bewing

It's in your "Difficulty options" under the "Advanced" tab. And no, you can change it at any time -- you're not locked in.

Since you have "no control without signal" turned on in your settings, your case is different from what most people face. With the default setting (off), you could do this mission with no kerbal and no relay. As it is, you need one or the other, or you won't be able to match the proper satellite orbit. Once you have matched that orbit, if you have a kerbal onboard -- you can just EVA the kerbal, and then the contract will complete. (But yes, you still need the probe core.) If you use a relay, I'd put it really high over the Mun, and time my mission for when the relay is over the back side. You can try doing math to calculate deltaV requirements, but I think that flying and reverting test missions is more fun than doing math. I just create a craft with a huge amount of deltaV and do the entire mission, and see how much I have left or how much I was short. If your commnet lines are red, then you still have signal and control. It's when they turn black that you've got nothing. I tend to do my rescue missions after the satellite missions are complete, because of the "unmanned" requirement in the satellite missions. Getting back from the Mun to LKO takes the same amount of deltaV as getting to the Mun, unless you want to try something crazy and dangerous like aerobraking. If all you want to do is just throw away your rocket and land one guy in a little capsule with a heatshield, that takes very little deltaV at all. Your original design with the RCS and no Ant would have worked nicely, if you had enough deltaV -- especially if you made a few small changes. (Adding a small aero nosecone, getting rid of the service bay -- you don't need fairings or service bays sometimes.) You also don't need to leave the satellite there. Your contract will complete after 10 seconds, and then you can do anything you like with the whole craft. Like take it and complete another satellite mission. KSP is supposed to be educational and make you think, and trying to complete many contracts with the same craft is one of the best ways to stretch your mind. It conflicts with roleplaying though, so if you think roleplaying is more fun, then don't worry about it.

IIRC, it's a factor of root 2? So the worst you would get by braking down in a spiral from Kerbin's SOI boundary is about an extra 410 m/s?

You have to make sure that you have a reasonable number of wheels to support the mass of the rover. If you overload them, they do go nuts. But yeah, in general, if you have a reasonable design then you can find a spring/damper setting that works. If you can post a stock craft, then we can take a peek.

Hmmmm. Then I'm not sure why your relative speed didn't stay zero for more than a few seconds.

Did I say "target"? Hmmmm, I think I said "orbital". If you thrust directly toward your target with some residual velocity in your craft, that will get you closer until you are a couple hundred meters apart. But no matter how hard you try after that, you will just go around in circles a couple hundred meters from your target. However, you said you thrusted prograde. Your prograde vector in target mode is pretty much just random. If you thrust prograde and get closer to your target, you just got lucky. If you come to a dead stop, then thrust directly toward your target, then you will get a lot closer than you started from. If you start at 500m, then you will probably get within about 20 meters when you pass by. If you are within 30 meters, and you come to a dead stop, point at the target, and thrust again, you will hit it. Did you leave your RCS thrusters on your ship turned on? If you do, they will continue making little adjustments and throwing off your nice dead stoppage.

More like a certainty.

Your target is behind you. So you need an orbit that takes longer than your target's orbit, so your target can catch up to you. Which means it has to be bigger than your target's orbit. So, just after you pass the intercept point, you want to burn prograde in orbital mode, to make your orbit bigger. Do it gently, and watch the intersect numbers while you burn. They will tick down to something under 1km, because you are coplanar. Then you have a choice: you can either just accept the intercept you already have -- wait until you are under 1km separation, and burn to a 0m/s stop in target mode. Or, you wait most of one orbit. Then, in target mode, you use your retrograde-marker-pushing technique that you learned to get even closer than what the intercept was showing. And then come to a stop. And yes, after you come to a stop, you will slowly start to drift apart again. But it takes a long time to build up speed, and you can always come to a stop again.

