JStevenson

Thanks guys! These are all very good suggestions - especially the one about the TCA mod. Sounds like what I have been doing is ABOUT right without this one. And yes I have done at least a dozen attempts so far (maybe even 2 dozen!) I realized that what I need is the equivalent to the "altitude hold" feature in Orbiter. Raise the Skycrane just enough about the, say 3-4m, then hold this altitude and with SAS in Normal Out. I scaled back the max thrust of each of the 4 corner thrusters to 10% to give even more precise control. I then use RCS thrusters to position in XY to be centered over the part. I even switched to DOCKING mode to get the linear mode, and using for/aft RCS to trim the vertical position. I *have* managed to do this several times now, and dropped on the Wheasley several times nice and centered and yet it didn't latch on to it. In most cases it either skipped/bounced away or in some extreme cases exploded. The lack of perpendicular surfaces is the problem. The engine is basically sitting with flat front end down, so is essentially a cone sticking up. Not much perpendicular surface there facing up! After I posted my question, I independently also tried the "Rover with Claw" idea. I built a special version of my "Constructor Mk1" rover but this time with a bunch of side-mounted tiny rockets to provide enough vertical lift that SHOULD allow the thing to fly off MUN once it has the part (assume the added weight of the Wheasley isn't too bad). Until I get the better "Mk3 or Mk4" wheels I find the earlier constructor Rovers would best with a bit of Ballast to them, so I always build them using a horizontal fuel tank with a small liquid engine at the back. The engine has helped me move heavy MUN base parts around and allow the Rover to get out of some bad jams (like being stuck down a steep slope) Anyways, I spent an hour building it, launching it and getting to the surface of MUN right next to the failed Skycrane/Wheasley combo. And now having still the problem of not latching on. I'm simply pushing the darn thing around the surface. Again because I think its too low and basically a cone. The "Claw" is basically snagging it with the bottom two claw arms only, which I suspect is the problem. Once I do latch on, the location is at the bottom of a deep crater so plenty of nice hills to launch up on! Talk about alot of fuss over a stupid lost Wheasley engine, eh? Oh well, at least I gave the Tourist who came along in the Skycrane alot of entertainment! I always try to multi-task on missions and do as many contract elements as possible with each launch. In this case, I took a silly tourist along who wanted to "Orbit and Land of MUN". He must have tons of neat stories now to tell his fellow Kerbal friends. Especially all the cussing coming from Valentina ;-)! Here is a photo of the Skycrane VERY close to the Wheasley. So near, yet so far..... https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ap9Ol_DyLKPiicotBWUEGysvGxAurw

Hello, I have been playing KSP now for a couple of years. Just started a new career after my last one basically "Saturated" with science. Anyways, I am trying to accomplish one of those "Recover Part XYZ from the surface of MUN" missions. I recall experiencing similar frustrations back 2 years ago trying to do this mission type. I recall I used something like a Skycrane to snag the part using a downward facing Claw. But I do recall it was VERY hard to center the Skycrane or simply control it with sufficient fine control to actually accomplish the grab. Even in free space I find the Claw somewhat unreliable and takes several "hits" sometimes before it actually grabs the part in space. Anyways, so my question really is in two parts: 1. Is a Skycrane the best thing to use to grab a part on the surface of the MUN (or Minmus, or whatever) and haul it back into space? 2. Assume (2) is yes - how the heck to I build and then fly a Skycrane with sufficient control precision to actually so the delicate maneuvre required to position the Claw EXACT over and then drop on it to grab it? Is there a trick to how to fly one of these things (i.e. seems like you need control ability like with a helicopter)? I built what I thought was a good design, got to the MUN and landed it very close to the part. Using short hops its now basically inside the radius of the 4 landing legs. I Quicksaved here for the final maneuvre. But after about a dozen repeats I have yet to find the right way to control the darned thing to actually snag the part (which turns out to be a Wheesley Turbofan engine - how the heck this got on MUN is a mystery!)

Is this the right place to ask specific questions about add on Spacecraft. For example ones downloaded from KerbalX?

Not sure if this is the right place in Forums to pose this question (moderator - please feel free to move this!) I recently downloaded the X-51 Hyperion III from Kerbal-X. Its truly a beautiful craft and I (barely) managed to fly her into LKO under manual control. Used up quite a bit of fuel along the way mind you. And in the words of Mattingley from Apollo 13 "Sorry Guys, my burn rate was too high...I'd like to run the sim again". Seriously, though, I have oddles of questions on how best to use the X-51, especially the Eve Lander which comes pre-loaded in the cargo bay. Is there a Users Manual somewhere, or at least a set of good advice? Cheers and thank you, Jon (and Fly Safe!)

