IncongruousGoat

5/10. An AI might have presets for those sorts of things. I'm human if I say I am, dammit! You can't stop me from Signal = SEGFAULT ERR: ATTEMPT TO ACCESS RESTRICTED MEMORY AT ADDRESS 0x0 REBOOTING... Ahem. I'm sorry, what was I saying?

For my auto-piloting needs (such as they are; curses be upon remote tech signal delay), I prefer to use... kOS! I'm fine with autopilots, I would just rather use one I had a hand in making (although I haven't done much with it, and only in RSS). Oh, and KER for the informational readouts in my modded install.

Sure you can. Just find the install folder and run the appropriate executable (ksp.exe ot ksp_x64.exe for 64-bit).

Yes, they did, and here are the results of my research and a more successful assembly procedure as a proof-of-concept. This is a crane I put together that uses rover wheels. The wheels themselves hold the load fine under normal conditions, but acceleration under load is slow (constant acceleration from the crawlerway to the launchpad would only yield 4 m/s from a dead stop). Steering is fine, although turning radius leaves something to be desired. On the upside, I haven't managed to flip one of these by hard maneuvering (and I've tried). The crane can only handle flat surfaces-try to go up the incline from the KSC to the launchpad and either the motors will not provide enough power to make it all the way up, or the speed at which the crane hits the incline will destroy one or both of the front wheels. There is in fact a full tank sitting behind the crane arm-this is designed as a partial counterweight to the payload (though its effectiveness as such has yet to be experimentally determined). I also created a variant for putting payloads on top of boosters: The weight of the payload is counterbalanced by the addition of an extra full liquid fuel tank at the rear. The crane itself was surprisingly stable-likely due to the high weight of the counterweight tanks. One thing worth noting: Assembly can be quite rough on the cranes. This is an extreme example, but one or both of the front wheels would consistently break after docking the carried component to the rocket. Without the presence of a level 3 engineer (a thing very hard to come by in a caveman save) the cranes need to be recovered and redeployed after use. A complete album of assembly using these newfangled cranes can be found here Obviously, these are all very early designs, and many improvements are sure to come by those of us who are better at building cranes.

Hello, all! I said in the 1.1 thread a while ago that I was nearly done with a 1.2 submission. Well... I nearly finished that, then had difficulties on the vehicle assembly lawn (although I will be presenting some discoveries later regarding rover wheels), then got distracted by RP-0 and Jool 5. Then I scrapped my old save, started fresh, and actually finished this time. So here it is: Submission to the KSP Caveman 1.2 challenge, vanadium level. Album is here: http://imgur.com/a/B5eiN I decided to do this one differently than I usually do. Firstly, I didn't collect any KSC science (except on the launchpad). Secondly, I built a powered rover, which I think is a caveman first enabled by the 1.2 rearrangement of the tech tree, which I used to gather science from 4 of Minmus's biomes. Third... well, I tried to use a free return trajectory during my Mun flyby. Needless to say, shenanigans ensued. The rover design I used could probably work on the Mun, although I have yet to test it. More data is pending. Edit: Never mind, looks like I was beaten to the punch with using a rover, but not for recovering the science afterwards.

Honestly, I haven't looked at the low-mass ones, other than Nefrums' (which are a bit hard to draw inspiration from due to their degree of sophistication). The Tylo lander is something I put together months ago for a mission that never flew, and the Laythe one was just built with the parameters of A: Use jet engines (RAPIER) and B: don't mass much more than 5t (the mass of the Tylo lander) for balance reasons. I guess I've just practiced building low-mass landers enough that I can do it fairly well.

As far as I know, it hasn't been updated yet. Then again, the entirety of my looking consists of a quick scan of CKAN. The grand majority of my KSP experience is with a stock install, so that's what I gravitate towards. This is also the reason I did it without KER and/or MechJeb, or anything else for that matter.

Thanks! I'm considering adapting those small boosters into some sort of super-re-configurable modular interplanetary transfer system. Maybe once I get around to finally doing an extensive colonization project. Oh, and best of luck with your attempt. I look forward to seeing how it turns out.

Hello! This challenge was just so much fun I had to do it again, albeit this time on Level 3. May I present: Project Ganymede II, now with 1/3 the parts, 1/4 the mass, 1/2 the cost, and 133.7% the panache! Imgur album is here: http://imgur.com/a/E8RY4 I took the divide and conquer approach, although I deviated from what seems to be the norm by parking my mothership in low Vall orbit, instead of the usual elliptical Tylo orbit. I justify this by a: the ease of reaching low Vall orbit, the ease of rendezvous, and most of all the ease of securing the Vall landing. You know, the one that's often squeezed in sideways in most missions? Plus, it allowed me to balance the Tylo transfer stage and Laythe transfer stage on the way to Jool, making construction and piloting that much easier. Admittedly, the nature of a divide-and-conquer mission is such that the mission gets a bit hard to follow, especially at the point when I'm flying three of the legs at once. See, people, this is what happens when you try and be clever. The mission was done in a fresh sandbox save Total cost:345, 032 Part count: 249 Mass at launch: 546.529 t Payload mass: 109.409 t Mission duration: 9y 330d

