Terwin

After landing on Duna with 180m/s fuel left yesterday, I topped off the (small)fuel tank and loaded up enough ore for 1.2 more tanks giving me a TWR of roughly 1.5. Tried some Biome hopping, but my normal ballistic trajectory with a retro-burn and vertical landing was not working with such a low TWR, so loaded back up and finally decided to just go to Ike. Problem: Attempting to get to orbit with an engine that has heating problems and unable to deploy radiators above 60m/s. At first I was just doing a normal gravity turn, but upon realizing my engine problems I reversed the turn and then kept killing the engine when it was getting close to over-heating, deploying radiators any time I was going slow enough not to lose them. Getting to orbit to a *lot* of fuel that way... (not sure I would have made it had I not been refining for most of the ascent). I did remember to re-pack the ladder-inaccessible chutes I had used for my initial Duna landing. After setting up nodes for Ike I decided my scansat was not going to be refueled over Duna after all, so I also headed that over towards Ike. Seems like I'll need to do some testing to see how fast I can go with my radiators extended at which altitudes. (losing radiators when trying to go more than 60m/s within a couple thousand meters of the lowlands surface is my first data-point...)

Heavy, highly durant, low-isp rocket engines seem a lot less magical than being able to re-fill a solid rocket booster without needing to re-build it. A 5 ton module that can re-pressurize the filler gas while refilling fuel tanks from an appropriate energy-rich ore also does not seem terribly magical, especially with a reasonable energy input into the process. Considering their small system, it is not unreasonable to think that Kerbals took more of a Russian Durable aircraft approach instead of the US highly-tuned but delicate aircraft approach to space flight. (I have heard that in the USSR it was reasonable to just bull-doze a crash off the run-way and deem the runway ready for use as opposed to the multiple-times-a-day manual policing of aircraft carrier flight decks double-checking for any stray bits or pieces that could get sucked into an engine and ruin the plane US approach)

I decided not to pick up any contracts for new missions until I had some Duna arrivals. With the faster time progression(skipping up to 20 days one time), I managed to get my first asteroid capture mission completed, then discovered that if you have an asteroid Klawed, you cannot mine any other object.(had my drills going down into the Mun, and even when I pulled up the landing gear for deeper penetration(not required previously) the only 'start extraction' option I had was Asteroid extraction, and it kept saying no contact. Putting the legs back down and dropping the asteroid let me finally fill up the tanks. Grabbed back up the asteroid and now that ship is running around the Kerbin SOI to collect all the different Asteroid samples it can.(it is an old 1.0.2 design, so it can't reenter safely, let alone with an asteroid in tow. Might send up a heat-shield/parachute just to bring down the asteroid as a trophy though, perhaps a pod to store the science in too) My Duna ScanSat/Resource scanner probe captured at Duna with a little over 1km/s and has scanned the planet and is now in a somewhat inclined orbit letting me scan most of the non-polar regions in preparation for my manned missions(should probably go scan Ike too, but I figure I can wait for the refuel before getting tricky with orbits as I only really have practice with low-orbit intercepts) Got my second asteroid mission captured at Kerbin and headed to the Mun for mission completion/sample collection My second manned Duna mission arrived at the Duna SOI(this one benefited from a mystery thrust before leaving the Kerbin SOI cutting it's 210 day transit to 160 days, so it is arriving a few weeks before the earlier mission) After mu initial Duna SOI science collection, I discovered that my low Ike retro-burn apparently drifted to be inside Ike, corrected that a bit and performed first retro-burn. Problem, only ~ 5 minutes to refine the ~2500 fuel needed for the Low Duna retro-burn, further problem, I am in Ike's shadow meaning my engine is my only power source for refining more fuel. Note: had ~1700 ore, but only a 2500 fuel tank. Initial tank had ~1.9km/s d-v but needed more than 3km/s to stay in the Duna SOI. Attempt 1: started burn early and kept refining fuel, but to no avail Attempt 2: Burned sideways to get out of Ike's shadow. Helped, but still not enough time to refine fuel for burn. Made named save game in case this is the best option(a while after passing Duna and still trying not to leave the SOI) Attempt 3: Aerocapture, Everything outside of the Mk3 components exploded, including the engines and most of the solar panels, still did not prevent leaving SOI Attempt 4: Found a saved game right after initial science collection, did 1km/s retro-burn immediately and re-calculated braking burns. Was able to re-top fuel before burn 1km/s in Ike's SOI, and with the better fuel efficiency managed to have a good 200m/s d-v worth of fuel for the Duna burn over and above what was needed for an orbit inside Ike's orbit. Finished off the Ore during first orbit and went down to LDO (50x52, so just above the atmosphere) with ~1200 d-v left @ ~900m/s). After collecting all the data I could, I made sure Had the game saved and made a landing attempt. Closed Gigantors and radiators, opened air-brakes then burned down about 600m/s. Watched parachutes closely and opened several that the engineer could get to fairly easily to re-pack once they were down to Risky. Managed to land without any breakages with a good 180m/s d-v left and deployed drills to start re-filling(don't think I can take off if completely full, but I can sure mine to get a full fuel tank and some reserve ore). next step: get all the Kerbals out to get flag XP, get enough fuel+ore to get TWR down to ~1.2 and then decide if it is time for biome hopping(I have lots of empty nodes in the community tech-tree to unlock), Scansat refuel(so it can scan the poles and also scan Ike), or a trip to Ike. This was my first Career Duna landing, with my only previous Duna mission arrival in a 0.90 sandbox game(I *think* I landed, not sure) that barely had enough d-v to a Kerbin fly-by outside the orbit f Minmus.

