The Flying Kerbal

Some handlin (Northern Irish term, that one! ) round at the KSC today. A probe that has been scouting for potential landing sites for the Project Orthrus mission had sent back hundreds... thousands even of photos, and the one in question was almost filed away as unsuitable until... As it was been scooped up to be put into a folder, a sharp eyed photo-interpreter spotted something unusual. She put it under a magnifier, and after studying it intensely for a few moments, added a red circle and arrow to draw attention to something. She then passed it to her supervisor, who also studied the image closely. Grabbing a white marker, he added: "What is this??", and pushed it up to senior management. For once the KSA seems to be stuck for an answer. Positioned on the northern rim of the Mun's Eastern Crater, there appears to be an arch shaped structure or rock formation, and just how it could be there has the scientists and geologists scratching their heads. The Photo. Conspiracy theorists are having a field day. Claims range from signs of ancient alien civilisations right up to the KSA having made actual contact with modern day and highly advanced (aren't they always?) aliens who live under the surface of the airless, bone dry Mun. In a press release today, the KSA said that although the Project Orthrus launch, previously delayed because of "instrument failure" (a broken computer mouse), was too far advanced to not take place on Sunday, the next launch would be an unmanned probe which would land close to this"arch" to conduct surveys and scientific analysis of this object and its surrounding area. In the meantime, the probe which took the original photo is to be put into a much lower orbit, hoping to get a much closer and more detailed image of whatever this thing is.

As usual, terrific answers from everyone. I remembered hearing about the fuel tanks exploding after so long because of the pressure buildup, but forgot about that. I didn't know that. No fault to Elon musk, and I admit he has some amazing technology going at the minute, but I don't always take everything the man takes too seriously. Sometimes i think he genuinely get over enthusiastic about what capabilities he has at his disposal, and others might be just a little headline grabbing. Thanks for all the answers guys, every one of 'em is appreciated.

Hi Guys, I suspect this is a stupid question, but it's one I don't know the answer to and I've never found it on Google. It's almost fifty years since Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and over the next few years a further five followed in its wake. When it was time to leave, they used the descent stage as a platform from which to launch the ascent stage, and ever since the descent stages have been sitting on the lunar surface. Over the years, would they have deteriorated in any way? Obviously they wouldn't have rusted, but what about radiation, would that have affected them or turned them into radioactive deathtraps for any future visitor who comes across them? And then there's the fuel. I remember reading the chemicals used were so nasty they prevented the engines fitted into each lander from being test fired, apparently the engines would have been destroyed by the corrosive effects of the chemicals during the test, and made unusable. Or maybe they would be as pristine today as when the Eagle and her sisters first set down back in the day? Does anyone know? Many thanks all!

Yes... UK, Northern Ireland to be exact. I was too busy to go shopping today unfortunately, and the one I ordered from Amazon should be here tomorrow, so I guess everyone at the KSC can have an extra day off this weekend.

Good! Really enjoy your posts, and all the really cool rockets and spacecraft you come up with.

Oddly enough, while most people I know have computers, I don't know anyone who has a spare mouse. I must admit, I never thought of a "thrift store", or pound shop as we call them over here. Do a bit of a search tomorrow at dinnertime.

It had been planned down to the last detail... crew trained, an entirely new rocket built... the weather was good, planets aligned... everything was good to go, until... My bleedin' mouse broke down. So there's gonna be no KSP until Tuesday, and this particular mission - Project Orthrus - which is to be played in the Demo version won't happen until next Sunday! In the meantime, having to get through until Tuesday at the earliest before my new mouse arrives, what cures or fixes do you guys have for KSP withdrawal symptoms? Not cold turkey... surely??

What a fantastic image!!

