Ace in Space

Today I finally cleaned up the rest of my mess. The first Ohana arrived at Eve and hauled Eridin back to Tiger's Eye station without a problem. That little speck under the sun is the Ohana, floating off in the distance since it's no longer needed and, having no traditional docking port, awkward to keep attached to the station. Shortly afterwards, the second Ohana arrived at Dres. Good lord, what a mess. Pretty much everything was almost out of fuel, except the converter, which as you may remember, used up all its fuel and had to ditch the engine and push itself the rest of the way to orbit with monopropellant. I decided the best place to start would be the Hub/Drill, since without it there is no station. I gave it a small portion of Ohana's fuel, undocked again, and sent it to intercept RQT-056, a class E asteroid that I later renamed Quartz I. Looking at the fuel reserves on Ohana, I wasn't sure I'd have enough to salvage everything in one go, so I decided to tow the converter module over next, so that I could dock Ohana to the thing and produce fuel for it if needed. This turned out to be unnecessary, as Ohana proved to be pretty efficient and was able to get the tank and habitat modules attached before I even needed to consider fuel. I may have even had enough to do everything in one go, but I decided to play it safe and refuel before retrieving the science module, which ended up being the only time I refueled the Ohana at all. After all the modules were assembled, I needed to bring in the Dres Rover, which turned out to have enough juice left in it to rendezvous and dock on its own, so that was nice. After that I parked Ohana in orbit and set about organizing the comm sats into a sensible constellation rather than a rat's nest. They didn't have much fuel left but they didn't need very much to make the adjustments so that all worked out just fine. Everything went better than expected! So there you have it. All irons out of the fire. I'll be taking a break from KSP for a while, I think.

So I think at this point we can conclude that everybody has their own style of docking - try out a lot of methods and stick to whatever feels best for you.

I'm going to assume you know how to rendezvous to within a kilometer. Here is how I dock. It is probably not the best way, but it works for me: When constructing the ship, temporarily remove all the parts that won't be there during docking (e.g. ascent stages, etc). Turn on the center of gravity marker. Place the multi-directional RCS ports in triangle or square configuration at both ends of the ship, at equal distance from the center of gravity! This is what ensures that you can actually use your RCS to move without spinning. Rendezvous with target to within 1 km (I generally aim for .5 or less, but whatever). Burn (with navball in "target" mode) to bring velocity to 0. This more or less "parks" you relative to your target. Burn toward the marker, then go ahead and flip the ship toward again and drift toward the target until you're within like a hundred meters or so. Burn until relative velocity is 0. Switch to target ship and rotate it so that the docking port is facing the incoming ship. Switch back to the incoming ship. Set the docking port on the target vessel as your target by right clicking it. Face in approximately the direction you'll need to be pointing when you dock. This may not necessarily be directly at the marker: Using RCS (I never use docking mode, just the HNJIKL keys), give the "forward" key just a tap or two - you don't want to move too fast just yet. Moving the camera to each dimension (e.g. looking straight down at the craft), adjust one dimension at a time using RCS. You can definitely use more than one tap of a key for this part. Once it lines up with the docking port in this dimension, cancel the velocity by RCS thrusting the opposite direction. So first you make sure you're aligned up and down, then you make sure you're aligned left and right. Turn off RCS and make any necessary adjustments to the rotation of the craft. Turn RCS back on and tap your forward key a few more times - don't approach too fast, but you can speed up a bit now that you're mostly in the right place. As you approach, keep moving your camera back and forth between side and top view so you can check that you're not drifting out of alignment in either dimension. Since you're aligned by this point, and you shouldn't be moving relative to the target in either direction, your should be lined up with your . You can use this fact to help make sure you don't drift. If you start to drift, tap your RCS a couple times to cancel out the unwanted movement, then tap once in the opposite direction to cancel velocity once you're lined up again - this should line the markers up again. Keep doing this until you dock.

I love how, given any sandbox or open world game, players will inevitably use it for something completely different than the original theme. I took a fantasy game about slaying dragons and turned it into an interior decorating sim. You've taken a game about space exploration and turned it into a car-building sim.

