Kelderek

EDIT: This was definitely related to my other bug. I decided to try editing the save file to remove the cloned kerbal and that fixed my astronaut complex. I can hire Kerbals again. My Astronaut Complex got glitched somehow and I can not hire any new Kerbals. I can open it up and see a list of applicants, but clicking on them does nothing. I only have 4 Kerbals: the starting 3 and one I was able to hire earlier. I have upgraded the complex once so it is at level 2. Also, it says "Active Crews: 10 of 12 maximum" -- I have no idea what this means as I only have 4 Kerbals, so why would it think I had 10? The max is 12 at this upgrade level, so why can't I hire 1 or 2 more even if I did have 10 already? It is possible that this is related to another bug I have had here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/103423-BUG-Bob-the-scientist-cloned-himself%21 The astronaut complex has not allowed me to hire anyone for a while, my one and only hire was at the start of the career.

Also, it turns out Bob the Clone is glitched. Even though I see him on the list of the tracking station, when I click on him there is no option to "fly", "recover" or "terminate". I tried to exit the game and reload, but he's still there. EDIT: I decided to try editing the save file for this career and I was able to successfully remove Bob's clone. So I can now proceed with this glitch out of the way.

Bob the scientist managed to clone himself somehow. (he is a scientist after all) This happened on the surface of the Mun during an EVA. When he tried to get back on board the game said that he could not board a fully occupied module. Sure enough, there was already (still?) a Bob inside the MK1 command pod. I now have 2 Bobs, one on the surface in an EVA, and the other inside my ship. I tried to EVA the one from the ship and that worked fine and he got back inside fine too, so I'm not sure what voodoo happened to make the first clone -- I could not replicate it myself. This clone exists on the Tracking Station list, but NOT on the view inside the Astronaut Complex (there was room for one more Kerbal, I had only used 4 up to that point with a max of at least 5). Alas, I only have space to carry a crew of 3, so I will have to leave Bob the Clone on the surface The only mod I am running is Kerbal Engineer Redux (updated for 0.90) if that helps. Here are some images:

Wow, ok that seems a bit odd and confusing to have it show that way. Most XP systems in games are cumulative, that's why this seems odd to me. But the good news is it will not be so expensive to maximize Kerbal XP.

So it sounds like to get the most XP you need to do each step and not skip any. So don't take a new pilot recruit straight to orbit of Kerbin, just do a small flight first and then do an orbit later, right? If only the highest one counts, then you need to do multiple incremental steps to accumulate maximum XP. EDIT: For a trip to the Mun you would want to do multiple launches: 1. Free-return trajectory for a flyby and return to Kerbin 2. Orbit the Mun and return to Kerbin 3. Fly over the Mun surface, don't land, return to Kerbin 4. Land on the Mun and don't plant a flag, return to Kerbin 5. Land on the Mun and plant the flag, return to Kerbin That would be an expensive way to do it, but would that give the maximum XP per Kerbal?

How does this work when you take more than one Kerbal on a mission? If I take a pilot and a scientist to the Mun (my current plan), will they both need to plant flags separately or will both get credit if one of them does it? Will it matter which one generates an EVA report? By flyby do you mean an encounter with a celestial body without orbit? And for a landing, does this only include powered landings or will parachute landings count too (if atmosphere is present)? I'm just trying to get a better picture of what milestones I should shoot for for each of my Kerbals. I'll double check that scientist with another orbit around Kerbin to see if he gets XP, I may have made a mistake before.

It looks like most people are needing to adjust down from their 0.25 difficulty settings. I had to do this. The KSC upgrade costs are very different in each difficulty. I've also found myself staying on Kerbin a lot longer than I did in the past, so that I can make some money and gain better tech to do the more distant adventures. One thing that stands out is how hard many of the contracts are in this new setting. With so many limits on techs, funds, part counts, and rocket mass, combined with the increased piloting and navigational difficulty, I think there should be some more easy contracts to do that don't require such pinpoint skill. Having to nail a specific altitude and speed to test a rocket part in flight is a lot harder now. Something like "gather science from Kerbin's Highlands" would be a good entry-level contract for a new player. In fact, I think the contracts should do a lot more to direct you to the things you need to learn like biome hopping or achieving orbit with a certain amount of payload mass.

