Red Shirt

So, apparently you can set a lander can safely on Mun using only RCS Thrusters. I used 8 multiport ones and I had my doubts until the last few meters. The however of the mission is, I did not know how to calculate the amount of propellant required. The lander can started its ascent but at about 200 m/s it sputtered its last. Doing the only sensible thing, Bob quickly EVA'd and with some work achieved orbit. A rescue mission will follow. The tricky part of an EVA orbit is switching back and forth with map view to reorient Bob. He does not stay feet down automatically as he rotates making circularization a little harder.

Well Slashy, your craft is not the one I saw, however I am inspired. I suppose it serves no purpose in 1.04, but I will land with RCS thrusters only! Pictures may follow... unless it ends badly, in which case pictures are pretty much guaranteed.

I have no idea where I saw the lander but it look a lot like The_Rocketeer's pic. I thought it sounded a little too good to be true. I think this goes under myth busted.

I saw on pic in a thread a couple days ago that appeared to show a lander can with only a RCS tank and thrusters landed on what I thought was Mun. I tried it today and hit revert just before slamming into the Mun at 350 m/s. Can it be done? If so, how?

I have been experimenting with new things in 1.04 so I don't have a big fleet designed. I'd lose my Mun base and a couple satellites. None of that will take a lot of effort to duplicate or improve. I'm more concerned about EVE 7-4. It is the base for nearly all my beautification mods. This won't likely ever be updated. The add-on cloud packs, like Edge of Oblivion, won't work with EVE WIP. I enjoy designing and thinking a mission through, but it is the beauty of the modded game that inspires me to be an explorer. Career is wasted on me. It is seeing a dust storm on Duna that motivates me to see what else is out there.

The pictured craft is very steady. The earlier attempts were not pointy enough at the front and lacked sufficient lift at the bottom. I learned a bunch with this project.

Thanks. Not sure what rep is for but have some.

After reading the thread about what mods people thought necessary, I decided to grab the asteroid day mod. I decided this would be my first xenon powered satellite. Tried two or three days to launch the satellite atop a standard booster ship. I had plenty of Dv. First attempts flipped end over end. The drag on the telescope was more than I could handle. Tried hanging the satellite upside down between two booster sections. Made it to orbit once. Only to learn ion engines require xenon AND electricity. Lots of electricity. I had also read the thread about parts people don't use, so I decided to put the satellite back on top with the not rockomax micronode under it. then attached two more on either side. The first is a spacer the second is my ion engine mounts. Next I used the pocket I-beam on each end and attached two gigantor arrays top and bottom. Below this I had a FL-T800 with a Terrior. And the equivalent of an orange tank with a mainsail. This wouldn't fly either, despite having around 5000 dv in the rocket engines, not counting the ion dv. Added a fairing around the satellite. Had to remove the I-beams until the fairing was in place. Toyed with a couple different fins. The Delta wing worked great. Finally. The lifter stage burned all the way to 50k. The Terrior only had .71 TWR at this point but it worked perfectly. Only needed a minor burn to circularize. Set a node to intersect Eve's orbit. Completed the 1000+ m/s burn and still had 350 dv. Used the rest to get most of the circularization complete before the ions kicked in. Turned on the telescope and opened the dish. That's when I discovered Eve has a slightly eccentric orbit. Half my orbit is inside Eve's orbit. Raised the Ap and circularized. Now it seems to be operating perfectly. The 4 gigantors was a bit overkill but it looks cool. Hopefully the link works.

Glad this was posted. I thought maybe it was just me. 0.23, 0.23.5, 0.24, 0.25, 0.90, 1.04 clean, 1.04 heavy mod. I only play the 1.04 heavy mod version. Other than EVE I haven't used many mods in the past. OPM kind of caused an addiction problem. I don't need an intervention. I need the 1.1 64 version! If you have one of the older versions go back and fire it up once. I was amazed how much less polished it felt and looked.

Upper left corner of your screen there should be a navball icon. Click it and the menu opens. Just did this a couple hours ago.

