FlyingPete

As part of my Eve colony, I've landed a secondary gas station around 10km from the main base area. Nearby is this pile of random debris from the booster that brought it there: Now, it's much too big to drag back to base, but I figure the colonists brought some tools with them... With the base being pretty far from here, I thought it might be useful if I could repurpose some of this junk into a little hut or something for the pilot to shelter in overnight etc. What's the best way to go about this? The simplest way would appear to be to find and replace the fuel tank with a hitchhiker cabin in the save file (as they're about the same size.) Is it as simple as that?

The mk1 inline cockpit should just use the same IVA view as the regular mk1. I personally think the capsule IVA views are fine how they are- for most applications you're going straight up anyway, so the outside view isn't particularly useful. It's really on planes that being able to see is useful. The windows on the Mk2 cockpits are a tad on the small side, and of course the Mk3 needs an IVA. It would be good to complete the set with interiors to the crew cabins and the lab.

I built a couple of small planes with a pair of rover wheels level with but slightly higher than the nose landing gear. Land the plane on the landing gear as usual, then retract the nose gear only, which lowers the rover wheels to the ground.

There's a cap on how much you can get back through transmission, but if you run the experiment again later and bring the results back to Kerbin, you'll get the remaining science. So whether you bring all the data back to Kerbin, or transmit some now and bring the rest back later shouldn't affect the total.

I built a vertical SSTO that I found quite useful as an orbital ferry. Make one version with crew cabins, another with a fuel tank instead and you're set for taking stuff to/from your space station. With a fully-reusable craft, you don't have to lift a great amount in one go.

I've recently set up a colony on Eve in my old science mode save. There's a launch window opening up from Kerbin, so I want to use the opportunity to send more supplies and equipment over to aid exploration. The question is, what to send? There's already two planes (one aerospike, one ion, both with rover wheels) so another fuel station is a must. I have a 4-man rover too. All those seas are asking to be explored, but I'm somewhat stumped by efficient means of boat propulsion. Some sort of fuel truck might be useful so I can bring the fuel supplies to wherever's most convenient at the time. Any more ideas? Pete

I always do this with contract spacecraft. I put a space station in orbit of Kerbin for Probodobodyne, so their flag was on the side of it. It looks quite good when you assemble various modules together with different flags on them to build a larger station that's actually useful.

I have a 1-man plane on Eve that's powered by six ion engines. There's no oxygen so jets are out, but these work really well as an alternative. They're useful on SSTOs as well as long as you can get suborbital while within the atmosphere- then all that's needed is a slight nudge to push the periapsis out of the atmosphere.

I keep meaning to clone some of the smaller fuel tanks to new parts that hold only oxidiser for use with spaceplanes.

Part 2 The first exploration mission for the Eve colony was to sample the lakes to the east of the base area. Lenke Kerman was assigned to take the rocket plane with its experiments to the nearest one. The twin aerospikes are really a bit overpowered for use here. One would have been better, but caused issues in launching the plane from Kerbin. The best technique seems to be to make an initial climb, then use the plane mainly as a glider, with short engine bursts to maintain altitude. Lenke quickly concluded that the most fuel-efficient way to travel was to not use any, and glided down to the surface for a landing. With Eve station on the far side of the planet, contact with the base was lost once he dropped below the hills. There isn't much weight on the nose wheels, so down elevator/torque was used to improve traction. In rover mode, it's possible to drive at 15-20m/s at 3x warp. After an hour's driving and flying, the target lake came into view. Lenke kept his altitude roughly the same by following the contours of the hills, for reasons which will become apparent. One efficient way to operate this vehicle is as a glider that has the ability to drive to the top of a hill. By pointing straight down the hill and extending the nose gear, the plane quickly launches itself into the 'air' and glides smoothly. Best glide speed appears to be around 25m/s, with a pitch of 10 degrees nose-up. The slight ridge ahead caused Lenke to land briefly, but was then able to coast over it and take off again on the other side without stopping or using the rover wheels. He then covered the remaining by gliding with height to spare. The third and final landing of the trip brought Lenke to the shore of this lake. He parked up on a peninsula just across from a small island. Lenke: 'Mission log, Lenke Kerman recording. Have landed on the shore of a small lake. Commencing EVA to collect surface samples.' Lenke wandered down the gently sloping beach to the water's edge. Unfortunately here he must have dropped the memory card for his camera, as the pictures from the trip over were strangely missing when he returned (aka: I've lost them somehow) Lenke: Entering the lake. Appears to be a substance other than water. Instrumentation detecting quantities of propellium, hexagen and blutonium. Given the possible elements in the lake, Lenke opted not to spend too long at its shores. On the way home, he chose a route through the nearby mountains to test the plane's performance in hilly terrain. At some points, the two rover wheels struggled for grip due the the limited weight on them. Short engine bursts were needed to push the plane over steeper sections. The last climb saw Lenke unexpectedly airborne and back in radio contact. He fired the engines briefly to gain height, then settled into a gentle homeward glide. He touched down with about 20km to travel and reverted to rover mode. During the drive back, he drove uphill as much as possible to take advantage of the gliding ability. At one point though, he went rather too quickly downhill and burst a tyre. Lifting off into the air, he landed safely and stopped to fix it. Soon enough Lenke found himself back with the others. Admund insisted on attacking him with a compressor to blow any remaining lake 'water' off before letting him inside. Before sunset, Lusen Kerman decided to survey the gas station outpost to the west of the base. The Ion plane needed refuelling, so it would be a good test of the route and hardware. The Ion plane is much lighter than the liquid-fuelled one, so is much more responsive as a rover. The 10.6km were easily covered by a combination of both driving and short gliding hops from the tops of hills. The plane is very stable in aircraft mode, flying at between 15 and 20 m/s. This makes transitioning between modes simple. The hills to the north look like an interesting target for exploration. Lusen: Plane 2 to Base. I've reached the gas station area. The lander seems to be in good condition, only one leg to repair. One of the refuelling arms appears to have broken off somewhere though. The other two look good. Gilbrett: Roger that, Lusen. See if the fuel pumps work. Did you remember the procedure? Lusen: If not, I blame the teacher. Attempting fuelling now. After several attempts, the plane was connected to the gas station by its wing (the nose and tail are both at the wrong height, whereas the dihedral angle of the wings make them adaptable) and fully refuelled. The sun was quickly dropping behind the hill, but Lusen took a few minutes to check out the debris pile a few meters away. When using a claw for refuelling, you have to switch to the gas station (or whatever part has the claw) just before the two ships connect. Otherwise, the planet disappears and bad things happen. Parts of the booster had apparently survived lithobraking. A probe core, fuel tank and a few sections of girder had landed close together. Too bad they're too large to haul back to base for reuse. Lusen then set off home. A large part of the journey was covered by air, followed by a relatively slow climb over the top of the hill. Another fifteen minute journey and the base came into view. While parking up, Lusen noticed one of the tyres on the other plane had mysteriously sustained a puncture, so fixed that before heading in for the night. The base flag has also apparently blown away somewhere and will need to be replaced. Another day though. Thus ends the first day on Eve.