I'm a bit confused about the XP for my Kerbals in 0.90. I have done a ton of different missions and for most of them I get 0 XP. I know that my pilot got 2 XP for "orbit around Kerbin" and he and my scientist got 1 XP for "flight in Kerbin", but I have done all sorts of different missions on and around Kerbin and neither of these guys has gained any more XP than that. The scientist was present for an orbit and did some science up there, but apparently that didn't count as he came back with 0 XP gained. I assume that it works like science from biomes, you can only get so much from one place before you have to move on. Has anyone figured out what kind of milestones you need to achieve to gain XP for each of the three Kerbal classes? Is there more that I could do on Kerbin that I am missing? Also, for the Engineers, is there anything they can do other than repairs and repacking chutes? If you fly well enough you won't take any damage. Will I need to do some controlled crashes so that I can have something to repair?

I had played career mode in 0.25 on moderate and was comfortable, when I tried that in 0.90 it was a LOT more difficult. I ended up scrapping that first 0.90 career in favor of a custom normal-moderate hybrid. It is definitely a lot more challenging. The difficulty settings affect the KSC upgrade costs -- I'm pretty sure the launch pad was about 75k on moderate, but on normal it's more like 50k for the first upgrade.

Not only does it help by showing biomes, but it also serves as a form of night vision! If you're trying to de-orbit from the dark side of a planet or moon, it helps to know where the land masses are, or to help find the KSC on Kerbin in the dark.

It was too bad that it didn't count as a different biome, I would have had more science for it. I had landed on Duna previously (that lander is still there) and transmitted back some data so my science returns were a little lower because of that.

I know it may seem like nothing special to make a round trip to Duna, but it was a major operation for me and was the first time I had managed a round trip anywhere other than the Mun or Minmus. I have a ton of one-way treks logged, but I knew that a round trip would be a bigger challenge. Here's the album with some notes: I learned a lot from doing this mission. I'm sure that I designed way more of a rocket and lander than is necessary, but I didn't know how much wiggle room I would need for my own piloting errors that were sure to crop up. There were two main flaws I found in my design that I would change for the future: 1. While my lander was symmetric and balanced around the CoM, my RCS thruster placement was not centered relative to my command pod. I had placed the thrusters so that they would be balanced around the CoM, but because they were not centered for the command pod, it meant that simple translations in one direction would fire the thrusters in two directions. This made my docking with the transfer stage after leaving the Duna surface a real pain. I could probably fix this by holding the shift key when placing the thrusters to change their angle relative to the command pod -- they had only been off by about 10 degrees, but that was enough to be problematic. I had made the lander with 4 engines and 4 asparagus fuel tanks, but I wanted a small gap where the hatches would be -- this is why my thrusters had been placed slightly off angle. 2. I should never have put any engines on my transfer stage, I should have just made it a big fuel tank. I designed it with 4 LV-N engines, but that exactly what I also have on my lander. Once I was up and flying with the two stages, I had that facepalm moment when I knew that it was twice the engines I really needed. I had 8 engines total between the two stages, but I only ever had 4 powered up at one time. I think this happened because all of my previous landers were tiny by comparison and would never have enough thrust (to my liking) to be used for transferring between worlds, so I always had designed my middle stages to have their own engines. But this Duna lander was big enough to have enough engines to do both jobs of landing and making interplanetary tranfers. Anyway, it was tons of intense fun for me, and I hope you enjoy the album.

In my specific case, I am sending a fuel tanker to park in orbit somewhere, so if I were to change the fuel tank setting to disable feed in the VAB, then I would have to re-enable it once it was parked in space so I could use it to fuel other ships. By making the change to the docking port so that this can be set in the VAB, then it potentially becomes a "set it and forget it" situation. I could add a spacer like you say, but that would add more mass and is not really ideal.

