JoeSchmuckatelli

UPDATE: I tried what you guys suggested on a new lander mission: except I chose Minimus due to its lower gravity and the fact I think I can land there without killing my Kerbil (Getting her back (Kerbil women in STEM!) will be another story). Getting the hang of maneuver nodes is an ENORMOUS help - hit Minimus orbit on the first try - still have fuel (not much) in my second to last stage. Thinking I can use it, plus the last stage fuel to set down gently enough for my scientist to get a soil sample or two. Up until today - all my orbits and other missions have pretty much relied on brute force and guesswork - really nice to see how you're supposed to use maneuver nodes - and how simple they are to use!

Snark - I have to hand it to you; EVERY time you respond to any of my posts - you end up answering 11 questions already percolating in the back of my head (as well as giving me a trick I did not even know about!) Thanks very much - more stuff to try; i.e. I may actually have a good enough rocket - I just need to fly it better! To the other guys: thanks very much for your responses as well! Snark's been showing up on a lot of my 'ask a random question about something I just don't ken' posts - so he gets the 'special' thanks.

Grumble - it's becoming clear to me that I don't have enough fuel. I'm pretty sure a 10k orbit will have me going well over 600m/s - and I'm pretty sure I don't have the fuel for that. (I do really appreciate the responses - but my options at this point is to either kill a good kerbil or leave her stranded in lunar orbit... Probably do that.

I've tried this several times and keep failing. Trying to land, and I've read that at 200k from the moon, my orbital speed should be 3-400m/s. Every time I've tried to land - I just don't have enough fuel to get my speed down enough. I inserted at 300 - but bringing the orbit lower increased my speed. What to do?

Huh. And I've been Shift+Adjusting them. - Appreciate the info!

I've figured out some brute force LKO to lunar orbits. I probably start losing efficiency in my gravity turns, and just keep muscling from there... But I have a probe in Munar orbit and another at Minimus, in orbit. Playing with a wide circumpolar orbit mission, atm. Learned that WHEN you launch is as important as the direction of launch. Very slowly, I'm getting a feeling for normall / antinormal (have a pretty good understanding of how pro and retrograde burns affect the orbit) as well as some of the other maneuvers. But preplanning and maneuver node work is coming on slow.

Okay - quick question - I've added a maneuver node that looks like it will achieve insertion into Minimus' orbit. Can I not 'warp time' to right before that - or am I limited to warping to that maneuver?

Holy noodley appendages! I didn't know you could save a named game from space. I've been reverting flights and praying Jeb survives my decision making the next try. Well, given the time investment getting to a Lunar orbit, I'll be a bit more confident trying things with a save game to work with! Minimus has been giving me fits trying to match the orbit, meet up with it, and not have the Mun throw me into Kerbin. It's fun, Tho!

Okay - that bit about 'purple telling you where you will go after you leave the SOI' makes sense now. Trying to get a Minimus flyby, I found a weird purple circle - and after studying the map I figured out that (because I was going to miss minumus this pass) that my return trip toward periapsis would take me past the Mun - and it was going to throw me into a really disadvantageous orbit around Kerbin (for someone trying to get to Minimus). So I accelerated Prograde - and the purple circle disappeared. It's starting to come together - thanks for the responses!

I've been following Wiki tutorials - and they helped get me close and then I panic-tried everything until I had both an apoapsis and a periapsis around the Mun... which I am calling orbit. Problem is - success through panic is not a reliably recreatable method. What I'm not finding online is an explanation of what's happening on the orbital map: as I approached my Mun encounter, everything changed abruptly, and I simply did not know what was going on. There were orange lines, purple lines, and my craft's projected path took it through the Mun. Instant information overload. I figured the blue path going through the Mun was not a good thing - and I just spun the ball around until whatever input I had seemed to be widening the purple orbit plane until it showed a periapsis - well, I think that's what happened; eventually the purple disappeared and now I have a nice blue path around the Mun. The weird thing is that I now have this orange arc - and I don't know what that is. (It goes to the surface). It may be a maneuver node I inadvertently established - but I cannot figure out how to clear it. So - given that some of the vids I've watched were made quite a few iterations ago - is there a newer or still applicable resource to show me how to do this again, without all the panic? Thanks!

Well, thanks guys! - Just had some fun with probes and the Mun. My first probe - I managed to get it out there, only to realize I hadn't put any transmitting gear on it. Grin. Upside was, I got to play with orbital inclinations - and learn that you can screw up an orbit so badly that instead of an orbit, you get catastrophic reentry. Fun times. Second one wasn't great - but it did have comm gear - and, while I was only able to accomplish a flyby - I did pull nearly 120 science out of that (yes, that's after being reduced by transmitting) - but still a better result than anticipated. That probe looks to be about to be slung out of orbit by the Mun - so it will be interesting to see what happens to it over time. Anyway, thanks again for the suggestions!

Thus far in my 'career' (2 weeks), I've gotten through everything via guessing, testing and revising. That's gotten me to orbit (once) and back. At what point - if ever - do I need to start really doing some number crunching before a mission to have a chance of success? Also - are there resources out there that can help an interested guy with a BA figure out how to run the numbers?