Since 1.0.4 I have finally started using mod-F12 I frequently use it to turn on thermal details so I can more closely track my heat status(I also tend to use F11 during most long burns with Atomic Age engines) Not only did I use F9 numerous times, but I finally had to revert to a backed-up save to get far enough back to have my first Duna lander capture at Duna(small fuel tank and large ore tanks apparently mean you need to burn early and often for braking) Finally landed with 180m/s remaining(thanks to lots of air-brakes and some parachutes). When a phantom thrust cut my Duna intercept from 210 days to 160 days, I corrected the trajectory and kept the bonus speed(same mission as above, so it almost cost me the mission)

You need Google to remember Kara's pet Fizzgig? (inconspicuously slides a chair in front of the 'D' section of his DVD collection) Then again, I suppose I should not be terribly disappointed that it took 15 minutes for someone to identify the character using Google, it is more of a fantasy than sci-fi movie after all...

As far as landings go, I would recommend KER(Kerbal Engineer Redux), I use the suicide burn read-out for all of my non-parachute landings (I start a burn to reduce my velocity to 20m/s when the suicide burn altitude remaining hits 100m, then come to a near stop around 40-50m with a slow descent until touch-down as most of my vehicles are 20-30m tall and have ISRU so a wasteful landing is not a problem) As far as I know it does not tell you how to land in a precise location though, I just use a maneuver node to come to a near stop in low orbit and make a near vertical descent for that(making hops as needed, after all with ISRU, wasted fuel can be replaced with just a little time and power, which is why I have it on all of my ships that plan to land)

