suicidejunkie

I did this manually in my high tech save. A little RTG powered jeep with a klaw on it to gently grab the rockets and KAS fuel hoses on the back to connect to the huge tanker/miner combo that would belly up to the launch pad. Got a bit inconvenient since the giant tires kept popping from the weight of the 40k units of fuel needed to even partially fill my heavy boosters.

In older versions, the MPL would add to the % of the science that could be transmitted instead of having to be lugged to the surface and recovered. Since the change to data, a single lab can get data from each unique experiment exactly once, no matter how many different copies of it you have or what the science recovery value is. A temperature scan from LKO can be processed in lab A for data. If you take a second temperature scan from LKO, then lab A cannot get data from it because it already got data from that. A temperature scan from some other biome will give new data, and processing the same experiment in a sequence of different laboratories will give new data to each of the labs.

On the other hand, you can take your SSTO to orbit, and then realize you left the gear down when you spin the camera to dock with your space station.

You can make a sporty little 30t SSTO plane for about the same price as my mun lander, except it doesn't get thrown away at the end, so it really only costs $5k per launch (fuel) and pays for itself immediately. It sounds like what you want is just an orbital drop pod: heat shield + decoupler(to drop the heavy shield) + AM canister + basic probe + parachutes, and then fling it at the atmosphere with a ship. Depending on the precision you get with your targeting, you can then send a rover or a puddle jumper airplane or perhaps a boat out to collect the goodies.

Also consider the benefits of just repurposing a spent booster stage. My most productive station is a 6-orange popsicle booster stage that accidentally made orbit after being used to loft a payload that was too light. With KIS/KAS, I just bolted on some docking ports, added an antenna, probe core, and RTG combo for fun and SAS, and then slapped other various widgets and knickknacks all over it as I felt like it. Tankers from minmus come to fill it up, spaceplanes make regular visits, and heavier ships getting launched come by to refill before heading out.

What about closing your air intakes to reduce drag? That doesn't mean shutting down the air breathers immediately; you can let them run on the remaining air in your hull after closing the intakes. But at some point as they spool down in the thin air, the drag from the intakes is going to exceed the thrust from your engines.

For absolute economy, a SSTO spaceplane with a small mining package can get the remaining payload mass to orbit for negative money per ton. However that's only because Jeb hasn't noticed that we aren't actually paying him.

I think your problem might be not enough wing, and thus not enough braking power. My SSTMinmus spaceplane does the following for reentry: 1) Final approach from 80km AP, set PE at 45km 2) Pitch to 80 degrees, hold as long as possible for thermally cheap braking force (only the cockpit gyro to help at this point) and then let it settle to just above prograde. 3) At 45 km, pitch up to 45 degrees and hold while speed rapidly drops to 1600m/s and heat becomes non-threatening well before the parts warm up (monoprop puff engines on the nose are available in action group 4 in case fuel balance is off) 4) Coast in to land. Throttle up the whiplashes and cruise at 22km / mach 2.5, if KSC is far away, or continue to pitch up and drop speed if KSC is close. Note: Airbrakes are used for surface landing, and aren't applicable to the deorbit braking. Puff engines are also used to flip into launch position on minmus and to arrest the flip from tail to wheels during minmus landing.

Had an engineer walking up a mountain peak from his plane to assemble a remote tech comm relay with good sightlines. Reached the seam between uphill and flat, and spontaneously combusted as he crossed the threshold.

What I usually do is have a rocket with a low starting TWR, but then hit it with a bag of Hammers on the bottom to bring it up to 250m/s straight off the launch pad. The main stage then just acts as a sustainer through the thick air, and higher TWR arrives as the atmo and fuel remaining both thin out. ... I might be a little too paranoid about supersonic rockets after jackknifing a skylab at 10km up ...

Is there any provision for a payload intended to be landed (or to be an impactor) rather than having a final destination in orbit? Or is that simply some combination of requesting zero altitude plus clarification in the "Other orbital parameters" field?

