Goody1981

Now I’m questioning haha... if it didn’t take 25 min to boot up I’d turn it on to check :p

Good point - though mine always defaults to the longest. At any rate, definitely need to sort out which is which.

There will be two nodes (the green attachment points) you can attach to - one for the central engine and one for the motor plate (engine plate in the English version). You can change the position of the engine plate node by right clicking the part and changing the length. It sounds like you are attaching to the central engine node, which will generate the shroud (cover) for the central engine only. You need to attach to the engine plate node. These two nodes will be in line with each other, but the engine plate node should be the lower one. Depending on the length of the engine plate, the two nodes can sometimes overlap, making it difficult to tell which is which.

Omg yes.... this is in my top 2 mods of all time. Thank you!!!!

That’s a weird one.... I can’t remember this ever happening to me and I’ve done that contract a dozen times through my many careers. Pretty sure I do the same trajectory as you and it has always worked. Puzzling! (not helpful to your actual problem of this weirdness, but pretty sure it would work if you launched then immediately deployed the parachute 10m above the launch pad)

Also are you aware of being able to use the mouse wheel to make slight adjustments?

Bewing’s response is excellent (as are, I’m sure, 5thhorseman’s videos even though I didn’t watch them).. but to summarise in fewer words: 1 - get an intercept as close as possible. 10km is pretty far, as Bewing says aim for 1km 2 - at 1min before intercept, quicksave 3 - burn retrograde in target mode (do you know how to change modes?) until your speed is 0. 4 - burn prograde in target mode until speed is 10m/s and wait until the distance to target reduces by half 5 - repeat steps 3 and 4 until you are stopped next to your target Then it’s time to dock (I’m assuming your difficulty is getting close enough to attempt docking, not the docking itself)

Cheers - I didn’t know that

Hi Steve Unfortunately, due to the way that the game engine works, you can’t make loops out of parts. If there’s a “parent” part, and you attach a “daughter” part to it, that daughter part can never come back to connect to the parent part, or any other part already on the rocket. Think like the branches of a tree - you can only branch out, it can never come back to join the tree in a loop (cue photos of just such a thing happening with trees probably :p) There are two workarounds: 1 - struts. They are a kind of cheat way of creating a loop. So you could place the radial decoupler, place your booster, then use struts to connect back to the main body. 2 - autostruts. Because struts look ugly, I prefer autostruts... which are just pretty much invisible struts. You have to turn them on via “advanced tweakables” in the settings. Once turned on, you can right click on a part (in the VAB or in flight) and cycle through a few options for where the autostrut is connected. So to do big boosters like that, my go-to method: - place radial decoupler and attach booster - add a nose cone on the booster and set it to autostrut to “root part” (this creates a solid connection between the top of the booster and the top of the rocket) - autostrut the main tank of the booster, and/or the engine on the bottom, to “grandparent part” (this creates a solid connection between the bottom of the booster and the bottom of the rocket) In the VAB there are orange lines that show you where the autostruts are connecting. As for the second problem, it looks like you have no fins on the bottom of your rocket. Adding some steerable fins may help. In order to steer you need to think of maximising torque - which you do by having the steering/turning force act as far from the centre of mass as possible. Imagine trying to use a spanner to turn a bolt - it works best if you grip the spanner further from the bolt, not really close to it. So the torque/ turning force needs to act at the ends of the rocket, not in the middle. Putting RCS right in the middle of your rocket makes it almost impossible for them to steer your rocket (actually, mathematically IMpossible if they are exactly on the centre of mass). Also, for a rocket of that size/mass, those RCS are pretty underpowered. So to maximise the torque/turning force you can move the RCS to the top and bottom, as well as adding steering fins to the bottom, and well as using engines at the bottom that can steer (have a gimbal range). Hope that’s helpful!

I haven’t noticed it to be much harder... I also like to start a new career every update. Forgive me if you already know some of this, but some non-obvious sources of science: - flying thermometer scans/crew reports are per biome (temperature scan above Kerbin’s shores is different to temperature scan above Kerbin’s water) - space EVAs are per biome (EVA report above Kerbin’s badlands is different to EVA report above Kerbin’s deserts) - all the KSC biomes, as mentioned by @VoidSquid above If you’re still needing science, you could try: - landing a probe on the mun or Minmus and transmitting scans back to Kerbin - landing a slightly more complex probe on the mun and returning some science scans physically back to Kerbin That last I have done recently - all that returns is a probe core, battery, small heat shield, parachute and the experiment storage unit.

It might be something to do with where you hit? Or total area of impact? After failing a few times with an SRB missile launched from the launchpad and hitting end on (perpendicular to VAB walls), I changed something and the SRB clipped the ground in front of the VAB causing it to flip up and randomly land on the VAB walls, parallel to the walls. The VAB exploded and collapsed. But the strange thing was that the SRB continued without a problem (maybe some of its fins were destroyed) and just flew up into the air until it ran out of juice. It was weird.

Ah cheers mate - yeah that makes sense

I am probably misremembering some wonderful dream I had, but it was my understanding that this update would add proper behaviour to the engine plumes? I.e. vacuum expansion ala realplume... but it seems not?

Instead of editing the save file you can use alt-F12 (the "cheat" menu) to give yourself funds/science. As mentioned by shdwlrd you can also use this menu to place a craft into any orbit around any body. So... alt-F12 to give funds/science until you have the same tech level --> build your com-sats --> alt-F12 them into orbit where you want them --> enjoy 1.8! ....I'd say it's maybe 15 min of work to get it the way you want it

I would start a new game and then use alt-F12 to get yourself to roughly the same place you are in your current game. ie - award yourself science until you have the same level of unlocked tech - design comm-sats and then “set orbit” them wherever you currently have comm-sats I wouldn’t feel bad about doing this, because you’ve already done it... you aren’t cheating yourself out of any experience. Whichever way you decide to do it though, I highly recommend 1.7 with the DLCs... very fun!