That's a good point. Manually adjusting provided voltage to ensure a stable coast would not be particularly fun, and it seems like the kind of thing that would be easy to forget or mess up, especially on bumpy terrain. I know Teslas have regenerative braking on by default, but on the other hand they are designed for flat tarmac, and not so much rough terrain. Still, the way motors consume electric charge makes no sense. However the controls are done, motors should never be in a zero electric charge consumption/production state except. Either voltage is applied to generate enough torque to provide acceleration, or they're applying voltage to generate enough torque to maintain a velocity, or they're applying torque to decelerate the motor, or power is being generated through regenerative braking. The "coast" mode on a typical motor controller is really regenerative braking mode-it's just labeled coast because it decelerates slower thank "brake"-which applies voltage to decelerate the motor. Although all of this would require serious changes to the way brakes and wheels work-including removal of the "brake torque" slider (unless there are physical brakes along with the regenerative ones, which makes everything even more confusing). Perhaps regenerative braking isn't such a good idea for the stock game, simply by merit of being far too complicated to deal with. It's not like the stock game doesn't have its share of magic things.

Yes, yes, I know, more about the wheels. While I am enjoying the new 1.2 wheel physics and think that in a lot of ways, it's great, I feel the wheels act too much like magic electricity-to-lateral motion devices.You press forwards, the motors turn on, and you roll forwards. You stop pressing forwards, and you keep your momentum, only slowed by air resistance, while the motors stop consuming electricity. This only makes sense if the motor disengages from the axle whenever it isn't running (which is precisely the kind of over-complicated thing no spacecraft designer worth their salt would do). In my opinion, it would be much more interesting for the wheel motors to act like proper electric motors-i.e. whenever they aren't running, they apply torque opposite to the direction of wheel rotation and charge the battery (because DC motors can function as generators). Furthermore, the throttle should have an effect on wheels-it should decrease input voltage (or equivalent Kerbal term) to a percent of the maximum, allowing you to drive forwards at something other than your vehicle's maximum speed.

Well darn. Time to redesign the entire mission profile.

So-I'm trying to control an unmanned lander out at Duna from a manned vessel in orbit of Duna. The two vessels have line of sight to each other (in fact, the first step to the whole process is to undock the lander). I have a Communotron 16 direct antenna on the lander and an HG-5 relay antenna on the manned vessel. By my understanding of the way CommNet works, I should have full control (except maneuver nodes) over the lander, since the orbital vessel has a relay antenna and a pilot. However, I only have partial, no-connection control over the lander. There isn't even a green line indicating an active connection between the vessels. The Kerbal in the vessel in orbit is a pilot (Jeb). Is there something I'm not understanding about the way CommNet works? Oh, and before anyone says anything, there's absolutely no way to set up direct communication with Kerbin due to the circumstances of this mission. Here's a screenshot, if it helps any:

Well, it's certainly a better name than mine. Further investigation may indicate that the heat shield is superfluous-the part that seems to be in the most danger in this setup appears to be the parachute. That science canister must be made out of whatever Kerbal helmets are made of. Also, apparently it contains potatoes. It seems like someone in the R&D department has been reading the work of Andy Weir *ahem* Kerman.

Having seen that this thread is alive once again, I decided to do a 1.2 Caveman run on Moderate. I'm not done *quite* yet, but I did have one discovery I wanted to share. Obviously, the science container is very useful, but you have to safely recover it for it to do you any good. Now, normally this is a problem, since you also need a probe core, and an antenna, and batteries, and a 1.25 m heatshield to protect it all, which all in all weighs more than one would like. However! I have devised a solution to this problem, which looks something like this: The principle is simple-take a .625 m heatshield, put a science container on top of that, and a parachute on top of that. For maximum effect, remove 25-30 units of ablator (or more) from the heatshield and set the parachute deploy pressure to .75 and the deploy altitude to 500 (for time saving). Just remember to deploy the heatshield before decoupling. It can survive Munar re-entry, at least, even if it enters the atmosphere in a tumble, but I wouldn't take too many chances with entry attitude. Aerodynamic stability is as fickle as it is dangerous if gotten wrong. Now, it isn't perfect. Apparently, for the second "Explore the Moon" contract the thing you return has to be controllable. But as a science delivery method I think it beats strapping a 1.25 m heatshield to a conglomeration of a spacecraft and hoping for the best. I think I'm going to call this the drop capsule. Of course, if anyone has a better name say it. I'm no good at this whole naming thing.

Welcome, @DONUTS ! Good luck to you in your future endeavors, and, of course... Happy landings!

