NFunky

Thank you guys for the advice. I've used Flyby Finder for RSS before and it's great, but I kind of didn't want to use any external tools with Stock. I do think that next time I try something like this, I'll definately work on my launch window. I'm thinking transfer earlier and faster? Anyway, I was able to get a return trajectory using about ~500 m/s in maneuvers. Since it took me a lot of trial and error, and I learned a lot from the experience, I thought I'd include some pics too. (I apologize for the links, the embed image function isn't working.) First thing I want out of the Eve encounter is to sling my Sun Ap way up above Kervin's orbit. By the time I leave Eve SOI, Kerbin is lagging really far behind and will only get further, so I need to slow way down to let it catch up. I also need to make sure that my ascending or descending node is right where my orbit re-crosses Kerbin's. Luckily, it looks like I can do most of that with the gravity of Eve. https://www.dropbox.com/s/crgxrdya9ry7zo8/screenshot1.jpg Since my Eve flyby w`iop[,asn't able to raise my Sun Ap quite enough, I do a prograde burn at Eve Pe. This, in theory will let me fine tune the timing of the intersect precisely enough to meet Kerbin when we cross. https://www.dropbox.com/s/91soizs24fibw25/screenshot2.jpg I say in theory cause I thought I would just be able to watch the "closest approach" distance while I burned, but the patched conics weren't having it. It took many quicksaves and reloads to get this right, and here is a pic of what it looked like. You can see it is saying 14 years, and it would sometimes get up into the thousands of years. This was honestly my biggest frustration with this whole mission. https://www.dropbox.com/s/r6mrjt5gqubcabd/screenshot3.jpg It wasn't until after I had passed the first intersect with Kerbin's orbit that I got the true close approach numbers. Does anyone know how to make the patched conics behave better for interplanetary stuff? https://www.dropbox.com/s/028eop67k9ppypd/screenshot4.jpg After this, it was just a matter of cruising to aphelion and doing some final minor normal/radial corrections to get an encounter. And all in less than two years! https://www.dropbox.com/s/wr71eo1hx8zqqfr/screenshot5.jpg I sure learned a lot about orbital mechanics, and even more about the KSP predictive system. I hope others find this an educational example too.

So I've got the old Explore Eve contract here. I could have just packed a ton of fuel and done the whole 'go into orbit of Eve and wait for the return window' thing, but I decided I'd try to do it the hard way. So here I am on a Hohman transfer to Eve, with aroun 900 m/s dV, and I'd like to get back to Kerbin in under 10 years if possible. I guess what I'm really asking is how to properly set up an Aldrin cycler orbit with Eve and Kerbin? I'd like to be able to fly-by Eve (near or far, doesn't matter) and return to hit the Kerbin atmosphere in as little time as possible. Again, I have ~900 m/s for maneuvers, so there's a good amount of wiggle room here. Has anyone done anything like this? Any tips would be very much appreciated.

Thank you guys. I am looking at the legacy RT files, but I'm not much of a coder, so it'll be slow going. Seems to me like it would be fine for the spacecraft to auto-orient to a selected target. That was essentially what I was planning to do with the stock system, only using the SAS's "hold target" thing. In stock comms, when you lose LOS, you can still issue SAS commands. The old RT system actually sounds more elegant than tat, so I'd be fine with it.

Yeah, it's physical orientation I'm talking about, and yes, with the use of PersistentRotation in mind. Ideally, I would like to use a mechanism similar to celestial body occlusion. If possible, cause parts to occlude comms the same way. I am hoping something using the stock comms, or even solar panel phyhsics would be doable, but I'm open to any suggestions. I have never coded an actual mod before, but I'd be willing to give it a shot. Any modders want to tell me how to get started?

Hey guys, I've been looking around, but can't seem to find anything like this. I love playing with extreme realism, and one thing that is very important in real life is spacecraft attitude for communications. I would like to either find a mod (or if need be, develope one) that requires orienting non-omni antennas toward either the DSN or a relay. I want to require GEO satellites to point their dishes down toward the planet (using PersistentRotation makes this possible). Ideally, if comms are not oriented correctly, the spacecraft would act as if their was a loss of line-of-sight, and have all the limitations that implies. Is there such a mod? I am not an expert modder, but I have done a lot of amateur .cfg editing and tweaking, and I have a rudimentary knowledge of C#, etc. Would this be a difficult mod to create?

Just for those who are curious, I did discover a partial answer to my first question. It appears that FAR has a config file specifying wing and control surface lifting area, in the FerramAerospaceResearch.cfg file. For modules FARWingAerodynamicModel and FARControllableSurface, there are two values. "MAC", the Mean Aerodynamic Chord, is basically the leading-to-trailing-edge width. And "B_2" which is the root-to-tip width. Not quite sure if there is a value for wing thickness, but I couldn't find anything obvious. HOWEVER, I'm still very curious about the real shuttle's glide slope and landing flare. Is anyone playing with a real shuttle model in FAR and having a similar experience to me?