Strip Symmetry for 1.0 http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/80654-1-0-StripSymmetry-remove-symmetry-%28v1-6-2015-04-28-20-20-UTC%29 Claimed to work in at least 1.02

Definitely interested in this topic. I have not been able, even with MJ, to land anywhere close to KSC in 1.04. If MJ can't do it, I don't stand a chance. In .90 it would land on top of the VAB almost every time. On my own, I use to get close. Now, I seldom make it to the correct side of the planet. I'm OK with that, slowing down without burning up is a lot harder now, but I am trying to figure it out.

Pre 1.0, landed and returned from every stock planet and moon except the Jool system and Eve. Responsible for killing the crew in Jool's atmosphere and stranding a crew forever on Eve. I gave up on the Jool system because of Laythe. Not sure what the problem was but pretty sure I had no clue about TWR back then. My pre 1.0 ships were single launch craft mostly the size of a small city. Future plans are to build refuel stations on moons and downsize my interplanetary craft.

Thought I would add an update in case anyone has this question in the future. I way over thought and over designed for this mining platform. I tested the solar panels at the launching pad with the drills and ISRU in full operation. When I realized how many gigantor panels it took I thought I would never make it through a night of mining. I added 6 fuel cell arrays. I was afraid it would use more fuel than I was mining. Silly me. Started drilling during the night. Filled two large ore holding tanks, two Rockomax X200-32 fuel tanks, two FL-R1 RCS fuel tanks, then refilled the ore tanks and completely recharged all the fuel cells. Now to work on the fuel shuttle. Here is a sunrise picture of my 60T over designed beauty. Mun Base Alpha is in the background.

I believe I have all the bugs worked out of my mining platform. It is a 60T overkill beauty, because it is the Kerbal way. Getting it to LKO was a challenge. After several adjustments (otherwise known as revert to VAB), made it. Did the transfer burn to Mun. Landed about 1km from Mun Base Alpha. It was supposed to be closer but it happens. While the drills were doing their thing, I bracket switched to a nearby scout ship equipped with scanners. It was landed very close to the base. As the scene appeared on the screen, I watched my base explode skyward then crash into the Mun surface leaving a trail of debris everywhere. F9 why didn't I remember F9? So the base is gone. Yeah, yeah, I know, it serves me right for using HyperEdit to set it there in the first place. I am guessing this was caused by physics being applied to the sprawling high piece count base. So, is there a mod that applies scene physics gradually so this doesn't happen?

@ WildLynx - Thanks for the reminder about a locked battery (and fuel tank) I forgot this on my initial design. @ Nori - Thanks for the fuel cell info. I will probably try this route first. @Slam_Jones - I have Near Future downloaded. I just haven't installed it yet. I was waiting for my first Sarnus mission in the near future I see from your setup you only have one ore tank. I guess I am thinking too big. It looks like you are using KAS for the pipes? It is on my list. I have to use a public WiFi hotspot (Starbucks) to download bigger stuff and haven't done it yet. I was planning to use the claw for now. I love your shuttle/hauler. I had something similar, but far more boring, started. After seeing your craft, I am already seeing revisions in my future.

Thanks to you all, I now have a grasp of how to scan for resources and have located a level spot to mine. I have begun designing my drilling platform for a refueling base on Mun. I know Minmus would be easier but... The platform will be permanent. I plan to truck the fuel to a shuttle. My platform plan is to start with an engineer in a cupola, then use two large ore holding tanks and four drills. I learned real fast that if the drills are mounted too close to the ground it will shake the platform unmercifully. Raised them and added struts, just in case. Above the tanks is the ISRU. On the sides I've mounted duel Rockomax X200-32 empty fuel tanks (half an orange tank each). Above that is an empty RCS tank. I mounted the side tanks on a structural pylon but will probably change these to eliminate the possibility of accidental decoupling. I ran a fuel line from the holding tanks to the LFO tanks. It works though maybe it would without them? Couldn't find any mention of this. I have 4 large radiator panels for heat control - is that still necessary? Doesn't matter, they look cool. I also have enough gigantor solar arrays to completely power the platform during daylight hours and fully charge the battery. Now the point of all the previous ramble - how do I power this at night? At the moment I have single Z-4K. At 4000 units with drills drawing 15/s each, I can watch it quickly depleting once the sun sets. I doubt I could carry enough batteries to matter. The alternatives I see are fuel cells which require LFO to work (seems to defeat the purpose) or just running out of juice (down time). Would it be better to only have one drill but multiple platforms with more batteries? It looks like it takes a very long time to mine and convert fuel, so I was trying to speed things up. Is there a clever way to keep things running around the clock?

