mabarry3

Oh, My apologies then. I've only ever played career mode so I guess I don't see things in light of non-career mode, even if they say so . You're still able to right click something with time acceleration on, just not able to do anything with it (all buttons don't exist). But you can still see its stats while in time warp.

Randm side question - what is an RTG? The best answer I found was one of those everlasting generators, but that's at the end of the tech tree so doesn't seem to make sense when responding to people who very likely don't have access to that yet.

Here's mine, though I didn't make it: It's the banner for a club I'm in at my university, who got me interested in KSP to begin with. RAER stands for "Robotics Association At Embry-Riddle".

A little trickier, but still doable; this should work: Pod/chute/battery, stack decoupler, empty Thumper, LT800 fuel tank (I think that's the name), LV-909 Terrier engine, and then 2-4 radially attached Thumpers on the side of the Terrier or surface attached to a stack decoupler beneath the terrier. You may need to tone down the thumpers a bit so they don't go to fast too soon, so try to knock down the thrust limiter until you have a thrust:weight ratio of 1.2-1.5 on the launchpad. Get as high as possible on the thumpers, turn on the terrier and try to make orbit. Run the thumper once you get to orbit (that terrier fuel tank should be plenty to get you there). if that doesn't work, let me know, I could attempt til I see what works to make orbit once I'm free.

Many thanks. Guess I'll look a little harder next time

One easy way could be, from top to bottom: Battery/chute/probe core, stack decoupler, (empty) Thumper SRB, two radially attached Thumper SRBs attached via radial decouplers OR attached to a stack decoupler on the bottom of the original Thumper. Maybe (probably) some fins. Launch, get up to target altitude, and then activate the engine through staging to complete the contract. Decouple it, come down, use parachute, profit.

Yet again, I've launched something without realizing I forgot to setup its action groups. Is there a way (or a mod) that allows me to reconfigure action groups while in-flight? Only thing I could find on the subject was a mod from 2013 that allowed you to do just that, but which was on a non-functioning website.

I have a separate, related question about this. Sometimes I see contracts to have me lug things to ludicrous places (I think I had one to go to low Eve orbit then fire), and they don't complete if the part is already activated there, so do you really need to lug (empty or not) the thing all the way there then activate it? I was thinking of one workaround (primarily for LFO engines) being to get there using the item, deactivate it move it right there farther along the staging sequence (move it up a stage or something), and then activate normal staging sequence which should activate the engine. Would that work to complete the contract? If not, I see no reason to lug heavy stuff around somewhere and not be able to use it 'til I get there.

I'm surprised it would take that long to fix; this seems like an incredibly easy fix really, you can do it at the touch of a button with some mods (such as KAC) to alter that specific mod's window to prevent clickthroughs, and not being able to click through objects is an already existing thing on other areas of the VAB/SPH, like the part list.

Here's what I think he means, which is also an annoyance for me too: When you select something in the staging sequence on the right side of the VAB/SPH to change it, you can select an object underneath the staging sequence item button you clicked on which can result in you picking up a part of your rocket as if you want to move it around, when all you were trying to do is change the staging sequence. It can also cause you to hit the exit VAB/SPH button which is also annoying. Here's what I mean: pic 1: Let's say I was adjusting the asparagus staging for my launcher for this rocket. You can see me zoomed in to the rocket so I can see the fuel lines, and I have two decouplers selected on the staging sequence area that I'm about to click on (so the stack of 2 splits and I can move the stack or choose one in particular to move or whatnot). You can also see "Rockomax Jumbo-64 Fuel Tank"; that shouldn't be selected because the fuel tank is behind the staging sequence menu: 2: Now, I click on it, expecting to be able to move the decoupler group or switch to selecting only one decoupler. Except, the entire rocket moves, because I clicked on the fuel tank AND the staging sequence. You can also see that the decoupler set on the right side split, which was my only original intent. I think he wants an option to lock the part, so that, even though you're clicking on it while changing the staging sequences, it doesn't pick it up like so in my pictures above. A simple fix is to just trash whatever you clicked on, then hit ctrl + z to undo that trash, then zoom out/rotate until the staging sequence panel is no longer hovering over an object, and then moving your staging sequence around. A bit of an annoyance, but gets the job done. But you really shouldn't be able to click through the staging sequence menu

The only mod I've downloaded any time recently was Protractor, which shouldn't have touched that function, and I have never had that option before, but I can check and see if any other mods could be messing with it (or if I see this again at all).

So, for some reason, I had a heat shield with a "decouple" option on it and added a second decoupler to my staging options even though only one actually existed. Decoupling it had no force (you can see the shield stay on top of my ship until the atmosphere took effect and it ended up moving), but what was odd was that it seemed to activate the actual decoupler below it too (the engine+tank moved away from the ship like they were actually decoupled with the 150 ejection force when I just hit decouple on the shield) Is that normal or a bug?

Aha, I see what you mean. I figured that, even if he doesn't save (through the main menu save/alt+F5), he still quicksaved in-flight using F5 before doing something important like landing or something so that if he messed up royally he wouldn't have to worry too much about it.

