[The outer planets refueling station]

2 minutes ago, Victor3 said:

I figured it out. I was not aware that my engineer, Dunnie, must be aboard the base and not on EVA, for full production. As soon as I boarded him in the rover production shot up and electrical charge usage increased:

You can see production and usage, at full "load" at night, in the upper right.

The one time full production would be a bad thing

[The outer planets refueling station]

1 minute ago, Victor3 said:

I could only run 2 drills OR make fuel (not both), so quite a large deficit. Now, as you see, I can run it all AND lights, at night. I can't give you an exact number as to the exact deficit.

Ah, so it wouldn't be from Dres' position just being closer to the Sun or something like that then

[Space Planes and Drag and Drop Tanks]

If you can post some screenshots of the craft and drop rank arrangement I'll try to get back to you later today on any tips I have (aside from whiplases liking 8km more than 4km on MK2 bodies).

Best of luck.

[The outer planets refueling station]

How bad was the power deficit earlier that you mentioned?

[Something about a Blue Mun.]

6 hours ago, 21603862 said:

For a second I thought you were making a pun about Minmus! Anyways, this is most likely due to the mod Planetshine, since it reflects light from the planet onto an object. I am probably wrong, it may be a pack that adds new stars. Hope this fixes the problem!

This is stock w/Making History

[Something about a Blue Mun.]

Anyone else see this?

[Kerbin Sorta-Circumnavigation]

What is the draft (depth) of your hydrofoil at low speeds?

And also, any tips for making them?

[Need help with going 2 the mun]

If you're in science mode I'd suggest a flyby of the mun first before a landing attempt, but another issue is that your craft doesn't seem to have the fuel or engines to go terribly far. If you have a probe (which I assume you do if you have a fairing), I'd launch a few of those first to the mun, get some science from space high over and near the mun and spend that science unlocking more stuff you can use to get there and land there (like the Terrier for manned flights or Spark engines for small probes which are easier to get to the mun with). 

 

Another idea would be adding a set of Fleas at the bottom of the rocket for launch to save a bit of dv and give you more thurst to pack in extra fuel for your swivels 

[Show off your awesome KSP pictures!]

5 hours ago, Castille7 said:

I always recommend doing this Challenge to others if you haven't already and this is one of the reasons why

 

Try doing polar circumnavigations from each launch site going north once and south once. You'll get slightly different scenery each time and have a lot of land to ISRU with, not to mention it takes you over more area than equatorial circumnavigation.

[Show off your awesome KSP pictures!]

I may have found my new favorite place on Kerbin

[The outer planets refueling station]

31 minutes ago, Victor3 said:

LOL...a self-refueling amphibious seaplane...now THAT will be a challenge.

Forgetting that this is quite beyond my current construction abilities (LOL), I'm assuming that some form of ore storage must be included? The drills can't send the ore directly to the ISRU, correct?

Literally just one radial ore tank will work, and I'm not sure about the crossfeed constraints on Ore, build a small thing with radial tanks and try it out? 

For building seaplanes, just try it out on Kerbin. If it works there, it usually works on Laythe.

[The outer planets refueling station]

Just now, Victor3 said:

I'm thinking water surface only, at this point...that will be hard enough . The problem will be...how do I do the water exploration...do I carry enough fuel to make the seaplane capable of reaching all the water bodies or do I figure out how to refuel the thing. For now my Jool system exploration will be dry land until I learn how to construct something that will work on Laythe's water biomes.

A plane with the small ISRU and big drill is viable at Laythe, but powering both at the same time will be "fun".

[The outer planets refueling station]

Exploring laythe's water can be as simple or complex as you like. Make a stick with a decent sized (filled) ore tank on one side, and probe core w/rtg, science, parachutes, antenna (plus batteries to transmit), and even a skycrane if you want to on the bottom if you want to be simple about it while reaching the deep blue.

If you mean surface science and not floor science, make a seaplane.

[The Eelootians]

BFR it up and send another 2 or 3 Landers that can refuel each other?

[Kerbin Sorta-Circumnavigation]

9 hours ago, purpleivan said:

Before I started this boat trip, with its use of tanker planes, I'd done very little flying in the game. I'd always been much more interested in the rocketry/interplanetary side of things.

