The Flying Kerbal

Thanks very much for such a concise and informative answer. I was aware of some probes not being able to hold a manoeuvre, but it's the first time I heard about pilots needing to be three stars. So it looks like my planned landings on Mun and Minmus are going to have to be brought forward. I was wondering about this. I had come to the conclusion the Normal and Antinormal were sufficient to adjust the inclination without having to hold on the manoeuvre node, but I couldn't make up my mind about the prograde and retrograde. I have a small - almost microscopic actually - lander waiting to shoot at Duna but was trying to hold out until the manoeuvre hold finally did become available. So let me just get this right, if I set up the burn to take me to Duna and just lock on prograde, then all else being equal, that will work over such a long distance? Two great answers guys and both are very much appreciated.

I'm in a bit of a hole regarding manoeuvre nodes. I've upgraded both Mission Control and the Tracking Station to level three - I've read level two is sufficient - but still I can't lock my spacecraft onto the node. When I place a node on the orbit to set up a manoeuvre, the blue marker appears on the navball, but the manoeuvre icon which I should click beside the stability control on the panel beside the navball never appears. It isn't the end of the world when I'm scooting around Kerbin's system, but when I come to plan missions to the other planets, it would be nice to be able to lock onto the marker instead of having to try to do it all by hand. So what do I have to do to have the ability to use this node?

It's kosher as long as our little green heroes have room to breath. I took a few minutes to watch your video, those are really excellent and I'll definitely be having a closer look when (if) I manage to unlock all the tech tree in my current game which is when I will consider this game completed.

OK update time! I downloaded the Bluedog Design Bureau package, how could anyone look at what you get and not be impressed? The lander is absolutely gorgeous and the Gemini capsule (my favourite space craft of all time) is pure magic... even if it has that missing rivet! Unfortunately the sheer scale and scope of what you get with that mod I found a bit overwhelming. Next time I start a career I'll definitely use those parts, but for now something much simpler is needed. So I removed that mod and decided to try the K2 capsule instead, and what a delightful little thing it is! What Fourfa said is absolutely right, it really is a gem and you just have to love the interior view. So I've finally got my two man pod I've been after for quite some time. I just can't suss out why Squad don't include one as stock in the first place. Thanks to everyone for answering and see you on the launchpad!

Wow guys... I forgot to select the "Notify me of replies" option and thought nobody had responded. And your answers couldn't be more timely as I just picked up two contracts to take four tourists to Mun and rescue a Kerbal who's stuck in a Munar orbit. Rather than having to haul an extra passenger compartment a two man capsule would be very useful for combining bot missions. Lots of suggestions here and lots for me to look into a little more deeply. Thanks everyone for such helpful advice!

Hey Guys, I'm looking for a 1.25m two man capsule. I've looked through a lot of threats on this forum, but they are all quite dated and what is suggested is either no longer available or not been updated to run on the latest version of KSP. I'm not too bothered about what it looks like, so whether it resembles stock or something like Gemini (my favourite RL space capsule BTW) is unimportant. I did find some fabulous looking parts produced by Orionkerbin under the banner Corvus, but they haven't been updated in ages unfortunately... Any help will be very much appreciated.

There's an awful lot of achievements in the comments above this one that are indeed things to be proud of. I too have one that stands out head and shoulders above everything else I've managed. It's actually pretty mundane really... I guess most of you will laugh when you see what it is, but even now I still pat myself on the back when I think of the first time I managed it. It's isn't docking (though it should be as that took months and was bloody hard work), nor landing on the Kerbin moons and surviving to tell the tale, nor even my latest accomplishment of getting a probe to Duna. No, even though it was much simpler than any of these, my proudest moment... was when I first put a vessel into orbit around Kerbin! Laughable I know, but there you have it, my proudest moment.