What about F9'ing it? I thought those quicksaves were different (I've been able to load the game, hit F9 and go to a position I was at before I loaded the game) and even if you load some other file and mess up your saves unless you hit F5 again shouldn't F9 take you back to the last F5-quicksave you made? Or does loading a save overwrite that?

I had this happen once shortly after installing Kerbal Construction Time mod. I went to upgrade my stuff and check out how the mod worked, then moved over to a ship that was about to land on Minmus for a contract and suddenly all my contracts disappeared. I luckily saved on a frequent basis, so I could get my contracts back and barely lost any game time.

I had this issue for a while, so you're not the only one. I even accidentally killed Jeb while I was still not understanding why I wasn't able to fly (and didn't even know he died! R.I.P. Jeb) or release parachutes. For me, it was easiest to try to maneuver it while at the highest altitude, or the thinnest possible atmosphere. You want your rocket pointed in the retrograde direction on the way down (you have it in the prograde direction currently), which will give you the least aerodynamic shape. The flat-ish bottom of the Hammer is significantly less aerodynamic than the angular shape of the mk1 pod, and you should slow down a lot more, well beyond the point you can deploy your parachutes. You can also attempt to turn your rocket on the way up so it's going in a more horizontal direction - the more horizontal you go, the less vertical speed you have which should give you more time to slow down. Just don't go too horizontal or you could flip or not reach the target altitude you want. Besides that, I'm still a newbie here too so some of the aerodynamic experts around here should show up any time if I'm wrong in my understanding of it. P.S. Jeb (your current Kerbal) is a pilot, so you do have SAS, and if you didn't you wouldn't be able to activate it. It's a functionality of having a pilot in the command seat. Edit: Ninja'd by Claw

Congrats on the recovery!

I never said I didn't overbuild.

As long as you have solar panels, any of the clamp-o-trons, and any antenna, you're fine for that requirement. Building a station just means to launch something there that meets the requirements. You don't need to send it in parts and assemble. The instructions are just a list of the things you need to accomplish. You need to orbit Minmus, you need to have a "station" with xyz, you need to have a facility supporting x kerbals, etc. It doesn't mean "do them in this order", just "do this"

Are you sure? If I remember my ground school correctly, when we got into canard wings a bit, the story behind the name was a Santos-Dumont (Santas-Dumont? I don't remember) experimental plane that was said to look "like a flying duck", which was coined a canard plane by a French person since, as you pointed out, canard is French for "duck". The name stuck. I don't recall hearing anything about it being called a news hoax.

Aha, my bad. Yes, you're correct, I was thinking of this: Had the colors reversed

If you have to measure it on the surface of Kerbin, it's probably significantly easier and more cost-efficient to take a plane there than trying to land a rocket there and read after that. One thing to note about the contracts that require you to take readings on the surface: the area in which you can read and fulfill the contract parameters is VERY small. Even with a mod like Trajectories that helps adjust your flight trajectory after counting drag and all that, the chances of you landing exactly where you need to be is near on impossible without being an ace pilot, and even then, it would probably take several tries... A plane you can make relatively early that has enough fuel to fly half way around Kerbin (aka anywhere on Kerbin that requires a surface or low altitude reading) could look something like this: It was the first plane I made that was aerodynamically sound and got me loads of science and funds for doing contracts like these basically anywhere on Kerbin. You can use whatever science parts you want on it as well, it's a good early plane. The only thing (I think) you don't have access to incredibly early-game is the circular intake on the front, but you can replace the mk1 inline cockpit with a normal mk1 cockpit and add a radial intake to the bottom of the plane instead. If you want the craft file, let me know. But seriously, don't try taking a rocket for a surface reading. It won't happen

I don't think those are RCS thrusters (I may be mistaken), I believe those are KIS/KAS pieces which you can use to transfer fuel or other resources between ships or "connect" them in general while on EVA. Also helpful for setting up bases and the like. It's a Kerbal Engineering System, which is a requirement for KER to work and give you the information, unless you either have an engineer on board or a level 3 tracking station. I'm pretty sure it's actually a mass-less, physics-less object, but I don't know for sure. The bay isn't necessary though since he could stick it outside since it's no extra drag or uneven mass.

The dV you still have on the craft alone won't be enough alone to get you into orbit I don't think (unless I'm doing something wrong... I have a miner ship stuck on the Mun I left with about 900 dV and that didn't seem to be enough to get me back to orbit), so I imagine if you want to get Bob back into orbit, you'll need to burn what you have left, hop out before Ap, collect the data you have and then once Ap hits, jump off and continue your burn using EVA fuel to try to make orbit. You'll lose the ship but I'm not sure I see how you could take that back into orbit by itself. Or maybe I just suck at getting things into orbit I like the touch on the flag, by the way.

The way that I did it that I found quite easy for me to just do a sun flyby was to launch in the direction of Kerbin's orbit (zoom out and find which direction Kerbin goes around the sun, then launch from Kerbin in that direction), and stop right when you have a Kerbin escape. When you get into the Sun's sphere of influence, you should be able to do what you need, then burn very slightly retrograde to slow yourself down. Kerbin should catch up with you and you will fall back into its sphere of influence without too much hassle.