Hotel26

OK, this is pretty ugly. Jeep Boxster. (Two of them ganged to test linkage for transport stowage.)

I'm not gonna show any pics, but I build my rovers with sleds/boosters dragging a chute or two... anything BUT "wheels". (Doctor's orders...)

It certainly won't save delta-v but my recollection was that it was a way to open up more "transfer windows" -- but having read it again more closely, I doubt it does. EDIT: I really wish I hadn't started thinking about your problem. I have this picture in my mind now of two rather large asteroids dragged into a rather high orbit around Mars. Dozens or even hundreds of kilometers apart, lightly revolving around a barycenter. Connected by a rubber mesh looking a bit like a catcher's mitt... and acting like an aircraft carrier arrester system.

[1.3.1.5] Telemagic has been released. It implements the Telemagic rules as described in the note immediately above. It's set up to permit a user to run the older version side-by-side: just unpack as usual and it will *add* files to GameData/Telemagic. You will need to adjust your launch method to run the new file, which is Telemagic.1.3.1.5.jar, but you can still run your older installation if you so desire until you've confirmed acceptance of any airports you've already constructed... Please let me know about any issues!

I just released [1.3.1.5] Telemagic at https://spacedock.info/mod/1627/Telemagic This release completes implementation of the Telemagic rules for recognition of "hub" airports and for refueling vehicles. Although it is currently still in "prototype" form, Telemagic is now "feature complete". One more major release is planned, the "April Fools' Day" release, to be delivered before 2018-4-1. This release will transform Telemagic into a proper KSP plug-in and simply put a single button onto the screen. For more information about Telemagic and its capabilities, please visit: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/169048-131-telemagic-v1311-new-years-eve-release Have fun.

There's a real-life need for this and someone (struggling to remember who) has proposed a rather brilliant mechanism. Here it is: check out the Aldrin Cycler... Also of interest is the Low Energy Transfer, particularly the Ballistic Capture, although this is about the opposite of what you want, as it takes longer. It's useful to know about though.

Is it all worth it? To paraphrase Dr Tyrell in Blade Runner: "if you are going to fly like a meteor, you are going to burn like a meteor."

I did actually get this to work properly and it's been incorporated into my Telemagic utility which has gone through several releases already. It will become a fully-fledged KSP plug-in during 2018 Q1.

@invision, what's the mission? It looks like an SAS attitude control test...?

Hotel26 is sad about this. [Is that so hard, folks? What's wrong with people, today?] EDIT: Just my sense of humor out of control. Not to be taken seriously.

I can't explain why JadeOfMaar, Martian Emigrant and Catastrophic Failure "like this", but I'm very sad about what has happened to you and am very sure you didn't deserve it in any way, so I can only say that I am very sad about it. And wish you a speedy recovery.

Jaa, in the savefile, they are listed as Vessels, so.... jaa.

the only thing I could think of to explain this would be: "extra sphere of influence [in close proximity to many orbiting vehicles]", an n^2 effect. Do asteroids have this effect, I wonder? I should think that even a Class E asteroid would have mass too low to garner a "sphere of influence" but it would just depend on what Squad decided... (A bit "conspiracy", I admit...)

One of these days, I will go get me an asteroid and hog-tie that dogie real goood...

As best I can remember, I ran missions with a tight enough budget that I couldn't be sure I could get a lander down twice (to deliver rig and truck), which is why I put an ISRU on the rig to operate on the surface. I'd delete that now if I were reworking things (and it looks like I am). In addition, I did it before asteroids and the claw (and have never been interested yet in asteroids) which is why I didn't contemplate the claw. I actually prefer my docking solution to the claw, but the claw has the advantage I mentioned, at least for aircraft, that you don't need to put draggy docks on them. (Unless of course you can fit in an inline dock or a cargo bay without simply paying for drag induced by extra weight...)

Me too. I have an ISRU in space and I'd prefer to lift 15 tons or ore and turn it into 30 tons of fuel. I don't recall why I had an ISRU on the ground too, but it might have just been lack of confidence!! The "claw" is how you dock to transfer fuel/ore? I use two junior docks all recipients facing Up and the one on the fuel truck faces Down. Easier to guarantee alignment even on uneven surfaces because the fuel truck has a couple of back legs to push the dock down in an arc if necessary. I'd like to see your thread! and I'll let you know when I have these up in KerbalX... (I've never used the "claw".) If you put a claw on a fuel truck would it mean you could refuel aircraft that don't otherwise have docks?? This would be a big advantage because most airplane designers do not like putting draggy docks on their designs, no way/no how... EDIT: Yay. Looks like I put one of those Grabbing Units on my fuel truck and need nothing else.

