Magzimum

Is there a definition of a moon or natural satellite - especially, is there a size minimum? I was reading up a little on wikipedia on moons in our solar system (the real one), but couldn't find what would be a minimum size for something to be called a natural satellite or moon. I am assuming that the billions of dust particles of Saturn are not all moons - or at least not counted on the wiki page. But the moons of Mars are just large rocks, and they are considered moons. So where's the limit? Shocking btw to read how much stuff is orbiting other planets/dward planets in our solar system. It numbers in the hundreds of objects!

(Sorry, not being really helpful, but not understanding what the exact problem is either)

Bare minimum (must have): Wheels Solar panels Batteries Seat, pod or probe core Some structural bits to hold #1, 2, 3, 4 together. I would add (nice to have): Lights Narrow band scanner and scanning module, for Kerbnet access. Antenna (not really sure you need one on Kerbin) A little more structural bits, to make it more stable / nicer Note: if you want to rove around with a external command seat, you should use another command pod, EVA the Kerbals into their seats, then disconnect the pod (since you probably don't want to bring that along).

LOL! I have to say that I like that idea to have tourists screw something up, and the crew having to fix it for extra pay. How far can we push that? Obviously they almost certainly WILL turn on all the lights, thereby using electric charge... Maybe they 'accidentally' change the ship's orientation? Sometimes briefly turn on the throttle a bit? Maybe extend some landing gear when they shouldn't - all those in the category of "Oooh, what does this button do?".

@sal_vager, I took the same launcher, removed the entire payload, and placed an empty large fairing in its place (roughly same shape, same total mass of fairing (10 tons)). It loads in 15 seconds. So, it's the combination of a complex payload with a large fairing that causes the delay in loading. [edit] I also tried to change the fairing into just 2 sides, with Clamshell enabled, but that did not reduce loading time at all - it's long enough to make a pot of tea and eat some fruit. (So, there are advantages to it too, lol). I may need to mention that in the design that loads so slowly, the fairing is mounted upside down, with the fairing 'deck' all the way at the top - so that I could decouple it. Not sure if the upside down use of the fairing may have something to do with it too, but I thought I should just mention it - just in case. [edit 2] Sorry that I haven't tried to download the .craft files you supplied - Dropbox asked me to make an account, and then I just went with all the other suggestions you gave me, which already solved my problem. In summary: Huge & complex payload + large fairing (regular settings) -> slow Huge & complex payload + large fairing (clamshell) -> slow Huge & complex payload + NO fairing -> normal No payload + large fairing (regular settings) -> normal Understanding what causes it makes it easier to live with. Hopefully it gets solved in future versions. Thanks again for your help!

How would that look? Wouldn't an even larger fairing cause even more delay in loading?

I can confirm that the fairing was the cause of the huge loading time. This monster of a craft took me several minutes to load. Below you can see what the fairing contained: lots of small parts of my lander(s). Without the fairing, the load time is reduced to at most 15 seconds. Thanks guys, for an awesome answer. You have solved my problem. I can now continue testing the launcher, using no fairing (most explosions happen very early on before drag sets in anyway). Then I will place the fairing quite late in the test-phase... (or perhaps I find out I don't need one - but I doubt that).

There is a name for tourists that were trained at the KSC for their missions: they are called the Crew. I am sorry to disagree, but a tourist cannot help in getting your spaceship anywhere, and cannot do anything useful - that's the whole point of tourists. They are about as useful as bringing a bag of dirt on your trip, except they talk much more. So I disagree with them controlling the ship without SAS or taking crew reports. If anything, they should make things worse, as proper tourists typically do. But I could be ok with tourists on EVA, as long as they don't do anything useful while on EVA.

