poodle. In the future I am definitely adding a second claw to all of my rovers. Thank you for that excellent idea!

Why, what's wrong with the craft as-is? If I managed to refuel it, it should definitely be able to go SOMEWHERE. I managed to land it with two rovers attached, it just took more fuel than I thought it would. And the notion of just grabbing the ship and completing the mission that way is the reason this current ship has a crooked nose. Tourists can't EVA but they -can- transfer modules within a ship. This ship also dropped two rovers (they're 3 km away doing a science mission), each with both a crew cabin and an AI, so one viable option would be to transfer the tourists to a better ship using the rovers.

So, there are 3 tourists and Valentina on the surface of the moon. They made it down OK, but instead of using -half- their fuel to get down, they used -all- of it. How would you get them back to Kerbal for the contract completion? And yes, that is a tourist vehicle with insufficient delta-V for a moon landing, grappled by -another- tourist vehicle that landed safely and is now stranded.

I\'m sure they\'ll fix it eventually. I managed to splash down back on Kerbal on my second attempt of the day: You\'ll note that I didn\'t manage to land it vertically this time, which if I have a liquid fueled final stage spells doom. But with my can of compressed air, it only meant a few crazy maneuevers on launching (You can see the landed payload in the background on image 2). I will note that I didn\'t seperate the liquid stages that landed this time, as it probably would have blown up my kerbals. If you try this rocket, you\'ll need at least a tiny bit of fuel to cushion your return to kerbal, as the chute only slows it to about 14 m/s and the RCS tanks are delicate.