Amen, brother. I'm with you. Unless one is in a rotary wing... fugeddaboutit!! But the same thing goes for designing stuff in which you dock pieces on the ground together from above. Kudos to those who attempt it but too much trouble for me. At the moment, I've gotten re-interested in surface mining set-ups. I'm about to load what I have to KerbalX and start surveying how other people do it... In summary, I have 3 mining rigs, one with ISRU, a fuel truck and a lander (and an ion-powered "flitter" that all have a standard docking system.) It's the best I could do and I think it has some advantages, but I'm pretty sure I could learn heaps from the "state of the art" in this community!

The great thing about KSP is that it is so rich [so much to learn] and the great thing about the forum is that there is such a distribution of knowledge that it is an incredible place to learn. I played KSP 3 years without using the forum much. The kindest way to judge myself is that "I had no idea what I didn't know". This forum is an incredible trove of skill, experience and insight. We're all pooling know-how. Best to just stay open-minded and pay attention at all times and don't make too many assumptions about how much you know!

Here's how that works. IF you fly the navball ALL the way to the target you WILL land on top of the TARGET and cause EMBARRASSMENT all round. After the umpteenth time getting chewed out for this back at the Academy, I learned that you pick an altitude, like e.g. 300m, and you fly the NAVBALL to that altitude and then just go into a stop-the-hztl-motion/land-on-the-point-below mode. The higher you are when you let go of the ball, the greater the final, maximum, surface distance from the target can range within. But yes, you can still get unlucky and land ON TOP. So by then, you've had to have gone fully visual and are ready to haul off, if necessary.

> How do you fly the navball? Yes, sorry. I was being rhetorical. "How do YOU fly the navball?". Then I outlined how I do it, or think of it. But I need to make a video demonstration. In the very early days of KSP, I saw a video of a guy in a rocket launching from KSC to intercept a target that had just passed over the tip of the desert to the West. And he simply FLEW THE NAVBALL the whole way to rendez-vous. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in Kerbal space history. (I'll see if I can find that video...) I've used three techniques for pin-point landing (by which I mean the fuel truck does NOT have to pick its way through rocks and across craters to cover 5 km to you): 1. Asymptotic method: in which I basically come asymptotically to a stop over the target and then shoot a vertical approach. Arriving at 5 degrees before the target, I want to be down to 500m/s (using the Mun as reference here). 400 m/s by T-4d, 300 m/s by T-3d, etc. (90 degrees before the target, I'll have made a very slight inclination burn to try to align the flight path over the top of the target.) This whole technique is wasteful of fuel!! Biggest problem is that you have to a) start a horizontal correction maneuver and then b) cancel it out when you arrive. Possibly one for lon and one for lat. Lot of work just because the whole approach is so primitive. 2. Suicide burn. On a body without atmosphere, the way to ascend to orbit most efficiently is jump 100m into the air and then turn almost horizontal and burn, baby, burn until you have just over 10km apoapsis. (This is Newton shooting a baseball at sufficient speed from a sufficiently high mountain such that it never comes back to earth, but continues orbiting. (He'd better take oxygen if the mountain is that high!) The most efficient way down is the reverse: T-270deg, I make a small inclination change to align the flight path over the top of the target. At T-180, I lower my periapsis (which now becomes directly over the target) to as low as litho-obstructions (mountains) and my nerve (chicken) will allow, e.g. 6km. Then I put my speed v and max decel rate (MechJeb for instrumentation!!) into s = v / (2 * a). (This comes from s = 1/2 a.t^2 and v = a.t) A number like 11.3km will come out. When the target marked closes in to 11.3km, I burn on my initial Orbit retrograde direction (Set Orbit mode; set Retrograde; set Hold (to ignore changes)). You became a flaming hockey stick streaking toward the target. Don't kill all velocity but get down to about 50m/s or a little more. Then go Surface Retrograde as base alignment (this is your big tool for landing with only mm/s horizontal "wander") and then jiggle it down however you like to do it. 3. Just Fly The Navball the whole way! For greater fuel efficiency, you can do the suicide burn and transit to Navball over the target. But that requires a mental transition. Flying the navball from the start keeps you in control of the ball the whole way. If anyone else uses the navball technique and can give a comprehensible explanation for everyone (mine is kinda incomprehensible, even to me!), please do so. But I will make a video, too, since I think that is the best demonstration. NOTE: NO hovering and NO jiggering was used in grouping the above. Slowed down to land softly with the landing spot already dialed in on the ball.