If we're making a wish list anyway, I will just go all in: Gas giant (on topic of this thread) Firstly, yes please. I would love to get a 2nd gas giant in the game, Around a Gas Giant, I'd like to see a few types of moons: Titan - I agree with a few others here: lower gravity, thicker atmosphere - leads to new lander designs. Triton - a moon with a retrograde orbit - just so that the new Jool-5-challenge around the new gas giant is even harder. An all-liquid moon. Just so that landing and taking off gets a little harder. A bunch of regular rocks, because not all moons can be special. I don't consider it realistic to be asking for active volcanoes or geysers. But it would be nice to have some striking geological features that can be seen from orbit (such as the Mun's canyon). Maybe a Verona Rupes (i.e. a straight cliff of 5-10 km high, somewhere on a small moon, far far away)? Dwarf planets (going off topic) I'd like a few more large asteroids (think Ceres, Vesta). Not because they add new challenges, but just because it adds to the realism of the solar system, and because with more rocks floating around in space, you'll always be in the launch window of something. And because Dres is so alone. I really should visit Dres. Pluto analogue (wandering off further off topic) Finally, I'd like a Pluto analogue - a tiny world quite far away, with even tinier moons. Whether the game engine can handle a relatively large moon like Charon around a smaller planet like Pluto, I don't know (I guess not). But I'd be happy if they scale down the moons. The fun would be that it's s just a real system with everything much smaller. Hell, if they just give Eeloo a few moons of its own, the size of Gilly or a tiny bit larger, I would be delighted. Such a miniature system would create new and interesting challenges. Trans-Neptunian objects (almost outside the SoI of the topic) Finally, finally, finally, maybe a tiny dwarf planet the same as Sedna. This should just be tremendously far away, on a 10000 year orbit, with a perihelion about 50-100 yrs after the game started, so that the players have pretty much 1 chance to catch it at its Periapsis. It would only be discovered by your space agency with the tracking station upgraded to max. If the developers have a sense of humor, it could be at its Periapsis in year one, and therefore moving away from you throughout your career, unless you play for >5000 yrs game time. For those not so up-to-date with what Sedna is: it's Pe is at 76 AU (76x the Earth-Sun distance), and its Ap is at 936 AU. Its orbital period is about 11400 years, but we don't really know it exactly. I wouldn't really care what it looks like, since this challenge would be all about getting there.

Since you only need that relay twice (decent and ascent), any relatively high orbit should be ok. If you are ok with adding an estimated 0.25 tons of mass, you could put a Mk1 fairing onto the upper stage of the lander, with one or two antennas inside it in their folded-up configuration. You can then deploy these as soon as you're outside Eve's atmosphere. But if you only want to bring home the 0.05 ton Experiment Storage Unit back, I would at least consider if it makes more sense to just add moar boosters onto that tiny storage unit, and just burn a bit more to ensure you get a Kerbin encounter. Also check out post #5 in this thread: it shows how minimalistic a mission can be to bring back a science storage unit. I am not suggesting that this can also be done from Eve, but it may serve as inspiration or at least as entertainment.

Ok, so I have a large ship, of around 700-1000 parts at the moment (depends which version). I have launched huge contraptions in 1.1.2 before, and they did load slower than the smaller ones. However, since I play 1.2.1, the loading time has gone up to 2-4 minutes before I see my ship on the launchpad, whereas in 1.1.2 it was certainly less than 30 seconds. It is really significantly longer than in 1.1.2, to the point that I now grab my phone to read the news while the launchpad is loading. Does anyone know what causes it, and is there a fix? This issue, if it is an issue, occurs with the stock game. (I generally play with only KER installed, but I just tested it without KER and the issue remains). I play 1.2.1.1604 (LinuxPlayer). Unfortunately, the ships that I built in 1.2.1 are incompatible with 1.2, so I cannot use that older version to test whether it has anything to do with the ship specifically. But the slower loading time happens with multiple versions of the same ship, which each have hundreds of part different. I do know that I launched a 997 part ship in 1.1.2, which was fine and loaded reasonably fast, so my computer can handle the load. Not sure if completely related, but I get the feeling that the other screens, including the main menu, also load slower than in the past. But here we're talking possible 1 second slower, so not a deal-braking problem.

Latin for "The sun shines for everyone". That used to be my Battle Cry in a mud (multi-user dungeon), called "Midnight Sun 2". It was meant to be sarcastic, because I used it when I was about to kill another monster. Since I use the same username here on the forum, I suddenly realized that this is actually really fitting for KSP too. So, I fired up the Gimp, pasted 2 pictures (banner & sun) together, added some text, and I made myself a flag.