Right. This thread needs an extra-crazy opinion-so here it is. As far as I'm concerned, career mode is fine. It serves its purpose, as far as I'm concerned. And that purpose (in my opinion) is to bring, not really progression, but challenge. Doing things on tech below sandbox requires imagination. It requires creative engineering. Doing an unmanned surface return mission to Minmus with only 30 parts, 18 tons, and crappy tech isn't easy, but it's sure an interesting challenge, and one I don't think I would have ever considered undertaking were it not for career mode's limitations (And the caveman challenge, of course. But that presupposes career mode). It doesn't need better missions, not really. The missions are just impetus to go and do crazy things. And, yes, most of the missions are really boring. So don't do them. You don't have to. The exploration contracts (plus unprofitable space stations, because I like space stations) provide enough funds to do lots of things. Or, to put it in other words, I can throw together and fly a mission to Duna in sandbox in, say, under 2 hours and not much effort, because I've done it before. Undertaking the same mission in career motivates me to think a lot harder about it-to optimize the design, and to not leave some poor Kerbal stuck in a Mk-1 command pod for 2 years straight. Sure, it could be better. But it's not fundamentally flawed.

It looks like KSP tried to write to a null pointer, thus causing a segfault. Have you tried deleting and re-installing KSP on your machine? Or, alternatively, tried starting a new save file? It could be a problem with your particular install, or with save file or .craft file corruption.

Here's one I built to go to Eeloo which I quite like for simplicity and efficiency: I don't know how much it will help, but there you go.

If you get your camera aligned parallel to the plane of the ecliptic, you should be able to eyeball where your orbit intercepts said plane, giving you the place you should burn. For the burn itself, you can try to plan it using a maneuver node, but it would probably be easier to just eyeball the whole thing and burn normal/antinormal until your orbit looks flat (or until KER gives you a satisfactorily low number). That said... Your station is in orbit of Minmus. Any incoming spacecraft will almost certainly have to perform some sort of correction burn to get into the plane of your space station anyways due to Minmus's inclined orbit, so other than aesthetics there's no reason to shoot for a perfectly equatorial orbit. Plus, the cost of plane-change maneuvers in high Minmus orbit is very low.

Hello all! Now having realized that this challenge is still a thing, here is the mission report for my submission to hardcore mode, achieved by going to Gilly. I think I'll try for Tylo next. 100% convinced it's possible.

Let's see... Most time lost: I was testing a Grand Tour ship, or more specifically the bit designed to go to the inner system. Got all the way through landings on Eve, Gilly, and Moho, including a monstrously tedious few hours aerobraking at Eve, just to realize that, as I returned to Kerbin, I had underestimated the amount of delta-V I would need. After that, the 600+ part save file for the vessel corrupted, and I was forced to abandon the mission. Efforts to reconstitute the save file and rethink the design have proved futile, as the asymmetrical payload is, needless to say, difficult to launch. Biggest facepalm: Doing an unamnned Mun flyby for the caveman challenge. The rocket flew like a charm, the payload got to the Mun, collected science, and even survived all of re-entry, at which point I realized that I had forgotten the parachute, and that I couldn't revert because I had loaded a quicksave.

Thanks!

Greetings, forums! Here is a mission to Gilly done, as the title would suggest, using only .625 m (and radial, but I think that goes without saying) parts. Not a particularly difficult mission, but an interesting one all the same. I originally put this together for a challenge and then... didn't fly it, until today. The octagonal struts are my poor man's service bay, which I can't use since it's 1.25 meters in diameter. They're placed to protect the pilot during re-entry. Strangely, they don't interfere with getting in or out of the seat. I chose to do a jetpack landing because A: I didn't want to risk damaging the solar panels, either on landing or by klutzing into them while on EVA, B: landing on a low TWR engine is never fun, even on Gilly, and C: Although this one is clearer in hindsight, I didn't have enough fuel to do it. I elected to not use Juno engines (which might, at first glance, seem a logical engine to use) because, in my experience, they don't have a sufficient TWR to even lift off the ground under their own power. So why not get some wings, you ask? Because I'm awful at planes, but more importantly I felt building a spaceplane wasn't really in the spirit of what I was trying to do. The mission album can be found at: http://imgur.com/a/oBQvy Oh, and anyone noticing fuel or dV discrepancies between the screenshots of the launch and those of LKO, or the 4.99 EVA fuel in the screenshot of LKO, this is because I decided I wanted to post this to the forums halfway through, and so had to go back to earlier parts of the mission (thank goodness for obsessive named quicksaving), including doing the launch over to get screenshots. The 4.99 EVA fuel is because Jeb had to get out of his chair and back in after the save loaded with him canted slightly, which doesn't look good. If anyone has questions, feel free to ask.

When your vessel explodes on the launchpad because the weight of the payload crushed the structural linkage between the fairing and the fuel tank below. When you almost, but not quite, align CoM and CoT on a rocket susceptible to wet noodle syndrome. When you get distracted during a rendezvous and crash into your target.