Is it bad that my first thought on seeing this was this old thing? As for what I did today, let's begin with a recap, since I, as always, had altogether too many irons in the fire: I was on a science binge on the Mun using a lander-orbiter combo Another Ruby mission was on its way to Duna to pick up a stranded Kerbal Wrong-Way Eridin in the Tiger's Eye Mining Lander was stuck in orbit around Eve and unable to reach Gilly The whole Dres mission was a hot mess I designed the vacuum-faring parts of a high-delta-v rescue craft called Ohana 1 I started my day with the Mun mission. There were a couple anomalies within biomes I needed to stop at, so I made a point to try to land near them. For a certain value of "near." I didn't land too close to this one because it was at the top of the crater's edge and outside the biome I needed. Better to land in a flat-ish area inside the biome and go over to the arch on EVA. Of course, because of the steep cliff and the presence of a smaller (but still huge) crater between the landing site and the arch, this meant jetpacking over. The arch was bigger than I expected. And I may have been a bit too liberal with the jetpack on the way over. Still, I figured I could make it, since I was going down instead of up and would therefore need less fuel. Bardard's jetpack got him all the way to the edge of the smaller crater when I decided the fuel levels were critically low and I needed to use the rest of it to brake. I underestimated how long it would take to slow down, and Bardard ended up smacking into the cliff wall at high speed - but not lethally, and kerbals are made of tough stuff, so he just bounced right off toward the interior of the crater, and used the rest of his propellant to stop his fall and get back up onto the plateau. This time there wasn't enough left to brake, but the speed was low enough that Bardard could just take the impact - he bounced a good distance, too. Since the ground was more or less flat from that point on, he could walk the rest of the way. But it was gonna be a looooooong walk. After a few minutes of holding the W key, I decided I had better things to do. I then went to do the laundry and make hot dogs. Bardard finally got back to the lander and rendezvoused with the orbiter, transferred the science, reset the experiments, refilled the fuel tanks, and then it was off to the next biome. This time, I wanted to land near the Armstrong memorial. Despite having the coordinates, I was having some trouble locating the memorial (as I've said, I'm really bad at navigation), and ultimately I decided to just go ahead and land anyway, memorial or no memorial. As luck would have it... With that, I wrapped up my shenanigans on the Mun. I probably could have gotten the last couple biomes, since I actually had plenty of fuel left, but I'd decided enough was enough. I could come back some other time for the last two. Next, the launch window for Dres came up, so after some tinkering, I launched the rescue craft (Ohana 1.11 after I was done fiddling with ascent stage designs) - as you may recall, it was a rather large craft. So it needed a large ascent stage. Which led to this monstrosity: It is much more stable than it looks, and got nearly into orbit on the power of the SRBs and bottom stage alone - though I did need to tap into the first pair of asparagus tanks to circularize. It was all fairly standard - orbit, slingshot off the Mun, burn to intercept planet. Since it's been a little while, I'd admittedly forgotten about Ruby entirely, so I initially just timewarped straight from burn to flyby, only to realize that Ruby was now at T+200ish from its scheduled maneuver. I reloaded a save from just after Ohana's burns and corrected this mistake. Then the Eve launch window came up and I sent out a second Ohana, completed its burns, and then went back to Ruby to dock it to Onyx Station to top off the fuel tanks. So that's where we are now: rescue crafts are en route to Eve and Dres, Munstone came home after a productive journey, and Ruby is orbiting Ike and ready for its mission.

(Also ostriches don't actually put their heads in the sand, just for the record. It's just a myth.)

So, this is actually today and yesterday, since I didn't get to post last night. As you may recall, while waiting for a launch window to send rescue tugs to Dres and Eve, I've been trying to finish off my Mun checklist. My first attempt at a reusable lander didn't go so well, partly because it was unstable and partly because it couldn't generate Crew Reports. Well, I launched a second, updated attempt with a more traditionally-designed lander. With a can. One of the kerbals from the last mission (a pilot named Bardard) got to go on this one too, but the other two are on the ground. As the pilot, he's the one who's supposed to pilot the lander down to the surface, then shuttle it back up where it can be refueled and a scientist (in this case, Mimon, veteran of Onyx Station) can reset the experiments. The "down to the surface" part went as planned, but the lander didn't have enough fuel to get back up - once again, the trouble was in Twin Craters. There are cursed locations in the universe, and that is one of them. So I tweaked the lander design again, and launched it (remote-controlled, of course) on a specialized delivery vehicle - no need to launch another orbital capsule, since this is a replacement for the existing lander. The trouble with this was that due to the way I attached it to the launcher, I had to fly the thing butt-first the whole way. SAS, it turns out, doesn't much like having the thrust applied opposite the direction the craft is pointing. So I mostly ended up using SAS to get the craft steady, then turning it off and burning, while carefully compensating for drift (with controls reversed). It was difficult, to say the least. But I did at least get to pilot it the right way around for the actual landing, having ditched the backwards travel stage. Landed it pretty close to where Bardard was stranded, brought him over, collected the Crew Report, lifted off, and docked with the orbital module. Filled up the tanks, reset the experiments, and called it a night. I've got a few more landing sites picked out; some are biomes and some are anomalies I may or may not investigate. Hopefully they go more smoothly. After I clean up the Dres and Eve situations I think I may take a break of indeterminate length from KSP.