I checked that link but it shows Kerbin by default. I'm viewing using my cellphone, I assume on proper PC I'll be able to switch to Eve? I have a new Satellite in orbit of Eve with the full suite of SCANsat sensors so will know quite soon where I'll be landing my manned lander which expected to arrive there soon! Cheers, Jon

Thanks for the very detailed help and ideas. With all your help I was able to adjust my Jupiter 6 heavy booster to work properly. The problem was the use of those radial hydraulic separators with the larger fuel tanks and the " boar" twin engines as the boosters. Seems the boosters were permanently attached even though I was careful to move them out radially to leave a gap. Visually it looked right but obviously the simulation still considered them attached. Switching to the TT-70s (2 for each) worked well and,also made for very clean separations in most cases. A possible future tweak will be to add small retro jets to push the boosters away at separation to be more safe. Anyways, now that the boosters are indeed separate from the core I was able to set up asparagus staging properly. Thanks to all that replied for your excellent suggestions. Happy flying! Jon

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try these out tonight and back to you with the results. Is there a special trick to attaching things like the craft file ( or even screenshots) in this forum. I tried do this several weeks ago on another matter but never did get pictures to attach properly!

Hi folks, I'm currently having problems setting up asparagus staging for big boosters ( for heavy lifting off Kerbin). I'm running the most recent version of KSP in Career mode. I've carefully setup to pairs of boosters around a large central core ( core is the huge four engine cluster with two large ranks above. Each booster is one if those twin engines with orange large tank an cone. I'm using a single large hydraulic decoupler roughly at the mass center of the boosters. I set up the asparagus staging using those yellow ducts to plumb from Paul 1 to pair 2 then into the core tanks. And setup the decoupler staging to shed the booster pairs in the same order. But test flights so far gave been less than successful. The problems I get are: 1) not getting sequential high burn rate on outer tanks first. All booster and the central core appear to be burning all if the lower stage fuel as a single burn. 2) attempts to stage each pair of decoupler results in an explosion and no shedding of the boosters! It's almost like these hydraulic decoupled aren't releasing ( or booster stage is otherwise permanently glued together) I suspect problem 1 is a symptom or the decoupling problem 2? Has anyone using the more recent KSP also had these problems (and/or have solved them)? Again I've noticed most online KSP tutorials are quite old (2012-2013) and make,asparagus,staging look easy. Is this another case where something has changed in more recent versions that has rendered this method more difficult? Am I simply using the wrong decoupler?! Thanks in advance, Jon Sorry for the terrible grammar! I typed my question on my cellphone with one thumb injured so auto complete made a mess of some sentences! If meanings are unclear I'll try to clarify tonight when I get back to my real PC!

Hey Guys, Thanks for the validation! I was going crazy trying to find Scott Manley's 11km high plateau! I'll try that Mod and see if I can find an equivalent high flat spot now!

Hi Guys, I'm planning for a manned (Kerballed?) mission to Eve, which will involve landing and (hopefully) returning to Kerbin. I already have an unmanned probe in Orbit over Eve, trying to scope out a good landing spot. I'm trying to follow a guide/video on a suggested landing spot that has a high elevation. There is a video by Scott Manley (Youtube) showing a landing on a 11km high plateau located at about 88deg 23min W x 12degS. But when I overfly that location now (I'm in career mode on V1.3.1) I don't see this at all. Scott's video seems to match a topographic map I found on the KSP Wiki: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/images/e/ec/Eve_map_800.gif But this does NOT match the Purple Biome map at all: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/images/9/94/Eve_Biome_Map_1.2.png What I see now as I orbit Eve does seem to match this Biome map however. But I can't reconcile this with the previous topo map. So - has Eve changed since 2012? Thanks in advance. Jon

Thanks for your advice. I actually do have a screenshot but haven't figured out how to attach it to a post here! Anyways, the basic problem is I can't get my two rovers to "stick together" via their attachment nodes (all are Docking Port Jrs). Even though this works fine in live running tests. I'm simply trying to figure out a safe way to package two of these bad boys in a single payload to send to Duna.

I spent a very frustrating 1-2 hours last night struggling with the building editor and realize perhaps I need some help! I'm running the most recent KSP version, in Career mode. I've experienced the problems I had last night on and off these past months but last night was the real kicker. I'm trying to assemble a Rover payload to send to Duna. I'm more or less folllowing one of the Modular Base Building tutorials like on YouTube. I gave up try to use the "bottom carrier" style of.rover since I experienced very strange (and violent! ) problems involving try to position the rover underneath a Base tube payload. Maybe this worked OK on previous KSP version but on the latest version I would experience explosive part collision effects where the tube would blow up into the air, the moment when the rover was underneath the power dock port. So - I switched to another method involving a pair of small 4-wheel rovers which can dock to the sides of components (using Dock Jrs) and carry parts around with legs up. These rovers are used in pairs. They also click together using their back dock ports to form a larger 8 wheel rover. Which I've found can move just about anything! Anyways, I am finding it impossible to connect these two rovers together in the VAB or SPA build editors. The editor does not always seem to recognise the docking JR points as valid attachment points. I was able to attach Rover1 to a small Base node part (basically an OCT2 with Docking Jr's at both top and bottom ends). But attempts to load/merge Rover 2 and have it attach to the other side of the Base Node all fail. The strange thing is in the tutorial videos this all seems fairly easy and trivial. Has something changed since 2014 so that Dock ports are problematic attachment points in the build editor. Or is their some other technique or editor command I'm not using correctly here. I'll try to supply screen shots when I'm back on my Home PC (typing this now on my cellphone) Cheers, J Stevenson "Get your Ass to Dooon-ah". - Arnold Kerbin.