After bringing home a load of tourists who did the mun-minmus-kerbol thing, I decided to get abmitious and actually do the sub-orbital on Kerbol stint one of them had. Accepted a Minmus orbital station contract to pay for it and loaded up my standard multi-moon ISRU design with extra cargo space for the sub-solar hopper(ion drive, fuel, panels, lander pod, probe core) Added in a couple of tourists who somehow missed their Minmus fly-by in spite of landing there and set off. Finished the station mission and landed on Minmus to top off the fuel and ore tanks. Burned a couple km/s in the mother ship to leave Minmus orbit(lined up nicely with Minmus between Kerbin and Kerbol to minimize needed d-v, which is why I decided to do this now) then undocked the ion pod, moved the mothership out from around it(no rcs on the pod to maximize d-v), deployed the panels and started the long burn(at 3x time-warp of course). (I set a node in the Kerbol SOI to make sure I had the directions correct but started burning for it while still in the Minmus SOI). Once I had the relative speed I needed, I just had to turn around and wait for the Kerbol SOI to start my return burn. Refueled the mothership from the ore tanks and started looking at rendezvous options. Plenty of d-v to get back to Minmus, so that looked like a good option if the pod could make it(and the mothership could refuel as needed before or after docking then take everyone home) Turns out the pod had plenty of d-v to get to a reasonable Minmus orbit, but the mothership was in a bad position and will take a bit of time to make orbit. While waiting I sent out and brought back another training/rescue/station/mining mission, but forgot to leave those 400 ore in the tanks. Fortunately the game does not care where the ore came from, just that you did the mining and then ended up stable on Kerbin with enough ore. So I just mined on Kerbin to get back up to the amount of ore I needed. Manage to Klaw my first asteroid(Class A that I need to bring to Kerbin Orbit for a contract) and drained it dry without even topping off my ore tanks, then set my burn node for it's periapsis in the Kerbin system. Not sure if I will leave it there or land it somewhere after that(perhaps on Minmus when I stop to get more ore for the next asteroid mission, or perhaps I should take it on a nice tour to get all the samples I can from it...). Then I sent out a station/training/mining mission to get those new recruits up to 3 starts(currently over 30 unassigned Kerbals with 3 stars, but they seem to be more than half pilots for some reason). I also did the final Kerbol SOI correction burn for my Duna scanning probe due to arrive in only about 70 days. Seriously considering not taking any more contracts after the current training ship returns and just hitting time-warp until my ships get close to Duna. (over 20M funds and no significant science is left in the Kerbin SOI, so not much need for more missions aside from feeling sorry for those in need of rescue)

Did one just the other day, had a parent ship with a tiny automated capsule in the hold(along with ISRU), landed on Minmus to top off fuel and fill ore, burned a couple KM with the mother ship, undocked the pod, burned the ion engines for a while until the perapsis went inside the sun, waited to leave Kerbin SOI, return burn on both mothership and pod to Minmus orbit(pod currently in orbit, mothership still on it's way). Once I get back to minmus orbit I'll klaw the pod, refill fuel from Minmus mining and head home. Not at all cost-efficient, but I took a station orbiting Minmus contract on the mothership to pay for the trip. Notes: * below ~2km/s around Kerbol put me sub-orbital (Kerbin is ~9.2km/s) * I had minmus between Kerbin and Kerbol, so I am sure that saved me at least a little d-v * I had originally planned to rendezvous near the edge of the Kerbin SOI, but both had fuel to get to Minmus, and I have a lot more experience with docking in low orbit where 3 extra orbits costs me less than 2 hours of in-game-time

Nope, I encountered the same thing on Mun with my first ISRU ship, had to send a probe with a klaw and a pair of drills so I could refill the fuel tanks as planned. Is this before or after they are deployed? There is an arm that lowers and will lift you off the ground if your drill is too low.

Did not get a lot done, but ran into a number of interesting bugs. 1) my Duna Cruise was heading to Duna with an Ike fly-by just because of where Ike will be at that time, and I could not add any nodes after the Ike SOI 2) time warping to get out of the Kerbin SOI so that I could hopefully set my capture burn node around Duna, I encountered a phantom force which(after some course corrections) cut my Duna intercept from ~200 days to ~160 days Hope I still have enough D-v to slow down... I managed to add a deceleration burn in the Ike fly-by(still have one of those oddly enough) for my current ~2km D-v, then a second node around Duna that will actually cause a capture(for after I have refined enough fuel for a re-fill), and a final node to capture into Ike orbit in hopes of being able to land to get more fuel before running out. On the plus side, if I run out of fuel after the capture burn, I can always wait for my original Duna mission to land, refuel and come up to lend a cup of fuel to the cruise mission.(assuming I can Klaw-dock through the lag) Admittedly the cruise ship should not be my first manned mission to Duna, but you take what you can get, and it will still arrive after my scan-sat which is intended to do the preliminary mineral scans of Duna and Ike. It seems like leaving the game paused for a few hours causes problems for further game-play unless I close down and re-start KSP. Does that mean my rockets are Jealous of my wife?

