rcp27

Back in 0.25, on my first visit to Duna, I came very close to a similar fate. On that occasion I had just enough thrust and fuel to burn back to orbit, but it used most of my return trip fuel, and I had to wait a couple of years for a rescue tanker. I learned the lesson well (though thankfully without loss of life). This is why I created this thread. I've seen well enough around Kerbin how radically the atmosphere has changed, hence I realise that the rules of thumb I used to use for Duna aerocapture are likely to be useless in 1.0.2. I completely agree 100% with this. The only objective I have for my first pass is just to go from hyperbolic (non-return) to elliptical (captured) orbit. Bringing the Ap down and getting a nice circular orbit at a low enough altitude is something that can be done with a much higher Pe for less aerodynamic stress on multiple passes once I'm captured, it's just the initial capture I'm worried about because it's a one-shot afair. I guess I'll go for a 20 km Pe first try and keep a quicksave ready from far enough away to allow for easy adjustment for when it goes horribly wrong.

I want to know what is a good altitude to set for the Duna Pe as I arrive so that I can get a captured (i.e. not escape) trajectory in Duna, so that I don't need to burn fuel to arrive (and whether burning up is a problem). Regarding Minmus, not aerocapture as such, but using aerobraking to bring your Ap down from Minmus orbital height down to LKO. This saves a huge amount of fuel if you want to use a re-suable tug to shift things like space station or surface bases on Mun or Minmus, by using a non-landing tug. The point about coming in from Minmus is if you set your Pe too high to get much braking, you are already in a captured orbit, so you can get the braking delta-V from multiple passes. If you are coming through on a hyperbolic orbit, as you will if arriving from interplanetary space, if your Pe is too high, you may just end up in a lower energy hyperbolic orbit rather than capturing into a returning elliptical orbit. My objective for Duna is to get a first pass through Duna's atmosphere that will capture me from a hyperbolic orbit to a high-Ap elliptical orbit. I can then raise my Pe to a higher but still atmospheric altitude and circularise on Duna with several passes. The question I have, therefore, is what altitude should I aim to have my Duna Pe when arriving from Kerbin so that I get enough braking to capture my orbit but not deep enough to either bring my Ap down into the atmosphere on the first pass, or burn up due to heating.

This rather overlooks the fact that the combination of solar wind and cosmic rays means that outside of the magnetosphere and atmosphere of Earth (and, presumably, Kerbin), space is pretty seriously radioactive already. One of the big concerns about real Mars missions is preventing the astronauts from suffering very severely from the effects of radiation on the long transfer flight.

My career is approaching a key milestone as my first Duna transfer window is nearly here. Obviously I would prefer to avoid burning too much fuel for a Duna capture, but I've not yet tried such a manoeuvre since the demise of the old atmosphere. If I don't have a heat shield, how deep in the atmosphere can I put my Pe on arrival from Kerbin without breaking my ship? Will this give enough braking to capture, or will I also have to burn the engines to at least get a high elliptical orbit? If I can't do that without burning up, what is the deepest into the atmosphere I can go without damage? I've used aerobraking in 1.0.2 to transfer from Minus to LKO at about 40 km, but obviously that's starting in a non-escape orbit, so going round for another pass or so is not the same sort of disaster it would be if I was relying on a single pass to capture from solar orbit. Any other advice?

So I had my first encounter with a crazy wobbly launch today. Pretty much everything I have put up so far has been fine, and until now I had not really understood what the fuss was about. I decided I wanted to put a space station up as a single launch rather than sending it up a few bits at a time and constructing it in orbit. The launch stage is a mainsail, and the upper stage is a poodle. Inside the equipment bay is a probe core and some batteries so that I can send it up unmanned. This thing went crazy wobbling about when it hit around 8 km at around 160 m/s. The first thing I did was to disable all the reaction wheels, using only the winglets and the engine gimbal for control. This reduced the wobble a fair amount, and it did flip out a few times, but I managed to get it into orbit, though it was 5 degrees off and needed some re-positioning up there. I then figured I'd attempt to make it more rigid, so I put a bunch of structural girders on radial decouplers and strutted up the main structure. That would sort out the wobbles, but not the aerodynamic problems. I figured the root cause of the aerodynamic problems was that those AV-R8 winglets were just not up to the job of keeping such a large rocket under control I therefore replaced them with Structural Wing A and Elevon 1 for control, to give it better stability. The result was this The result was not pretty, but it went into orbit like a dream. I did my usual roll over 5 degrees at between 50 and 100 m/s, and fly it up with SAS off, controlling the ascent with the engine throttle. In addition to the old KSP rules of "if it moves when it shouldn't, add more struts" and "if it doesn't move when it should, add more boosters", I think we need a new rule: "if it points the wrong way, add more fins"

It kind of depends where you want your career to be going. When I hit that sort of position, I was beginning to find the Skipper was a bit weak for some of the bigger launches I wanted, so I headed for the Mainsail ("heavier rocketry"). That gives you the oompf you need for bigger launches. Also the "Propulsion Systems" node gives you the 48-7S "Spark" engine, which is extremely useful for things like satellite contracts and all manner of other purposes (it has its uses in lander engines on lower gravity places like Minmus too).