I'm probably in the minority of minorities but I'd probably not like that, considering how much the same effect used to bug me when playing World of Warcraft - the music would stop and then I'd get this nagging sense that something was missing until I figured out what it was. Incidentally, world of Warcraft has a "loop music continuously?" switch in the settings. This, I would support. Options are always good. Although, I could also get behind adding more tracks, since the same one over and over can get obnoxious - this was my main gripe with Elder Scrolls Online compared to WoW on the soundtrack front.

This is not the first time I've been told I don't exist... But as a generic playlist recommendation, the Fiechter brothers make some great music and they compile them into hour-long themed reels.

You've gone beyond the Shadow Realm. You have looked into the Abyss, and the Abyss looked back into you. No, see, you don't understand. I'm really bad at navigation. This, although in my case it's not that I forgot RCS, but rather that I didn't pack enough monoprop and ran out. Granted, it took my first 4 weeks of KSP to learn how to rendezvous and dock but now it's fairly routine. On the other hand, I was learning to rendezvous and dock in my first four weeks, when I was still figuring out orbiting... As for what I did today... In space... ... no one can hear you derp. I decided to try a sorta-Apollo-style lander - larger orbiting travel craft, with a smaller lander that docks to it. The idea was that the increased fuel efficiency of the tiny lander and the ability to refuel it from the larger craft would make it possible to hit multiple biomes. That was the plan anyway. Part of making the lander lightweight was that it didn't have a cabin - just a chair for a kerbal to ride it to the surface. So it was actually more Dr. Strangelove than Apollo Program. Although for all the misfortune it went through it could well have been Apollo 13... For starters, I'm not used to building crafts that don't have cabins. And therefore, don't have built-in reaction wheels. So once I got into orbit around the Mun I discovered that the lander couldn't actually maneuver without using its RCS, which was not really feasible because that system had been designed purely for docking. So I packed up and went back to Kerbin empty-handed. Having corrected the error, I set out again, and found that the weight of a kerbal sitting on the side unbalanced the craft and made it veer. I figured out that I could correct this by setting the two engines opposite the pilot to 80% thrust and leaving the one directly behind her at 100%. So then it was down to the surface for the first landing, which turned out to also be the last. I've got to admit that I don't regret doing this - it was worth doing once, even if it didn't pan out, just because... well, look at it! I touched down in the Twin Craters, exactly as planned. So far, so good, right? The craft seemed stable enough. I was glad I'd chosen the leg configuration I did, with the two legs on the kerbal side, which helped the lopsided weight. Until the pilot got out. And the craft, being vindictive, drew out the suspense by doing that circular wobbling thing that coins do, before finally falling over. Okay, fine, let's see if we can salvage this operation. Those RCS thrusters ended up being useful for more than just docking, as they were able to roll the lander over so the seat was on top. And from there, with manipulation of both the RCS and reaction wheel, I was able to tip the nose up enough to get back up off the surface. Okay, Brooke, you can keep your job. Gene's still not happy with you, though. The lander was never meant to return to Kerbin, so upon rendezvousing with the main craft, the science was transferred over along with Brooke, and the lander was ditched in Munar orbit. The fuel efficiency, at least, worked like a charm - I did indeed have more than enough fuel to perform several landings like this. But the tipping over wasn't the only reason I decided to go straight back home. Because, you see, upon collecting my science, I had remembered the other reason I always used command modules: external seats can't collect Crew Reports. So I have to come back here anyway. Derp.

I considered it but I knew I wouldn't be able to find/recognize the mountain. I'm really bad at navigation.

Uh... correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like your homework is to design the creature... and you want an artist to design the creature for you? That sounds... unethical.

Neither Eve nor Dres are in good positions to launch for right now, so I took a break from designing my lorge rescue craft to build a smol unkerballed mun lander. It's so tiny and cute! There was one biome that I'd previously visited, before I'd unlocked all the science parts, so I already had the surface sample, etc. I had no reason to send a Kerbal back, so I built a tiny probe to land there and grab the missing science.

Why doesn't that surprise me, given the expressions on their faces?

Oh dear.