Thanks all of you. I think I get it now. If not, I'll be back.

Thank you. That was the clearest tutorial I have seen on the subject. I learned I did not need to relaunch the exploded satellite! Couple questions: The result from the surface scanner is a more accurate average reading of the entire biome resource and not literally the exact spot of the probe? I noticed you have the surface scanner and the narrow band scanner on the same probe. Will the narrow band read on the surface or do I need to launch over the biome to read? Simplified - what is the minimum/maximum altitude for the narrow band scanner.

Looking for guidance on scanning. I had a satellite in Munar orbit with an M700 scanner. The first one exploded while establishing a polar orbit. The second attempt worked fine. I picked a spot with 80% resources according to the long range scanner. Marked the spot with a scout probe. HyperEdited my Mun Base nearby on a flat spot. My first ever HyperEdit. I know its cheating to many of you. I have built orbiting stations one part at a time. I can. I chose not to, this time. Anyway - HyperEdit isn't as easy as I thought it would be. My base was fine in orbit but upside down at the surface. Had to use RCS thrusters to rotate it before it touched down. None of the controls seemed to work as expected but I managed after several attempts. My scout ship had rover wheels and a surface scanner so I tried to figure out how to use it. I still don't get it. It only seems to read what I'm sitting on top of at the moment. I might be only a few meters from a rich vein but I couldn't tell. Am I missing something? While messing with the surface scanner, my in orbit satellite exploded, again. Cool fireball, but seriously? Since I had to launch another anyway, I added the narrow scanner. Back to polar orbit. Surface scan now shows only 50% resources at the spot I chose. sigh. Tried to use the narrow scanner - it does not seem to work anywhere near as I thought it should. Apparently I have to be directly over the area to scan. I don't have the fuel to change inclination again. I don't mean to complain but I guess I am. It seems to me if the scanner can see an area (meaning it is on the correct side of the moon) I should be able to mouse over and direct it to scan the point I select. Maybe that is too simplistic? As it stands, it appears the narrow band scanner needs its own satellite as the polar orbit will take forever to hit the right spot and I will have to stay with it while it scans as there is no way to save a location scan area. If I could give it a target area and move on to something else while waiting that would work for me. I'm really not seeing how to make this practical. Tell me, is there an easier way? I am pretty sure I have read where some of you mount the narrow band and the surface scanner on a rover. Does that work? As soon as I narrow down where to drill I will launch a few drilling platforms and a refuel hauler. In the meantime here is a picture of Jeb, Bill, and Bob outside Mun Base Alpha. Yeah, I know its cliche, but I bet I'm not the only one to give this name to their first base.

After my first successful Duna rescue mission - because I always strand the first crew on a new planet/moon (poor planning, not on purpose) - I tried an Eve mission. Well, let's just say that crew will never see Kerbin again. Sorry guys (pre-Valentina). I then decided on a Moho mission. This was way before knowing anything about deltaV. I didn't know it was hard. Landed with only vapors left. The rescue mission is the hardest thing I have pulled off so far. Wish I had pictures. The ship was massive. The most fun was my dune buggy on Eloo, followed by my failed attempt to dune buggy the Dres canyon.

First attempt at using HyperEdit to transport my Mun Base from the KSP runway to Mun surface. First I put the base in Mun Orbit. Then selected landing site. Focused on base and clicked landing. The problem is the base is now upside down. Oops. What did I do wrong?

My Mun base also uses zzz_thing spheres. I have been having the same issue with most of them disappearing. After reading Starwaster's comment about the space in the TypeB_S name, I noticed everyone of the problem sphere parts have a space between the last letter of the config file name and the .cfg extension. I edited the name to remove the space and so far so good. If that is indeed the issue, I would never have noticed it on my own. Fingers crossed.

I've noticed if you open the cfg and save it without making changes, it will work the next time you enter SPH. Then the part will be gone again on the next start up. Very Weird.

Crosswalk issue - This morning I used a KSP copy with no mods except the z_things. I could build with the crosswalk. Saved. Exit program. Restart. Craft won't load. The crosswalk TypeB_S is gone from SPH. If you have no ideas it looks like I'll have to make this part go bye bye.