TanDeeJay

gotta leave you in suspense

<WARNING: The following story may be distressing to some Kerbals> The decent into the crater began with Megwin shouting over the radio "NOOO! Don't do it. Don't risk your lives! Don't risk all that science data!" But Megwin's plea's fell on deaf ears as the two adrenaline filled kerbals in the rover drove over the crater rim to begin the slow decent into the crater. What slowly became apparent was that the lights mounted below the deck were so close to the surface of the mun that any bump in the crater wall cast impenetrable shadows beyond the bump, making it impossible to gauge the condition of the slope... did it drop off to an impossibly vertical angle? or did it continue at the same angle? Suddenly their idea of ignoring Megwin's advice seemed foolhardy! Could they turn around? could they reverse? did they even have enough power in their rover wheels to climb back out? Reversing out did not seem possible as they had no rear mounted lights to be able to see their path back out, and they had not followed a straight line as they were trying to follow the shallowest contours. Attempting to turn around, they almost flipped the rover and only just managed to keep the rover the right way up by turning hard into the direction of the flip which stabilized the rover, but suddenly they were moving much faster than they had intended and the next bump sent the rover high into the air slowly rotating in an inevitable death roll. High above in the space station, the crew could do nothing but listen in horror at the frantic words of the two Kerbals as they fought their ineffective controls "ARGH! If only we had some decent reaction wheels or RCS thrusters, I'd be able to stablize this! Try reverse throttle! Try reverse throttle! It's not working! We're going to land upsidedown! ARGH..." then the radio went dead...

"... We need a rover." Everyone in the committee started talking at once. "A rover" "Thats brilliant" "Let me get my hands on that science" "Why didn't anyone think of that before?" "..." After Megwin's rousing speech there was a fresh excitement in the air. The committee decided to appoint a sub-committee to build a rover. Valentine thought they should see if the research department could provide parts needed to launch a direct attempt to rescue Jebediah, to which the committee replied "your the head of this committee, go ahead and build a ship if you want, but it must be un-kerbaled. We can't risk having more Kerbals in solar orbit outside of Kerbins sphere of influence" Megwin was shockedwhen he was overlooked as a possible candidate for the Rover Sub-committee, and decided he would recruit some of the quieter committee who he saw were sympathetic towards him. He was determined to provide the means for fuel to his friends and fellow Kerbinauts who were waiting for a way to refuel their station without incurring the wrath of the committee. One of the 1st items produced by the research department following the injection of data provided by Megwin, was an advanced grabbing unit. Valentina knew this was just what she needed on the ship she would build. A ship capable of reaching solar orbit and matching orbits with Jebediah's ship to refuel, so that Jebediah could maintain his dignity and fly home under his own power. The small team of engineers she had recruited to assist her were driven mercilessly despite complaints that they were being pushed too hard, and construction of the JR Mk 1 began. Complaints were made and ignored that there simply wasn't enough time to properly calculate fuel requirements, and no-one seemed to notice that this "unkerbaled" craft had a Mk1-3 command pod at the top. The crafty Valentina had discuised the pod with the advanced grabbing unit. No-one had ever seen such a configuration before, and it simply never occurred to anyone that this ship wasn't quite to specification. Before the Rover Sub-Committee had even finished ground tests of their 1st rover prototype, the JR Mk 1 was ready for launch No-one noticed that Valentina was missing from the Command Centre during the launch. The engineer sitting at the remote control panel noticed a slight delay between his commands and the response from the ship, but it never occurred to him that the delay was caused because Valentina was on the ship madly trying to respond to the engineers commands making it look like there was a remote control unit onboard. The countdown approached 0... "5...4...3...2...1...Lift off" All the years of practice doing manual lift offs in the early years of the Space Program really paid off for Valentina as she effortlessly guided the rocket along a perfect gravity burn as she took the ship into orbit. The engineer at the remote control panel felt rather pleased with himself as the rocket seemed to take a path far closer to the perfect liftoff than he had ever been able to achieve in all his years in the space program. He felt sure the kerbinauts would accept him more now, even though he had never been in a rocket before. He was quite shocked when Valentine's face appeared on the video feed on his control panel. That panel only lights up when activated by a pilot on the launching ship... but that means..."Chief! Abort! Abort! the rocket has a stowaway!" the chief replied - "Abort authorized" but when the engineer pressed the abort button, Valentina grinned mischievously, and said "you don't think I thought of that when my team built this ship? I'll be back" There was nothing anyone in the control center could do now but hope and pray, The JR Mk 1 was in the hands of their most experienced pilot. The engineers who built the rocket, however, were concerned. They had not had sufficient time to properly calculate deltaV requirements, or to calculate optimal transfer nodes. they could only hope that their calculations scaled to solar orbit distances. Of course such a flight would take time, so they had plenty of time now to perform proper simulations and find more accurate data for all the required burns. Meanwhile, the Rover Sub-Committee continued to design rovers and were quite successful with their prototype Mk II had the grabbing unit added to the front and a much larger antenna. With a sky lifter connected via a docking port, the rover was ready to launch. Megwin was assigned flight status for the transport of the rover as he was the voice instrumental in invigorating the space program to build a rover. This meant he had to leave his team secretly building a mining ship to their own devices. So the rover was transported to the mun and landed on the Mun surface near the equator about 50k's west of the North west crater. WIth a scientest and pilot abord, the rover headed towards the North West Crater collecting science at lowlands and midlands along the way. The journey was tedious as the rover became unstable above 15m/s. after collecting science in the north west crater, the 2 intrepid kerbins headed north across the crater aiming for the polar crater. Along the way they experienced a solar eclipse as never before witnessed by kerbinkind {Kerbal Archivist, Brian Kerman, reports that this image is missing} From the polar crater, they headed further north to the north pole. finding the terrain on the pole very mountainous, they decided to go no further than necessary to collect the science data, and then headed west to find a highland crater that scans had shown. Upon arriving at the highland crater, they found a steep decent to the bottom would be required. Megwin was carefully monitoring their progress from the space station and radioed down that he did not consider it safe to take the rover down the steep slope, but the 2 kerbins on the rover had been driving for hours on end and were feeling reckless. They felt they had a far better understanding of the rover than anyone else... afterall none else had driven it on the Mun surface. They decided to drive down the bottom despite the crew on the station advising against it. Valentina would never have permitted such a reckless trip, but she was somewhere on the otherside of the solar system attempting single handedly to do what the committee was so slow to attempt...

