ygarl

I bought a new 10 inch Dobsonian telescope so I can look at the REAL Saturn. Failed. Now I just stop Kerballing for an hour or so in the evening until I've looked over Saturn - and it's still too light to look at any deep-sky object here in the UK, so I go back and carry on making Bop landers! Sorry - Can't help ya, mate.

Also - try MechJeb's "Maneuver Planner", and then "Hohmann transfer" and watch what it does. Copy it a few times until you get the hang of it. (Then don't use it any more, because it's too easy... until you can do it manually quite easily. It's ok to start using it after that, because docking 50 times manually is boring! Hahah)

Made a nifty under-slung Mun probe, under-slung beneath a manned lander on a 3m fuel tank with a Jr. docking port - shut off the probe brain, so the rocket didn't fly sideways (LESSONS LEARNED!). Landed on the Mun - all was well. Dropped the probe all of half a metre... Forgot to turn on the probe core, so dropped a totally dead probe with no way to control it or turn it on, and too far below the main craft to re-dock it.... REVERT!

I use them on landers 10 at a time as landing engines - esp since they run on monoprop, so only need one type of fuel, and the external mono tanks can be quite small. I even sling one under driving rovers with a couple Puffs on top and bottom to correct interesting driving malfunctions, plus front and back to get up hill and stop a bad choice of driving route from turning into a GEF (gratuitous existence failure) event...

LMAOOoooooo! That is totally insanely awesome! (I thought my attempt to reach a Munar impact probe with only solid-fuels was mental!)

First time I landed a probe on the Mun - full stop. There's nothing like realising you can shut the engines off... and everything stops moving, and the ship is still ok! (I was showing screengrabs to people at work - and they of course thought I was nuts!) [Edit] Here's one of the screen grabs. Look at that fuel level! Hahah

P'raps we could have "effectively" parts welding on any parts less than a specific mass - because they simply don't contribute to the wobble between each other until they get above a fairly large size anyway. So, that should save a fair bit of computing if you don't bother computing the "wobble" of a thermometer, for instance - or a single light. It would slightly less exciting SUDEs (sudden unexpected disassembly event) or GEFs (gratuitous existence failure) at close ranges, but your fuel cells and tanks should still destroy each other correctly (with their welded-on thermometers) in a suitably gratifying way...

Could always strap a pair of decent boosters to the topside - making sure they are centered nicely above the CoM, set them on low thrust (50ish%), run very low throttle on the main engines until the boosters run out. I've had good luck with that (just making sure they don't eject onto your avionics/control surfaces!)

I have two separate MPLs I docked to make a larger station with another unit saturated in batteries and solar panels - I can confirm that indeed you get twice the science. (BTW - I can also confirm that letting it tick over nicely while doing two missions at the same time to Duna and Jool's moons is a magnificent way to get a couple hundred science before the science from Duna and Jool even comes back! )

Hello, In a fit of stupid here: HOW did you manage to almost complete the entire tech tree that way. I actually find it DIFFICULT to get out past Minimus or even get to the 4th level of tech! Am I missing something here?