Poor old Bob had a bit of a nightmare. He was testing a prototype for a new mission in the KSP Demo sandbox when things started going wrong as he was preparing to land on Minmus. Running out of fuel left his ship falling onto the Flats, blowing up the engine, smashing one of its two solar panels, and lying on its side. Using the reaction wheels, he managed to right it so it was facing skywards, but he had nowhere near enough monopropellant to make orbit and break out for Kerbin. So he simply waited until he thought he was in the right position, then took off hoping to fly a direct descent which would bring his Pe. into Kerbin's atmosphere. No chance, he ended up about 500 K short. So now he had no resources left, and things were looking bad. With a typical Bobby frown on his face, he realised the only option left was get out and push. The Big Push! Finally after numerous EVA's, the Pe was down to just over 20K, well within the atmosphere, nothing could go wrong now, right? Well no actually... For some reason I still haven't fully sussed out, the parachute overheated and exploded during reentry. No idea why, I've dropped down to 20K from Minus on numerous occasions, but this time something went wrong. So his only chance was to jump for it! Bob's "One Giant Leap"! He survived! Splashdown!

Val on her day off likes nothing more than a spot of mountaineering:

A little trick I have is when I'm testing some rocket, wanting to take it well up into space and try a few things out, when I have rolled it out to the launchpad but before I launch, I hit ALT F5, saving it as a named quicksave. This means I can then use regular F5 during the test flight, which would mean I would lose the Revert option if I then hit F9, as often as I like, knowing when I'm finished with the test flight, I can reload the named quicksave. It saves cash which I would have to spend if I didn't do this.

Great answer Draalo, I was toying with this idea myself but wasn't sure if it was a good one, your answer has now convinced me that this is the way to go!

Great answers guys, thanks so very much!

I'm thinking about setting up a satellite network around Duna; I realise geostationary networks aren't possible as Ike gets in the way, but that's not what has me scratching my head. No, it's more like a Catch 22 situation I'm thinking about. How can I control the deploying of my satellites if I don't have a relay network to pass signals from Kerbin to Duna??? I'm pretty sure this has an obvious and simple solution - and I admit I haven't really thought about it very much just yet - but on the face of it, it does seem to be a problem. Advice, suggestions any and all help will be very much appreciated. Thanks.

Not really anything complicated this time guys, just curious really, at what altitude do you pop open those fairings you have so carefully built around that nice new satellite? As for me, I've never came across anyone really say what height to throw them off; I try to do it at around the 50K mark, but more often than not I forget and end up taking them into space.

Terrific answers as usual guys. I'm currently cobbling together an experimental ship to test some of your suggestions out. Val volunteered, or rather her buddies all took a step back when I asked for volunteers to step forward, and will shortly be sent hurtling skywards to put your ideas through their paces.

I'm gonna have to try that, I normally set it at 35 Kms. Thanks for the answer.

To keep it simple, let's just say you have a vessel returning home from Mun or Minmus and you're going to use aerobraking to slow the thing down in preparation for landing. Is there any way of timing where and when you enter Kerbin's atmosphere so that you can be reasonably confident of landing somewhere safe as opposed to slamming into the side of a mountain? I've had a few close shaves at times, and one or two impacts on mountain slopes which have proven fatal, and I've never been able to see how to avoid this. So is it really just a question of dropping your Pe. into Kerbin's atmosphere and trusting in the gods, or can a descent like this be made a little less haphazard? Thanks everyone.

You guys who suggested the roll being caused by the SRB's flexing have been proven right. As an experiment I put on six struts on each booster and the roll instantly was gone. I then took on board A_name's suggestion and turned on Rigid Attachment, something I've never used before for some reason, remove all but the original strut at the bottom of each booster, and it seems to have kept the roll at bay. The line you see must be the little Ant engine which is attached to the satellite. Do you think I should add struts up here too? I do have Autostrut turned on. There are other suggestions I haven't tried yet, putting parts in bays instead of offsetting them for example, I'll look at those tomorrow!. Thanks to all of you for helping me with this.

