ghpstage

Probe cores drain electric very quickly, for example in 6 hours (roughly travel time from LKO to Mun intercept) a Stayputnik will use up over 600 charge just to remain active. On top of that you have the time during orbit at both Kerbin and the Mun, and electricity used during manoeuvres. Keeping SAS active, especially if you are using vector holds (i.e. prograde/retrograde) tends to drain electricity at incredible rates.Why would you carry a fairing to Munar orbit???

Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator. Yeah its one of those power generators from the end of the tech tree, but the OP did specify that this was being done on sandbox so the tech tree position means nothing.I agree with Capi, check if you have enough power at that time, and check if time warp is still on.

Try to go there in as few launches as possible as a challenge. Its possible to land a Kerbal on the Mun on with your fifth rocket on hard mode without abusing KSC science. Its hard to get bored that quickly if you haven't tried it before

Two identical engines would have the same ISP as one, with a larger dry mass and more thrust.

Generally when trying to get to orbit you burn to the horizon, to push back the apoapsis all you have to do is turn upwards from the horizon.The effect it has will depend on the angle between your heading and the horizon as well as your TWR.

Kerbals are here in large numbers.... Heres a rather short list of projects that appear to have been influenced by their presence. Project Hakkubak Project Pigeon Hafner Rotarbuggy Caspian Sea Monster Goodyear inflatoplane

You don't really need a ladder at all on Minmus, the jetpack has more than enough TWR to get you to and from a landers hatch.

I set challenges for myself, i.e. fewest launches to X, fewest launches to complete first level R&D tech tree, lowest tech/facility level to X. Gets pretty interesting to try a manned Mun landing on your fourth launch on hard difficulty settings (which is doable!), or land at Minmus on your fourth launch and come back with enough science to clear the first level R&D tech tree! You could also ban yourself from using certain parts (parachutes!), techniques (asparagus, KSC science rollers) or contracts (i.e. either random repeatables or the explore family) and find ways around the restrictions. The caveman challenge on this forums is a good way to spice up career mode for a while too.

@Bishop149, Could you post some pictures of your rocket? The OP mentions failure when starting a gravity turn at 10-15km, which is far from early, and not losing control when done at 20-25km where the atmosphere is practically non-existent. Added to the fact that the rocket can get to that altitude while travelling straight up without flipping strongly suggests an overly aggressive gravity turn is at least part of the problem.

Most of the results of a retrogradce orbit are felt after the orbit is achieved, the increased dV cost for landing on planets that has already been mentioned being one, but also as all moons in the stock system orbit their parent planets prograde it makes getting to those extremely costly!

How much did you tone down the science and cash rewards to need to do that?

The initial challenge of getting into orbit is easy, my 8 part offering is below. http://imgur.com/gallery/Ve7BV/new My re-entry is steep, but it would easily be survivable if I hadn't warped so long.... smashing Bob into Kerbin Difficulty for SRBs will come from precision, mostly transferring to other SOIs and landings. It can be done as seen above, but its a little beyond my patience!

It looks like its flipping when you drop the SRB stage because the drag on the radial liquid stages is way too high up, almost certainly putting the centre of drag in front of the Centre of mass. When this happens you get an unstable rocket that, left to its own devices, will flip over and fly backwards. Also, you want to swap at least the central, if not all of the LV-T30s with LV-T45s. The gimbals they come with will amaze you, swap them all out and they should even be able to handle the instability of this design without other changes. In future to provide more useful screenshots, include CoM and CoL showing for each stage in the VAB, and one at the point you lose control during flight.

Jeb's stuck with a PE of 866km, and dangerously crosses the Mun's orbit. Cause - My own stupid fault as I entered the Muns SOI on Kerbin's nearside, and botched up a very late correction burn...Made a few mistakes that are causing annoying delays, namely, Landing my orbiter flight in the same grass my Flea landed in Jeb's Munar SOI science not being recoverable (transmit only), Designing my Munar probe as a lander rather than recoverable orbiter, means I now can't get rid of the 'Return from Mun' contract without another Mun mission, and killed off the landing contract.... Tipping my Munar probe that had dV to visit another biome or two Though it is still ticking along quite quickly, the Mun probe was the fifth flight. To make matters worse I haven't been logging the transmitted science properly either, so I might need to restart

