Clear Air Turbulence

OK on first try Mechjeb steered me straight into Kerbal Is there an 'operate Mechjeb' automator? A sort of meta-mechjeb?

Thank you! After spending a number of Kerbal days zooming round and round the planet and missing rendezvous after rendezvous, I am afraid I am going to have to try Mechjeb. I seem to be able to get within 700-800 metres, but our orbits are just mismatched enough that we zoom past each other. But then I wonder: won't doing everything on autopilot take the fun away?

Indeed It was that or Zero Gravitas.

Yes, I do understand the physics of things at different orbits going at different speeds, and, more problematically things at the same orbit... at the same speed. At the present configuration I should have a relatively painless rendezvous after a couple of thousand times around the planet

Thus far I have had some success in getting into a very similar orbit - precisely on the other side of the planet. Does that count?

Yes, I will probably download mechjeb at some point. But for now I want to waste tons of monopropellant and liquid fuel trying to make it happen.

Oops, I should have said, I am playing with the full version now. Rendezvous is still near impossible, but I will keep on trying.

I meant an empty capsule. I want to send up another Kerbal X with an empty capsule and a remote guidance system. I figure that's the simplest way of getting them down. Given that, as far as I know, they don't have jetpacks, the question may be academic.

Will it be easy to get Kerbals to EVA from a manned capsule to an unmanned one? Will they need jetpacks, special powers etc?

Sorry if this is a n00b question. (I am one ). Searched the forum but did not find an answer. How come my Kerbals don't die? I had Valentina Kerbal in an abortive spaceplane mission. The thing ran out of liquid fuel but luckily periapsis was below 70 000. After a few orbits velocity was low enough to ensure we would stay in the atmosphere, but I ran out of electricy. Plane was tumbling end over end at several times the speed of sound for a very long time. Eventually I decided to go EVA with Valentina just as an experiment. The whole thing was a disaster anyway. V stepped out of the plane 7 km up and basically fell into the sea. But when I did an attempted recovery, there she was, ready for more punishment. Does anything actually kill a Kerbal, this side of lithobraking at 1000 metres per second?

Not managed to rendezvous yet. I sent up an empty capsule, controlled with a remote guidance unit. Followed the various rendevous/orbit matching tutorials very carefully, using Manuever nodes with finicky care to get it exactly right. Final approach was odd. The orbits were very close to each other, and those little intercept markers were very close to each other, but the delta v recommended was insane (2 minute burn). I thought I would do it anyway. Realized too late that I had been trying to go in the wrong direction. Trying to do a u-turn while in orbit is not a good idea. Fortunately my fuel ran out before burn time elapsed, or I would have intercepted the stranded capsule at a couple thousand metres per second. This is what sandbox mode is for, I guess @ Starwhip, thanks for the tutorial - I will check it out!

It has also come to my mind that it would be nice if the Kerbals were still alive at upon return to Kerbin. Hmmm.....

I like those external command seats. I think I will glue some of those to the outside of a command pod. It should save some fuel.

Well, I got the demo mode and managed to get into orbit. Now my guys are stranded there. Next mission: try to put into practice what I learned about matching orbits and get the poor guys down.

By the way, is it actually possible to get a rocket into orbit in demo mode? I have not managed so far... The moment I have enough fuel to get into orbit, the thing gets top heavy and wants to start tumbling in the air. If I put in lots of solid booster rockets, the speed gets uncontrollable. And try as I might, I have little ability to steer the thing...

Thank, you! Those look like amazingly useful resources.

Hi everyone, greetings from a wintery Cape Town. Have just started playing the demo, and enjoy it, but am wondering about buying the full programme. I have told myself once I can get a rocket in orbit in the demo programme I will buy the full version, but I have had many launches now (& killed quite a few Kerbals ) without ever attaining orbit so I am suddenly wondering whether I have have, you know, the right stuff Is there a manual for this thing? There are all kinds of things folk like Scott Manley talk about (like debug mode, and the aerodynamic forces overlay) which I can't seem to activate in demo. Anyway, if I get hooked on this game (which seems likely), I might post in here every once in a while Hot jets! etc.