Starchaser

I had to step away from KSP for a few days. I'll drop a screenshot of my tech tree when I get home. I'm at work right now. I didn't see I had notices until I relaunched Chrome to post my docking image

Thanks for the advise, and tips. I should have thought of the SAS myself. I'll do that as soon as I get home

Writing this quickly because I was just trying to get some quick playtime before work and I have to leave within 9 minutes. My docking mission around minmus finally made it's rendezvous, and after 1 set of attempts pulling my hair out, I thought I learned enough to make a second set of attempts. I quickloaded my quicksave made as I was initially approaching my target, gave it a few nudges forward and back, then some right and up, and I got to this point I rotated all the way around the craft. It looks like this from all angles. What am I doing wrong that it won't dock? Do you need to arm the clamp-o-tron or something? I looked in the right click menu and I couldn't see anything

In short order, point 1. I gave it more steering than that, includiing, on a launch that came after the attempt pictured, 4 fins. There are also 2 reaction wheels, a 1.25m wheel right under the command pod, and the probe hidden in the fairing has a small reaction wheel. Point 2, I did attempt it with fins, and I always use the AV-R8's when I use fins. It still flipped about. However you suggest putting them on the boosters, and that I didn't do. Point 3.The fairing is that size because of the orbital survey scanner on the top probe. If I try to keep the fairing to 1.25m it clips through or won't let me place it. I wound up launching it with 2.5m parts, although all I did was remove everything under the first tank under the lander, put a rockomax adapter on it, then launched 2 stage rockomax tanks/engines and fins. Point A, I did this. but only on the center stack. Next time I try asparagus, I'll try on the boosters too. Point B. This is confusing to me, as other people have asked me why my boosters are so low, when I've had them low. Point C. This is a must do. I wasn't aware it was possible. I mean, I saw the fuel priority buttons, but had no idea what they were for or how they worked, Point D. The only way I fixed that permanently was when I learned about interstage fairings. I've launched a few multi-probe rockets since then, and to make them smooth I've had to use rockomax tanks. I was trying to avoid it for cost purposes, but less launch stress is helpful too. Thanks for your thoughts and insights. I will definately incorporate the new info in my future launches It actually leads me to a different question. Someone above suggested enabling crossfeed on the decouplers and getting rid of the fuel pipes. It seems I could use fuel priority to make the tanks drain in pairs....but without a connection to the boosters aside the one you want to drain, will that work?

Well, through much finagaling, and a bit of video watching so I understood what I was doing, this is my final result https://imgur.com/a/kEVRD Looks nice, right? It got into orbit easily enough, once I convinced it not to control from the upside down module. But as far as advanced player goes......I realized in orbit that I never put antenna on that middle probe.

Thanks for the response. I will attempt to make the changes you suggest. The image was a reload of one of the intermediate attempts to launch this, as I said, I got it into orbit with a single stack eventually. One of the 'bring it into the assembly building to try something else' was to add fins. You're right, it didn't help. Are you sure about the autostruts? in another question I asked, regarding stacking multiple probes, the answers there said to avoid autostruts totally.

That's certainly more elegant than the ad-hoc staging I made, that worked for crap! I'll just load in my last savegame and redo that. Thanks guys! I hope the modules fit. I was surprised at how big the scanner and telescope is.

Ok, I've asked this question before, and I was told it was because I had an unbalanced rocket. I didn't really believe that side torque of less than 0.1 kNm would be an issue, and I managed to launch that payload, but in a very brute force manner. But, now, part 2 of the issue. Here's a rocket with no side loading. https://imgur.com/a/dbpvM It absolutely won't launch. https://imgur.com/a/Dzm0C Here is the whole rocket. Now, I was able to change the delivery to a 2 stage rockomax mainsail/skipper and it went into orbit fine. But that's not the point. From everything I understand there is nothing wrong with the first rocket, and making the change cost me an extra 13,000 ish. I play in career mode and funds are important as well. I am really getting angry and frustrated over this. Edit: If anyone wants to try to fly it, here it is. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B99G8SQzn7guNk5UZFlEMkhEdUE/view?usp=sharing I'm using all the near future mods, but I think all of that is stock, except for the mechjeb and KER required parts

So, I have a mission that popped up to plant a flag on the Mun. I also have a need for a telescope in Kerbin orbit and an orbital scanner on a polar Mun orbit. I'd like to deliver all 3 on one rocket. So I built a tiny probe for the orbital scanner and I can't figure a way to mount the telescope on top of it. I guess I could build some kind of a jury-rigged platform for it out of girders. Is that the best way or is there something I'm overlooking. Reaction wheel. I need a reaction wheel on the probe....almost forgot that.