Thanks very much for taking the time to respond Plusck. Originally I had no fins on the rocket, then I put those on to see if they would help counter the rolling. I do have small inline reaction wheels on board, two of them in fact, but you won't see them as I hide such things as batteries, reaction wheels, etc. by offsetting them inside the body of the rocket. Just as you advised, I had indeed the decouplers at the very top of the SRB's, with a strut right down at the bottom. Autostrut is really good, it basically does what normal struts do, except there's no additional parts (if the VAB hasn't been upgraded a big plus point), and to me it just looks extremely realistic. This Rusty Star Rocket is heavily auto-strutted; without it it would have been like flying a piece of string, but with it it was as steady as a rock. The only normal struts were low down on the SRB's, and I'm not sure it needed them even there. Anyway, I'm only home from work and have things to do, but I'll be trying the suggestions both you and Harry Rhoden made and see how things go. Thanks again guys for the help.

Well I have Autostrut enabled and regular struts on the bottom of both SRB's as backup. However I'll go back into the VAB and add some up bear the top of each if them to see if that helps. Many thanks for the suggestion!

Sigh... yet again I'm back on this tired old subject of rockets rolling during the flight through the atmosphere on their way to space. I was absolutely certain I'd cracked it a few nights ago, but alas no... it's back again with a vengeance. I'm really really stuck with this one, I have absolutely no idea what to try next; possibly I've been trying to solve it for so long I'm missing something obvious, but anyway, maybe some of you can see what I'm doing wrong? Image 1 In the VAB the KER readout said the torque for this rocket is 0.00 right across the board. On the readout in this image It says the Thrust Torque is currently 0.1. Not sure what that term meant, I googled it and discovered it refers to the gimbaling on a rocket engine. I'm using a Swivel engine for the main stage but it doesn't fire up until the two SRB's are discarded, so I can't see how that could be having an affect during the initial minute or so of the flight. Image 2 Assuming this Thrust Torque is some how responsible, and in Image 2 it has already went up to 0.51 only a small number of seconds after lift off. Although it's very slight, and really not an issue at this stage, but if you look closely at the Navball you'll already see it has rolled very very slightly clockwise. However I could live with this amount of roll. Image 3 By the time the rocket reaches 2,100 meters and the roll is much more noticeable. It would be much worse if I wasn't fighting to correct it. The problem is it's extremely difficult to try to make a reasonable gravity turn while having to counter this, although as you will see shortly I did a pretty good job of it on this occasion (a little bit of unabashed blowing my own trumpet there! ). When I launch this rocket without the side SRB's, this Thrust Torque remains in such small fractions as to be inconsequential, so the problem must be related to them in some way, however I've no idea why. They seem to be on straight, and as I've already said, in the VAB KER says there is no torque in any part of the rocket, so what is my problem here? It's a pity I'm having this problem, indeed in five attempts at a launch, four of them had ended up totally out of control because of this. The fifth one I sent much higher than normal before pitching over, and it did help to lessen this rolling somewhat, but it was more like a sticking plaster rather than a proper cure. The result was one of the best orbits I've ever established without tweaking it, the readings on KER in this image shows the Ap and Pe I achieved with my insertion burn! Not too bad, even if I do say so myself! However this was a fluke, I couldn't hit an orbit like that with the best rocket ever produced by any KSP player, let alone one rolling as bad as this one. Image 4: That'll Do Nicely! This rocket is pretty cheap and has the potential to put a small probe into LKO with sufficient Delta V to travel to quite a number of destinations with a few simple science experiments on board. However the rolling makes it such a pain to fly it really is hardly worth the effort. Do any of you have ideas why I'm having this problem? I'm beat on this one, I just can't think what else it could be, so any and all suggestions will be very much appreciated. Thanks everyone.

