Zophos

I understand, and had no expectation that older releases would receive support. Putting together an RP-1 install is an adventure in that respect already. Thanks for the answer.

Are the releases backwards-compatible to earlier versions of KSP? In particular, if I want to add SSTU to a new 1.3.1 install (for RO/RP-1), can I use the latest build, or do I need the last one before it was updated past 1.3.1 (looks like 0.7.39.149)? Apologies in advance if I failed to turn up an answer already given elsewhere in the thread. I looked but did not find.

The additional delay is to allow you to schedule (now) a command to be executed later. For example, you may want to schedule "trigger an action group" for a time when you're at periapsis of your flyby of a planet, but on the far side from Kerbin/Earth and therefore without full control of the vessel. This might cause science collection, fire orbit-insertion retros, etc. The "extra" part of the delay is so that you can precisely schedule the command, rather than have to rely solely on signal delay.

For those coming along behind me, here's a workaround: I edited the tech tree to make it possible to unlock the Hydrolox node if any of its prerequisites are unlocked, rather than all of its prerequisites. Details below. The upshot is that Hydrolox can be unlocked even if the Heavy Orbital Rocketry node is not (which I'm fine with doing, because I have, in fact, scheduled that node in KCT), and now the button shows up in the R&C Building. The specific edit is as follows, for my current install (RP-0 ver. 0.54): This will get around the immediate problem, and an analogous edit can probably work around any other issues that come up with any other nodes that refuse to unlock.

@Lilienthal: Thanks for the quick response. I'm certain it's not scheduled, and in any case, I can unlock the ones I've scheduled that have not yet completed. I can also unlock other nodes that I hadn't already scheduled. Specifically, I got a pile of science from a Venus fly-by mission, which I went to spend. I clicked on, and unlocked, all the nodes that I had already scheduled, then started unlocking new nodes. After I'd unlocked three or four, I tried hydrolox, but no unlock button was available.

Apologies if this has been asked, but I haven't located the question or answer in the forum, if it has. I'm running the published RP-0 (installed from CKAN) on 1.2.2, and I'm at the point where I should be able to unlock the Hydrolox node in the R&D Building (the one with the J-2 engines, not the early Hydrolox). I'm not able to do so, because the button to research the node is missing. Not greyed out or inactive -- it's just not there. I think I've seen @NathanKell mention the same bug in the recent Race Into Space campaign on YouTube, but I don't recall him mentioning a specific fix or workaround. (Though admittedly, I haven't yet caught up through all the back episodes.) If someone could point me in the right direction, I'd be grateful. I'm not afraid to hack savefiles, etc. to get around the issue, but I don't want to just randomly flail at it without any understanding. Thanks in advance...

Is the dish at Kerbin set to target the active ship? If so, it'll connect to the Martian orbiter when it's active, but not when you're flying something else (like the probe). (Or maybe that's only RemoteTech targeting...I can't recall. But it's all I've got.)

