Zephram Kerman

Way back in the demo days, someone suggested "there are only two forms of life on Kerbin: kerbals, and grass. Where is the missing link?" Then the monoliths revealed themselves, and once again I could sleep at night.

Quite possibly responsible for the evolutionary leap from grass to sentient space-faring Kerbals.

On election day, I plan to vote for Jeb, because he represents the reckless. Then I also plan to vote for Bob, because he represents the timid. Then I also plan to vote for Bill, just to be fair. Don't throw your vote away. Recycle!

Hey, congrats Starchristian! Getting a circular orbit is the second achievement. In my opinion, getting the PE and AP within 1km is "close enough for rocket science". Now, can you do it again at 100km? Can you do it with less fuel?

Learn about gravity turns, Goddard Problem, Oberth Effect, Hohmann Transfer, bielliptic transfer, optimal descent, etc. and use those ideas to make your flights more awesome. Did you know there are easter eggs scattered around? You might have noticed one or two of them from Munar orbit, but several are only visible if you get right up close. There's a mod part to help track them down. Or, make a really noodly airplane and flap around until it displodes.

If I understand correctly, yes. Try putting some struts diagonally, and from the lander to somewhere on the boost stages.

ASAS tries to return the craft to whatever orientation it had when it was turned on. This includes the roll angle. So if there is very little control authority in the roll axis, it will overshoot several times and take forever to actually stop. If you toggle it off and on again, this resets the target orientations. (You can also tap "F" to do the same thing.) Do this several times for a simple damping effect. I assume you're using the symmetry tool? That helps a lot. Otherwise, it sounds like another effect (which I don't know the name of). It's basically unintentional roll forces caused by pitch and yaw controls having a side-effect. A good example of this problem is the Albatross that comes with 0.17; it's hard to turn, because the rudders activate when you're trying to use ailerons, and vice-versa. Try it with ASAS turned off, and see if it happens any differently. Another possibility is physics simulation weirdness. (Yes, that's a technical term.) When you load the vessel in VAB, disconnect the first part from the command pod. Put it down. Pick it up again. Reconnect to the pod. Doing this reestablishes all the connections between parts, and eliminated some weird problems in 0.16 and earlier. I haven't used 0.17 enough to know if this still matters, but it's an easy thing to try.

Technotica, welcome aboard! I always love seeing these fresh designs. Hanging around the forums means you learn all the tricks to optimize things, but it also means conventionalizing your designs. (Did I make up that word? Sorry.) Nice job on the images too. Guys, have they changed the "unfocused ships have no drag" issue? If not, Technotica, you'll need to be flying that ship the next time it enters the atmosphere. Otherwise it would have no drag and stay up there forever. So get in the ship, skip ahead until they hit the atmosphere again, then go to map view and watch your apoapsis start to decay. They'll come back down in a little while. The only reason your orbit is slightly unstable is the eccentricity. If you can get it to be circular, your crew could camp out up there for as long as they like. (Just remember to save some fuel to get them back home again!)

It's already been partially covered, but just for organization and clarity, I'll do these together. Six directions of movement: prograde - in the direction of travel retrograde - opposite the direction of travel normal - perpendicular to the direction of travel (in a standard easterly equatorial orbit, this would be northwards) antinormal - opposite of normal (in the standard orbit, this would be southwards) radial - perpendicular to the direction of travel, again, but this time away from the orbit foci (not necessarily straight up) antiradial - opposite of radial, not necessarily straight down Plug: by the way, Togfox wrote a nice description of delta-V in Issue 3. (Link below.)

You could: • use a lot more struts (but I presume you already tried that), • air launch and use lots of parachutes, • use the debug console to turn off parts breaking. Cool looking ships, by the way.

I'd like to see a brief history of the progress of your space program. You could update periodically it as you go. Start with the tutorial rocket, do some zany crashes, then move on to the incremental improvements as you learn things. Definitely include your first Mun landing; re-enact it if you have to. It'll be geet!