So much to learn - I promptly went out - accepted the 'Test' contracts - those that offered science for completing the test - and completed them for the science. Did not think about or anticipate the part disappearing immediately afterward. Such.... Arrrgh! Upside is, it pushed me over the limit so I could afford to unlock the OCTO.

I did not know the 'test' missions actually gave you a part. I thought you had to accept the mission, then unlock that science module to be able to complete the mission. Interesting. I think one of my problems is I'm not getting the gravity turns effectively. I use the largest single stage solid fuel rocket available at my level to get out of the atmosphere... That may be part of the problem: I just read that too much thrust can defeat gravity turns. I've been trying to power into a turn, but then need a second stage to widen and flatten my trajectory, and a third to get back down. Looks like I need to play with liquid fuel rockets in the atmosphere...

Yeah - my battery died on the way out of the atmosphere on my first attempt - going to have to play around with this to get it to work... Didn't have enough charge to separate the engine from my probe. Razmafraz.

So this is what the Stayputnik is for? I thought it was just something funny. Hmmm... Will have to try this. thanks!

In my most advanced career to date (playing two whole weeks now...) I've managed to get a craft into orbit and then degrade the orbit without killing my Kerbil. Much celebration by all. The problem is - to get to higher orbits I need more science - - - still trying to get the '90' cost items - of which I only have a few. I've already built a KerbilKar and driven around the space center gathering temperature, barometric, goo, science and crew.EVA reports. Whenever I'm in space I try to gather science - but I've apparently already been to these altitudes - cause I'm usually getting nothing. The contracts I have are for high altitude temp / baro / crew reports - and I don't have supersonic engines yet. So they're a waste. Or they're asking me to test stuff I haven't unlocked yet. So, I'm kind of at a loss. What next? . . ...FWIW - I have a 20% rep, if that means anything to anyone.

Must warn you... it runs HOT on my laptop. Have to put a book under it when my son and his friends are making Kerbil Suicide Rocket Buses.

Yeah - I get that. I'm getting ready to try to figure out how to calculate what rocket might get me where I need to go before I assemble it. Thus far, it's fun to guess, test, revert, etc. But I anticipate it only gets harder. Thank god for the lines that show reentry profiles. I'm getting proficient at stretching them out enough to keep my kerbils alive. Next step... orbit, I guess (but after playing the tutorial a few times, I think I'll be okay).

I ran the same mission again, and this time everything worked. I must have missed something - but am at a loss as to what.

I thought I had this mission figured out: haul a Swivel engine to a set altitude range, while there fire it up and stay within a set velocity range... I do that, and keep an eye on the mission log until every check box goes green. So I figure I've completed the mission. Eventually my speed gets too high or I start reentry and the altitude requirements are no longer met, and the boxes uncheck. SO, in other words - I don't activate the stage until its all green, do I need to decouple while its green? What am I missing?

Okay - quite frustrated. Since posting I've delved into the save files... and it looks like for whatever reason all progress was lost. It's weird, really. The named save file was from yesterday. The persistent file was from today. Tried deleting persistent (actually just moved it out of the folder), game would not start normally. Performed a STEAM integrity check - it found two corrupted files, claimed it corrected them. Took the named file, copied it to a different location, renamed it 'persistent' and inserted it into the save file location - game started normally... but again, all progress was lost. Something happened to my saved progress. Whatever that something was, the files are gone - reverted (apparently) to an earlier game state. The ship files (with parts I can no longer access / are not unlocked at this gamestate) are still there. The only thing I can think of is a bug which occurred when I double clicked on a bit of space debris - and was unable to get back to KSC. I had to close the game and restart - and this is when all the problems occurred. See: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/127297-delete-please/#comment-2313411 There appears to be no fix for this - I can either continue from the previous 11% spot - where I don't remember what I've done or not, or start a new game.

I found the save file location - one has my named game, the other has 'persistent'. The named game was saved last night when I logged off, the 'persistent' file today. Named has more kb than persistent (72 vs 63). Looks like it should be the more advanced file. Unfortunately the persistent file seems to be the one that wants to load.

I logged in today, went to fly a space plane I flew yesterday and the loading screen has the warning "Contains invalid or locked parts". Googled and found a thread that says "Alt+F2" should display them... Looked like a bunch of collision errors. So I went about trying to fix them, eventually got bored and tried to launch a space plane I flew last night. Except it says the parts haven't been unlocked yet. Did some digging, and it seems I've lost my science and tech tree progress. So I went back to my saves file - which showed me at 20% reputation when I saved last night - and now my save game rep is back down to 11%... and the science I'd earned and the parts I'd unlocked are gone. Has this happened to anyone else? I had a problem with a game earlier where it locked me in space - could the game have determined it was a corrupted file then reverted me back to a previous save? The odd thing is that the plane I built was there - same with a rocket I'd built to do suborbital missions, but the loss of tech tree functionality has me stumped, as the game won't let me fly these parts until I unlock them again. Edit: please see this post further down: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/127301-lost-save-game-lost-progress-contains-invalid-or-locked-parts-reverted-to-previous-save/&do=findComment&comment=2313489

That's what I did. Same thing: KSC was gone. Reloading did nothing - restarting fixed it.