Zephram Kerman

Yer gonna need glue! Lots of glue!

Very nice guide! Everything is spelled out verbosely, yet not too complicated for the beginner. Lots of big ideas here, so the extra verbiage helps folks absorb it all. For stage IV, you might want to mention to mouse over the PE marker. That way, you can monitor your progress and throttle down when it starts to get close. If I don\'t do that, I always overshoot.

Until 0.15, you can use Tosh\'s cart mod to rotate parts. It\'s hard to explain, but the cart can attach radially, then attach something else (i.e. a fuel tank) to the carts end and build on to that. Now when you detach the fuel tank and put it someplace else, the attached parts retain their attachment angle relative to the fuel tank, and so wind up at some crazy angle. Then throw away the cart. If this made no sense, rotate your mind 90° and read it again. Anyway, by doing this with two carts in series, you could have the legs oriented upside-down (or whatever).

Pod + MechJeb helped, but only just a little. I think it\'s because MechJeb takes a little while to think about what should be done. It\'s even slower-witted than I am! So I still had to use F9 a lot.

It sounds like you want a way to 'filter' debris out of the map view. We don\'t have that yet, as far as I know. If you want to actually remove the debris from the game, there are some options: 1) use the game settings to reduce persistent debris to 25 objects, 2) edit the persistent.sfs file according to this thread, 3) blow it out of the sky, using Tosh\'s Sunbeam Laser mod, 4) reduce future sky pollution by launching things according to debris mitigation protocols.

Sweet! I think you just saved a bunch of folks a lot of headaches. I haven\'t downloaded the mods yet, and don\'t have time for a session of KSP today. But, I wonder what would happen if you rotated those three legs 120° or 180°? That way, there would be one leg on the back to serve the same purpose as the big tail, and the two skids in front would help auto-level the plane during takeoff and high-speed taxi. I\'ll try this as soon as I can, but ideas are impatient. Anyway, your idea and design work very well. o7

Keosynchronous (kerbosynchronous? whatever) orbit is at 2868.4km, so my normal planetary scans would have been far out of range and not have detected it. Just in case, I put the Albatross into orbit at 2821 km, so that it will eventually orbit Kerbin within range of anything that might be parked up there. I\'ll let you know in a few days.

Albatross included a MechJeb, which helped a lot with stability. All I did was put it in Surface mode, any random heading with pitch 90° or so. Any time we hit a bump and went flying, it usually straightened out before it came back down. Although it did frequently require some manual piloting. My cart also included some RCS thrusters, which was very handy for hopping over (or down into) steep spots. I\'ve since made a more powerful version for Kerbin that has two small LFE instead of the RCS. So it\'s basically a wheeled lander with autopilot and the large muon detector.

It\'d help to see an image of your ship, or the .craft file. Most likely, it\'s wobbling around enough to tip over. This means you need to either add struts, or make the base more symmetrical.

'Guys, the solution is simple! No struts. Who needs \'em?' ~ Jeb

Wait, whaaaaat? ??? Are you saying there\'s a Munolith in orbit? I didn\'t know about that one. Scramble the Albatross!

My ship, Hummingbird, was all stock. Please put me in the Stock Ships class. Wait... that puts me in 2nd place? Woah!

The second KSC happens to have a munolith at the site. So you can find it with the MuMech Muon Detector plugin. In this case, it works best attached to a spaceplane. Oh, and KSC-2 is not in the northern mountains. If you really want to know, I\'ll send a screenshot of the map location, but only by PM. I think the whole point of the thing is the challenge of finding it, so spoil carefully!

Oh, and gimbal is something else. You\'re thinking of the nav ball (a.k.a. 'blob'). Some engines have gimballed nozzles, that gimbal (change angle) to help control the craft.