A quick test shows 15.1 science from the runway with a mat lab, crew and EVA report and 2 goos. Add a thermometer and multiply by 11 and your talking about a fairly large amount of science. Its not a lot of grinding considering how much is available, but I would feel guilty taking so much!Along with not accepting any repeatable contracts, not taking ground or airborne science that I don't start on, pass through or land on while attempting to go to space are the additional house rules I imposed for my attempt at this challenge. I was just wondering if anyone had any experience with not going for a Kerbin ground/plane science run Also intending to get really ambitious, the Duna, Eve, Jool SOIs are all on the target list! EDIT- It was going really well until I screwed up Jeb's Munar flyby, leaving him stranded in space. Though his sacrifice was not in vain. He transmitted enough science back to get the crucial Electronics tech, from now on no other Kerbal will need to be sacrificed!

This looks like a really interesting challenge, will try a game under its rules even if I don't post it. Has anyone yet succeeded without making a major run on Kerbin low altitude and ground (KSC in particular) science?

Thanks for the replies all. Those all changed for 0.9, and while I didn't mind those changes to make probe cores different the fact that it got nothing in return for what it gave up left it a shadow of its former self, with only a few niche uses remaining. and 1.0 seems to have cleared away almost all of remaining niches. This is a very creative way to use them!But I suspect more often than not either a better probe core or a docking port would be much more useful here. I'll have to pinch this if I ever start building spaceplanes With the current tech tree solar panels, which are required for any worthwhile satellite come with the same tech as the OKTO. The OKTO costs only a small amount more, while the Stayputnik requires some additional, generally expensive source of torque (a reaction wheel on its own is more expensive than an OKTO), OKTO with its two attachment nodes are also easily launched in multiples. In short the OKTO will work out cheaper in almost all cases.It won't be useful for this without additional rebalancing. That's unconventional, but I don't see how the Stayputnik really adds to this. Seems to be the only notable niche it has left now unfortunately.

Now it may just be the way I play career mode, which tends to involve rushing through the early milestone contracts as soon as possible, but looking at the Stayputnik now I can't help but think its been nerfed into obscurity. In 0.9 I found Stayputnk to have value for a few reasons, Solar panels and OKTO were on separate 90 science techs and solar panels were more useful for general use. The only Mun milestone mission was 'Explore' which was very well set up for a one way probe. The Terrier engine was on the same tech path as the Stayputnik. Funds were a significant barrier to rapid progression. Low weight meant more space for Science Jrs and goo pods. All this gave it uses as early satellites, rescue craft and to complete the lucrative 'Explore Mun' and Minmus contracts using batteries or panels. However even in 0.9 people generally recognised it wasn't particularly useful, primarily due to its awful tech location (a problem that has been made much worse since 1.0!) Instead the changes have attacked the previous values in several ways, Additional contracts and vast increases to milestone rewards have made the cash for upgrades practically fall from the sky, the cash barrier is no more. The addition of the return from the Mun contract, which is impossible to complete with batteries and a level 1 VAB, can block the appearance of the Mun landing contract. Solar panels and the OKTO are now on the same tech. Meaning the OKTO, being pretty much an absolute upgrade is available for any mission that requires panels, including all satellite contracts..... Scientists being able to reset experiments drastically improves the science-weight efficiency of manned missions. Now a scientist can take one of each and get science from every biome he passes through. This also greatly increases the rate at which science can be accumulated. Moving the Terrier to the top of the tree, where the other parts required for manned landings were made early probes less attractive. In the current version I can see uses in two areas, for rescue missions which are safer with solar panels (and as a result OKTO), and early orbital and sub-orbital tourist contracts that are a total waste of time from a cost-benefit perspective.... I still use it occasionally as I like the aesthetics, but has anyone found solid uses for it in the post 1.0 career mode?

Definitely agree.

The argument against it for the benefit of new players is easily shut down by making it a non default option...... you could even put a warning ingame to say it will lead to much more difficulty than the standard solar system JohnFX makes a very good point about it improving replayability and allowing for more meaningful interactions in an uncharted solar system. Getting around will of course be considerably more difficult without the online transfer tools, but the manoeuvre nodes we have give us dV requirements in advance, and can probably be used to come up with reasonable approximations for the optimal phase angles over time, assuming you don't want to do the maths. It would also be made far more manageable if the distance from target indicators reliably appeared. I am sure that someone will create a general planetary phase calculator that people can plug the orbital parameters in to calculate for them. That being said it has been discussed a lot and I doubt we'll see it happen

Easily done, I get confused all the time! Back fiddling around with designs and now have something that on paper I think could manage to get a Kerbal to and from the Mun. Its the Minmus rocket plus 17 additional fuel tanks, the solar panels removed and a decoupler added below the command pod. I'm still assuming the demo allows for sandbox, as the parts count and weight limits will make even getting a Kerbal into orbit difficult under those rules. Also, I can't account for changes in the physics since 1.0, so I don't know how comparable my results efforts will be. EDIT - Finally got demo to work.