Sadly too startled to take pics, so a description will have to do. Fortunately, no Kerbals were harmed. Playing my 1.2.2 RSS/RP-0 campaign, and setting up for the first manned orbital flight. I have a Mercury-capsule analogue with a small service module (a few hundred m/s and four extensible solar panels on a decoupler stuck to the heatshield) sitting on top of a 2-stage launcher with plenty of delta-v to put the package in orbit, capped with a launch escape system (LES) on another decoupler. Because I care about my Kosmonauts, I decide to launch the first one unmanned. This proves wise. The gravity turn on stage 1 goes fine, with no real flaws other than a slightly-too-high arc. But I have the delta-v to spare, so no worries. I can manage that with pitch controls in stage 2. I reach MECO, separate the upper stage, and light the engines. It's a good light, so I stage to detach the LES and send it arcing away. Only it doesn't. The decoupler fires, pushing the LES tower a few meters ahead of the ship, but no rockets fire. The LES then settles back against the nose of the capsule, slightly off-center, and just hangs out, sapping delta-v. what? Well, it's odd, but not fatal. I wiggle the pitch a bit, eventually dislodging the non-functional LES, which tumbles down the side of the stage and (fortunately) doesn't hit anything on the way. Need to check that out in the VAB, though. Make a note. I then fly to my parking orbit of around 200km, needing a fair bit of down-pitch to zero my vertical velocity. Nicely inserted, I detach the second stage of the booster, run out the solar panels, and test everything out. At this point, everything looks fine. Orbit is good, we've got plenty of life support, we've got...ooh, not enough power from the panels. It's fine in sunlight, but it loses far more in the dark than it can build back up in the sunlit portions of the orbit. Right...make a note to fix that in the VAB, too. Glad I tested this. So, all that's left is descent. I spin around to retrograde, fire the engines to give myself a 35km periapsis, then pop off the tiny service module, reorient, and warp ahead to the atmospheric interface. Just for kicks, I decide to see if I can manage G forces with a lifting reentry, so I activate descent mode, and proceed to more or less level out in the upper atmosphere, bleeding off speed but next to no ablator. Then a heat bar pops up. On the capsule. Ok...I check the thermal properties and discover that, sure enough, the skin temp is fine, but the internal temp is climbing through 650K towards its max of 800K. Rather quickly, in fact. Maybe a bug? I dunno, but let's kill the lift and put this sucker down before it blows. G-forces be damned. And...yeah, make a note not to do that next time. With descent mode disabled, the pod begins dropping and decelerating. Pretty flames spring up, and the internal pod temp peaks at about 785K, just shy of failure. The reentry forces peak somewhere north of 8Gs, but that's fine, and the pod drops down through Mach 2 and starts the long, slow fall to the ocean below. Then the double stack chutes pop. At 30,000 feet and 600 m/s. They are immediately ripped off and destroyed, as I gape in bewilderment. Weren't those supposed to be a drogue at 8km and mains at around 4? Uh...crap. Make a note to check that, and ... well ... sigh heavily as the capsule plows into the ocean at terminal velocity. Ahem. What were those notes again? Ah yes. On return to the VAB, I applied the correct parachute settings (doh!) and added another set of solar panels to allow battery charging on the dayside (doh!). Most amusingly, I discovered that during my build I had somehow managed to remove all the solid propellant from the LES without noticing (I probably clicked-through something and hit "remove all tanks"), rendering the LES just an amusing bit of sculpture on top of the rocket. So...fill that sucker back up, too. So that just leaves "don't do a lifting reentry." And the question of whether to do another dry run before sending up my first crew...

Still poking along in my first RP-0 career (on 1.1.3). Just finished filling in a basic geostationary constellation, so I won't have any more annoying coverage gaps during launches. Now...on to manned capsules in orbit!

@steuben and @ElWanderer are correct; SCANSat accounts for the rotation of the planet underneath the satellite. It's particularly pronounced at Minmus because the low gravity leads to slow orbits (giving the moon more time to rotate), but you can see the same effect around any body. I find the information very useful when I'm trying to do precision landings. In the regular map view, it can be hard to tell when you've set your orbital inclination properly to bring you over the target. But if you watch the SCANSat view, especially the zoom window, you can dial it in within a few meters from three-quarters of an orbit away.