Ohhh. I like the look of that mod. Thanks for the direction!

Entry 4 Day 160-161 The rovernauts made fair time, and finished the science and contract aspects of their missions. They had 2 pucker factor moments with very sudden cliffs in their path. Bob tried to get an image of one, to show us what they were looking at. https://imgur.com/a/96cOp They are on their way back to the lander now, about 78 km away and parked near another steep hill. The probe rescue proved difficult. The grabber unit seemed to not want to trigger on the stalled probe. it took several impacts before it suddenly just seemed to grab it. It appears that grabbing the body of the small probe was ineffective and it only succeeded when it could grab it by the small ring along the top of the probe. Then, as the engineering team predicted, even with the mass of the upper stage, the whole thing inverted as it was landing. At least it held it's orientation through re-entry. The probe is on the bottom and the rocket engine is on top in this picture https://imgur.com/a/1M5hn We have another rescue in munar orbit that came in, and they've now asked us to put a station on the Mun. A permanent base. I've got my team looking into how to do this. Also, the asteroid capture mission came up again. We haven't seen an asteroid small enough to qualify for this mission yet, so I'm authorizing putting a small telescope in orbit to help detect them.

I'm sorry, but I had to take exception to this. I know you said 'most' real world rockets, but with 135 total launches of the 6 orbital shuttles, I think that's a fairly large slice of the total rocketry pie. The last command issued to Challenger was 'go at throttle up' or, increase to full throttle. This occurred at 2 minutes into it's launch attempt. Increasing to full throttle implies it wasn't at full throttle beforehand. Investigating a little further, this is in the shuttle's wikipedia entry: Around 30 seconds into ascent, the SSMEs were throttled down—usually to 72%, though this varied—to reduce the maximum aerodynamic forces acting on the Shuttle at a point called Max Q. Additionally, the propellant grain design of the SRBs caused their thrust to drop by about 30% by 50 seconds into ascent. Once the Orbiter's guidance verified that Max Q would be within Shuttle structural limits, the main engines were throttled back up to 104.5%; this throttling down and back up was called the "thrust bucket". To maximize performance, the throttle level and timing of the thrust bucket was shaped to bring the Shuttle as close to aerodynamic limits as possible.[78] I know Wikipedia is not considered a great source, but the footnote 78 points to a PDF from NASA regarding the shuttle's wings and the aerodynamic challenges they generated. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/584730main_Wings-ch4d-pgs226-241.pdf The throttle-down is discussed on page '233' of the report. (it's an excerpt, the PDF is only 16 pages long. My apologies if anyone finds this overly pedantic. My intention was to generate interest and conversation. However I am aware that my attempts to do so often come across as pedantic. It's not my intention.

I am not sure what part it is. It was a ring with a cone attached. I've grabbed things a few times. This was the second item this playthrough. I managed to grab it, and get it through re-entry, then it slowly flipped as it drifted to the ground. https://imgur.com/a/1M5hn

Day 159-160 The missions seem to have slowed down some. Is that a good thing? KM2RovLP2 2.0 The rover mission covered some flatter ground today, and Seanul managed to put 30 km and a science stop behind him. The drive in the Minmus 'afternoon' was at such an angle that the sun was able to charge the rover's 1 remaining panel so we only had to stop once to recharge. There's 1 more science stop, then the contract survey to go. Then it will be time to drive back to the rover. As an aside, perhaps it would be a good idea to include a probe core on these landers, even if they are manned. It would have saved a lot of time if we could have moved the lander to the second survey area while they drove the rover there. At least Seanul will be the first Kerbal to circumnavigate Minmus. KM1Sta 1.03 This station slide smoothly into munar orbit, and that was an easy contract to collect. The 2 stations are on similar orbits, and at this point nearly in opposition. One of these will be useful in Minmus orbit. Will be able to refuel outbound probes and ships. I'll wait until I'm offered a contract to do it though. These launches are expensive and it would be helpful to defer the cost.

I got a contract to recover a probe in low kerbal orbit. I made a small ship with a grabber and launched after it. I didn't put RCS on the ship, figuring I'd be able to grab it without it. I've bounced the probe off the center of the grabber at least 6 times and it won't close on it. It's armed. Is there a trick to these types of missions?