@Weywot8 That rocket makes use of both the LV-T45 and LV-909 neither of which the OP has access to. Without a gimballed engine, flight control surfaces and a dedicated vacuum engine I suspect a lot of people with a fair amount of experience in KSP would struggle to get far! @ the OP, I haven't tried the Mun yet, but I slapped together a simple unmanned satellite that can get into a low orbit and not much else, as well as a manned rocket that can land on Minmus (i'm assuming Kerbin's second moon is in the demo) and get home. The manned rocket could easily orbit the Mun, but would not survive any kind of landing attempt. The lack of a decoupler below the command pod mean that re-entry, which I haven't yet completed will likely prove to be to explodey for Bill's tastes, but Jeb would probably love it. It makes use of RCS for control during the ascent due to the lack of flying controls or vectored engines. Asparagus staging (thats what the fuel lines are for) is used as reaching the required dV without a dedicated vacuum engines isn't easy! The asparagus might make copying it difficult for someone not familiar with the game. In practice the solar panels on the manned rocket were a waste of fuel as all the engines had alternators..... but they may serve to rescue the worst reentry section I have ever built. I could have dumped two of the engines on the initial stage too. Once you have a design your going to have to learn how to fly them, both at launch and your in space manoeuvres. What you have seen in videos of the game post version 1.0 will give you an idea of what to do during take off and reentry, orbital manoeuvres are the same as always so most videos will give a decent example of what to do there. Of my designs the unmanned rocket will not have access to SAS outside of sandbox mode, while the manned one will need RCS activated to control in the atmosphere but the rest should be the same as in most vids. EDIT I didn't expect it, but the Minmus rocket actually made it home following a lengthy aerobraking manoeuvre. Bill was in space for over 70 days! Panels proved useful in preventing an explosion

My early career Mun lander. It does need Heavier Rocketry, but not Aviation. It has only a minimalistic payload of a pod chute and mat lab and uses radial SRBs in order to keep the parts count down to not need the expensive VAB upgrade (27 parts total one of the spare three could be used for a thermometer). This tends to be my fourth launch on hard career after a goo armed flea, an orbiter and a combined Mun flyby-orbit mission with only the astro complex and landing pads upgraded, i've not seen anyone manage a third launch to Mun landing so its comfortably among the more 'basic' designs. I would advise that you consider the first Mun landing be primarily to complete the very valuable landing contract and things you can tie to it (science from surface, science from space around, and flag planting contracts) and to open new milestone contracts (hopefully Minmus very soon after!). Grab science opportunistically while your there, but the most effective target for a dedicated science grabbing mission is Minmus as its much easier to land on due to gravity and the flats biomes freeing up fuel for more payload and more biome hopping. Don't worry, doing this with basic tech and infrastructure is far from a novice question!

Yeah, fired up KSP again for the first time since 1.04 came out and managed exactly the same Mun landing and return on the fourth launch as before, on hard with a 0 cash start. Don't even need to grind lots of biomes on the first launch either, just a scientist with goo's and a chute strapped to a flea, launched into the water to get the 30 points needed to get goo and a science jr into orbit on the second launch.To those struggling with the grinding, how long in terms of time and number of launches are you taking to achieve the key milestones of getting into orbit, getting to and orbiting the Mun, and landing on it or Minmus? and what are you finding yourself grinding at to achieve them? Or is it only later things, like upgrading the VAB that people are struggling with? Make sure to check for new worlds first contracts while once you tick off existing ones, theres a bunch of less obvious ones that appear at times worth surprising amounts, such as the 30k funds offered (on hard) for just returning from your first orbit!

This was certainly true in 1.03, and I doubt it has changed much in 1.04.I used to aim to get a scientist into orbit on my second launch, with enough fuel to just get over the 250k high-low orbit boundary with both goo and a mat lab onboard. Used to come back with a total of around 140 science, with 60 coming from high altitude, low space and high space material labs alone..... You do have to make sure you upgrade the astro complex before anything else, and while your scientist is up there however.