Bumping this post for emphasis. It would be nice to be able to disable the crossfeed for fuel on docking ports while in the VAB. If you fly a certain ship design often enough it can be a pain if you forgot to do the disabling on the launch pad only to find out you drained fuel from the wrong place during your trip. If we could do this in the VAB then it would save the setting with the design so we wouldn't need to always remember to do it on the launch pad. This also has the added benefit of affecting any mods you have enabled while in the VAB to show you things like Delta-V. There are already similar settings available for other parts like landing struts up/down, or lights on/off, so it seems like this would fit in well.

Thanks! Heh, joining the first two parts of that station was also my very first rendezvous and docking.

As an avid fan of manned spaceflight for past, present, and future, I am so glad that I found this game. I can name all the 7 Mercury astronauts and I've watched "From The Earth To The Moon" HBO series all the way through 4 or 5 times now. I consider myself a veteran PC gamer, going back well over 20 years, by I am only a fledgling rocket scientist (the "bottle rocketeer" forum title is quite apt). So I totally love this game so far - I am already up over 130 hours since I bought the game after Thanksgiving weekend. So don't be surprised to see my noob questions from time to time. This looks like a great community and you've already been very helpful so far. Here's my first Kerbin space station built from 4 modules including: science labs, hitchhiker storage, refueling tanks, observation lounge, and 4 escape pods. I added light poles all over because I like to see it all lit up on the dark side of the planet Anyway, glad to meet you all, see you in space!

Let me see if I have the gist of this... Let's say I know the following as an example (using some numbers from that Temstar post): Payload to LKO = 69 t Desired Payload Mass Fraction of Total Vessel = 15% Desired Launch Pad TWR = 1.6-1.7 I can calculate the total mass of my rocket: 69 x 100/15 = 460 t I can calculate how much thrust I will need from engines to lift that mass: 460 x 1.6 x 9.81 = 7220 kN 460 x 1.7 x 9,81 = 7671 kN So I would need to have enough engines in my center stack and boosters to give me between 7220 and 7671 kN of thrust. I would need to add enough fuel tanks and other hardware parts to bring my dV up over 4500m/s and that should be roughly 460 - 69 - engine mass. Is that right? If you know your target thrust, then am I right in assuming that you want to achieve that thrust with the least amount of mass? For example, let's say I want 1000 kN of thrust on a booster, wouldn't I be better off using a thrust-limited mainsail engine instead of using five LV-T45 engines (6 t mass for the mainsail compared to 5 x 1.5 t = 7.5 t mass for five LV-T45 engines)? I would think that would save fuel, allowing your payload to be a higher fraction of your total rocket mass.

Thanks for that link, I found that very helpful. All of this makes me think of a second question I had: how viable is it to recover spent stages? Can you put parachutes on them and recover them that way? Isn't that how the real space shuttle launches worked? I thought that the main fuel tank and SRBs were fished out of the Atlantic and re-used. Or does the way the game handles debris cloud the issue? I expect you would have to semi-deploy parachutes really high up and that may cause them to fail.

This is exactly how this all got started for me. I think I had a few designs where the TWR for the center stack alone was low enough that it felt really slow and sluggish after I had decoupled all of the auxiliary tanks and engines. I assumed I needed more thrust for that stage, but it also could mean that my auxiliary tanks were too small and needed to last longer. I'm still very new to this, so I also might have had my gravity turn not exactly ideal too.

That makes sense. After I made my post I made a couple of test examples in the VAB and was able to verify that they have different Delta-V values with the same number and type of parts attached.