Landed and refueled a couple ships out of the Mun on Minmus(Duna Cruise and a training/station mission), disparate departure times and different trajectories had them both capturing close to each other. (the Duna mission did a straight burn while the training mission did a sling-shot due to positioning) While on Minmus I took a drill drone that had been sitting there for a while over to a Kerbal who needed a return with their pod, took some finagling to get the docking klaw onto the pod, but got it over to the fuel sands and recharged the pod so it could sit on it's side for easier grabbing. Refilled the drone from the ISRU of the Duna mission, then orbited Drone+pod and Duna Cruise to transfer the pod to the Duna klaw. Verified that two vehicles clawing the same pod will summon the Kraken, then transferred the pod to the Duna ship and clawed the engine of the Duna ship with the drone, topping off both monoprop and liquid fuel from the drone just because I could. Brought the drone back down and topped it off from the training ship, then tried to klaw the Duna ship with the training ship for some extra 'free' delta-v by doing the initial burn with the training ship(which has > 5K liquid fuel and had just topped off 3K ore, with nothing left to do but pop out to Kerbol SOI and go home). The extreme lag and the slow/non-functioning reaction wheels on the Duna ship(possibly due to the pod) combined with some missing RCS thrusters on both ships(design re-use is better when you remember to put everything back-on after tweaking the design) caused me to give up after the first failed attempt and just pass the pod over to the training ship for return to Kerbin after the Kerbol SOI visit. With a line from Kerbin to Minmus at just over 90 degrees compared to a line from Kerbin to Kerbol and with Minmus orbiting towards Kerbol, I got a node that will give me a Duna intercept with a Minmus escape burn of only about 2500 d-v in roughly 200 days(Duna is currently ~ 80 degrees ahead of Kerbin as I am only about day 120 or so, and this is faster and cheaper than my earlier missions) I just hope that refining during the burn does not cause any problems, as I only currently have ~1500 d-v from my one fuel tank, but I have ore to re-fill it 3.6 times(did not work out the exact d-v but it has a higher fuel fraction than my first Duna ship that had ~10km/s delta-v, it just has nearly 80% of that as ore at the moment) After this I launched the station/ship that was originally supposed to collect this pod to Kerbin from the Mun. (I'll need to check to see if it is doing any other contracts now that it did the orbital Mun station with 2K liquid fuel and the pod was rescued by another ship(did not expect the training ship to rescue it as it does not have the gear to go horizontal to pick it up, the whole conga-line plan was devised kind of spur-of-the moment)) notes: Drone has MkII liquid fuselage, nuke engine, several 0x solar panels, 2 drills on the sides, 2 rover wheels and 1 RCS 5-way on each corner(it can drive with drills pointing up or down), reaction wheel, small bay with monoprop and probe core, and topped with a Klaw. Originally launched because my first ISRU ship turned out to have drills that did no go deep enough to harvest, followed that ship from Mun to Minmus, and has been occasionally helping ships drill faster on Minmus ever since. This is the first time it was used as a rescue vehicle as it has neither pods nor chutes, just drills, a Klaw, lots of reaction wheel torque, plenty of delta-V and TWR(on Minmus at least)

like this: (without the extra spaces of course) [imgUR ]s9kn0[/imgUR ] My activities today: I spent a lot of time flying to the badlands and the poles with the basic jet engine to finish the caveman challenge. Manged to get all techs available without upgrading the science building without so much as reaching orbit of Kerbin. (did use ~ 10 science form contracts, but that was more to add variety to my activities than because of any particular need)