I did a first test making a boat! She's called "Boat Mk1" (Yeah!), and she comes equipped with two boaty things at the bottom, and seats for 7-Kerbals, and a rear deck too because everybody knows that boats have decks. I was quite surprised how well she boated. She boated up to 25.9 m/s! The Kerbals on the rear deck managed to stay upright at speeds up to 1.0 m/s or so, so I learned that Kerbals don't have sea legs - they looked all seasick and miserable as soon as things got interesting. And they stayed flat on the deck until the boat came to a stop (so <0.3 m/s). But at least they didn't fall overboard, so huzzah or whatever sailors say... Here she is, looking like a hippo on her small boat-wheels. I put the wheels on decouplers to make sure she ain't never coming back ashore. So maybe v2.0 should have wheels a little more permanent. Here (below) we see the lovely couple enjoying the good weather. It is tradition that after you pay far too much money to be on a boat, you at least pretend to enjoy it. Notice the velocity of 0.0 m/s. So, Val and Bob aren't so good at pretending. Here they are already seasick on the deck, just a few km away from home, going only 10.4 m/s. So, with Val & Bob safely strapped into their seats, and supplied with barfbags, I gunned it and tried to see how fast she could boat. Turned out she is just as good at boating as she is at making a fuss. The left engine ran only at 25%, while the right engine went full throttle, which obviously wasn't so great for boating straight. So, I had to manually limit the other engine to make her go straight. But because the horizontal boat-wings were placed at a small angle (5 or 10 degrees, I think), she actually tried to climb out of the water, which reduced the drag. It also lifted the engines out of the water enough to create some spray. And look at that spray she's making. She looks like a hovercraft! So, for a Mk1, this was a HUGE success, because I have no idea what a good Kerbal-boat can do in this game. And things soon start looking awesome if you have no frame of reference. Finally, below you can see the lovely Boat Mk1 with a setting Sun, at her top speed, looking all boaty and all. Apologies for my lack of boating vocabulary but why can't they just say left and right?

I learned a lot. I learned that around Jool you get a lot less energy from the Sun. Only about 4% compared to Kerbin, in fact. My lander's batteries were completely empty, despite having two 1x6 solar panels, and a bunch of single panels... the 3 OKTO2 probe cores sucked up the little charge that was being produced, so I had to hibernate them. *Makes note in Jool-5 planning book: Bring more solar panels.* I learned that Laythe has more hills than flat surfaces. I finally learned how the fuel priority system works (and immediately loved it). *** Dude, you have surf boards on your space ship. Gnarly, bro! *hides in a corner*

Heh, reading all your comments, I guess that I did pick a nice slope to get into trouble. Anywhere else (Kerbin, Mun, Duna etc.) I would just advise to find another landing spot... but Laythe only has so few of them. @bewing, my lander it really not made for that solution: landing in the water may be possible, but this lander cannot move sideways (yet). It would have to be able to drag itself ashore completely, because I intend to launch one or two planes too - just for fun, btw. It also requires precision landing to land near the shore, which may still be difficult. This solution may be easier with a space plane. Although my lander contains wings and jets (Rapiers), it is more a rocket than a plane. Complete redesign will be considered if all other options fail - and then I will certainly take this into consideration. @Sharpy, thanks for that analysis. That seems like a very feasible change to the lander. Wheels aren't much heavier than legs. Obvious difficulty is that they are mounted below, not radially. I may be able to find a few free spots on the wings or perhaps on some small cubic octogonal part that is itself mounted radially. @Clipperride, if the upwards facing thruster can stop the lander, after which I can shut it down, that's an interesting solution. If it must burn continuously to stay in place, it is a no-go. My lander comes with 2 planes, and I intend to stay a little while to enjoy the landscape. I will give it a go. @DrLicor, I am trying to keep it stock (only KER installed). My latest strategy is to actually learn to better predict my landing spot. It appears that on Laythe, from a 110x110 orbit, and a burn to lower the Pe to exactly zero, I come down to the ground about 104 degrees later. I am now doing a lot of attempts, to scout out some decent islands for landing. Then I can perhaps pick one, and learn how to do a precision landing from orbit, by parachute. The lander comes with a little extra liquid fuel, and some backwards facing air intakes on my outermost tanks, so I can use my Rapiers (airbreathing) while descending. Earlier today I managed a landing on a 10 degree slope with only 0.4 m/s sliding, which eventually stopped (without the slope changing, I guess the 0.4 m/s was some kind of residual velocity from the landing). However, the location was horrible for my little planes... so the search continues.