First (because I don't think anyone has answered this part of your question): Yes, you will be able to EVA the stranded Kerbal across to your rescue ship. In fact, you can't generally dock with the stranded parts because they don't come equipped with docking ports. When you get the grabber, you can grab those parts if you really want to avoid EVA. As for the rendezvous, there are a few points worth mentioning, some of which have already been addressed: If you put yourself in a lower orbit than the target, you will "gain" on it (travel a larger angle in a given time). A higher orbit is the opposite. The larger the difference in altitude, the faster your angle will change relative to the target. Either way will work; if you are close behind your target and in a higher orbit, it will get farther and farther ahead, until eventually it is coming up behind you. Of course, this may take a few orbits. Crossing the target's orbit (altitude) is inefficient, as you will spend part of the orbit gaining and part losing relative to the target. So pick one. If the target is in a low orbit, you have much more maneuvering room if you pick a higher orbit and let it gain on you. With all that in mind, what I usually do is launch to a circular orbit at about the altitude of the target's apoapsis. Then, at that apoapsis (wherever it falls on my orbit), I will burn prograde to raise my apoapsis some way above the target's orbit. This puts me in an elliptical orbit higher than the target, so my orbit will take longer than the target's (it will gain on me). Moreover, my periapsis is at the same point as the target's apoapsis, and it will stay that way as long as I burn only at my periapsis (raising or lowering my apoapsis). My goal at that point is just to make sure I hit periapsis at the same time the target hits apoapsis. Generally, only a handful of orbits is needed to get one where the target will be relatively close behind me at the meeting point --- specifically, where it would be ahead of me on the next orbit if I don't do anything. At that point, I burn retrograde at periapsis to lower my apoapsis; not all the way to match orbits, but just enough to let the target catch up to an extremely close encounter at the next meeting. Finally, at the encounter, a second retrograde burn matches orbits (lowering my apoapsis to match the target's periapsis). You can apply the same ideas whether you choose to meet at the apoapsis or periapsis of the target's orbit. But by staying strictly above the target, you will never hit atmosphere as you've described. There are also more sophisticated techniques in which you enter a circular "phasing orbit" and then do a Hohmann transfer to the target at the right point. They are more efficient in some cases, but they involve more burns and more calculation. The technique described above can be done entirely on the screen with maneuver nodes and your eyeball.

The KER menus don't show up unless you have a control-capable part (capsule, cockpit, probe core) and a KER module on the craft. There are two ways (that I know) to get a KER module: (1) place the KER part on the craft, or (2) under the KER settings, select "partless" instead of "career". Option 2 makes all control-capable parts have a KER module, without installing a separate part on the craft. So try putting the KER part on the ship. If things are working properly, THEN you will get a KER button in the app launcher (that menu on the lower-right in the SPH). See the shot of my SPH below and note the KER button third from the left.

Glad it worked...with some modifications. When the bug is worked out so you can actually use the wheels, you'll probably want to use the offset tool in the SPH to push the rear wheel up a bit (producing the tail-dragging attitude on the runway). For a more extreme example, look at the nosewheel on my original pics --- it's pushed almost all the way into the fuselage because it's only there to prevent the nose from hitting the ground in case of extreme braking during landing.

Apologies if you've realized this already: you don't have to complete any of the contracts with a single flight. In other words, the six Kerbals from the six-Kerbal contract don't have to go on the same ship. You can send three on one ship and three on another, or six separate ships with one each, or whatever else. The only thing that matters is that you get each Kerbal into the situation(s) it wants on the contract (e.g. landed at the Mun) eventually. Each Kerbal pays off the listed reward when that Kerbal returns, and once the last one returns to Kerbin, the contract completes. Therefore, I second the recommendation to use whatever tools you already have, and to look for other contracts you can complete along the way. For example, if you have a good three-seat lander (based on Mk2) that needs a pilot, grab one or two easy Mun contracts (e.g., plant a flag, return science from surface), then load up a pilot and two tourists and go. It's often the case that one or two tourists is enough to pay for the whole mission cost, so any other contracts you complete are then pure profit. (Of course, you shouldn't let any of the above stop you from building a new craft. Trying new things is most of the fun. So if you want to build a six- or ten-Kerbal lander, just to see if you can, go for it! The tourists are paying for your experiment, after all.)

Your plan A should work; it's a basic orbital rescue scenario (except the polar orbit thing), and the simplest way to get your Kerbal back safely. Just be sure that the extra mass of the Mk 1 cabin doesn't require you to tweak your launcher. Or, if your probe cores are up to the challenge, you can also send an empty 1-man capsule with a robo-pilot instead of using a second Kerbal, as Pecan suggested. The probe core should weigh less than the materials bay, so no worries there. For plan B? Hard to come up with something simpler, though there are certainly other ways to skin this cat. For example, a tug with a Claw could latch on to the stranded pod and then deorbit it, or tow it to a space station with a lander or spaceplane waiting. But that's at least as hard as docking, so probably not what you want. Any way you slice it, though, you have to bring a second craft to rendezvous with this pod, and the simplest thing at that point is to EVA the stranded guy to the second craft.