Once you intercept, if you reduce your relative velocity to exactly zero and then wait 15 minutes, you are guaranteed to be in the sunlight again. It's easier just to terminate them in your tracking station. They have some built-in lights. It's enough to provide you something to aim for, which is all that you really need -- when combined with the Kerbal's helmet lights. But if it helps your role-playing then go ahead and stick them on. But they add mass, drag, and cost -- which can cripple your craft if you do it wrong. Actually, one has 10 and the other has 15. But if you fill them up, that should give you lots of good practice time. No, RCS jets can't be obstructed by other parts of your craft like engines can. You can clip them completely inside and they will still work. You can build a box around them and they will still work. But understand that is not true for engines. We all do that at one time or another. But keep in mind that you can only board a craft at the hatch. So your ladders have to lead to the hatch, or else you will still have to let go again and fly around from the ladder to the hatch. The default numbers are for when you are flying around in the atmosphere. Which you almost never are. You can change the deltaV display to show "vacuum" numbers instead, which is more informative. And yes, it calculates that number based on how much mass is remaining in the craft after you've staged away all the rest.

I think I already asked you about your "no control without signal" setting, and you said you turned it on like a crazy person. This is why. If you leave that setting on its default (off) you can still fly a mission without relays. For directions, you are limited to what you can do with the navball. For thrusting, you are limited to pulsing your main engines off/on. But that's enough to get you anywhere, and when you get there you can still do anything -- provided you build your ship carefully.

Yup. Well, you get one shot every 5 days or something. It takes a long time for the ships to come back around for another close approach if you end up timewarping through your intercept (as a theoretical example, but this has never happened to me *coff*).

Right. Use the same basic ship as last time, but add four of the 4-way RCS blocks, and 40 units of monoprop. When you become an expert, you will need less than 5, but 40 will give you a lot of practice. Or, if you want to add another challenge -- add another MK1 Crew Cabin, and try to rescue two kerbals with one mission. You may need a bit more Lf and Ox if you do that. I'd suggest an Ap of about 92 to 95k, and a Pe of about 80k. In general that will guarantee that you are higher, and that there are two orbit crossings. But the higher the difference between the orbits, the faster your intercept will happen. You don't want it to be all that fast yet. So, higher but not more than 10k higher, and the Pe at an altitude that guarantees crossings.

Ah, you have to make your orbits cross to make it easy to actually get an intercept by only pushing the yellow/green retrograde marker. And you push the retrograde marker around, not the pink antitarget marker. Basically, you waited too long to push your retrograde marker. If you push it around sooner, that will make your orbit cross. Yes, that orange intercept marker mostly shows the closest approach, but it is not absolutely precise. As you make adjustments to get your closest approach even closer, yes the intercept marker will move farther away from you in time -- but the "separation" number (which is the important one) will decrease to zero. You can also turn around and point at the target, and pull your prograde marker around in the same way as you push your retrograde marker -- and that will also fix the fact that your orbits don't cross. This is also necessary if your "target" speed gets too low (or goes to zero). Having slightly faster intercepts actually works better. The markers don't have time to drift very far if you are going faster.

Are you willing to do engine clipping, or no? And does this spaceplane need to dock with your base?

For planets, it gets tricky because you have to figure out the proper transfer window (about once a year). You can't just go any old time you feel like it. For the Mun, it should be pretty easy. You look where the Mun is, in its orbit around Kerbin. You aim 90 degrees ahead of that point. You burn prograde on the opposite side of Kerbin from your aim point. For Minmus, you aim 60 degrees ahead, instead.

Once you have a close approach (less than maybe 15km at Kerbin -- more on a CB with lower gravity), it's best not to think of it in terms of orbits anymore. Just think of it in terms of 3-D space. You and the other ship are passing each other. It doesn't matter which direction. All you are concerned about when doing a rendezvous is relative speeds. Target mode on the navball shows you the relative speeds and directions. You don't need to worry about which compass points they are. You want prograde (the direction you are moving) to be right on top of the target marker on the navball (or equivalently the retrograde marker on top of anti-target). Because that means you are moving straight toward the target. But you may be going too fast, or too slow, and the prograde marker will always drift over time. As you begin your pass, you may have time to "push" the retrograde marker on top of the anti-target marker (or pull the prograde marker on top of the target marker). But at some point, you always want to come to a stop, relative to the other ship -- and you always do that by burning retrograde.