I've had similar problems while doing Base building tests at my nearby Kerbal test site (I test modular construction tech always on ground before wasting time launching to moons/duna/etc). Sometimes just toggling the brakes (B key) seems to "wake up" one of.my rovers after undocking it. Also, I suggest you always test your cargo-rover payload deployment at launch pad to make sure it works OK before committing to a mission. Generally, I've found that if things work ok in Kerbal gravity (meaning rover can separate from cargo pod in a non destructive manner) they should be ok in lower gravity/airless places. But do also check that your rover has ample comm link and power as (early on) I did experience dead rovers way out due to dead batteries or no comm link! Usually it was because I forgot to deploy solar arrays or antennas shortly after orbit! Doh!

Is this Modular Base kit still compatible with the latest KSP? How do I download the *.zip file? The link in the original post from 2013 appears to be "stale" (no server found)?

On KSP, where can you find extremely precise orbital position definitions in game? I'm trying to figure out how to time my interplanetary mission ejection burns precisely. For example, the interactive calculator (I'm using the Illustrated one) provide very precise phase and ejection burn angles say for a typical Kerbin LEO to Duna of 44.36 deg and 150.91deg. But how can you be that precise?! Clearly just "eyeballing" such things in the normal tracking station or map view can never achieve this sort of accuracy? Note I have experience playing Orbiter, which did provide such positional details in-game. I'm assuming a similar thing must exist somewhere in KSP, just I haven't found it yet?! Or perhaps there some add on that does this (ie it would be handy to have the phase and ejection angles calculated somehow?) Cheers and Thanks, J.Stevenson

Thanks for all your kind words and suggestions! It turned out I did indeed hAve the Relay Sats display filtered OFF in Tracking Display. Turning it back on revealed I now had all of my Sentinels back! And also another Duna-1 Unmanned probe which I thought was also lost a few weeks ago! So all seems OK now. I did clean up some.of the assorted space junk floating around the Kerbol system though ;-)!

At first I thought it was my imagination, but it has now happened twice. I have a long-duration unmanned space probe on an interplanetary trajectory (inwards, towards EVE) that simply disappeared! It doesn't appear anymore on the Interplenatary Map view, nor as an object listed in the Tracking Station (which is now fully upgraded in my career). The vehicle was a "Sentinal Class" space probe that I launched to fulfill one of my career mode missions - in this case to track/map asteriods. It was a pretty basic interplanetary probe, though equipped with one of those large "Sentinal" camera/scanners. I was so concentrated on doing my first "kerballed" Duna flight I didn't notice exactly when it happened. So last night I relaunched my "Sentinal" mission, and had successfully sent it on an escape trajectory from Kerbal. But, after switching to map mode and back to tracking station - this second Sentinal was also gone! What's going on? Is there a maximum number of objects that perhaps I exceeded? Or is this some sort of bug/glitch in the Tracking Station mode? I cleared out a few of my "debris" objects and will now re-launch a third mission. But if there is some maximum count limit I should avoid, it would be good to know this. Fortunately, the lost probes are un-manned. It would be a shame to lose an actual crew this way!

Hi, I'm having a strange problem with the Payload aerodynamic cowling *Fairing) separation on my "Rover Payloader". Basically I'm trying to place a Science Gathering Rover at a location on opposite side of KSP spaceport, and using a rocket launcher to place a cargo pod into sub-orbital trajctory, so it re=enters, and through staging eventually lands my rover on parachutes. The problem is when I STAGE the Fairing, the shell itself detaches but not the support structure holding the rover, nor the base - so I am left with the base and this structure attached to my rover which is now quite overloaded both for the parachutes!, When it lands (hard) there is a small explosion which usually cripples the Rover. The few tmes when I got lucky I managed to get the lander down in one piece, but still with the payload flange and support structure attached, and the Rover was basically struck (payload fairing far to heavy!). What am I doing wrong? Do I need to use a stage separate inside the cargo bay (between the back of rover and the base) to force a clean separation? I tried using one of those small blue separators but this didn't get rid of the base plate or supports! Also, if it matters I'm running V1.2 in Career mode. Thanks in advance for any advice, Jonathan Stevenson