What item is it you have? Jetpacks aren't an item you can hold, so that sounds confusing. Might it be a stackable item where you had x2 in one slot before, such as an ox-stat solar panel? In the short term: Hit ESC to cancel the action. You can then use the jetpack to maneuver and line up a course; grab the part as you're moving past, then attach it somewhere on your ship while you drift past the ship, so you can take a break without losing the part.

If you make your JOI burn with some slight aerobraking help, could you not just jettison them normally while your PE is still in atmo, and let Jool deorbit them for you? (presuming the moons don't throw the path off) With KAS, you could also just bring some C4 and detonate the tanks when you have some coasting time.

It was the space cowboy days of the program, no fancy math beyond basic maneuver nodes and designs being first tested in the field. It was the first use of Rockomax tanks to power heavy Minmus explorers, and mining tech was just being developed. Valentina was in a standard Minmus hopper on the west side of the moon, training up a newbie pilot to two stars and waiting for a fuel delivery before finishing some lucrative survey contracts and eventually heading home. Bill and Bob on the other hand, were flying the very latest in high tech; an unlimited range science explorer design with built in ISRU and drilling equipment, and they set it down on the slopes on the east side far from the training mission. Hilarity struck when it turned out that the mining drills were taller than the landing legs, and Bill & Bob ended up riding a bucking ship slowly down the hill. After a few minutes, the hilarity turned to tragedy when the drills had enough of being dragged sideways through the terrain at 0.6m/s. The 6-way symmetry pods containing drills, auxiliary engines, fuel, ore, solar and most of the battery capacity decided to just fall off into a pile of debris. This left the core stack of the ship standing naked on its poodle engine, held up at worrying angle by gyros as the remaining battery ticked rapidly downwards. Rather than wait for the power to die and tip over to be stranded, Bill and Bob mustered their courage and lit the engine with what fuel they had, and burned east for orbit. If only Jeb was there, he probably would have gone for less altitude and more actual orbit, but they had only gotten a path to the far side of Minmus when the fuel ran out. Doom! Val was quick to respond to the distress call, eyeballed the direction and launched to the west. Pulling a 180 and burning even harder as Bill and Bob cruised past, she was able to dock during the descent and then used the last fumes of fuel to boost both ships into a safe orbit. Seven days later, Jeb arrived from Kerbin to deliver much needed supplies, everyone made it home alive, and it was awesome.

I'm pretty sure there's a small fudge factor in there to treat the planet as slightly smaller than it really is so you don't get zero visibility when splashed down and such. Mountains and large hills are critical to making a relay network. The only place I'd consider constructing an actual tower is right at each pole for purposes of beaming very high power antennae out into the depths of space with 360 degree coverage of the orbital plane.

The nodes are just little things that an engineer can fit in his backpack and assemble with only a wrench: 1x Octo (stayputnik would roll down hills) 2x Solar panels to run the antennas Batteries to keep it running long enough for the delivery plane to take off and unload physics it if working at night Antennae to taste. The DP10s are all you need, with an occasional communotron whip for mid level orbit. Then pick a couple sites on the grid for long range dishes. This goes on top of the highest mountains in the area that can reach. A 5km mountain peak gives about 200km range to the next 5km mountain before you're cut off by the curvature. Network is expanding faster now that I've built a 3 seater plane instead of having to head home after each one: Note the terrible range on the lowlands of the peninsula east of booster bay, and the canal crossing to the desert landmass because the mountains aren't quite close enough. And the whole system can result in really indirect comm links: Having a tidally locked mun is very convenient for relays on the near side!