Part of my launch check-list [TVZR] is to set Radial Out to get SAS to keep the pointy end directly "up" until I say otherwise. It gives a vertical ascent. Radial Out from the Surface point below you is just simply "vertical" in the frame of reference of the planet/body. The fact that the surface is moving doesn't matter since the atmosphere is moving too and since your goal is to cancel horizontal thrust. It should work at or near the poles, too, because it should provide its own kind of correction in attitude. Well, I can imagine there will still be a kind of drift to deal with, but it won't be the pilot-induced oscillation kind and it's not caused by your own horizontal thrust. The only effect I can think of is that if you are ascending/descending very fast, then "orbital" speed of the atmosphere [at the altitude you are passing through] is changing -- but I think it should drag you along with it. Geometrically, I can't see this does have any effect and certainly not significant. Especially in the "hover to dock" scenario. All it does is quell horizontal acceleration (relative to the ground). When you are over the target, you kill horizontal velocity by overriding SAS (with it still engaged), and then return control to it as you control descent rate in the hover. That should allow an uncomplicated maneuver to approach any point on the ground, whether it is level or not. THEN you tip over.

I don't think so because it all just adds up to a single thrust vector. @Corona688: "you cannot aim PERFECTLY upwards on a probe's navball," Well, done!! first of all. I use Surface:Radial Out on the SAS setting...

Hello. "What did I do [in KSP] today?" Well, I've spent the last 72 hours, surveying airport sites on Kerbin. I know. it sounds tedious. It actually isn't. And it has to be done, anyway. We take so much for granted about the infrastructure that provides the fuel and parts and transport; the logistics and planning to perform the missions that captivate our excitement. Have you ever been to 5.795N 149.312W on Kerbin? No, I didn't think so. It's a beautiful place. In its own right. When I first spied it, from a stock, standard 100x100km, easterly orbit, I thought, ha ha, that's a great place for an airport. Build it; and the aircraft will hold to land... I finally got there, years later, on a surveying stint. Whatever else you might say against it, the surveying profession takes you places. I wouldn't say that you "meet people", though. No airport: no people. First thing after landing before we even rolled out, I scribbled in my notebook, "Galt's Gulch". We flew in the first control tower, though, and got a real camp going... the place really reminded me of Arizona. I think my official report will dub it El Tapatio. As a pilot, you think you know a place to land! From the air. But we've all run into the horrid surprises: a cow planted in the last 100m of our run-out. Or even just the cow-pat we didn't see just there under the bottom rung as we alight, congratulating ourselves on a perfect landing. It's not so easy. Right now, my job is to pick a field. A big one and a flat one. The type you get the fast heavies in and out of without missing a beat. The type busy enough you have at least two fire trucks on warm stand-by at all times in case of... all that infernal paper-work! On the ground, it never looks so flat. It's a challenge. But you develop a knack for it fast enough. Once your intuition locks on, your savvy takes over. You need four flags down, marking out dual runways, intersecting at an angle of at least 30 degrees. One 1,000 meters long at least, and the minor: 800 meters or more. Four flags. And the control tower. All within 10 meters altitude of each other... When you first pick the field, if you can't feel sure from the get-go you can solve the Rubik's combination to unlock the next Hub Airport in the Kerbal Global Aviation Network, probably you're not going to be in this business long!

Every time I have to fly a navball approach to a pinpoint target on an airless body[*] and I haven't done one for awhile, I have to re-teach myself. Let O be the top of the blue section of the navball (that's the spot directly under my "vessel" (guys, you know what I am talking about)) If I have any horizontal mambo-jambo at all, that is NOT where I am going to be later today... Let X be the target and let's assume it's on the surface of aforesaid air-forsaken body... Let + be my navball Surface prograde marker; we has to fit it in somewhere. And let V be my attitude (the which way I is pointed marker)... If I get O X and + all aligned with X bracketed between O and +, I am looking fine. + is what is dragging my O (current position) toward X I can use retrograde thrust against V to repel + from V and thus control its alignment with [OX+] (Sadly, that's the only move I have got...) Meanwhile, my Silent Foe, Gravity, is dragging + (line of flight) toward O -- which is kind of an Astronaut's Droop... Not me, but I've heard on the grapevine... So, you have to lead the target, X, somewhat. Eventually, you want O, X, and + to arrive all together at the same time your altitude and velocity reach 0. Except, when you do that -- and you certainly will do, if you follow the above -- you will have landed on top of, and possibly destroyed your target, so you had better detune this slightly when your AGL is close enough. Just go for a soft, vertical landing right over wherever you are. Reason I am posting this is that I don't really think I can explain it without a video. (Which is maybe my next step.) Can anybody explain this in a much more succinct fashion?? Kudos for doing so! * not talking about my g/f

To be clear, I'm not saying I think KSP has yet run its course! (And that's up to the developers.) Nor am I saying extensions from T2/Squad for a fee is something I am implacably opposed to; I am not. I do want to continue to enjoy free access to updates to the backbone of KSP, since the history has been changes that are incompatible from the mod point of view. Every KSP update necessitates waiting for and finding updates to the mods you like. Paid DLC should not disturb the current user-contributed, free mod ecology. That would be a clumsy move.