Nah nah nah. Gotta go back and reread the initial comments in this thread. You set target mode, and point retrograde in target mode, and burn in that direction. In target mode, the displayed speed is your relative speed. When you burn retrograde, you are burning exactly against your relative speed -- which makes it go to zero. ^That's how you do it. Burn retrograde in target mode. Both. If you have a close approach, then you are getting closer until you get to the node, and then you start getting further apart. The 13.6 is the vector speed difference when you pass each other.

Yes, flying on EVA is different than flying a ship. As mentioned already, the kerbal's helmet always points north. So you can't adjust that dimension with the camera. If your destination ship is above you, the only way to get there is to use the Shift key to thrust up. Similarly with down and the Ctrl key. I really only fly EVA in space by eye -- almost never with the navball. You zoom the camera out until you see your destination. You swing the camera around until the camera is directly behind the kerbal, facing the destination. Hit Space to force your kerbal to face in that direction. Now you know that W is prograde, and S is retrograde. Now judge whether your destination ship is above your kerbal's head, or below his feet -- you need to fix that with the Space or Ctrl keys. So you hit Shift/Ctrl and W to head toward the destination. Keep your speed down -- there's no reason to go faster than maybe 7 m/s until you are an expert. If the destination ship is sliding sideways (vs your prograde symbol, or just visually) then use A/D to cancel that movement. You want to fix the vertical dimension (Shift/Ctrl) before you get to your destination, because it's hard to see in that direction. Usually, your helmet light is L, and that can really help for the last few meters. It can also help to turn on the lights on your destination ship.

Because the testers found that you get too much flexing with those parts if there are no autostruts. So they were set to being permanent. Nope.

Welcome to the forums. Besides Solar panels, RTGs, and running your engines -- there are also Fuel Cells, that convert small amounts of fuel directly into electricity.

In default commnet mode, Kerbin has ground transmission stations all around the planet. I assume you turned the ground stations off? Yes. That's exactly it. That's how it works IRL, and in the game. If you turn off the groundstations, then you need to provide a string of relays between KSC and Duna where every relay has the range to communicate with the next relay. And with 2 RA-2's on each sat, that basically means that they can't be more than 3.5 Gm apart. (Or a bit further if you use five.) However, if you just include a pilot in your craft, then you do not need continuous signal back to KSC to do anything. Or even if you want to do this as a robotic probe, you can control enough robotic functions to complete (for example) a satellite contract -- unless you decided to be a masochist and you also clicked the "no control without signal" button in the game settings.

Yeah, in stock there really is no purpose for a space station, except as a big fuel dump. If you add KIS/KAS, then a space station can additionally become an orbital spare parts warehouse. IRL, there's not much use for a space station either.

Yes, that's the other major benefit of autostruts. You can turn them on and off, and change their type in flight.

I agree with vanamonde. When you built that fairing, you turned on "interstage nodes" for the fairing. You built your payload for the fairing, and then stuck the payload to an interstage node, not to the base. When you decouple a payload, the decoupler must be the attachment point to the node for it to work. So yeah, your only choice is to go back and rebuild it. Turn off the interstage nodes, grab the payload, and then attach it directly to the base. After that, if you need interstage nodes to build the rest of your rocket, turn them on after you've attached the payload.

There is no such thing as a parent autostrut. Because of the tree structure of craft, the grandparent part always stays the same. Once you are docked, you intentionally create "root" or "heaviest" autostruts across the docking port to stabilize the station to create rigidity. It should also work to autostrut your docking port to grandparent if you initially build your craft with a detachable root part above the docking port.