My caveman challenge album: If that did not work, here is the link: http://imgur.com/a/rat3O Things I learned: At least 8 of the 9 biomes on Kerbin have a splashed-down location. Everything except Mountains. (Highlands were in a small pool near the badlands, I was actually going there to get badlands splashed down only to find out it was highlands) KSC has at least 15 biomes at the starting levels: Admin, Astronaut Complex, Crawlerway, Flag pole, KSC, Launchpad, Mission control, R&D, R&D corner lab, Runway, SPH, SPH Main Building, Tracking station, VAB, VAB main building. You can also get EVAs for 'flying low' at KSC and the flagpole. It takes a *long time* to fly to the badlands using the basic jet engine, it also takes a while to get to the poles. Those ice flows are hazardous near the edge. I had intended to just drive my airplane off the edge of the flow, but it kept exploding before it reached the edge for some reason, finally had to take off then open chutes just past the edge of the ice and parachute down.

I was referring to the Docking module, as it looks like a hitchhiker can with docking ports covering the window and the hatch. I suspect that if you accidentally transferred a Kerbal into that piece you could not get them out without removing the docking port covering the hatch.

Question: Doesn't covering the hatches on the hitchhiker can make it pretty much impossible to get kerbals out of it? (I think you could still transfer them into it, but I don't think you could get them out)

I wonder how much of that 5000 escape d/v or 6000 deoribt d/v you could save if you start in a low-Minmus orbit when Minmus is in the correct orbital position... (I like launching my interplanetary missions from Minmus because that makes it easy to have practically full fuel+ore tanks without adding additional stages. Not sure if it actually helps me at all though... especially when Minmus is in the wrong orbital location relative to Kerbin)

I kind of expected that Science alert would not be permitted, but I wanted to check just in case. Created a new 1.0.4 directory last night and only 6 tech tree nodes short at this point(~520 science needed). Checking what is needed(1188 total science) vs what is available(23.4/landed biome(20?), 31.2/splashed biome(6?), 9.1/flying low biome(9)[+5.6 per jumping kerbal eva if still possible], and 277.9 global(some flying low, all flying high, all orbital+high orbital), I will need either at least 17 jumping kerbal EVAs(possibly up to 21 available, possibly only 9) or to find a way to get badlands/splashed, mountains/splashed and highlands/splashed. Replacing one of those 3 with water/landed would still leave me short by 5.3, assuming any of them are even possible) note: I am assuming that I can get icecaps both /landed and /splashed but I have not yet verified this. (I have successfully gotten shores, grassland, and tundra both /landed and /splashed) At worst I could need to get an additional 88 science from testing contracts(4 points so far)

Is the Science alert mod permitted? https://kerbalstuff.com/mod/424/ScienceAlert Seems like it would help make sure you did not miss any science. (I am hoping to manage the challenge without going more than 260km from Kerbin(just into high orbit)

If landed or in orbit of the moon/minmus these are not so bad(monoprop is the worst though as I do not use it very often) I just make sure I have large enough containers for the ISRU on a mission I was sending anyway to fill it up near by...

I always figured it was hobbyists who got in over their heads(Bill, Bob, Jeb and Val started in their 'barn' and their success has inspired other Kerbals with an interest in space to start their own programs, some with less success(LKO rescue) then others(Landed Mun Rescue)). Not quite sure how they managed to signal home that they needed a rescue though... might be their mothers/families watched in horror as they crashed then called the KSC administration building for help... I don't know about you, but if I was building rockets in my back yard, got stuck in orbit and NASA came to rescue me, then NASA asked if I wanted to work for them as an astronaut, I would most likely say yes...