A Tale Of Satellite Launches, A Munar Miracle... And I Need A Lawyer! The last couple of days has witnessed the KSC transform itself into a busy little beehive as a steady stream of rockets roared off the pad to fulfil satellite contracts. In all four were successfully put into the required orbits, although it has to be said not all went smoothly. The most frustrating little tick was when I used a SETI ProbeSTACK 2 (with a built in thermometer) on my satellites. Being a bit tight for cash at the time, (and being a miserable, tight fisted git to boot), I thought I could save myself nine hundred credits by using it to fulfil the requirement that the satellite should be able to record temperatures. Off went the rocket, nicely got into an orbit, and then the fun started as I fiddled and futtered with the thing, to get the orbit adjusted to meet the requirements of the contract. And I did it (YAYYYYY ), the first time I tried such a contract, and I was feeling pretty smug with myself. It was then I noticed the company who had tendered the contract - RSR Rockets - hadn't coughed up the loot! After the KSC Accounts Section sent them a "gentle reminder" (pay up or we might accidentally hit your premises with a bloody great big rocket!) they fired back a response suggesting the KSC was being run by a bunch of morons and telling us we were supposed to add a 2HOT Thermometer! So that was one lesson well and truly learnt... Then came a whole series of satellite contracts, resulting in four successful launches. The downside of all these is that for some reason they seem to interfere with the reception on the TV's of most of the good people Kerbals living on the planet Kerbin. The RSR Satellite which didn't meet all requirements of the contract (no 2HOT Thermometer). Minmus Launch Vehicle, the now ageing workhorse of the KSC The Minmus H(eavy) with extra boosters for lifting heavier payloads throughout the Kerbin system. And then came a strange contract, we were asked to take aircraft undercarriage on a suborbital flight to Mun. Although our engineers thought it was an insane idea, the money was tempting so they quickly cobbled together a package which could perform some science at the same time as carrying out the task required. The mission was a total success and the settlement of the bill was met with much cheer and celebration by all concerned. But what to do with the little vehicle which had been used for the contract? The original idea was to just leave it to spiral down to its doom on the surface of Mun, but then one of the cleaners suggested we should try landing it as the first ever landing on heavenly body! After everyone had stopped laughing, a closer look suggested that while it would be a challenge, it might be worth a try. It was already well into its terminal descent, travelling at over 550m/s at 5000 meters, and this wasn't taking account of the true height of the terrain, in the pitch black night side of the Mun, and with no way of knowing where the surface really was... what could possibly go wrong? The first thing was to try to reduce the surface velocity; everyone was surprised at just how powerful and efficient the RE-12A Pomeranian engine proved to be and the 550m/s was quickly reduced to zero. That didn't help with the slight problem of not being able to see in the dark. The solution was to simply run the engine at sufficient thrust to try to keep the little craft descending at a velocity which would be survivable if it did hit something more solid than vacuum. This would continue until it either reached the surface, or the fuel tank was drained. Down it went, until suddenly it wasn't... it had come to rest, rather precariously, on the side of a slope... balancing like a one toed ballerina on its engine nozzle... The Munar Miracle: sitting on a slope on it's small engine, the plucky little probe is lucky there's no wind on Mun. The KSC needs a lawyer, we're going to sue Maxo Construction Toys for breach of contract! They hired us to put a satellite carrying a materials bay into an equatorial orbit around Mun. Nowhere did it specify what size of material bay, so to save space it was decided to use the mini version. After a great deal of fiddling about getting the orbit the way it was required, not made any easier by loss of signal when the vessel was on the far side of Mun, there were green ticks on all points in the checklist, except for the carry a materials bay!!! When no reward for carrying out the mission was forthcoming, a great deal of cursing ensued, and a threat to take Maxo to court over this issue. So if you happen to know a good lawyer, do let me know.

Guys... guys... LOL... I have more than enough trouble just surviving reentry without worrying about then gliding down to the KSC. I admit doing so would look classy, but let me first figure out how to walk before starting to run! Thanks all for offering your advice, it's a pretty complicates game and I really do appreciate the help.

Hi Bewing... ... and thanks for taking the time to answer! That's great news about the aircraft contracts, not so good about me having to redo the satellite one. Still it'll keep me out of mischief today when I'm off work.

OK guys and gals. a little general information needed. Even though I've got the full version of KSP for about six months or so, I really have enjoyed the Demo. However I've finally decided to get serious with KSP and started a career game in 1.2.2. So far things have been going really well, and money's flowing in at the moment. However a couple of issues have appeared and maybe you'll be able to help me with them. Let's start with the most important first. I've never liked aircraft flight simulators and admit I'm really bad at them; being totally honest I've never even sussed out how to line up on a runway in any I've tried. Recently my available contracts list has been inundated with contracts which really need to be completed by aeroplane. My question is if I ignore them will I be able to keep going with this career game, or is it not possible to do so without flying planes? Would MechJeb be able to fly the thing for me if I really MUST take on these contracts (never used MJ before... know nothing about it...). The second question is much easier. I've accepted a couple of contracts to put satellites into polar orbits of Kerbin. The contract stipulates they must be able to record temperatures. I built a satellite for the first using a SETI ProbeSTACK 2 which has a thermometer already built in. However when I achieve the designated orbit, I'm not getting my reward. On the contract checklist I have all green ticks except for the one concerning the thermometer, so does that mean the one built into the SETI ProbeSTACK 2 isn't acceptable? It's not the end of the world if it isn't, but I made such an effort nailing that orbit that I don't much fancy doing it again. Thanks guys.