Hey guys, you're a bunch of smart people, maybe you can tell me if this seems right. Overview is, I'm working on a small mod that rescales all parts to 2x, for use with RF and RSS (not RO). This allows me to pretty much build stock-ish craft that have reasonable performance in RF and RSS. So, got a question about FAR, aerodynamics and rescaling. Does anyone know if I change the rescaleFactor, if that will automatically inform FAR we are dealing with 4x larger surface areas? I have been trying to build a Mk3 Space Shuttle, and am running into some interesting problems. I basically have to balance it to where it is slightly unstable during reentry (CoM too far back) in order to make it maneuverable enough to attempt a landing. Otherwise, as soon as I'm subsonic, it's lawn dart time. I seem to remember that the CoL moves toward the back when supersonic, but it almost seems to be the reverse case for my shuttle. Finally, once I've gone below 5km, I have to maintain a very steep dive, and pull out very hard at the last second in order to have the lift to land. I know this is pretty realistic, but can someone give me the actual numbers for shuttle final approach? I have to go in a nearly supersonic speed, and I have to start the flare at above 2km to make it in time. This is what got me thinking something was really wrong with my aero model. I have to be within seconds of the correct flare time, or I nose dive, or loose too much energy and slam down on my belly. Any help would be very welcome!

The game runs quite well on the Pro 4. Touchscreen works perfectly in game as well, aside from the no-right-click thing. I can't for the life of me work out why it doesn't, but I'll keep trying things and post if anything works.

Hi all, So I just got a new Microsoft Surface Pro 4, and it actually runs KSP with all the RO mods really well. I'm really enjoying having the touch screen during gameplay, and the screen can detach to make a tablet, so I figured I'd see if I could at least do VAB stuff in tablet mode. Long story short, everything runs fine, but the right-click gesture (which seems to work in every other program) doesn't do anything. I can place parts fine, but I can't rotate the view or bring up part tweak menus. Has anyone had any experience with this sort of thing? Is there a way to get KSP to recognize press-and-hold as a right-click? It'd be nice to have the scroll and zoom gestures too, but I really only NEED the right-click feature. Thanks!

Thank you! I'll check out that link today. Strangely, even though I made all the suggested corrections, but it still says it found 25 errors. I've updated the dropbox file with the corrected version, so if you has any more suggestions, I'd be grateful. https://www.dropbox.com/s/3kftdve3lzxbhc2/Kerbalism Overhaul.cfg?dl=0

Hey all, I'm having some trouble doing a bit of simple game tweaking. I have an install with a collection of mods that makes KSP very realistic, without using Realism Overhaul. As part of this setup, I've written a custom cfg file that tweaks a number of stock settings, as well as things like Real Fuels settings, etc. My problem is, when I start KSP, i get this message during the loading screen: ModuleManager: 6313 patches applied, found 25 errors related to GameData\Kerbalism Overhaul.cfg The strange thing is, everything seems to work once the game loads, so I'm not sure what errors it's talking about exactly. My game is running a bit slow though, and does occational 'garbage disposal' pauses, so I thought maybe I could clean up my cfg and improve performance a bit. Does anyone know how to tell specifically what errors ModuleManager is detecting? Otherwise, could some kind soul look over my little file and tell me if they see any obvious issues? https://www.dropbox.com/s/3kftdve3lzxbhc2/Kerbalism Overhaul.cfg?dl=0

I really appreciate the advice. My dudes ended up dying, but only after making Mars orbit and were bravely doing research until the end. So I got good science, and you're right, now I have a depot with hydrogen fuel, food, water, oxygen and a bit of hypergolic RCS fuel. Also, I can dock my next mission to it and use it for extra living space while waiting for the return window. Thanks again!

Just a heads up, unfortunately it looks like MechJeb won't plot maneuvers in a heliocentric orbit. The vessel has to be in a planet's SOI, or the planner gets stuck at "Computing: 2%".

Thank you guys! This is fascinating. While I hate to lose this mission, this incident has made me understand yet another reason why Mars is so much harder than the Moon. Are there any plans for manned Mars missions that include abort provisions? I know that was a very important part of every phase of the Apollo missions, so I assume NASA (or whoever) would want as robust an abort protocol during as much of the mission as possible. BTW, great call on MechJeb. I don't really ever play with it, so I forget about it's powers of education sometimes.