I've probably flown 3-4 times as far in the Juice Goose's (can't bring myself to call them Juice Geese) as all my other planes combined. I've also flown over a much greater variety of places.

I flew to the Golden Chain isles yesterday and the ice island as well in something I threw together in 5 minutes. Great spot to keep the birds while you're near the southern ice sheet. And the tankers by this point have probably flown 2x equatorial circumference of Kerbin. Keep up the good pace man.

['Dawn' engine. Useful or useless?]

22 minutes ago, juanml82 said:

My issue with ion engines is that there isn't much solar power beyond Dres to power them continuously and, if you're going outwards from Kerbin, you'll have to burn from Kerbin's shadow anyway. That leaves Moho, Eve/Gilly and the Kerbin system to play around with solar powered continuously firing ions.

Ion outwards has 2 easy solutions.

1: retrograde kerbin orbit keeps you on the light side for your burn with only a 352m/s dv cost

2: put 2 stacks of 3 oscar-b tanks alongside the main probe and use them while on the dark side of a prograde orbit.

[Kerbin Sorta-Circumnavigation]

1 hour ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Having done a fair bit of flying down there (KSC -> Antarctic coast -> Golden Chain (those New Zealand lookin islands) -> Desert Airfield is my standard test route) yeah pretty much, but that icy island is one of my fav places in the game for no particular reason.

I've never been to that island, guess I have something to do this weekend now

[My first rendezvous]

5 hours ago, Blaarkies said:

So when you are standing on the launch pad right before lift off...which way is prograde?

Nowhere, it is undefined because you are not moving (you can look around on the navball while standing still, you won't find it).

Once you start moving in a direction, the prograde marker will show up...in that same direction. It shows up in the direction of the trajectory line drawn in map mode, so you won't see it when your velocity is 0. But if you switch your velocity mode to "Orbital velocity" while you are still standing still on the launchpad, the prograde marker will show up towards the east (because your vessel and the ground below it is moving towards the east)

Try setting the nav ball to orbital mode at the very start of a launch. While you don't have any movement on/over the surface, you do still have rotational velocity and also carry the velocity of kerbin.

 

NVM I just saw the parentheses, disregard this post (which it seems I can't delete)

[My first rendezvous]

Meanwhile 2 or 3 years of playing and I still don't do rendezvous without absolutely having to... (Thank god for ion engines being great and not doing manned missions)

Congrats man.

[What is your most facepalm-worthy moment regarding KSP?]

21 hours ago, GRS said:

Forgetting Eve Science, which is Stupid, and didn't quicksave, which makes it more Stupid, Science Gain was only 2048.2 with mostly Gilly Science.

At least Eve is fairly easy to get to?

[What is your most facepalm-worthy moment regarding KSP?]

11 hours ago, Kerballing (Got Dunked On) said:

O. M. GOSH. THAT'S. UN. FORTUNATE.

Not as unfortunate as the tylo impactor I made yesterday that was supposed to be a jool probe.

[Kerbin Sorta-Circumnavigation]

Awesome job making a hydrofoil, man. Very glad to see the giant crater get attention, that's the benchmark I use for finding my aircraft range :p

[Getting a probe to the sun]

I've never made it that close to the sun, but a tip I'll give you is to use repeated mun flybys to exit kerbin for about 770m/s (perfect run) and then burn so your aphelion is about Duna height and then retro from there. For me it cut down dv cost to 4.8k due to sloppiness in retroburning. 

If you are seriously considering going that close to the sun, the ablative shield isn't going to help that much, a fairing and an (uninflated, yes this sounds strange but it works) inflatable shield might do better, not to mention solar array are done for pretty far up from 16km, so your best power option might just be RTG.

As for comms, if you have any strong relays like the RA-50, one of those at Eve or Moho should help dramatically.

[Winged Rovers]

37 minutes ago, Jestersage said:

My personal concern with winged rover (especially with Eve and Kerbin, with actual rover wheels) is the drag, especially if you want to fly Mach3+ to your destination.

Anything below? Sure why not.

I only use them for initially landing the rover on planet, to avoid water and really steep hills mainly.

[10M Inflatable Heatshield]

It does still protect you, look at @Stratzenblitz75 and his videos on land speed records and you'll see he uses them quite nicely with a rotated ablative shield too.

 

That might be fairing though, not quite sure.