Thanks! The encouragement is appreciated

(Correction to above. it was really day 158) Entry 2, Day 158-159 The boys on the rover didn't manage to get far today, as rough terrain kept them moving slowly and other missions kept making them park while other teams used the control room. Distance traveled 15km. 83 to go. They did send home a great picture though https://imgur.com/a/0Oamu Mission KM1RPrP1 1.0 Burlo landed today and joined the staff. While it's great to have him aboard I should note that his debriefing file had a picture he took of the rescue craft. It threw some water on the 'bright spot' I mentioned in entry 1. https://imgur.com/a/T5nRU I've issued a strongly worded memo ordering the design teams to run their final releases past the astronaut group before construction begins. Mission: KM0Pr 3.0 This was a typical probe, on a simple equatorial orbit, It reached it's assigned orbit easily enough. The payout was nice. I wish more of our missions went like this. Mission:KM2Pr 4.01 is still on a near-stationary orbit of Minmus. The designated sector is slowly catching up with it. it still seems to be a quarter of it's rotation away from coming under the probe. Patience is a virtue here. New contracts. We were offered 3 new contracts today. Placing a new station in Munar orbit. I guess someone wants bookend stations there. The specifications for this station match the one we already sent into orbit. The lifting vehicle for our station design is large enough that although the payout seems huge, we'll only make about 40k profit on the mission. We accepted this mission and KM1Sta 1.03 is on the way to the Mun already. Going in and tightening up on smaller design flaws in the rocket made for a much smoother liftoff than the first station, which we almost scrubbed, but somehow the rocket came under control once the first 4 boosters were jettisoned. This was under control throughout, but still required us to delay the gravity turn until very late. an image of the rocket pre-launch. https://imgur.com/a/HLPw5 It got cropped out of the pic somehow, but Jeb managed to sneak aboard and we almost launched with him in the probe. He knows it's supposed to be under probe control in transit, but he's just itching to go into space again. DM0Pr 1.0 is hanging out just outside of Kerbin's SOI, waiting for it's burn window in 79 days for Duna. I haven't told Jeb yet, but 2 weeks before that burn I'm going to authorize a manned mission in to orbit and conduct science in the Duna system. I am toying with it being a 3 man ship. We'll see how the group's track record looks over the next 60 days. Anyway, one of our probes caught this pic of the station entering orbit. Quite dramatic. https://imgur.com/a/H9lmH The second contract was a completely new mission for us. A derelict probe in low kerbin orbit. I thought about this one hard. The design team gave me several options, but without seeing the probe I don't know what's viable. I thought about making a close flyby with existing material to get a look at it, but nothing was really close enough to make that effective. In the end I thought of an old Hal Kinden movie I saw about a suborbital passenger craft that suffered a malfunction and got blasted into orbit. It was laughable in several ways, however they solved their re-entry problem by using a slightly bigger heat shielded ship to ride interference. Never mind that there is no way that doing that would allow the sub orbital craft to decelerate fast enough to not crash into the leading ship. However it did lead me to approve sending a grabber unit mounted on a 2.5 meter rocket, and use the bigger mass to protect the probe. It presented a design challenge. With the grabber unit we can't mount a top parachute, and the engineering team assured me that modeling just bringing down the fairing base, and the grabber would be horribly unstable, and likely to flip, we are landing the maneuvering stage along with the probes to provide extra weight and stability. We all have our fingers crossed on this one. https://imgur.com/a/0wPxX The last contract is for 2 tourists to land on Minmus. I've held this launch until we get the probes down. The 2 craft will rendezvous in 10 hours. Time for some sleep! End Entry 2 (the pics didn't embed. I will replace them with links, but I need bed right now.)

