Red Shirt

Spent the last couple days trying to fix my SSTA. It was pretty hands off, easily making orbit even with all the mining equipment installed. Then I added 2 of the smallest batteries (for emergency power) and offset the front landing gear to raise the nose on the runway. Afterwards it would not build up enough speed to make orbit no matter what I tried. I even reversed my tweaks. Finally added a little attack to the canards and we were back up to speed. Headed back to Minmus to a high ore landing site. This is when I learned how slow the mini drills and ISRU are at converting to fuel. I have 4 on board radial ore tanks. Eve using warp I've only added 60 m/s of fuel. That's filling and converting 4 tanks twice so far. I'm thinking a large mining station is on its way to Minmus.

Thanks. You may have just saved my next flight.

Learned a valuable lesson as I once again attempted to test my SSTA on Minmus. As I exited warp at Minmus SOI and noticed I had no control. Seems the solar panels were blocked by the body of the ship. Ordinarily that would be OK, except the stupid radiators draw power even though they are not needed. Did a Minmus flyby and headed back to Kerbin. I thought once in atmosphere I could regain control. Silly me. My plane skills are awful. Lost Bill and Jeb. Added a couple small batteries that will be turned off at launch - just in case. There is always a mod - name one with a power switch for radiators. It ought to be a simple mm config file. EDIT: Found Radiator Toggle by Snark. Looks to be exactly what I need.

Doing my best not to clip except structural parts that in real life we would make work. Doesn't the big ISRU overheat in atmosphere? Well, obviously not, but I would not have thought to do it this way. I love the forums. So many cool ideas.

Came back with the intention of deleting my post as right after posting I figured it out (after two days of trying). Now I see I forgot the scanner and the antenna. To the SPH! Thanks for the visual help and the reminder. I did a quick test take off and noticed the radiators did not overheat today. I think I had them clipping the doors earlier. Moved them. Seems fine.

I have a stable flying SSTO that is capable of landing on Minmus with fuel left over. My intent is to make it an SSTA but I need advice on packing stuff in the MK2 cargo bays. I have one short bay, opening from below, for the drill-o-matic jr. I used a second bay, opening from above, intended for solar panels. After installing I learned the gigantors will not fit without clipping and the 1x6 panels aren’t adequate to power the small ISRU. So looks like I need power cells. I also need ore tanks and batteries, along with some radiators. I can’t figure out how to get everything inside two bays. Anyone have a working set up that you can share how you stuffed the bays? One more thing. I noticed the radiators in the cargo bay heat up while going to orbit. Anyway to prevent this? Should I be concerned? Is it likely to explode on reentry?

Woot! My first SSTA. DV says around 1000 once in orbit but I actually had several hundred more in the R.A.P.I.E.R. tanks that I transferred as needed. Despite rather bad flying, Landed on Minmus with lots of room to spare. That's when I discovered I forgot the ore drill. Anyway, Woot! SSTA (but not back - yet) on Minmus! Got some tweaking besides drills to do yet. I notice I have 3 solar panels. One must go as it clips the bay door. I also don't like the tail and haven't come up with a better alternative yet. Stable and pretty much hands off flying in atmosphere once a little speed is built up.

Anyone else read this and hear Sheldon's voice all the way through it? I enjoyed reading it but kept thinking I needed a hot beverage.

Yeah, I forgot this step and had to pull up slightly from prograde. This is a big help. Thanks I did not know this. So thanks again. This is what I was originally trying to accomplish. I was not able to build enough speed in my run before needing the rocket. Possibly because I did not have the incidence set along with the front canards that I have since removed but the craft would begin to flat spin and needed constant correction. Lost the canards and the rocket engine and replaced the much loved panthers with RAPIERs. I will use your suggestions and see how it goes.

Took a few days of tinkering, redesign, engine replacements, but finally made stable orbit at 75k. Not enough dv left to do anything but reenter. Overshot KSP by 200k, had to ditch in the ocean. Jeb smiled hysterically the whole way down. Jogee, well, she was much less enthusiastic, but lived to tell about it. Needs some work but I'm not sure how to tweak it any more. The tanks behind the shock cones are empty fuselages. The liquid fuel tanks behind them are only half full (might try filling them back up for more atmosphere flying time, at the cost of adding weight. Has room for 6 plus a cargo bay which currently has only a battery and SAS. I did forget to remove monoprop from the pod that might help. On the plus side this is extremely stable and hands off. Leave runway at less than 60 m/s. Set to climb at about 10 degrees. Go get tea. Come back and wait to cut engines once Ap is reached. Then circularize. Less work than my rockets.

Please forgive me if this is not the place for this comment. My experience may not be typical but I'll share anyway. There are several mods I always grab with each new release of KSP. Only a few do I update between releases. I find most of them from the forum and just click through from there to where ever they are hosted. Sometimes I find them through a google search. That all said, on the rare occasions I do start with a hosting site, In the past I have preferred Curseforce. Don't shoot - let me explain first. I really like the tag system used on that site. If I am looking for an engine as example, I don't want to wade through several pages of totally unrelated mods (as cool as they might be). I would love to see SpaceDock develop an even better system to sort mods by type. Newest and most popular are too broad of a stroke at least in my opinion.

I've been enjoying reading the posts and until you pointed it out, I didn't realize this thread was that old. Since it has come back from the dead..... at what point did space become black? More important, as it is my pet peeve, when did the sky turning black at 6k become a thing. Most jets should fly under blue skies - just my opinion. I would play career if I could start with the side panel and the barn (he says knowing the reopened thread will now devolve).