I do believe that's the plan. But at this stage, they're still building the technologies and parts. So there's no use in making the campaign yet because everything is still changing. It would be like "putting the cart before the horse".

Unfortunately, this very handy technique is not always available. Yes, I did try to attach the engines using shift-WASD. But the fuselage joint faces only accept connections at the node, and parts can rotate but not tilt. So I used this old trick instead: [ATTACH=CONFIG]32976[/ATTACH] It still crashes. But it crashes less immediately. This looks sort-of like progress, sort-of.

I think our problem is that we are lacking a special part that would make shuttles work properly. Take a close look at the launching shuttle in profile. Notice how the orbiter main engines are tilted so that the thrust axis goes right through the center of the external tank. This means the balance does not change as the tank empties out. So what we need is a way to put three gimballed engines on the back of a fuselage, and have them tilted upwards.

These two challenge threads thoroughly dwell on efficiency subjects. (There are two more I want to point out, but can't find them now.) 1) the Goddard Problem 2) the Optimal Ascent Challenge The links go to specific posts which have the (relatively) short answers. Closette's table of terminal velocities helped perfect the ascent speed profile. My post in the ascent challenge has a graph image attached, which reveals a lot about how to shape your gravity turn. Darn, but I wish I could find the other two challenges, about approaches and landings.

T10 and MarkoRagnos basically said the same thing. (Handy diagram, by the way.) The idea is to angle your ascent so that, when you coast clear of Mun's/Minmus' SOI, you're simply falling back to Kerbin. The ascent was your de-orbit burn.

Ooooh! You broke space. Space Kraken's gonna git you now.

Oh yeah! That's a big one. If the wheels are flexing, or if they are attached to something wobbly, you can forget about seeing the other end of the runway. Sometimes I see wing/fuselage parts bouncing and flexing. If that's the case, add struts or attach those parts in a different way.

This could be a few different things: • make sure the wheels are exactly straight upright and parallel (as Ydoow said); • if the veering happens at a high speed just before rotation, pull back on the stick earlier. (On normal configuration planes, up-elevator command pushes the tail down and the nose up. Since the plane is not flying yet, there is no apparent affect. However, the wings are already generating some lift. If your main wheels are in the correct places, this means weight is being lifted off the main wheels but not the nose wheel. So now we have more drag up front than in back, causing a sudden change of stability. Pushing the tail down and the nose up transfers drag from the nos wheel back to the main wheels, stabilizing everything until getting airborne.)

This will sound really weird. Sometimes loading a .craft file changes something, so that a previously perfect design starts wobbling and exploding all over the place. If it happens to you, try this: • pick the first part in order to remove the entire rocket from the command pod, • release that assembly so that it becomes translucent and floats in the VAB, • pick it up again, • reattach it to the command pod, • return to the launch pad... • Stability!

There's a very useful article on this in the KGSS Journal, Vol 1 Issue 2. (Link in my sig.)

Depending on your airspeed, there should be enough pressure at 10km to keep under control. I'm guessing you keep the 30° pitch angle all the time? As you get higher, the rate of climb will decrease. Eventually this means your angle of attack becomes too large and you'll stall. Instead, climb steeply at first, and gradually level out to your ceiling altitude. The key is to keep going faster so that the engines are happy with the reduced air density.

If you're comfortable with editing text files: • build another copy of the ship the way it ought to be, including active stage number; • exit KSP, or at least go to the 'Space Center' menu screen; • open persistent.sfs with NotePad or NotePad++; • copy the new vessel and paste it to overwrite the bugged one, so that it is now on the Mun.

A very different strategy: instead of lander legs, use one of the rovers. Those things can safely touch down with horizontal speed, and can bounce harder too. (Just be sure to land straight, not sideways, of course.) Once you're safely down, you can explore long distances. But it doesn't look nearly as cool as the classic "Eagle" style landing.

This is an old screen shot. I don't know the altitude, but it was done at orbital speed just before a very white-knuckle burn to land on the hills beyond.