dborgo

I've never hired a Kerbal in all my time playing. The smile on their face at the landing and their undying devotion to the space program is all I need to keep rescuing every contract the comes. Plus, I really enjoy the challenge of re-purposing multiple missions to a single task. One of my favorites was after just delivering an asteroid into orbit of Ike, a Kerbal popped up needing rescue from orbit around Duna. Another Kerbal had already been there in need of rescue, but had to come all the way home with his capsule intact. I had a small base established on Ike that had just enough dV to get back into orbit around Duna. It rendezvoused with the first Kerbal, loaded him up, but had no fuel left over to go anywhere. Asteroid tug then came down from Ike, grabbed the Kerbal that was still in his capsule with it's claw. The Ike base then docked with the asteroid tug on a side docking port that was only intended for refueling. The entire contraption, Tug with ike base hanging off the side at 90 degrees, with the horrendous center of mass vs. center of thrust, then limp burned its way back to Kerbin, but without the dV to enter orbit. A new mission was launched from Kerbin to meet them as they were on a sling shot through the Kerbin system. Kerbals transferred along with their capsule, then back to reentry and successful splashdown 30 miles from KSP. Two smiling Kerbals. And if that wasn't enough, the asteroid tug had just enough fuel to transfer to the old Ike base that then allowed the base alone to enter orbit and land on Minmus, fulfilling one of those 4 different body flyby/landing missions. The money poured in, and I still have the Ike base (now Minmus base) ready to fly again. It was something like 5 different missions combined to produce a very satisfying outcome. Who said rescuing Kerbals was a "grind"!?

Was this mission by chance from a previous version of the game and now completing in a new version? I had the exact same problem, but with a completion of "ready to launch from minmus." The mission had been corrupted from an update of versions of the game. See the thread and see if this explains it.

I'm not running any mods that should tinker with contracts. Only Kerbal Engineer, KIS, and a couple graphical mods. I can only think the difference between "be ready to launch" and "be landed on" is requiring fuel and an engine to be present, rather than just a probe or capsule parachuting down to a surface. When I get the chance, I will make a quick save and experiment with putting the ship back into orbit. I also have a couple Kerbals in a station around Minmus. I'll pick one up and land again and see if that makes a difference. If nothing works, I will just take the advice to force the contract to complete.

In career mode, I had a left over contract that dates from the last version of KSP, but now running on 1.0.5. The contract is called "Supreme Ike Four Rally" and consists of fly by's of Ike, Duna, Mun, and then "Lastly, be ready to launch your vessel from Minmus." I've got green checks on all but the last, and my ship is now landed on Minmus. What does it mean, "be ready to launch your vessel from Minmus?" I have no Kerbals on board, but should that matter? Originally, in 1.0.4 I think it ended with just a fly by of Minmus or maybe in orbit at Minmus. The contract changed slightly when upgraded to 1.0.5. Perhaps it's just broken? Any thoughts how I can get it to complete? http://imgur.com/crKmN6q

First time looking at the new forum, just started reading this post, and didn't even notice post times were out of order. No wonder I've been so confused. Forums like this, where there is much ongoing discussion, need to default to "sort by date." Let those who want a quick search for the best answers click to "sort by rating." It just makes more sense.

I find that when intersecting orbits are very different, and thus very high relative speeds to each other at the intersection, the best way to cancel that relative speed is to place a maneuver node at the point of intersection. Then use the maneuver node to match your vessel's orbit with the orbit of the ship you are rendezvousing with. By manipulating the maneuver node, you should be able to place your periapsis and apoapsis right on top of the targets periapsis and apoapsis. Make sure the ascent and descent nodes are zeroed as well, and make the burn when you reach the maneuver node. You will now be on nearly identical orbits and now can make fine adjustments for the approach and docking. Usually you can switch to making small RCS burns and translations (IJKLHN keys) to keep your velocity vector on target.

KSP does not utilize Steam cloud saves, so you have to come up with a way yourself. Manually copying and transferring files back in forth will work, but you can also set up a personal cloud save. I made a save game folder on dropbox. I then change the default KSP "saves" directory a virtual directory that points to the dropbox folder. The game thinks it's saving in the standard "saves" folder, but the path is rerouted to the dropbox folder on a system level. I can access the same save game files from separate KSP installs on my desktop and laptop. Running the game on either device will then automatically sync through dropbox. I do the same with the Gamedata folder so that mods are consistent between both computers. If I update the mods on one, it will automatically be synced with the other. Takes a little work to set up (all of 10 minutes) and you have to be comfortable using the command prompt to issue the "mklink" command. Once done though, its perfect. Here is a link to someone who wrote up a nice guide on how to: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=259581627

I'm curious if I encountered a bug, or some weird design feature in the game. I met up with an E class asteroid while it was passing Kerbin on a mission to get it to Ike. This is only the second asteroid I have captured, with the first being a class B to bring into orbit around Kerbin (no problem there). Knowing this bigger mission would require much more delta V to be on hand, I designed a tug that would mine the asteroid to replenish fuel. My particular design has a small fuel tank just below the drills and ore containment, followed by the ISRU, and then more fuel tanks connected directly to the engine. There is a fuel line connecting the first fuel tank across the ISRU converter, so fuel will be drained from it as well when the engine ignites. In fact, this small tank is the first tank to be drained by default. It is also the quickest to fill with the ISRU producing fuel because it is so small. Here's the weird bug(?) I started mining the asteroid as soon as I rendezvoused. I fired my engine to change the orbit of the asteroid to intercept Duna's orbit, but after initially seeing an expected change in apoapsis and delta V, the rate of change suddenly fell to minimal. What was expected to be a 2-3 minute burn, was more like 4-6 hours. I thought something had borked with the game. I quit and reloaded a couple times, but nothing changed. My engine was producing minimal thrust despite any throttle changes, and set to 100% thrust. This was a "Mammoth" 4000 thrust beast. No way it should take 6 hours to make a 70 m/sec delta V change, even with a class E asteroid. Through a process of elimination, I found that the first fuel tank, being the smallest, had filled completely with fuel and was not draining at all despite 100% thrust. I was still actively mining the asteroid at the time. When I stopped the mining, suddenly I had full thrust available again. It seems that when that small fuel tank filled completely, the engine was only consuming the small amount of fuel actively being converted from ore... a trickle. Is this a bug others have seen?