Ty Tan Tu

To expand on Red Iron Crown's post, if you are like many of us, there is a step between 4 and 5. Your second attempt at a landing on the Mun will be a rescue mission to try and save the Kerbal you stranded on the Mun in your first attempt.

I am one of those slow plodding types. I launch a resource scanning prob in a polar orbit along with a rover with a Surface Scanning Module in an equatorial orbit. I skip the narrow-band scanner altogether. Like I say, I am willing to take time for a miner to produce fuel, so good enough is best for me, I find a likely spot to land with the data from the polar orbiting prob, and land the rover. This is the best part of the game for me, exploring a distant planet for the first time, I rove around to find a flat spot with at least some ore. I jump right in at that point and send a small surface base. Something like a Mk2 Cockpit, Mk2 Crew Cabin and Mobile Processing Lab, although that is not easy to do with a planet that has an atmosphere. But it does hold up to 8 Kerbals, but I put fewer on it, otherwise you have to kick someone off to move the crew around. Only lately have I added a resource miner, but I am still not good at those, so it is just a one off unmanned craft to refuel the coming space station Finally I launch the space station with attached lander to shuttle the Kerbals back and forth. I should refine that more because I have shamelessly resorted to the F12 fuel and electricity cheats at times. It is really very handy to have your space station arrive with a full tank of gas.

This is probably heresy, and I would not blame the moderators for deleting it, but you might want to look at Orbiter too. That is where I started out. It was actually Orbiter that lead me to KSP.

That is a good point, and something I thought about asking even before I read this thread. What type of buffered analgesic tablets does the community recommend. * Welcome aboard! Remember to always have fun, but sometimes the hardest problems to solve are the most rewarding in the end. Also, I have never asked a question, no matter how basic, that someone on the forum did not answer with knowledge and respect. So never be hesitant to ask. * [Cryptic allusion to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.]

Looking at your already impressive accomplishments, how about landing an unmanned mining ship on Duna with a large fuel tank and some type of habitation module? That way you make make fuel on Duna for a return trip to Kerbin while you are planing your manned mission.

I call it the 'drowning pool' after my last fail attempt to land a rover on the moon. :-)

Oh, I got so close. I am struggling with landing at a precise spot on planets with atmosphere. I got closer, but I still missed it.

This atmosphere stuff is really hard. It is like rocket science or something. :-) OK, I am in orbit again. (At least I am getting more efficient with my gravity turn).The worse part is Laythe is a whole new problem. Once I figure out Kerbin, I am going to have to do it again with Laythe.

Thanks ForScience6686. D'oh! I landed a good 200 km short. That is not going to be good enough for Laythe. Back to the drawing board. :-)

I know this is probably a stupid newbie question, but what are the green vector lines I am seeing orbiting Kerbin? I just wanted to practice landing at precise places on planets with an atmosphere, so I launched a very simple MK1 command pod to see if I could land it close to the KSC. Now that it is in a low Kerbin orbit, I am seeing these green line vectors pointing down to the surface. Are they some kind of communication vectors? They seem random, pointing to spots in the middle of the oceans at time, My ship is about as basic as you can get, it is a MK1 command pod with a heat shield, parachute and enough fuel to de-orbit me. What are the green vectors trying to convey to me?

I will second that. I have a miner on Minmus, but it is a one shot design. Once the tank is full, my ship can transfer it to the ship orbiting Minmus, but after that the miner is useless. What are you suppose to do? Build a rover with a large tank that can dock with both the miner and a transport?

I CHEATED!!! BIG TIME!!! The battery to my ore extractor died (those things take a lot more energy than i thought). So I open up the persistent.sfs file and finally found the VESSEL and the part were the electrical charge was stored. I put the value at the max, which was conveniently referenced two values down, and saved the file. After reloading the saved game, my extractor had enough energy to start drilling again. Maybe I should feel bad, but I am actually proud of myself. I have been meaning to write mods, and basing them on preexisting parts seems like a good place to begin. So, successfully editing the save file was a good start. The fact that the files are plan text really does make it easy..

Never be afraid to ask a question. I have found myself stymied at times, but the community has always been there to help me out.

Congratulations Cirius! It will be no time at all before you are designing your SECOND attempt to land on the Mun. Which of course will be a rescue mission, attempting to retrieve the kerbalnaut you stranded on the Mun in your first attempt. I still remember my first return to Kerkin from orbit. As the heat kept going up and up, I was nervous, the Kerbals were nervous, but than things started to cool off and I deployed the chute the second the light turned green,

I think step two should be, add the parachutes but forget to stage them and watch you rocket lift off a few meters before the chutes deploy and tumble you back to Keribn.