Bug report: The Temperature gauge is labeled in degrees C, and shows the same number as the thermometer on my ship. But the thermometer is in Kelvin, not Celsius. The seaside temperature on Kerbin's shores is definitely not 310 C as the gauge insists

Well, I did my first mun landing in my lifesupport game. No pilot, because the mission included constructing a (remotetech) comms relay on the mun to permanently link back to Kerbin thanks to the tidal locking. First launch had flames for about 2 seconds before the explosions started. Giant ball of smoke and flame and shockwaves, rapid staging to the munar descent stage, then the engine got destroyed so I staged to the ascent engine, and then threw out the parachutes once it was starting to fall clear. Kerbal survived with a couple landing gear scattered on the grass and a 400 tank to the side. 4 KCT days to clear the pad and 5 days to finish the backup mun rocket, this time with launch clamps Launch went successfully this time, and I got into orbit of mun, but then realized that thanks to the previous launchpad incident, it was now a new moon. Everywhere that can see Kerbin is pitch black, and I'll have to do everything on battery power in the dark. Also I couldn't quite remember where the rough terrain is and I wasn't going to look up a map online. I did have a landing light so it wasn't all bad. Managed to come down on a mostly flat spot using the transfer/landing stage, and then ditched it to put the lander down on its legs. Unfortunately, one of the legs caught on the descent tank, and it tipped over. Not enough gyro to force it upright. Fortunately I had the three most dangerous things in the universe: An Engineer, a Wrench, and an IDEA! I could fix this! Didn't quite go as expected; the landing gear dug in to the soil and the rocket faceplanted on the first try. I then spun it back to its feet and faced it east again, then did a small burn to rock forward and as it rocked back, I gunned it and spiraled into the sky After getting a couple minutes buffer before impact, I had the engineer step outside, tear off the landing gear to rebalance the ship, and then finished the orbital burn. Now he just has the easy trip home to deliver the science loot, collect his first star and lots of fame.

One thing I would like to see if possible, is for the AMP gauge to show the excess energy income even when it can't be stored. Once the batteries are full, it currently drops to zero, but it would be quite nice to see how much margin I have for activating more parts without draining the battery.

Rlin; you can send a kerbal up, EVA and right click the antenna to say 'force open' and adjust it manually. Or you could turn off remotetech temporarily, make sure all the antennas from your old save are deployed, and then install remotetech. Or, you could also go into the remotetech settings and set the range multiplier to 1E+99; if you've got it, the probe cores with built in 3km omni should be able to reach KSC so you can tell them to deploy their main antenna (then switch the multiplier back of course) Drastyy; fastest way is to try it (remove science alarm temporarily and see if things work), but Yes is the answer from what I've read. There is also a patch for the science lab transmissions which may be related a couple pages up the thread.

Completed? You mean just the first step, not the whole thing right? If you have a lifesupport mod, that kind of bug would just kill the victim.

Jot down the LF and Ox levels of your miner before leaving the scene quickly with drills running and ISRU chugging. When you come back, see if they're different. It might be that the catchup physics top out at one ore tank worth of ISRU conversion, and between the small or tank and inefficient ISRU, you're only getting a tiny amount of fuel converted between physics loads.

As a note, you can also see this with water bottles in cold weather. If you leave pure water undisturbed and cool it slowly, you can get it a fair few degrees below zero without freezing. It would freeze, but there is no good spot for the ice to start from. Tap the bottle and the splashing will provide a starting point for the ice, and the whole thing will crystallize in a few seconds while getting warmer. Heat pack is the same idea, but different materials with better stability and relevant temperatures.

Could it mean 'must have wheels' in the sense of 'is a rover' and 'can be driven around'?; if so the requirement should be spelled 'powered wheels'. Try tacking on a balloon tire to it see if that satisfies the contract.

I was wondering why my Asteroid Munninator redirector/drill ended up with less mass than I expected! You can get around the problem by locking the ore tanks (or leaving them full) Then, when the drills are started, they will be stalled on ore storage and not actually extract any resources, but they *will* warm up. Once the drills are up to operating temperature, you can unlock the ore tank and start collecting ore and refining fuel without waste.