Nice post. I love improvising, and when it goes well I am massively proud. But I use a simple pre-launch checklist (which I check in the VAB / SPH) and I have a system of save-files now to avoid getting into such a situation. Obviously, it still happens though. Basically, my checklist checks for a lot of issues that have gone wrong on previous missions: Got control? (RSC/reaction wheels) Got power (battery / solar panels) EVA access: got ladders, hatches not blocked? Landing gear: legs/wheels/parachutes Staging sequence ok? Got the right crew? Got science? (the right equipment / data storage) Got antenna? (since 1.2) Also, I use number sequences for save files: Totally safe, all Kerbals on the ground at KSC Ongoing mission, all going according to plan Risky part of the mission ongoing We've changed the plan but may fulfill the mission goals Last attempt to save the mission Just messing around now Sticking to these numbers with these descriptions, I can always go back one step where the situation was safer and better... worst case back to the pre-launch situation with all Kerbals on the ground at KSC. In your case, I would have saved the progress throughout the mission onto a "Save 02" file, possibly "Save 03" during the landing sequence, then a "save 02" again when you're safely back in Mun orbit on the return trip, a "Save 04" when you are on a no-going-back-now course with Kerbin's atmosphere with no decoupler at 3000 m/s. After it all goes horribly wrong, you still have "Save 01" to go back to before it went wrong (and in this case it went wrong already in the VAB), but you can also use a "Save 02" and try to do the re-entry a second time. Sorry if you consider this off-topic, but I haven't had a situation where I cannot revert back to before the launch since I use this system. I still love to improvise, but I don't risk my entire career over it anymore.

@Clipperride, I am playing 1.2. I have updated the OP to include that info as well. @bewing, I can see that retracting some legs may work on smaller landers, and on the Mun, but my lander (below) may not gain any stability. I gave it a try, but it actually toppled over (sideways) without the legs on the uphill side. In the meantime, an attempt with twice the number of landing legs (16 in total) didn't work out so well either. The legs did a lot of "microbounces". So much in fact that it walked itself right off the launchpad when I tested it there. This frequently happens when you attach the legs onto multiple different parts - which means that the legs aren't 100% at the same height, but differ by a pixel or two. (To the naked eye, they look the same). Especially relevant on larger landers with e.g. asparagus staged boosters or stages, like in my lander here. I am now following two lines to solve my problem: one is to learn about the landing legs. The other is to find an actual flat spot on Laythe, somewhere reasonably near the equator, so the lander can just land safely. It may take a few attempts to nail that spot, but the lander has (minimalistic) airplane characteristics so I may be able to do some flying before landing by parachute. Not relevant comment 1: I tried solving this by using a space plane - but the sheer lack of good landing spots on Laythe, adn the fact that you have to land the plane with full tanks (it's heavy) did not make that option easy. I failed so many times to land it that I now try the parachutes. Not relevant comment 2: It was quite amusing to see that after my lander had toppled over (because I retracted some legs) it started shedding bits and pieces while accelerating down the mountain. The trail of parts looked quite dramatic. Picture in spoiler due to lack of relevance.

Is there some formula or a rule-of-thumb to predict how many landing legs you need to stop a lander from sliding down a hill? Or is sliding down inevitable at a certain slope? I am playing around on Laythe, which has little land, of which exactly zero percent appears to be flat... My trial landings (cheat mode) thus far landed me only on slopes of 20 degrees or more. I now accept that I will land on a hill. How many legs do I need to put on a lander so that it doesn't slide down the inevitable >20 degrees slope that I will land on? I'm deliberately not (yet) posting a picture, as the question is really about landing legs and nothing else. I would expect that the mass/legs ratio is all that matters, which is 25 tons / 4 legs. At such a ratio, I happily slide down a 27 degree slope at 1.2 m/s. On the 34 degree slope, I slide at an impressive 1.7 m/s (still not tipping over though, which is good). Reducing weight is, although always a good idea, not the solution I am looking for today. [edit] I am playing 1.2.