Never underestimate how stupid The Flying Kerbal can be! Having never done it before, I fancied building a small lander for two Kerbals to take down to the surface of Minmus. However - and this is the bit I'd never done before - this thing would have no engines, it would be powered by RCS thrusters for both descending and the ascent back up to rendezvous with the command/service module in orbit above. Everything went really good! The launch was one of the best I'd ever made, nicely into orbit... very good injection burn... it was only when I was well into my final descent that I noticed I'd forgot to add RCS thrusters...

My computer's dead, drowned in an ocean of tears and shorted out... It had all started so well, having went to both of Kerbin's moons on numerous occasions, now was the time to go further afield. Duna was calling and a decision was reached at the KSC that the next mission would launch a probe to the red planet. After much research watching Youtube videos and rocket development copying a Marcus House design a launch vehicle with a Duna probe payload was assembled and readied on the launch pad. Waiting for a launch window, the entire staff at the KSC were turning blue - well cyan really - as they held their breath in anticipation of the beginning of the next chapter of the Kerbal Space Program. Finally the moment to begin the mission arrived. As Flight Director Gene Kerman stood with the box of matches beside the fuse that would fire the engines, everyone else who knew anything about rocket launches at the KSC ran for their dear lives, scared senseless by what was about to happen! But their fear was misplaced, this rocket was well designed Marcus House knows a thing or two about designing rockets and the huge vessel soared majestically skywards on its single LT-45 engine backed up by two Kickback SRBs. The launch went perfectly and in no time at all, orbit had been achieved, fairings discarded, solar panels deployed and the burn to send the vessel on its way to Duna calculated. Ten minutes later and the engine fired up again and the now much smaller craft was hurled out of the Kerbin SOI and thrown on an intercept course with Duna. Three hundred days later and we finally get an encounter with Duna. Once the probe had entered Duna's SOI it would take a few hours to reach the planet. So I... I mean Gene Kerman decided to time warp. Hands in a cold sweat as the first ever interplanetary mission was reaching its climax, "poor old Gene" made a major boob... forgot Duna had an atmosphere, allowed the probe to slam into it at some godawful speed, and watched in despair as the planet was showered with bits of burning debris as the thing exploded into a million pieces. Worse than that, but in all the excitement, I - I mean GENE... yes Gene... forgot about F5, so it really was a total loss. Now I hope none of you blame me for this disaster, Gene Kerman, he's the Flight Director, he's responsible, I just push the buttons! Moral at the KSC is nonexistent this evening, but knowing our little friends they'll have another crack at a Duna probe in the very near future, and at least they now know for certain Duna does indeed have an atmosphere!

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to answer. It's quite understandable you didn't quite get my point Vanamonde, when it comes to explaining things I'm the absolute world's worst! But FullMetalMachinist nailed it; I wasn't aware of right click and dragging in map view and it solves my problem perfectly! Yes I agree Benjamin K. sorting out the plane change first would be the way I would normally do it, although what I'm trying to do is to launch my rocket so that it intercepts Minmus at either the Ascending or Descending node.

I'm sure this has been asked before but after much searching I can't find it. Is it possible to slow down the speed the screen scrolls in map view? A nice simple example: suppose I've placed a vessel in an equatorial LKO and aiming to set off to Minmus. I want to reach Minmus at either the Ascending or Descending node. So I go looking for where one of these is; I have to first align my own orbit perfectly horizontally (right?), but the speed the screen scrolls makes this virtually impossible - at least for me. Is there a CAPS LOCK type way or adjusting the sensitivity of the arrow keys when in map view? I've tried numerous combinations of key presses but haven't found any that slows map view down a bit. Maybe I'm doing this all wrong... maybe I don't really need to so precisely align my own orbit to find the nodes? Am I being too picky? Any help would be very much appreciated.

This is a genuinely pathetic answer, but for me the most important thing I've learned is the ALT+L to disengage staging. Before discovering this, the number of flights I screwed up because I accidentally hit the space bar are too numerous to mention; there isn't much worse than dumping part of your rocket before using it. Right clicking on the engine to bring up the menu allowing the engine to be shut down is a very close second as I was also a dab hand at firing up the motor(s) unintentionally by hitting the Z key (never the shift for some reason). It usually isn't as serious as staging by mistake, but it was no fun either.

Thanks very much for taking the time to respond Bornholio. I never for one minute even considered KSP wouldn't be running on anything but 64 bit, but as it happens it was! So that has now been sorted. I seem to recall reading somewhere that KSP runs by default on DX11; if that's the case then that's what it's running on as I haven't tried changing it, although I notice both openGL and DX11 are on this computer. To be totally honest, I'm not a computer whizz and wouldn't know how to change it even if I wanted to! However I tried a quick session after switching to 64 bit, and although it was very short, there was no sign of any crashes, so fingers crossed!

