J-Dude

Interesting... I never really knew what that did, only that it's enabled by default. UPDATE: Well, it definitely flies true... to a point. Apart from holding my breath that each stage won't blow half of another stage up on decoupling, at some point it eventually likes to tip in the upper atmosphere and flip over. I think re-enabling the AOA limiter might help with this a LITTLE. It's probably to do with only having the one reaction wheel on top, but I couldn't see how else to do it. Can't interrupt the fuel passage with those, or mount them on the side. RCS maybe, but that would demand BRINGING RCS propellant, which is unnecessary weight. Uh... canards maybe? I dunno. Good news is I'm finding flatter ground to drive the whole thing higher. Got it up to 20m/s without busting at one point... still a LONG way to go.

I'm on Eve right now, trying to climb my heavy escape vehicle up a mountain to eliminate as much atmosphere as possible. The problem is, the rover part of the vehicle is effectively crawling as it goes, only travelling short distances before wheels need to be repaired. And often, at least one wheel will instantly break upon repair, probably because too much weight is sitting on it. It's hobbled its way up, risen about a hundred meters and half a kilometer away from its original landing spot in the foothills. So I'm trying to see if I can JUST make it from where I am. Using SMARTASS to keep the ship angled up, I've managed to engage the ascent guidance after the thickest atmosphere, and ALMOST make it to a 100km orbit. Only 8 seconds of burn between me and an orbit my mothership can collect the vessel from. But of course, angling straight up forever and doing a gravity turn that late is bound to be inefficient. If I did the turn somewhat earlier, I could optimize the ascent. Ascent guidance could almost certainly do it... it just isn't. I don't know why, but attempting the autopilot from landed provokes some weird, useless behavior. The ship slowly spirals upward and harsher and harsher angles, until it finally flips over. Usually it catches itself and is upright after a few seconds, but the ascent is by then a total failure for the fuel and momentum wasted. It's not even in a consistent direction. It almost looks like over-correction and a propagation of error. Even engaging the ascent autopilot ANY time before being CERTAIN you're in the upper atmosphere is likely to provoke this effect. One wonders if there was a simple issue in the ascent profile gumming things up from the Kerbin Launch, but as this isn't Kerbin, I have no way to edit the profile. ...Or do I? See, I've SEEN videos of Mechjeb users editing the ascent profiles on other planets... but I can't for some reason. When I open the profile window, I get a blank window I can't close without hitting the button in the Ascent Guidance control panel again. I'm starting to suspect this isn't normal, though I've deleted and redownloaded the entire game and reinstalled Mechjeb a number of times by now. Do I have a wrong version?

What are you talking about? I'm already done with Duna. I'm performing aerocapture's for smeg's sake, I know the skinny on how this thing works. Are you responding to the OP? Anyway, somehow managed with a combination of manual landing and autopilot. Picked up my guy on Ike, and got back with just enough fuel to get both landers back to Kerbin. Now I'm setting up for a manned EVE expedition, already having sent a space station there, and launched three micro-probes at the planet to get a feel for it. Aerocapture almost wasn't an option here. Designed a rover to be my escape craft, with asparagus-staged 200 tanks fueling an array of Aerospikes, with only seats for the Kerbals and no pod. Plan to orbit it, and EVA to the actual return craft that they'll arrive in. Tested them by orbiting Kerbin with it at half throttle. So, overcompensated for liquid fuel due to the station attempt, but I can dock the return craft with it to ensure it can get back. Figured I'd stay in orbit till the Kerbals arrive in the return craft. But, figured I'd test the lander a bit first. Used the nukes for a while, but eventually... they petered out and lost all power. I have no explanation to why, and I had time to check after the chutes opened. The throttle was at full, and I hit the buttons several times to check for a glitch. I had half a over 500 units of power left, so scratch that. And again, I had a surplus of fuel to burn off. It burned all the way down, even after deploying the chutes, but I watched as the throttle stayed the same, and yet the thrust visibly depleted until they were no longer running. I hit the ground at 16 m/s and broke almost everything. And of course, I realized only THEN that I had hard-connected two points which I meant to be decoupled, and had to scrub the whole freaking mission back to Kerbin. I'm confident that ditching the nukes and their fuel will result in a clean landing, but I'm quite worried about what exactly happened there. It's not something I've ever experienced in the game. All requirements for burning were present, but it deflated like a balloon as I got close to the ground. I'm wondering if its something to do with the atmosphere. I know the NERVS are almost useless in atmosphere, but I've never had something stop firing outright. Is this like a reverse to a jet engine losing its air intake? Like, the thick atmosphere killed the engine in some specific way? But no flameout was reported... I'm just worried I'll run into this again.