My landing routine looks something like this: 1) get in a circular ~50 km orbit. Hit F5. Deploy your landing legs. You don't need them yet, but better to get that out of the way now. if you have landing lights, switch them on. 2) pick your landing spot 3) when you are a bit before 90 degrees away from the landing site, point retrograde and burn so that your blue trajectory hits the ground a little beyond your landing site 4) set up a manoeuvre node on your trajectory just past your landing site, and pull the retrograde all the way, to kill velocity to zero. This is useful because if you hit full thrust in the retrograde direction a little before the "burn time" matches the "time to manoeuvre", you will kill your orbital velocity over your landing site. 5) switch the nav ball to "surface mode" and put SAS in "retrograde". Once you settle on the retrograde marker, put SAS into normal "heading mode", wait a short time, then burn your engine at about 50% thrust. By not being on retrograde mode, this will kill your descent but also push the retrograde marker towards "straight up". Once your retrograde marker is straight up, kill the engine, put SAS in "retrograde" mode. 6) control your velocity on the descent. There are various ways to get a feel for how high up you are. Can you see ground scatter yet? Is there a shadow from your ship on the surface? If you have downward pointing lights, can you see them on the surface? If you have a lander can, the IVA view has a height-above-ground indicator. 7) aim to hit the ground at less than 5 m/s. I usually manage about 2. Note: the SAS on retrograde has been fixed, so if your velocity drops below about 2 m/s, it automatically switches to heading hold, so that if you overdo it and start going up, you won't find your ship flipping over. As others have suggested, Minmus is a good learning ground. First, the gravity is a lot less, so everything happens more slowly. More usefully, it has the big flat areas. In the big flat areas, the ground height is zero on the altitude readout at the top of the screen, so you have a much better idea of how high up you are.

From the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."

I find the most efficient way to get new Kerbals is to do rescue-from-orbit contracts. Not only do you get more Kerbals in your space program, you get money for doing it too.

That seems reasonable to me so far These stages seem to be the main problem. The LV-909 is a "vacuum" engine rather than an "atmospheric" engine. I've just had a go and managed to get a free-return flyby of Mün with the following: from the top down: Top stage: Mk 16 Parachute, Mk1 command pod, 1.25 m heat shield, TR18-A decoupler Next stage: Science Jr, service bay (containing 2 each of the Z-100 batteries and goo pods), FL-T400, LV-909, TR18-A decoupler Bottom stage: 4x FL-T400, LV-T45 and four AV-T1 winglets Radially attached: 4x TT-38K radial decoupler, RT10 SRBs each with an aerodynamic nose cone. I set the trust on each of the SRBs to 75% in the VAB. All of those are available with the Start, Basic Rocketry, Stability, General Rocketry, Advanced Rocketry and Basic Science nodes unlocked. My flight plan was turn on SAS on the pad, launch with the LV-T45 on but throttled right back, instantly roll over to about 5 degrees. When the SRBs run out, run the LV-T45 up to about 75% thrust and turn off SAS. It hits about 45 degrees over at somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 m, where I run the engine up to 100% thrust. Keep going (if you are rolling over too fast, put SAS on for a bit to prevent the nose falling) until the Ap is about 85,000 m, kill the engine. At this point, I had a little bit of fuel left in the main launch stage. Circularise at Ap, the bottom stage runs out and is staged off just at the beginning of the circularisation burn. From there, I set a manoeuvre node to give a free return fly-by of Mün, with a Münar Ap of about 250 km and a return Kerbin Pe of about 35 km. There was a fair amount of fuel left, it might be possible to use this design to actually orbit Mün and get back. That gets science in space high above Mün. after the flyby, go on EVA and take all the science out of the science gear so that when you dump that stage, the science is safely in the capsule.

All you need is the fixed plane wheels and basic jet engine, and you can make a jet powered rover that is quite capable of scooting around the KSC and gathering its science. A nice little boost early in the tech tree.

I recall talk of one earlier in the development process, but I recall the devs saying something along the lines of they didn't see how they could port the game to be suitable for a touch interface without overly compromising the game.