A press conference by the KSA to announce their latest achievement ended in farce and chaos today as arch rivals Rusty Star Rockets muscled in on the proceedings and stole the show with an announcement of their own. Gene and the guys round at the KSC had just confirmed the successful completion of a mission to intercept and capture a Class A asteroid, putting it into a stable orbit around Kerbin, and releasing a few images for the various media outlets to publish. "Asteroid Hunter Enters Parking Orbit Around Kerbin". "Approaching The Class A Asteroid". The KSA apologised for the lack of illumination in some of these images, unfortunately all the light units they had in store seems to have mysteriously disappeared... "A Successful Grab". It was at this point things hit the buffers for the KSA at their own press conference. In burst Sergei Kerman, CEO of Rusty Star Rockets, together with some of his officials carrying large brown envelopes. Sergei raced up to the front of the briefing room and, as his people handed out an envelope to all present, started to speak: "I would just like to take this opportunity to congratulate the KSA for their latest achievements in space, it just renews my belief that given sufficient time and taxpayers money, they will indeed accomplish something noteworthy sometime in the far of future! However I would ask all present..." and turning to the KSA officials conducting the press briefing handed them a brown envelope each, "...I would like to ask you all to open the envelopes which have been passed out by Gregor and the boys to everyone. As you will see, we have taken a real step in space exploration, rather than attaching a great big rocket to a large pebble, changing its trajectory and then blowing our own trumpets about it, we have actually landed a Kerbal on a Class E asteroid, with sufficient resources to sustain him on its surface for three days. Indeed he's up there even as we speak!!" Amid gasps of astonishment, we quickly tore open the envelopes to discover a selection of images and notes which did indeed seem to confirm the claim that RSR had landed a Kerbal on an asteroid. He continued: "A few hours before the KSA linked up with that space pebble of theirs, our brave Kosmonaut successfully intercepted and locked on to the surface of a Class E asteroid, which we have christened 'Gene's Embarrassment'. As you can see from the photos and notes we have provided, our hero Doodhead Kerman, has been exploring the asteroid's surface and carrying out important scientific research since he landed." "Will he be bringing back a surface sample or any other evidence to substantiate that this has really happened?" asked one of the journalists. "The surface of Gene's Embarrassment has turned out to be incredibly hard, but he has managed to break a small piece off and will be returning it to the RSR for further research. Doodhead went on to say how very much he was enjoying Gene's Embarrassment, as indeed are we all over at RSR!" The photos Sergei released: "The Vessel The RSR Claims Made The Flight". "Approaching 'Gene's Embarrassment'". "From The Driver's Seat". "Edging Closer..." "Contact Light!" "Doodhead Kerman On EVA 1". "Doodhead on EVA 2". "Doohead on EVA 3". "Kerbin & Mun From The Space Around Gene's Embarrassment". Unusually for RSR images, these ones are pretty well illuminated... Having already descended into a shambles, the press conference now quickly deteriorated into a complete farce as the journalists started questioning the agency's officials about what RSR had just announced. "Gene, if these claims hold up to scrutiny, what have you got to say about what RSR has done?" Wearing an expression on his face that would have soured milk, Gene began to answer: "They're a bunch of rotten bast..."; at that moment Rupert Kerman, the KSA's press officer cut Gene off, "Well first I would like to welcome Sergei to the KSC. If indeed what we've just heard proves to be true, then we really must congratulate all over at RSR for pulling this off. However in future I would ask Sergei to let us know well in advance about such missions , because although we will obviously be setting our top engineers and technicians on the task of putting together a vessel to rescue this Kerbanaut when we receive the almost inevitable SOS, it's really unfair to expect us to be able to launch a rescue mission so far away on such short notice." "Kate Kerman here from KBC... Rupert, how did this come as such a surprise to you, did you not know RSR had launched a rocket?" "Good question Kate, well obviously we did detect the rocket launch on our radar and other sensors, but as usual, we lost it once it made orbit." "If I may ask a follow up question Rupert, why is it you can't track them once they enter orbit?" "Well even though we have some amazing technology at our disposal, we simply can't figure out a way of differentiating an RSR craft from all the other space junk and garbage flaoting about up there." At this moment the RSR and KSA officers then started a rather heated exchange of insults and jibes at other, while we were quickly hustled out and away from the battle developing inside. However I've been told what happened next went something like this (language warning!):

I'm glad you enjoyed it, I admit I'm not a gifted writer although I did enjoy putting this together. I'll try to add more instalments when I get the time to do it

At the risk of sounding stupid, but you haven't set the docking ports to act as part of the staging sequence by any chance? I can only see one stack decoupler in that image, but there are two in the staging sequence? If you have then maybe hitting the spacebar will do the trick, just make sure you don't activate the real decoupler by mistake.