Hey all, So I'm playing an RSS install, but this should apply to Kerbin-Duna as much as it does to Earth-Mars. I've got a manned mission on its way to Mars, and about half of the way there, several coronal mass ejections blasted my crew (Kerbalism) and they are now suffering serious radiation poisoning. I need to abort the Mars trip and get them back to Earth as soon as possible. As I said, I'm about half the way to Mars, so the the Earth is already pulling ahead of both my spacecraft and Mars in its orbit. My ship has about 5500 m/s dV, but I'll need about 1000 of that to capture at Earth (gently aerobraking my rest of the way to LEO). My questions are, is it possible to even perform a mid-course abort with this kind of dV? If so, could you help me understand when and how to burn to get home as fast as possible? ~2 years will be too long for my guys to survive! Here is a screenshot of my situation. Sorry for the dropbox link, but I can't seem to embed images for some reason. https://www.dropbox.com/s/uexk1qnqynumd2w/marsabort.JPG?dl=0

Just an FYI for anyone who's interested, I've found a very nice RSS profile for Kerbalism. It's not for Realism Overhaul though, so all it really does is scale up Kerbalism's time scales, etc. to work with Real Solar System. Works really well so far, and I think, with some tweaking, I can get everything pretty comparable with RO values. (May need some help with part masses, etc.) https://www.dropbox.com/s/t79oy944jwpvjgs/kerbalism-rss-profile.zip?dl=0

Did it! Thank you so much for the help. I feel like, through the node tweaking process, I've learned a ton about the way a celestial body's gravity influences a trajectory. One final note, I didn't realize quite how important inclination is to this whole process. My inclination differed from the Moon's by ~0.5 degrees, but prevented me from getting my perigee below ~14,000 km. With ~90 m/s anti-normal added to the injection burn, I came down to less than 500 km. So yeah, I'm learning a lot.

Sorry for the delayed response. I gave it a shot, but did not have the delta-V to lower my perigee enough for a return. I only have about 295 m/s to begin with, but I usually have to use about 30-40 m/s for correction burns & attitude control. In total, I used around 250 m/s and was only able to lower my perigee to ~160,000 km. I think I have to get as low a perigee as possible from the initial lunar encounter, so my perilune burn is more on the order of tens of m/s. Unfortunately, I still don't think I fully understand how gravity assists work, and I'm still not able to replicate (or come close to) blakemw's first pic. Help!

I think I'm still not getting it. The only way I was able to put the perilune at 6 o'clock, I had to reduce my overshoot, and ended up with this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6d2ysxg96b9t9x2/FRXmoon.GIF?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/eqp6dns1230d0wl/FRXall.GIF?dl=0 (So sorry about the links rather than just embedding the pics, but I for some reason I can't seem to embed the links.)

Really appreciate the help. After many attempts, I've gotten to the point now where I can plot an ordinary free-return (with a moderately high perilune), but I'm still having trouble finding a trajectory with a perilune under 100 km that sends me on a proper return. What side of the moon should I be trying to put the perilune? If the Earth-Moon line is 12 o'clock, I've been trying to place perilune around 5 o'clock, but I don't think that's right. Is there a particular technique I should use for node tweaking to help me find the correct path?

Well, I found a really interesting and unique flight path that does get me both a low perilune and basically a return trajectory (tiny correction needed). Only problem is, it take almost a month to complete the entire journey. A whole month in a tiny capsule is a bit too much to ask of my pilots. Anyway, I've got Precise Node installed, so I'll keep messing with maneuver nodes and see what I can come up with. Here's a link to a picture of the trajectory I stumbled upon. I am definitely doing something wrong, so please feel free to let me know what! https://www.dropbox.com/s/e4mrnbgt749j8nr/FreeReturnREF.GIF?dl=0

Thank you guys! I'll give it another go today.

I guess I'm being ham handed, cause the smallest correction burns I can get add up to more than 300 m/s. Is it just not possible to do a low flyby->return unless I have the dV equivalent to get into lunar orbit? Approximately where, around the moon, should I try to put my periapsis? I still don't have an intuitive grasp on how the radial vs. retrograde acceleration (from the moon's gravity) works. I've been assuming that the closer my perilune is to the line of the moon's orbit (in front), the stronger the retrograde acceleration, but it doesn't appear to really work like that. It looks like a combination of a retrograde and anti-radial assist is what I nneed, but I'm not sure how to go about getting it.

Hey guys Got a follow on question to something I asked before. I'm playing with RO/RSS, but I believe this topic should apply to stock as well. Basically, I'd like to know how to get a perilune below 50 km, that will allow me to correct for an Earth return with 300 m/s dV or less. I have a bare bones system with Mk1 pod, lunar heatshield, and service bay, on top of a rocket that can comfortably send it to any type of lunar transfer orbit. I've done a free return successfully now, but I didn't manage to get close enough to complete the contract or get low-space lunar science. I belive I can increase service module dV by 100 m/s or so, but not much more without designing a whole new rocket. (NOTE: I guess if using stock system, think about the service module as holding 100 m/s or so, and the perimun being less than ~30 km) Thanks!

Anyone had any luch integrating these two mods? RO is amazing, but there are some key realism features I miss without Kerbalism, like radiation belts, solar flares, crew comfort/sanity, and limited part lifespans with breakdowns/repairs. On first glance, it looks like I can install Kerbalism over an RO install, and I don't get any errors on startup. I'm mainly looking to see if anyone's made an RO profile for Kerbalism, as the default one is only for the Kerbol system, and I had to make up my own rough estimates for my RSS/Stockalike install. Also, I'd love to know if there are any conflicts between the two mod, before I've spent hours on a career. Thanks all!