Heyyyy, thanks Hubbazoot! That was very nice. I took your example, and made something similar. (Call it a reciprocal gift.) It gets to Mun and back with just 19 tanks. It\'s very quick off the launch pad and in the ascent, so it helps to keep the speed below terminal velocity. If all goes well, the drop tanks go in Booster Bay, the first three engines dissolve in the atmosphere during circularization, and the second three engines hit the Mun during descent. The final engine is the only gimballed one, and has a single fuel tank for landing and return. We returned to Kerbin with almost half a tank in reserve, which is nice if you want to control the landing site. Or if you want to add weird things like lander legs.

Congratulations! You have won KSP. 8) The art looks great! At this scale, the limitations of 3D printing are apparent. But I think we\'re all so impressed that it doesn\'t matter. If the visors cannot be really transparent, then I really like your idea of the gold color visors instead. Amazing.

Well, even if it is someone else\'s idea, all you\'ll be doing is helping them implement it.

I really enjoyed the explanation of the numbering system. When I first saw '1793.587', I just assumed it was random techno-babble. But after the system was explained, I realized that meant there were 586 failed launches since the last success! That kind of dry wit really works for this. May I suggest: Jeb probably wouldn\'t be angry at all about the crash, but more like 'another day at the office'. Right? Keep up the good work!

I\'ve always wanted to mod those guys. For example, after reading Closette\'s Goddard Challenge thread, I wanted to add a yellow sticky to Jeb\'s helmet visor.

Any further south would have sent us into the canyon. Jeb wanted to 'go for it', but Bill and Bob actually managed to talk him out of it... mostly because the fall might cause him to accidentally spill his drink. It never ceases to amaze me what smart folks can do in this game with plugins. It sounds like your code works just like a real life orbital terrain mapper. For purposes of knowing the terrain and 'not crashing the ship' this is plenty good. And, for mapping an entire planet or moon, perfect resolution would be overkill anyway. Quite a handy tool you\'ve got there. You make it sound like good piloting. 8) But it was more like, 'Too close for missiles, switching to g- AYEEEEEEEE, whew!' - ...Zephram 'Maverick' Kerman. 'Yes, ma\'am, a \'Kerbal Aviator\'.'

Yah, I get that. Never thought of it before, but I can see a metaphor there.

This might just be the most prominent feature on the Mun. So I feel pretentious attempting to name it. I\'ll understand if anyone disagrees with me; it can go to a poll. I propose we call this Jeb\'s Landing, because the canyon looks like an enormous skid mark or horizontal impact. If this were a real impact site, the scale of the destruction would be worthy of the famous pilot\'s enormous ego! 0° 57\' N, 129° 38\' W, or +0.965°, -129.638° if you prefer decimals. This image is looking south west at the highest point in the area: elevation 2,968m.

Lo and behold, they are one and the same. The pointy peak on the opposite side of the canyon is the highest point I could find, and just a short drive from PakledHostage\'s requested landing site. (Sorry for the mix-up on this morning\'s post. I came in from orbit low and fast. MechJeb had trouble with that situation and the rough terrain. So I had to switch to manual and pick a landing spot visually. In this image, the distance to target readout is still jammed.) Here is the scene from (as close as I could get to) the requested coordinates: And, here is a glorious view of Jeb\'s Landing, looking southwest, from the highest elevation 2968m. (This will also show up in the KGS thread momentarily.) 8)

That area has peaks, which surround the equatorial canyon for which everyone has their own name. I call the canyon 'Jeb\'s Landing', since it looks like something enormous plowed into the surface here. The altitude at this image is 2814m, but the next ridge about 100m ahead and to the right is a little bit higher at 2821m. The lander has enough fuel to check out the pointy one across the canyon, but I have to go to work. Expect an edit in about 12 hours.

Just speculation here, but maybe something is turning off shadows (and other effects) when the frame rate drops below some threshold. Do you see shadows on Mun? Do you see shadows in the rain? * * Woke up in my clothes again this mornin\' Don\'t know exactly where I am I should heed my doctor\'s warning He does the best with me he can He says I suffer from delusion I\'m so confident I\'m sane This ain\'t no optical illusion How do you explain Shadows in the rain?