Especially for things like planes (which I'm not very good at building) I'll use revert if it doesn't work correctly (call it R&D using a CAD system). The flight where it works is considered a manned test flight.

I tend to send up a core piece first- usually just some structure with a bunch of docking ports attached. Then send up different modules for fuel, control, crew quarters, lab, extra docking adapters etc. When I decide to build another I'll migrate all unwanted ships to the new station, dock a tug to the old and send it off to the Mun or someplace. So a little bit of both methods.

You're basically doing the same thing as an orbital rendezvous, though obviously you only have one orbit to do it in, and the target has a rather odd trajectory. First get the inclinations matched, either by launching into that plane or doing a plane change in LKO. Then it's a case of tweaking your maneuver node until you get a close approach. You can always do a course correction later. If you can get the asteroid far enough out, it shouldn't take much delta-V to nudge it into an aerocapture trajectory instead on an impact.

If in doubt, build it! Make a few notes of how it's constructed, then off to the VAB for assembly.

When you get close, it's useful to target the base. You can then use the navball indicators to get your relative velocity pointing at the base.

I think I might start using this in my career save as a crew shuttle. Ok, so it only holds a single pilot, but considering it's 100% reusable and can get into orbit on less than a tank of jet fuel, I think it's worthwhile. Certainly more efficient than my 3-man crew bus. Larger ships for going places can stay in orbit.

I recruited Jongun Kerman earlier. Or perhaps it should be Kerman Jong-Un? He certainly sounds like a Kerean defector

I've just had a go at replicating your design, then added two monopropellant engines between the rear wings/control surfaces, and also an inline docking port. It's really easy to fly, and with the right profile you can get it into orbit with just under half the liquid fuel remaining, and plenty of monopropellant for orbital maneuvers. I launched a small station as a target and rendezvoused with it. Jeb seemed to be having fun on the way up. Docked to the station. Bill and Kerman Jongun were on board to meet him.

It's quite surprising how little thrust you need to get into orbit, once the jet engines have done most of the work. I quite fancy building a Jet/monopropellant spaceplane sometime. Stick a couple of the little monopropellant engines at the back and you'll get slightly further with the same fuel. I like the plane design too

It makes sense to me- first step is to launch yourself into a solar orbit with the same inclination as Moho, by ejecting from Kerbin orbit at the AN or DN of Kerbin/Moho. At this point, the position of Moho doesn't matter, just that the inclinations are the same, and your Sun Pe touches Moho's orbit. From here, it's exactly the same process as rendezvousing with a spacecraft- do a prograde or retrograde burn at periapsis so that next time you come around, Moho is there to meet you. There will be a rare launch window where Moho is in the right position to meet you on the first pass, making the second part unnecessary.

You need to send Dodgson Kerman to Duna to meet up with Nedry If you want to go to Eve, one method of getting science from the surface relatively simply would be to add a probe to the ship. Launch that to the surface from Eve orbit and have it transmit the data. The Kerbal crew can amuse themselves doing science in orbit and on Gilly. You don't even need a ship to get to Gilly as you can jetpack down from orbit.

I have some Kerbals now living on Eve I've provided a rover and a couple of planes so they can go exploring. Since i've never been there, actually it's me doing the exploring. Once you're there, it becomes a cheap, instant way to complete the 'plant a flag on X' contracts. If you position the base near several biomes you can use the base as a ..er.. base from which to send a rover.

Rovers don't work too well on Minmus in my experience. You spend far too long spinning wheels to overcome inertia. Some form of engines are a good idea, either to provide extra forward thrust, downward thrust to improve traction, or upward thrust to make suborbital hops.

I've not attempted to land and return from Eve yet- though I've sent some one-way colonists, hopefully to be joined by more as the next launch window opens. Really the best way would be to have a dirigible of some sort to take the vehicle out of most of the atmosphere.

Give career a go. There's then a new challenge early on in how to build craft that are small and efficient.