Krow

So, needed some more science before I could build my munar base. Missing a few parts that I need. Decided to send a 'simple' mobile research base to Minmus. Getting the death roll again. As mentioned before, I assume its the CoM issue? Does that mean my payload needs to be lighter, or heavier? Sorry, never really had these issues with the smaller 1.25m rockets. Uncharted territory for me! Removed the fairing to show payload, if that makes any kind of difference.

That's the general design I was attempting. I don't have pictures of the ones that didn't work but... pretty much the only difference is the size of the payload. It's much shorter this time (I'm not attempting to launch with the science lab AND the lander).

I finally did it! I have a working 2.5m rocket design now! Just achieved a stable orbit at 103km with 1200m/s delta-v left in the second stage, more than enough for a mun encounter and landing! I have no idea what I was doing wrong before, honestly. I didn't change much in the launching stages but I did change the payload a bit. Is there a bug where the payload drag is still in effect even inside a fairing? It's the only thing I can imagine would have caused the roll. Either way! I now have a 3 kerbal lander on its way to the Mun! Now I can begin launching the science modules and begin building a munar research base!

I've tried that but it still doesn't seem to help. Either I get into a crazy rotation (Yaw, I think? The Q and E controls) that makes it almost impossible to gravity turn, or the moment that I tap the pitch, the whole thing suddenly keels over and starts to flip. Fins don't really seem to help one way or the other. Never had these issues with the 1.25m radial designs so either I'm still not looking at things right, or 2.5m aren't built the same way as 1.25m.

Back to grinding out easy contracts since I blew about a million funds trying to design a 2.5m rocket that can actually, well, work. No idea why but it seems as soon as I scale up from 1.25m, I start running into a ton of design issues and can't control them nearly as well. Was able to get one of them to 100k ap while fighting it the whole way but didn't have enough fuel left over even for circularization.

Erm, yeah! I knew that. Fixed now. And wait, how do I just get it to appear inline? D**it Jim, I'm an astronaut, not a computer genius!

Hey, who turned out the lights? I was playing with EVA around my new space station with Jeb and decided to dock a new part to it. So I went back to the VAB, built up a new component, launched it and began the interception. I miss timed it a bit and was going about 200 m/s when I zipped right by. What I forgot to do was bring Jeb back into the station. I somehow managed to hit him as he was slowly drifting away from the main station.

Spent about six hours trying to figure out how to design an asteroid hauler that doesn't cost 100k+ funds so I can start trying to make some profit on the contract offers in my career mode. Gave up on that and started to give some more thought to my LKO space station I've been wanting to throw up. Got the core of the station made and deployed before realizing that I forgot to include reaction wheels or RCS on it.... docking the next pieces is going to be interesting. Still haven't touched SSTO designs.

So it definitely feels like I'm in the outlier here. Dunno why but expendable stages always seemed wasteful to me, even though it doesn't really cost anything in real value. I really should learn to build an SSTO. Seems like the logical next step.

So, this is something I've been messing with for a while. I haven't gotten into SSTOs much in my latest career mode, so I've been doing a lot of staged rockets. Lately I've been trying to ensure most if not all stages are completely recoverable, this includes attaching probe command modules and batteries to each stage in order to fly it back to kerbin. Of course, this just increases the overall size of the rocket and required fuel. Am I just being nuts?