(This will be an overview of my in game missions, written from the point of view of a newly appointed director of the space program, due to his predecessor's mistakes and oversights. I hope you all enjoy) Space Journal entry 1. Day 152 of mission operations. Well, this is it. I'm in the big desk, with huge shoes to fill. I look over the asset list and the science pools and just shake my head. We have a 7.2 million pool of resources and a science pool large enough to pull the trigger on a half dozen advances should we need them. And I'm here because Werner made mistakes? If that's the expectation, it might not be as fun a place to work around here as it's been in the past. It will definitely be a tight-rope for me to walk. But lets discuss that later. I'm Charles Kolden, the new KSP director. Lets look at today's mission activity. 1 Mission KM2RovLP2 2.0 Our Minmus rover mission. It's been on planet for 8 days. Pilot, Seanul, Engineer, Bill, Scientist, Shelbert. This is a stricken mission, with a rover that's been hugely reduced in effectiveness. We caught Seanul turning donuts on Minmus at high speed. When we told him to stop showboating, he pointed to the mission objective to test the new self-righting mechanism. With reluctant fairness to him, it did take 7 attempts before the rover failed to land on it's wheels. However, by the time he did manage to get it to land on the science jr, only 1 of the solar panels was functional. So now, multiple times during the day we have to stop and park the rover into Kerbol to recharge the batteries. One of Werner's mistakes was authorizing a replacement rover for them. It's still 5 days away from Minmus. However, they will have finished the major science efforts and the mission contract within 2. I've repurposed the delivery mission. More on that later. They drove 7 km before I made them park to turn mission control over to the Minmus Probe teams Distance driven in this mission segment. 8.5 km 98 to go on mission route. 2 Mission KM2Pr 4.0 More than anything, the 3.0 and 3.01 Minmus probes cost Werner his position. The 3.0 probe arrived on it's assigned polar orbit, and the contract refused to pay out, citing a lack of mission critical equipment. The design team left thermometers off of both the 3.0 and 3.01 missions. 4.0 and 4.01 were launched, with thermometers and an upgraded probe core. 4.0 reached it's assigned orbit today. 4.01 is near it's assigned orbit, but we're waiting for it to be over the specified sector before making the final mission burns. Further millstones from these missions, all 4 have undersized antennas HG-5's and were overdesigned fuelwise. Both 3.0 and 4.0 have 1300 m/s worth of fuel left in their transfer tanks, beyond the 1038 m/s in their adjustment tanks. As they are in nearly the same orbit right now, I'm considering the worth of sending the refueling probe into Minmus orbit to drain those transition tanks. 3. Mission KM1RPrP1 1.0 Our bright spot for the day. We picked up Burlo from Munar orbit, and burned retrograde to the Mun to return them home. We couldn't get a free return, but it got us more than 2/3 of the way back, and the probe-guided ship still has 930 m/s in reserve. 4 Mission Rover delivery. This mission has been repurposed to finish a temperature survey mission from points on opposite sides of Minmus. We came up with a plan to dip in and out of orbit to pick up the 2 'below altitude' requirements when we had Jeb in orbit, but it was deemed he had too low amounts of fuel left and he wasn't allowed to attempt it. At the time I thought "this is Jeb, he's gonna do it anyway" but surprisingly he obeyed the command to burn out of orbit. I guess he was worried about his tank too. Anyway, we're going to do the orbit dipping with this probe and use the thermometer on the rover. Our ground rover drove under the point for the 'below 2300 m' requirement and confirmed it's in the lesser flats, so maybe we will drop the replacement rover there also. We burned today to move our entry trajectory from a high polar orbit to one with a periapsis of about 9000 m. A final check before committing the burn exposed a staging flaw that would have decoupled the rover when the lander stage's engines were triggered. That would have been an auspicious beginning for me. End Entry 1

and effects of me waking up at 4 am. those were supposed to be separate posts. That was to prevent my "boosters crashing into rocket" issue as much as I could. I'll raise them again if I can figure out how to make the separatrons work for me.

Mia culpa. The ascent autp[ilot still couldn't handle it, but it behaved very nice for me. as long as I only tipped less than 10° before dropping the first booster set. After that it did the gravity turn very well. I'll have to pay more attention to the torque values, I normally don't look at them unless I know I'm installing something that is asymmetric. (My rover rocket, for example, has the small I-beam running along it's backside to offset the rover) Not enough ejection force. The high profile ones only push with 260. The hydraulic manifold is low profile so everything is too crowded close to the stack and things go bump because there's no room. If I'm going nearly straight up they'll fall away mostly ok, but tilted, gravity pulls the number 6 booster into the number 1 booster and knocks it off the decoupler, or it smashes into the main stage, and I discover that when I get to just the main stage, there's no engine on the bottom of the main stack anymore. I never understood how the separatrons worked until I watched a non-Manley asparagus staging video last night. I'll add them next time. i didn't want to tear this existing rocket down and add them, thinking if I reconnected the second and third booster sets and inadvertently fixed my issue, I wouldn't be able to track it down. Now that I have some idea what was wrong, I'll look at separatrons.