Gawd! Sometimes I think I am really bad at this. I want to be able to use ore extractors on Mun or Mimmus to fuel a mission to Duna so that I don't have to lift all the fuel from Kerbin, But for the life of me I can't find a solution with stock parts that does more than a one off tank of fuel. But I figured I should try at least that, since I have never used an ore extractor before. So I used my R&D game save (I have two games. One in which I do stupid stuff, and one in which I at least try to be serious.) I launched an empty fuel tank, with a separate launch engine, at the top of a drill-o-matic, holding tank and converter-o-tron. The very first thing I notice is that an empty tank at the top throws off the center of gravity for a launch from Kerbin. I did get the thing in orbit and with a bit of swearing in orbit around Mimmus. Landing a long monstrous like this was a challenge, but not as hard as I thought it would be. I am slowly extracting ore now, but I am not sure my effort is worth the one tank of fuel I can transfer to my Duna bound space craft - which hasn't even been built yet - let alone in orbit around Mimmus.

Thanks Curveball Anders. I thought I was going crazy. It looks like there have been some tweaks to docking since the version I have. I think I will try the new 648 build.

I never accidentally landed by one, but I did once use MechJeb to land on top of one. The lander teetered for a few seconds before falling off, stranding Valentina on Mun for I think the third time.

I just checked to see if there is an updated version of MechJeb and noticed that the most current version is 2.5.8.0. But somehow I have version 2.5.9.0. I can't remember where I found it. I do remember I had a bit of trouble getting it to work, but I ended up just replacing the dll. It seems to function fine for what I use it for which is not much, just docking and landing. Does anyone have any idea what I have here? I fixed the title. I accidentally hit a 9 instead of 0 in the title. The zip file is named MechJeb2-2.5.9.0-643.zip.

I just add a tiny docking port to the front of my rovers and right click and do a control from here. The extra probe might be confusing things. Maybe it is a part that can't control a rover?

OK, there is ore on Laythe. Now I have to land a rover on at least one of the islands with a resource scanner to find a place to land. I guess I don't have to give you a blow by blow by now, but I still want to see your boats. :-)

"gangplank on the nose that reaches a few meters to the shore, " I kind of like that idea. Argh, walk the plank matey. I sent my resource probe to Laythe, and almost crashed into Tylo! I was just trying to get an orbit around Jool and then transfer to Laythe. I did not even think about the other moons. It caught me by surprise, so I just decided to orbit Tylo and figure out what to do next. I love this game. I figured out how to get from Tylo to Laythe directly and am doing that now. My fear is that there will not be any ore on Laythe...

I have what I think would be a fun idea, build two bases on Laythe on two different islands and run a ferry boat between the islands. It has not gotten past just a vague idea. I have never built a boat before and I am struggling with the design. I am thinking it would have to be amphibious, otherwise I would have to come up with some type of shore docking system which raises all sorts of level of docking ports problems. Maybe I could just have my Kerbals wade to shore, but that does not seem an elegant solution. I am thinking I could use two Structural Fuselage capped on either end with Aerodynamic Nose Cones as pontoons, with something like a MK2 cockpit and Mk2 Crew Cabin powered by a jet engine. But I am not sure how to do the wheels. So, I was hoping some of you might share your boat designs to get me started. What does your amphibious boat look like? Or, maybe you have a better solution?

I should start this by admitting that I am still new at this and even then the OP is probably asking a more nuanced question than I am answering. But in case there is another newbie like me - here is a very simple rover design that workers for me on Mun. The Probodobodyne RoveMate is on the bottom of a M-2x2 Structural Panel. A tiny docking port is added to the front so that the NAV ball will be horizontal. This makes it wide and with a low center of gravity. There is a bit more weight in the front with the battery to keep it from doing wheelies, but I try to balance the weight a bit with my Surface Scanning Module on the back. It only works in light and even than only for a short time, but it does not tip over on Mun. Edited: Actually it works for as long as you would want in light. Hills put a strain on the battery, but it chargers up very fast.

Low center of gravity. I put the Probodobodyne RoveMate on the bottom of a M-2x2 Structural Panel and it seems to work pretty well for me. That is the only generic advise I have.