Rmack

No. I usually have this problem trying to re-enter the vehicle from the orbital tutorial. It says to go ahead and ride it down, or something, just don't forget to separate the capsule. It directs you to get your Pe below 20,000km, and I get it real close. I seem to come in at a angle that is not too steep.

No, they are getting destroyed and I'm getting that message. The chute itself turns red, not the background.

I usually try to re-enter on training missions, but I seemed to loose my main chute half the time. Even if I seem to be doing everything right, it still can get destroyed. The drogue chute, when there, hasn't survived yet. Is this normal? Am I doing something wrong?

I'm an adrenaline-addled fool. I probably need to do this a few more times at least. Not to mention the landing tutorials.

LOL! I know what you mean, but being a rookie, I could have used at least a co-pilot to call out vertical speed and what-not on my first Munar landing.

I'm only part way through this subject, and I have to scoot soon, and I was wondering if anyone has thought of this; What if it's a limited multi-player mod that would only allow different players to play different crew members on one spacecraft?

I finally did it! I docked. THAT WAS NOT EASY!! Thanks for all the tips, everybody. What should I try next? Uh, how do I get control of my ship again after transferring crew?

https://www.facebook.com/ray.mcdonough.71 whoops, wrong copy there we go

That's what I suspected, I just didn't have any experience on how far away that was. It probably varies, too, depending on the planet, huh?

Well, I finally hit my target vehicle. And I do mean hit. Kaboom! I'm on the road to success, though. I learned the trick of thrusting on the other side of the target marker from the prograde marker to bring them together. Being able to stop that waltzing around the target was a big win for me. And a wiki mentioned that locked view now does what chase view used to, as the instructions in the tutorial said. Question; how far away from the target does the pulling the prograde marker to the target marker work? I'm sure it's limited, but about how far? Thanks again for all the help. I'm go for another try!

I'm having a real bear of a time rendezvousing a docking. I got real close, and went to chase view mode, but since it didn't have my axis lined up, it was very difficult to use the RCS. I thought it would put me in up right position so the RCS aligned with my view. Also, is there a way to pause the game without hitting escape, allowing mouse-overs and such?

I've been trying to follow all the advice, and listen to Gene also. I've got the game paused, I'm about 1000k away, closing 3.5 m/s. I try everything I can think of, but it gets within a certain range, and starts widening again.

I learned to pop the full thrust key z, and then instantly shut down to get a burn estimate, but am I doing it too far away from the node, or something? it keeps changing if I try the pop trick again. I know you're suppose to half the burn time to get your time to maneuver node ignition point, but it seems impossible to do in the docking tutorial. It keeps changing. Even if I wait until fairly close, it seems, the estimation seems to be more than the burn I get when I start it, causing the burn to terminate even before reaching the node. Am I doing something wrong?

This is wrong. I was actually fiddling with radial in/radial out. Right? I used normal/antinormal to adjust my orbital plane discrepancy.

OK, if I remember right (I'm still sort of punch-drunk from doing almost nothing except flying around in space for over eight hours) I did null the closing rate (delta-v, right) to 0. I'm thinking I did this at under the 5k distance to target. So, I messed things up moving in too fast? I thought I only used time acceleration, but there were a lot of new things going on. Didn't Gene say to stay under 10 m/s for the approach from 100 meters? Now that I think about it, that does seem high. Did I confuse this with the 1000m transition. That would seem to make more sense. So, I should stay on my approach vector till under 100m and then null my closure to 0? I was fixated on my distance, and didn't worry about the closure rate, figuring I had plenty of time to null that out. Thank you very much for helping a newbie. I'll try this next time. If I'm right about this, that is. Also, Gene was telling me to select the docking port on the target ship as my target. I couldn't do this from my view screen. Is there a way to make the target ship your view subject? The in-game index isn't that good. Can anyone recommend a good wiki or something to have open on my second computer?

Well, I finally intercepted. I was within 100 meters, but I couldn't get closer. The target ship seemed to be circling me. I would thrust towards it, using main engine on low throttle, but after getting within a few dozen meters, the distance would start increasing again. All the while changing relative position, as I said, so it seemed like it was circling me. I thought that if I got within a hundred meters, I would be able to just translate over. I was both below 10 m/s and faster sometimes, but to no avail. Any idea what's going wrong? Also, is there any way to save a training session, so I don't have to go through all of the preliminaries before trying the close approach? I wish I could see these screen shots, but I'm on a laptop, and the info is just too small. What is the extra writing in yellow? That doesn't happen in my training exercise.

I've been trying to do the docking training scenario, but I just can't get it. I can get the tilt down to zero, but trying to set up a burn that matches that orbit is eluding me. I pull the prograde until my orbit gets up to the stranded ship, but I can barely get one set of the pink and gold markers to line up, let alone both at the same time. I've tried playing with normal/antinormal, but still can't get all four of them lined up. Going with one set matched doesn't seem to leave enough fuel to do anything left. How do I get both sets of markers lined up? I do have to get the same colors matching, right? I've hit a couple spots where they merge and become one color, but that doesn't seem to be it. Is there anyway of getting more fuel in a training exercise, so I can experiment more?

So, my solution of setting the SAS on stability assist will not hold if I go under 1 m/s?

I think I understand how the 'retrograde' setting can move, as it's based on your direction of movement. However, I had the SAS set on 'target'. I assumed that this would be the surface. Is the 'target' icon moving for some reason? I set the SAS on stabilize and just came in vertical. I probably could have made RCS adjustments if I'd needed them.

I was doing another "To the Mun II" tutorial to see If I could get smoother. Everything was looking good, then it looked like my vertical speed was getting too low, so I throttled back. I think I killed the engine, or was very close, when the ship started pitching over. It does a whole flip back to upright, and I hit the throttle, which seemed to activated the SAS again, which I had set on 'target'. I wound up landing on my side, though. I fixed the problem next time by just setting the SAS to 'hold position' once I was almost vertical. Is it because my decent got too slow, and I killed the throttle that confused the SAS?

Is there anyplace that gives an explanation of the various colors that appear when you manipulate vectors in map mode?

It was my nav ball not being visible in map mode. That fixed it.

OK, I think I'm about up to answering my own questions. I hadn't explored the full 3D capabilities of the map yet when I wrote the above. 'Nuff said.

Without going into gory details, this is the fourth space simulator/game I've played, and this one beats them all together, hands down. For a mathematically challenged person like myself being able to go all the way to Mun on my first try (Well, since orbital training, anyway) is amazing! The interface and training panels are wonderfully succinct and humorous. Squad, you just collected another fan.

That was it, I didn't have the Navball turned on in map view. That did it, thank you. I got all the way to a successful Mun landing on the first try in training. I successfully did a return to Kerbin, but I apparently came in too hot and ruined my chutes. Probably should have done one of those retrograde burns Gene was talking about, huh? The orbital rendezvous training is a bear. figuring out which part of the burn to manipulate to get the results you need? Hard, hard, to quote Al Kermin. (Does anyone know the historical transmission I'm quoting?) The problem is; I can't grab the maneuver node to move it around it's orbit without clicking on the pink thing in the middle at the zoom I need to see the target Kerbin numbers I'm trying to manipulate at the same time. Is there a way to unlock the middle of the map, and move it around? I've perused the in-game docs, but they are not very helpful with this so far.