Hey Guys, A little advice here if possible. I recently downloaded a few mods and immediately the game started crashing! It never crashed before this, but with the mods it was really bad. So I decided uninstall all the mods, and nit surprisingly the game became stable again. I then decided to install just one mod and went for the Environmental Visual Enhancements, and immediately the crashing resumed. I'm using KSP 1.2.2 and according to CKAN (which I use), EVE should be able to run in this version, but there's something not right... Is anyone else using EVE having similar problems and could anybody give me a few pointers as to how to prevent this, or else let me know of a similar mod which may not cause so many crashes? It's a real shame, because EVE really makes some difference to how the game looks. And just in passing, I somehow ended up with Mechjeb 2 installed? I didn't deliberately download it, but as it was there I thought I would give it a try. So I put the package on the side of the capsule, but couldn't figure out how to switch it on? I've read somewhere that a window or icon would appear on the screen which I would have to click to open, but there was nothing like that to be seen. Mechjeb isn't that important though, if I could get some way of adding some visual effects such as clouds, etc. I would be more than happy. Thanks.

I haven't been playing much recently, but a few days ago I did get stuck in again, and there's a huge - absolutely MASSIVE - shock in store for all of you when you see what I managed to do!! First though a nice gentle polar scene with Jeb on the ice while Mun and Minmus light up the night sky: Jeb at the South Pole. Yesterday Jeb was in orbit around Kerbin when an old satellite suddenly jumped out from behind the planet without any warning! Poor old Jeb stood on the brakes but it was too late and he hit the thing, demolishing a solar panel and knocking it onto a sub orbital trajectory. It has since crashed and burned: Jeb Meeting With An Old Satellite. Never one to miss a photo opportunity, Jeb was out the hatch and posing faster than you could say "Warp speed Mr. Zulu": One For Jeb's Photo Album By now you may have figured out what's coming next! Yes, the champagne corks went sub orbital this evening after I managed this for the first time Who's Feeling Pretty Smug With Himself Right Now? And here's a couple more: http://imgur.com/5TecJ7k http://imgur.com/M1SqdZC The mission specified the Kerbanauts would have to swap seats before heading back home. Naturally Jeb realised the photo opportunity which carrying out this order presented, and Val didn't need a huge amount of convincing either. The 100 Km High Club! The release of these images is expected to add more fuel to the conspiracy theorists who insist the KSP is all fake and demand to know who takes these photos. So far the KSA has refused to be drawn into a confrontation with this Kerbals, some of whom go so far as to claim their whole existence is just a computer simulation...

Would it be possible for Squad to add more systems into the game and still keep it small enough to work on our computers, or would they have to go down the same path as Frontier Developments with Elite Dangerous, having us plug into servers holding all the data for us to explore around. It would be a fun thing if one day we really could go where no Kerbal has gone before.

Unfortunately real life reared its ugly head these last few nights, and the Kerbals quest to reach the stars had to be put on hold because of wallpaper and paint (this never happened at NASA), and indeed there's no guarantee tonight will be very much better either. However last night I did manage to find a very few minutes to load the game up, but not really having time to do anything too serious, I decided to enter that strange and mysterious place known as the Space Plane Hanger... Now admittedly I have to say upfront I'd never even been in the SPH before, let alone try to put an aircraft together, and I suspect ten or fifteen minutes isn't quite enough time to figure out what makes those things work. However after my feeble attempts I now have to look at those amongst you who build aircraft regularly, with a great deal of new respect... those things are seriously tricky to put together; even Jeb had stopped laughing before I was finished, and Bob was found hiding locked in the loo in case I wanted to put him in one of my flying death-traps! Bob's not the stupidest of the Kerbals... Without any doubt I'll venture back into the SPH, but not before I've got a few more prestigious missions under my belt in the Space Program. What I would like to do is to build a Kerbalised version of the X15, with something capable of carrying it aloft. Yes I know, I know... that should come before any rocket trips to space, but hey, nobody has ever said Kerbals are logical creatures.

That's the sort of thing I would really like to play! It's not too far removed from the real timeline, yet is sufficiently Kerbal to make it quirky and fun. I must look out for Unmanned Before manned and see how it plays.

Hey Guys & Gals, I'm just curious as a newbie to KSP, is it possible to acquire enough science to launch a satellite into orbit before launching a Kerbal out of Kerbin's atmosphere?

A very sad day. We have "heroes" getting awarded for all sorts of nonsense these days, but Gene and his comrades... they were and are the real deal. Let's up that one day soon man will take another small step.

Maybe the theme of "From the Earth to the Moon" is worth considering..?