My advice: First do your Mun landing (don't forget to post the mandatory picture of Jeb-on-the-Mun-next-to-a-flag-with-the-lander-in-the-background on the forum!). Then once you either nailed the landing & posted the picture, or got tired of trying and want to do something else -> upgrade to 1.2. As you can read above, you can probably continue your career in 1.2 without problems... but I would just reach that major milestone first (Mun or Bust!), and then do anything else.

For me the really basics are: Blue bal (CoL) behind yellow ball (CoM). At least 1 horizontal control surface in front of yellow (and blue), and one behind yellow (and blue). Tail fin on the back. My favorite designs (because they are stable) usually have large wings in the back (helps to push that blue ball back), and winglets or canards near the front. Because the canards are often quite far from the yellow/blue balls, they give excellent control. And it's not science fiction either. The Typhoon uses it for example:

Good to see that you enjoy the career. I don't play anything else. I like the feeling of achievement when you unlock some new science or finish a contract. And I think that it teaches a lot about the game and the physics, because it starts with few parts, but also without the advanced probe core and pilots. Also, because you do not have limitless cash, it teaches you to be (at least a little) efficient in your designs. It ain't necroing if you're the OP yourself, in my opinion.

The same thing we do every night! Also, planning a Jool-5 mission.

Dundun Kerman! Every time I see his name, my mind goes Dun Dun Duuuuun, and I anticipated some excitement! He's my new favorite guy.

You need a lot more control surfaces near the top. All those giant 10m heat shields cause enormous drag. A lot of people use airbrakes for that (enable pitch, yaw). Given the number of heat shields, I would think 30+ airbrakes. There have been several threads on the same topic. I think this is the most recent one:

Friday, I read about the crazy adventures of Claw (seriously, Jool-5 and Elcano in one mission! Congrats!). As I was playing around with rovers yesterday, I thought that I should do a circumnavigation of a moon or planet too. To my novice eye, Minmus appears the easiest: due to its size (small) and location (near Kerbin). I decided to give it a go. The whole adventure is logged in this Imgur album. The rover is a pretty simple one. It has just the basic stuff you'd expect. Hidden from the picture below are the two reaction wheels on the bottom, to keep the rover straight during the many jumps on Minmus. There are 4 RCS thrusters that face upwards, but that make the rover crash when used. There is about 3000 units of electric charge, so the rover can keep going at night. The rover is quite heavy: 5.1 tons, Kerbals excluded. This is done on purpose, to give it a little traction on Minmus. So, there are quite a few beams used, some for structure and some just for the looks. The two monoprop tanks are there mostly for their mass, as I almost never used the RCS (did I mention it makes the rover crash? Yeah...). The rover comes with illuminators, which make it a little easier at night, but which mostly just look cool. And it has redundancy in solar panels and antennas since those stick out and may break. Nothing sticks out from the wheels on the front, and it has enough ground clearance to be able to make some big jumps. The rover is connected to Kerbnet, so I can place waypoints, which makes it easy to trace where I have been. Compared to placing flags, it is much easier: you can do it on the move. All parts (launcher and rover) are stock, but I did use KER, so I guess I compete in the "Stock Craft" category. Above: A good close up of the rover on Minmus. Jeb & Bill are the pilot and engineer (Bill had an easy time, as nothing broke that needed fixing). And here a picture showing all the waypoints. The trip was completed in 3 Minmus-days, and in about 6 hours of game-play, including some reloads and touristic detours. It actually went according to plan: everything worked as expected, the average speed was probably around 30 m/s if you exclude the touristic stops. And the rover did not break (one monoprop tank went missing, but that did not stop the mission). Next I am gonna build a mining colony on Minmus so the rover(s) will be put to good use for that. The Imgur album contains 66 pictures, with description... I did not link all pictures here, since that would make the thread too long. Thanks for giving me the idea to do a circumnavigation. I got the idea that I have seen a LOT more of Minmus in just these few hours than in months of gameplay before.