I find it interesting to see the same people who complained bitterly at the 0.90 stage that "the game is not ready for 1.0, if they release it without several further beta releases, all the reviewers will see it and write terrible reviews." Now with the successful reviews coming in, the same people are saying, "reviewers are terrible, their reviews are wrong, they are not seeing all the flaws I see in the game." Perhaps these people (I won't name names) should consider the fact that, to most people, the flaws in the game, while present, are not game breaking, and as a whole, the game is a good quality product and a critical and commercial success.

So when the game gets updated, we all get excited about the big additions that we see will change gameplay in a huge way. Recently it's the aerodynamics and re-entry heating that have been massive changes that alter how we fly our missions. For me, though, what has been the biggest improvement in terms of how I build and fly my rockets in 1.0, though, is the service bays. There are so many situations where I want to have small size or surface-attach components in the middle of a 2.5 m size rocket. Perhaps it's science kit, perhaps it's a probe core for an unmanned launch vehicle to add a new module to a space station or construct-in-orbit long range mission, or maybe a bit of extra RCS fuel. It's so good to have a structurally rigid container that I can fill with all that sort of junk ... er I mean essential equipment. My rockets now don't look like they have had a warehouse full of junk stapled to the sides of them, and I can do heavy duty unmanned launch vehicles with mid tech tree kit that don't end up like limp spaghetti.

1 definitely agree something to help tell apart who has what profession would be welcome. At the moment, on the map view, there is a crew roster icon on the right, which will tell you this information, but it's not obvious, and you can't have it visible when you are choosing who to take on an EVA or something. 2 in the R&D building, top left when on the tech tree view is the "Science Archive" tab. Click on a planet/moon, it gives science you have collected, including the option to sort by biome 3 take a look at any one of the numerous threads in the Suggestions forum relating to life support. It's a long discussed and strongly debated topic. If you want to have a go, there are mods that add life support. 4 Definitely something lots of people want. I suspect we will see improvements in this direction in future updates. In the mean time there are mods that help in this area if you don't want to wait and see.

Presumably the ones in red would be the expendable ones...

I completely agree that some form of mission planning would be useful, and I made a post about it a little while ago that suggested a way to do it that would be in keeping with the KSP style of try-it-and-see, rather than using something like pork chop diagrams that, while powerful tools, are not particularly accessible to newbies and more casual players. Regarding the "kerbals go into hibernation but don't die" concept, that strikes me as extremely easy to circumvent. Add a probe core to your ship, and it can fly without "active" pilots. Include just enough life support for only the "active" part of the trip, which is pretty much going to be the same for every destination. Deliberately block access to life support for all parts of the mission where you are in time warp, and deliberately "hibernate" your crew. Even if you try to prevent this by disabling access-blocking to life support, it is a trivial matter to put the life support on a separate probe with docking port that flies a parallel course to your main ship. At the end of the day, all this means is every mission requires one identical part to be added to it, regardless of destination or duration, with potentially added annoyance if you require undocking and re-docking. Basically it comes down to this: If you don't want to worry about life support but it is forced into the game, it either takes the game into rage-quit levels of frustration if it kills your Kerbals, or tedious but trivially exploitable if it doesn't. Neither of these is going to make the game any better for the "I'm happy not to worry about life support" crowd. Furthermore, the wide range of active and actively used mods currently existing for life support solutions means that whichever version is chosen as "stock", a significant number of the pro-life-support player base will still prefer a mod-based solution because their idea of fun life support is different from the stock implementation. If you want to see how the player base will react to a change in the game that goes from "easy but unrealistic" to "a bit harder but more realistic" just take a look at any one of the flame filled threads about the 1.0/1.0.1/1.0.2 aerodynamics changes.

In the end, life support is simply a matter of "add x additional parts to your ship to give you y time to complete your mission". At the moment, the game offers absolutely zero method for predicting the value of y. How long does it take to reach Duna from Kerbin if you leave at a pretty good transfer window? Once you get there, when will the next transfer window home come up? If, when I'm there, something goes wrong, when will the next transfer window for a rescue mission come round? How long will it take for that rescue mission to reach Duna? Without some kind of method for the player to get a handle on the answers to these questions, the only way of figuring out the value of y and therefore x is pure guesswork and dumb luck. That places life support in the same category as "random part failures" as a mechanic that is 100% guaranteed to enrage players and destroy their fun.