I thought that is what challenges are for. I know that I plan to start running through the various forum challenges once I have gotten proficient at interplanetary missions. Also, I downloaded the community tech tree, so I have plenty of high-price nodes to unlock even after emptying the Kerbin SOI of science(not that there is anything in those nodes, mind you)

At this point I think Squad can improve the game most by focusing on functionality, stability, and efficiency. There are *lots* of contract packs and other ways to adjust your contracts to fit your tastes. I would rather have Squad work on things that are harder to mod like Unity 5, Bug fixes, processing optimizations, Multiplayer(even though I doubt I would ever use it), 64 bit, Heat and Aerodynamics(I think this is already pretty good, but I don't fly a lot of planes), Physics(Kraken attacks are less common, but still occur, vibrating orbit predictions as well), etc as opposed to things that are relatively easy to tweak and extend like the contract system(Just takes a text file, I think, less if you use the Contract Configutator mod) Once KSP has rock-solid stability for multi-player 64 bit builds on Windows and Mac that can handle every mod you want to throw at it without crashing after weeks of up-time flying Whack-job inspired ships without appreciable lag, it would be nice for them to address the contract system a bit(perhaps even have a switch to have silly/serious contracts depending on your preferred play style), until then, I feel that they have bigger fish to fry and should leave it mostly to the Modders.(of course adding tools for new types/styles of contracts could be done sooner)

I suppose it depends on how you run your space program. Early on, I had a number of one Kerbal flights, but none more than a few days long. Except for my Duna mission (currently on day 55 with ~200 days until Duna SOI), my longest missions were my Minmus+Kerbol training missions which were probably in the neighborhood of 2 weeks(14 kerbal days so less than 100 hours), and there was plenty of company. (Currently on day 110) I would need to check, but I think the first Duna mission was gender balanced. My second Duna mission (less than 6 hours old) is somewhat less balanced(F engineer, M+F scientists, F tourist + 5M tourists), but that is primarily due to the tourists(with the male tourists mostly relegated to the Hitchhiker can), so I don't feel too bad about those who are paying for cheap seats to go on a long trip without all the comforts of home. My professionals(press-ganged or not) are well taken care of and well trained(> 30 at 3 stars with none hired). I just need to find something to do with the ones staying in the Kerbin SOI besides rescues, or there may not be room left at the KSC for the Duna explorers when they come home...

Took a couple 5-kerbal contracts. 4 of them just wanted Kerbin SOI stuff, with perhaps a Kerbol visit, but the other 6 want to go to Duna. First sent off the locals off using an existing multi-moon vehicle(along with some kerbals who are not yet at 3 stars), landed on Mun, refilled and currently sling-shotting around Kerbin for Minmus. Then I re-designed my old Duna mission ship(the old one launched on day 55 and is now 55 days out, with another 200 to ETA), swapped out the horizontal mining apparatus(lots of Verners on the tip along with drills in the Mk3 bay, large landing gear near the nose, small landing gear and rover wheels on one pair of landing legs) with a drill on each of the 4 landing legs. Also remembered that the large ore tank is much more weight-efficient than the MkIII short fuel tank(2T for 6K fuel vs 1.8T for 2.5K fuel), so I swapped out all but the adapter(2.5K fuel) for Ore tanks for slightly better range/speed. Unfortunately I had some problems with my launcher(Main engine wanted to over-heat) so I used q fair bit of fuel for circularizing. When approaching the Mun I realized I might not have enough fuel to land for refueling(next time: stock an ore tank at least half full). A little checking showed that I was ~30-60m/s short for my normal landing process. While checking to see if my RCS fuel would help, I noticed I did not have as many thrusters as I thought, but I also found another vessel coming in for a Munar capture less than an hour after the Duna Cruise circularized. The other ship had full fuel and plenty of ore as it has just returned from a base mission on Minmus and was just stopping by to collect an abandoned Pod that I still needed to bring back for a contract. With any luck I will be able to claw my Cruise ship without knocking anything off anything vital(festooned with radiators and solar panels), and transfer it as much fuel as it could possibly need to land some time tonight. (I'll probably land them both for a full refueling anyway as I am still experimenting with how to get my current ship designs landed safely near KSC in 1.0.4 as they generally only have a 0.3 TWR on Kerbin) Only at the end of the night did I realize that one of the tourists does not want Kerbol orbit, but suborbital at Kerbol, so not sure if I will complete that one or not...

The talk of Ring worlds and O'Neil cylinders gave me visions of Wackjob building a launcher for a fully assembled Cylinder or (Halo-sized) ring world. You know he would...