Spent the last few days tinkering with various designs to fly, land, rover, and flag an anomaly on Kerbin. Now I have a question. I'll continue this in spoiler mode for those who don't want to know this stuff:

Foxster, I used your pics as inspiration and headed for the SPH. I also used set up knowledge I gained from playing with a VTOL I downloaded from Whiteknuckle. My first attempt flew fine but it just didn't respond as I thought it should. I changed the amount of wing surface and added some angle of attack to gain lift. I ended up with a plane that takes off at 40 m/s and flies pretty much hands off. I still have work to do as it is slow, with a cruising speed of abt 180 m/s. The good news is I can pick a spot, cut the engine, pop the chutes and land close to where I intend, then raising the landing gear, I can use the rover wheels to cruise to X marks the spot. I am a long way from a SSTO/rover but I'm now over halfway there. Thanks

This is why I asked the question on the forum. My brain is stuck in tripod landing gear, it has to look like a plane mode. Get outside the box and it makes more sense doing it the Kerbal way. Thanks.

I would have thought the bottom mounted rover would be ripped from the craft on touchdown. Obviously not. I do like the idea of landing legs to raise the rover back up. Good ideas. I'll tinker. Thanks!

Let's pretend for a moment that I might actually learn to land a jet with some accuracy and without exploding (crazy I know). I have been to the outermost depths of the stock Kerbol system using rockets but I have not spent a lot of time exploring Kerbin. I want to go anomaly hunting with a jet but expect there are a few where my future landing skills will not get me close enough. Walking is a pain. I need a rover but it would be best to reload it after each use rather than sending a new plane. How do I accomplish this on a jet without stepping up to the MK3 Cargo Ramp. Smaller is better. Prefer a stock method if possible.

Grabbed this to figure out how to set up a VTOL. Learning a lot and having great fun buzzing the KSC tower. Makes a great trainer for learning to land.

I've landed at all the anomalies on Mun & Minmus. Sent mapping satellites to many of the planets and their moons. Found several anomalies on Kersex orbiting Kronkus. Planning to go investigate. It is an atmosphere body. Thought I better learn to fly planes first by finding Kerbin anomalies. Put together a simple jet using a panther. Easy takeoff. Arrived at the island runway before I knew it (in the dark). Tried to land. Tried. Hit the water and exploded. Tried twice more. Never came close to the island runway but was able to pull up. Decided I stink at landing. Headed back to KSP and decided to let MJ land. The plane headed straight between the VAB and the SPH (excuse me, but the runway is way over there), hit the ground and exploded before I could pull up. The cockpit sailed way past the runway and was destroyed. Apparently landing is hard. This may take a really long time.

Sorry, I know you've told me that before. Assuming I can't figure this out and have to ask again, what logs? Never mind, I just learned to read. ----------- Edit to say, I have everything working now. The problem wasn't the planet packs, a bad install, or outdated mods. In settings under background scanning I had scan all active celestials checked. I thought that would take care of it since the mapping was the active ship. It wasn't until I checked the actual planet I was attempting to scan that it began to work. So, apparently I am the problem - as usual - Sorry and thanks for a great mod.

I want to ask the experts if I am on the right track - I have Kopernicus 0.63 along with OPM. Scansat appears to work just fine until I add Asclepius and Kronkus planet packs. Best I can tell they have been updated to 1.0.5 but with Kopernicus 0.5. I love both these packs but is it possible/probable using a newer Kopernicus than they were designed with, would cause Scansat to refuse to map even the stock planets? I would ask on the Kopernicus thread but the planets, with a little orbit tweaking, work fine. My issue is narrowing down the root cause of why Scansat won't work with my install.

With the old souposphere MJ could drop a ship almost on the mark. You often had to compensate for this when sending a rescue mission, less a second rescue mission be needed. In 1.0.5 with MJ a close landing at KSC might be in the ocean to the east or in the rough grass on the KSC side of the western mountains. Yes, that's close enough for career (so I've been told as I personally never play career), however you better send a rover if you need to be exact. Point is, eyeball and skill is still required to land closer.

Did some testing with Scansat around Duna. Think I have narrowed my problems with getting it to work down to one (or maybe two) of three planet packs not being compatible. Anyway, while scanning I watched a transit of Eve in front of Kerbol. Couldn't zoom in to get a good pic but neat to watch. Right up there with my first eclipse.

It's a great day to be alive. Beautiful sunset landing after planting some flags on Minmus. Getting geared up for the return of X-Files tonight. Mulder and Scully need to investigate the polar regions of Minmus. Somethings going on and the truth is out there. Conspiracy pic included. Jeb refused to get closer and whined all the way back to the ship - something about probing.

Have no idea why I can't get this to work. I used it on Mun fine. I'm trying to scan Minmus now. All I am getting is a grey screen. I was getting a warning of insufficient power so I added 2 gigantors and 2 fuel cells. The stock scanner does its thing (shows ore in map mode) but it never shows up on the scansat screens. I can see my satellite, orbit, and grid markers, as well as a flag previously planted. Nothing else ever gets added. I am in a 250k polar orbit. Since scanning Mun I may have updated OPM and Kopernicus, possibly added Dynamic Texture Replacer. I am not sure when these were added but if others aren't having an issue I imagine that might not be the problem.