I hate landing so much... I hate what this game does to me. I'm literally crying right now, because what I'm attempting has taken so long, needed so many attempts, and shouldn't be this hard! I've already been to Duna and Ike. It took two refueling missions, but I got the crew and science back. Landed a huge base on the Mun. Figured I'd do some more with Duna before attempting Eve. So I took on both base-landing missions to Duna and Ike, and the rescue of a Kerbal from Duna. Getting there was easy. My base design was too long and wobbly to be practical on a planet with an atmosphere, but I landed it all the same, only losing the then useless nuclear engine on its end, and coming down too hard on the front wheels which snapped. Otherwise, operational and in one consistent piece. I retired the design because of the numerous flaws I encountered, and went with something more practical for Ike. The REAL challenge was the return mission, sending an unmanned ship with a lander to ferry them all back. It took three full mission attempts, and reloads to be settle on a lander design that could make it back to orbit, and even rendezvous with the main ship. So since I landed the base in a sensible location along the equator, picking up the four Kerbals there was doable. I'd pick up the Ike base pilot last, which even the main ship could land on despite its size, and oughtn't be an issue. But of course... the Kerbal I'm rescuing is at the south pole. Funnily, I think the north pole is where my first expedition landed, but even with the refueled lander... this trip is impossible. I'm largely relying on Mechjeb at this point in my experience, and before anyone judges me... I don't care. This game is hard enough as it is, and I dropped forty bucks on this thing. But the landing guidance has done me so well, that with Duna I've been thrown for a loop. On the Mun base missions, I had to be careful about using the guidance, because using the base as a target would almost always guarantee my lander would drop right onto it and break off solar panels. But here... I don't know what to do. I'm so tired, so DONE, and the idea of relaunching the return mission again makes me physically ill. The landing guidance, every time, brakes WAY too late, and ends up blasting far from the landing site on the pole, nearly 20 kilometers generally. WAY beyond the accepted 2 kilometers the game allows so another ship/kerbal can be controlled and rescued by an unmanned lander. And yes, I've tried landing manually... and it's no good. Oh, I can land it. I have parachutes, and in conjunction I can put her down within 3/4 of a kilometer... the issue is getting back. The Landing Guidance of Mechjeb is efficient enough to land me, and put me back in orbit with the engines and fuel I have. I did LOTS of tests on Kerbin to find a lander that could get the highest of the others, and tested different levels of fuel with the winning design. It's as good as it gets, though next time I might consider a seat-only lander to remove the weight of a whole pod. Really I used a four-seater crew cabin, which sounded great with its half-weight on the space shuttle pod, but now remembering you don't friction-burn leaving Duna, the external seats sound like a good bet. But basically, manual landing means I lose too much fuel to achieve orbit again, and Mechjeb can't get me close enough as I see it... does the landing guidance need some sort of best case scenario? What does the orbit need to look like for it to be effective and accurate?

Far as I can tell, it was a glitch. I fixed it by remaking it... but I abandoned the design anyway. I can't do it. I just can't pull this off, and I don't have a clue why. I've looked up every tutorial I can find, looked into the various techniques and the ways you can be more efficient with your fuel. I'm really starting to actually hate this game. Completing basic goals takes me DAYS of trial and failure. I'm not kidding when I say some of this has made me burst into tears out of sheer frustration. Rescuing a Kerbal from low orbit took me so long that I couldn't believe it once I'd actually pulled it off. But now I'm trying to land on the Mun and return... and it's... IMPOSSIBLE. I mean it. I don't think it's supposed to be this hard, and supposedly I'm playing on the easiest setting. I ALWAYS run dry of fuel, and crash into the Mun at anywhere from 100 to 350 meters per second. I've even tried incorporating the RCS thrusters against the speed. I'm not coming in at a steep angle, in fact I'm basically just letting the orbit decay until it reaches the ground. But by the time I've dumped a full minute of the liquid fuel in the transfer orbit, and secured a mun-centric orbit... I've got nothing left. I have enough to suicide into a crater of my making, or maybe run away with my tail between my legs and waste 30-100 thousand credits of funding on a failure. I'm starting to master the basic Kerbin orbit, and can be left with a 3rd of the fuel in my second stage to begin the transfer. But that transfer orbit, if you're carrying ANYTHING and not employing the optimal periapsis approximate transfer, will leave your final stage with almost nothing, even using the efficiency of the terrier engine. And if that doesn't happen, I'll run dry of monopropellant and electricity, to be left in a dead float. I've built ridiculous rockets with asparagus staging, tried loading up the lander with TONS of fuel, and make the containers ejectable when they run dry to dump mass where possible. It's why it feels so impossible: even if you BRING more fuel, it only tends to weigh you down and make you pay for the expense by having the trip require more fuel because you brought more fuel. I even gave up and installed MechJeb, just to see if it was even POSSIBLE... and I'm not convinced it even is anymore, because THAT just crashed too!!! Even the OPTIMUM orbital path, (sans the ascendance automation because I haven't unlocked that) run out of fuel, and I don't have enough fuel to land. Retrograde. Crash. Retrograde. Crash. Retrograde. CRASH!!! ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

I've been playing about a week now, got some basic techniques down, and now I'm working to progress through career mode. I tried landing on the Mun first, but either by wrong techniques or inferior design I was forced to make it a no-contact trip. I didn't have enough fuel to land safely, however I tried, so I hobbled back to Kerbin, to use my new science to upgrade my design and try again. I switched pods from a cluster of lander cans to the full three-seater, and with some science tech I sat it upon a thick and short fuel tank, and radially mounted four others with terrier engines under them. Each are mounted with radial decouplers for an easier trip home, and another terrier is seated under the main tank in the center. This is just the lander of course, the other stages aren't much issue. But for some reason this setup is causing me some irreconcilable issues, and I've no idea why. The center of thrust and mass are all fine, and after the first firing all seems well. But as they keep firing, two of the radial engines are burning WAY faster than the others, and eventually flameout and become unusable, lest the whole thing starts spinning. I can't figure out why this is. None of them are sharing fuel lines, unless the decouplers do that and I hadn't realized it. But even if, why would two drain faster than the others? It's weird too; one of the tanks clearly fires, but doesn't indicate ANY fuel loss when I right click it in flight, while the engine has burned out beneath it, and the staging indicator shows it's empty... what the smeg is going on?