Is it more efficient to shed both engines and fuel tanks in the early stages of a launch or just fuel tanks alone, keeping all of the engines (and their thrust) until orbit? Let me give an example of what I mean. Let's say I have a central stack with an engine at the bottom and also 4 smaller stacks in a 4-way symmetry formation along the sides (2 pairs of 2) and each of those has its own engine too. The way I usually see this is with asparagus fuel lines and decouplers so that you eject the first pair of side stacks, then later on the second pair, leaving only the middle stack for the remainder of the ascent. With this design, you will lose thrust at each stage because you are losing the engines and the fuel tanks together. Now, alternatively, if I were to move the 4 engines from the side stacks and attach them directly to the center stack (separating them from the side fuel tanks and using fuel lines to stay functional), then as I eject the side fuel tanks I would keep the same amount of thrust all the way to orbit. I would still use the usual asparagus setup on the side fuel tanks. The trade-off is that I keep the same constant amount of thrust all the way to orbit, but I also keep the mass of those side engines all the way too. Also, with more engines active during the entire ascent, I would burn through fuel quicker. The real question is whether the additional thrust would make up for keeping the mass and burning the fuel faster. I'm not sure if being more specific about certain engine and fuel tank parts matters, but it might. I was mainly wondering what works best in a general sense.

Those are all fascinating designs. I loaded them up into my career and even tried to fly one of them. I'm afraid that it's a complexity level way beyond where I am now, but it was useful for me to see new concepts. I'm assuming that you need to use control groups to do your undocking from the sky cranes because it looks like you use multiple docking ports on some of those. I only just got this game after Thanksgiving weekend, lol, so I am still trying to learn and there are so many things that I look forward to. Thus far I have sent science orbiters to Moho, Eve, Gilly, Duna, Ike, Jool, Tylo, Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus. I have sent landers down to the Mun, Minmus, Eve, Duna, Ike, and I even did an EVA landing on Gilly which was fun. All of these so far have been one-way trips except for one or two successful round trips to the Mun and Minmus surfaces. This is my second career in my short time with the game. I decided to restart for a new career after I unlocked all the technologies way too fast in the first career (normal difficulty) mostly because of the strategies. I found those strategies to be highly unbalanced and I felt that it ruined my career experience if there was no need to explore to gain science. So I started up a new career on moderate difficulty and am not using strategies at all. Funds come easy with contracts, but the science I have to work for which I like. This is all just for learning the game right now and I plan to restart my career again when 0.90 hits.

Well I did know that it worked when docking two vessels, but it hadn't really occurred to me to have two command parts on one vessel with no way to separate them -- it had only made sense to me for situations where you needed to join or split multiple vessels with docking ports. Thanks for the help everyone!

I had wondered in the back of my mind if I could use both manned and unmanned command parts together, so it's nice to know that works. Will the game automatically switch between the two command parts or do I need to make a switch manually somehow? @Laie I love that MIRV design, I'm going to head to the VAB now and try something similar (and less complex to start off), I think that will be fun.

I like to build a Science Orbiter that uses a processing lab and a bevy of other instruments to send out for orbiting for each of the worlds and moons. I have tried two different designs, but I'm not sure if either of them is optimal. 1. The first design uses a probe core to command the ship and I put 2 Kerbals inside the processing lab. This has the advantage of only using 2 crew members, but I cannot do crew reports. 2. The second design uses a Mk1 Command pod to drive the ship leading to 3 Kerbals on board in total. I have full access to all reports and the only real disadvantage is I need 3 Kerbals instead of 2. I had really hoped that I could send up a pilot and one scientist and then once in orbit just shift the pilot back and forth between the processing lab and the command pod in order to do crew reports and use instruments and transmit data. I was hoping to be efficient with only 2 Kerbals on board and have full access to crew reports, but unfortunately this didn't work. When both Kerbals are in the lab, it does not function because apparently the lab cannot function without someone also in the command pod. Is there a way I could make this work with a lab, only 2 Kerbals and still get crew reports and full functionality (and also just stock game)? It's not a huge problem to send 3 Kerbals instead of 2, it's more a of a preference for me, I was really hoping for just a 2-man crew.