I have to add my agreement to the originator of this thread. The most important thing to appreciate in software development is there is no such thing as bug-free. It doesn't exist. Version 1.0 of anything will contain a few bugs. The heat sheild bug is irritating, but I have only died from it once, after that I figured how to fly a re-entry that can cope with it. Launches are harder to do than before, but once you figure the technique for building rockets, and the technique for launching them, it's no harder than any other aspect of the game. In terms of the mechanics of the game, it's definitely as good as any 1.0 release I have encountered. The other criticism that lots of people have is regarding the actual game play. First off, I have to say, the new atmosphere model makes the game way more fun than before. It feels fast and exciting in a way the old soup-o-sphere never did. Launches and re-entry feels exciting in a way it never did before. In terms of career mode, go back to the forum history from the days of 0.24-0.90, and look at how many people complained about how it was possible to max out the tech tree in a handful of launches. I think there was a Scott Manly video showing him maxing out the tech tree in career mode in something like two launches. That really was game breaking. Sure, the new career has the potential to be a bit more of a grind, but I have no problem with this. When I started my 1.0 career, I knew it would be a bit of a grind. I didn't go for "hard" for this very reason. I chose a version that would give me enough funds and science to keep my career moving at a pace that I would find fun, and you know what? It's fun. Sure, I have had to build a couple of launches with a ton of smaller tanks and rocket motors I wouldn't chose if I had the full tech tree unlocked, but that's part of the game: getting where you want to go with the tools available to you. In essence, I think the developers have done a great job bringing this game to where it is, and I think they have achieved what they promised us. I think the testers have done a good job of making sure the game works well. I have to say I have been really annoyed with the negativity I've seen on the forums in the last week. If you are having a problem with the game, please try to find a constructive way to express your frustration. If something doesn't work the way you expect it to, and you want to post about it, ask "why is this happening", not "this game is terrible, the devs suck, this must be a bug".

It was mentioned in the Dev Notes from 11 Feb: Personally I never used docking mode, so I haven't noticed (to be honest, I'm playing a new career mode and haven't yet unlocked RCS, so I've not used them yet).

I think you have encountered the modified docking mode controls (that is to say this is a feature, not a bug). From the Devnotes Tuesday from 11 Feb:

To back up on steam, go to your library, right click on KSP in the list on the left, click "properties" and somewhere in there is a "browse local files". This opens the actual game folder in a file browser window, which can be copied to a location of your choice.

I think if you fly a capsule, heat shield and parachute (undeployed) it will remain stable, but if you put anything between the capsule and the shield, for example an equipment bay or a materials bay, the CoM is far enough back that it is unstable. I went to orbit with an equipment bay containing a couple of goo canisters. I de-orbited by bringing the Pe down to about 30 km, and I found that with SAS on, provided I kept the pointer on the nav ball within the ring of the retrograde marker I was OK, but if it wanders outside the retrograde marker, then you're toast. Once you have a pilot who has been to orbit, just put the SAS on retrograde and you should come down safely. Only thing to be careful about is running out of power because the twitchy SAS in this situation eats up your battery. I think it's better to go for a much lower energy re-entry profile, though (but I've not had time to properly experiment).

Well it looks like I need to learn how to fly rockets again. I started a new career for 1.0. First two flights went well, being short hops to do the basic science. I unlocked enough parts for what I thought would be a sub-orbital hop out of the atmosphere. On the way up, my second stage went unstable and I had a nice little fight to get it back on course. Ended up when the engine cut out suborbital with an Ap of 184 km. I had a Mk1 capsule with Jeb in it, a materials bay underneath, a heat shield and a parachute up top. Re-entry was hitting its high point with flames everywhere, when suddenly I lost control, flipped over and within a couple of seconds Jeb was toast. I need to go back and learn how to fly again.

My standard launch goes something like this: M. Bring up nav ball. Click on resources pane. M. T. Z. [space]. Swear because the launch clamps were in a separate stage from engine start. [space] again to light the engines. Fiddle with staging because I forgot to combine decouplers and next stage engines into a single stage event. Check speed to make sure the ascent looks OK. Begin to roll over for gravity turn. Stage off the spent boosters. Curse as the separating boosters take out my main fuel tank. [Esc] and revert to VAB. Fiddle with sepatrons so that boosters will separate cleanly. [save] and [Launch]. M. Nav Ball. Resource Pane. M-T-Z-[space]. Swear again because I forgot to fix my staging. [space] to light engines. Fix staging. Begin gravity turn. Sigh in relief as boosters separate cleanly this time. M to map view, click on Ap to get it to display the numbers. Stage runs out. M to regular view, [space] to dump spent stage and light the next one (good thing I sorted staging out). M. Get annoyed that Ap numbers are gone, click around to get them back. Bring Ap to 86 km and engines off. Out of map view. As we pass 60 km, realise I forgot to put solar panels on an action group, and grope around trying to deploy them all. Get annoyed about the one I can't quite see because it's on the shade side of the ship. Back to map view and set a manoeuvre node for circularisation. Fiddle for ages to get the projected orbit exactly circular to within 0.1%. Bring ship round to blue marker for circularisation burn, and make a ham handed effort, end up with Ap out at 102 km while Pe is 84 km. Right, Twitter tells me 1.0 is out, I'm off to get downloading.