Possibly, except for 2 things. 1. I've launched worse without an issue. 2. the torque values go up as you peel off boosters, at it's worst when I'm just having the main stack. It's also at this point that the autopilot regains control. However, my saying no is just theoretical. I'll pull off the station and replace it with a module and equipment of approximately the same weight, and 0 torque and see if the issue fixes itself. Although I'm not sure where the asymmetry is coming from. All parts were added with the symmetry tool, except for the KER amd mechjeb items, which don't affect torque. My in-line docking port maybe? Update 1. The 'asymmetry' was mostly in the second PPD-24 Itinerant module. I have asymmetry in quotes because I pealed off every component on that module and then put it back on, and the 'culprit' was the HG-5 high gain antennas I took it off and the torque on the payload went to 0. I put it back on and the torque stayed at 0. There is some asymmetry, oddly enough on the central stack. Maybe some stitching is off. At any rate, as you can see, the torque values are all less than 0.1 across the rocket now. https://gyazo.com/587ee6dbfa59802e17007bef6d28535d So let's see how it flies now.

Nope. Mechjeb and I both took 2 or more attempts to launch, because separating boosters took out parts of the rocket. (which seems to be a recurring issue. using the manifold with the 450 ejection force or the high profile decoupler I use here.) Mechjeb wouldn't gain stability once it lost it, until I dropped the final 2 boosters manually.With just the main stack it didn't have enough delta-v to get to orbit. When I piloted it, once I dropped the first boosters, as soon as I touched the control it went crazy. I finally succeeded in getting it to orbit bugs bunny style. I went straight up and once I dropped the first and second booster sets, I made a left turn at albequerque. I wound up in a circular (ish) orbit at 138km, and 2.5° of inclination, using 4k m/s of delta-v (I could have done a bit better. I was so intent on watching time to apoapsis to keep it from climbing to 400k or some ridiculous number, I missed when the final 2 boosters ran out of fuel, for a bit. The main tank was about 80% full when I did separate. So, the stitching didn't help my stability. Neither did Jeb trying to sneak into my command pod!

New stitching, https://gyazo.com/5197f03ddcf9ed407c66672f7234b603

Made me go back in and look. I could have sworn the boosters were strutted to the center stack, and they are, both at the top and the bottom. However, it's kind of an oblique strut instead of more direct. Maybe I moved the part after settng the first strut.Unless I strutted it in the opposite direction too, it might act like it's unstitched from force in a certain direction. I'll redo that stitching and try the launch again Edit: I removed 4 of the boosters to look at the original set It was stitched at top and bottom and left and right, to the center stack. https://gyazo.com/02672a0b4a2c4c295e6b409e4ecf0845. I'm going to try to shorten them some and try to launch again

I've recently begun experiencing instability in my rocket launches. I'm 150 days into a career, and I often have 5+ active flights at the same time, so it's not that I'm doing anything wrong on my launches. Within the last few days I've been trying to launch and if I fail, I've been letting Mechjeb's autopilot do it. (which it doesn't seem is working properly. It won't throttle down to avoid going over terminal velocity.) That's been hit or miss too, but I did have it recover a launch where the rocket did a loop. This morning, I was launching a new station for a mission, and instead of docking in orbit I decided to launch it at 1 shot.To make a long story short, I launched it with 6 boosters in asparagus staging. Everything was fine during the initial stage, but went crazy after dropping the first pair of boosters. It did a loop and then started spinning like clock hands. It reached a peak height of about 26km. It dropped the second pair of boosters at around 12km, and remarkably they didn't crash into anything. By 8km, between rocket gimbal and RCS thrusters, mechjeb managed to get the rocket stable and pointed in the right direction, and successfully put the station into orbit, with barely enough delta-v to make the Mun transition and then do an insertion burn. (at least, I assume it will be enough. It's still in transit, but I have 750 m/s left That event convinces me that I'm doing something wrong in setting up my asparagus staging. I'm hoping someone can help me with what I'm doing wrong. Here come the pictures Long shot of rocket. I actually can't pull back far enough to get the entire rocket in the shot: https://i.gyazo.com/37d143a688df596f9159685bf21c6ec8.jpg Close up of boosters https://gyazo.com/20112520147c87a577a023c8c3d68aca Top down: https://gyazo.com/a0e8b00af0446c6ec32d756d12462cec Angled a bit to see stitching: https://gyazo.com/588592116f365aedf5365c93bbf030b9 Thanks in advance for any assistance