That is perfect. This thread now shows up first with the searches I was trying!!!

Great story. Can’t wait to read more

Whoops! Thanks for that! Luckily this forum doesn’t have a timelimit on editing. Fixed. i need to take more notice of my Kerbals. After all isn’t that how Jebediah got into this predicament in the first place? I wasn’t paying enough attention?

didn't get shots very early on, but here is the initial Fuel station the Jebediah Rescue Committee comissioned as their test around Kerbin {Kerbal Archivist, Brian Kerman, reports that this image is missing} And here is a ship docked on the way to the mun. Everyone on board jumped out for the photo. The lander attached to this ship was a failure as the engine I used was an Ant and I didn't know how to make use of Kerbal Engineer, and there simply was insufficient thrust to decelerate when trying to land... {Kerbal Archivist, Brian Kerman, reports that this image is missing} And here is the Mun orbit fuel station as finally commissioned. This shot has a Mk II Science lander docked at the end, and the return ship docked in the middle between the habitat and monopropellant modules. The lander carries about 3500m/s DeltaV {Kerbal Archivist, Brian Kerman, reports that this image is missing} Much science has been collected with this lander, racking up stops in 9 biomes. It has a science module jr, a goo canister, a thermometre, and a barometer. Here is the most precarious landing yet (and yes, someone broke one of the solar panels... Valentina was not happy when the ship came back minus a solar panel...): {Kerbal Archivist, Brian Kerman, reports that this image is missing} The crew manning the Mun station and lander found that their experience meant they had problems if they tried to collect data from any more than 1 biome. After 2 attempts to collect from a second biome before returning to the space station both of which ended up running out of fuel when trying to adjust their orbit to match the space station, resulting in the other ship docked with the station being sent on a rescue mission... they decided it would be best to only collect from a single biome and return to the space station to refuel before attempting more biomes. In this fashion, data was collected from a total of 9 biomes before the stations fuel was depleted - much to the embarrassment of the pilots and crew on the station. The Kerbin based engineers who designed the space station had assured everyone that the station contained sufficient fuel to completely explore the Mun, so to run out, meant someone had to fly the return ship back to Kerbin with their hat in their hand and ask for more fuel. Much discussion was held aboard the space station as to who would head back to Kerbin. Then Megwin spoke up to say that if instead of asking for more fuel, they should ask for a rover to drive around. That way they could veil their need for fuel in a request for data collection mechanism with a reduced risk to Kerbin lives. Everyone immediately thought this was a brilliant idea and that Megwin should return to Kerbin with their request. The KSP flight director was surprised when the tracking station reported that a ship had left Munar orbit and was returning to Kerbin. According to calculations, there was still days before all the biomes had been visited, so there was much discussion about the reason for this premature return. There was a strange silence from the Mun station. The Kerbinauts on the Kerbin Space station claimed they knew nothing, so everyone at the Kerbal space station was hanging out to find out why a ship was now on its way back from the Mun ahead of schedule. Mathematicians in the tracking station plotted the course of the returning vessel and determined probable recovery zones, and dispatched recovery crew to the most likely touch down locations. After successfully recovery of the command pod, Megwin Kerbin was brought before the Jebediah Rescue committee to explain this unscheduled flight. The committee's questions came in thick and fast. Had they collected all biomes faster than expected? was the Mun made of cheese? was there a Mun space program run by Munbles? to which Megwin had to answer 'No', 'No', 'No'... Valentina was livid! why were they wasting a trip to Kerbin when they should be out there collecting science for Jeb? Just as everyone was feeling like they would never rescue Jebediah, Megwin pulls out a Science storage container. At that moment, you could hear a pin drop. It was clear that the container was not empty. There was something in it. It moved in a way that an empty science container shouldn't. Megwin began to speak. "11 years ago to this day, the great Space Pioneer, Jebediah Kermin, set forth by sheer luck on a voyage of great significance! No one could have predicted the effect on progress that one single journey could have. One journey beyond the Mun! One Journey around the Sun! By sheer dint of forgetting to press a button, Jebediahs inaction has brought together the greatest minds in all Kerbal history, and pushed science far beyond the bounds of imagination! Without a common goal to unite us, to drive us to higher orbits, we would still be stuck flying peashooters into suborbital flights. We would have a ring of flags around the Kerbal Space Station showing how far we could never go. But now, thanks to Jebediahs epic journey, we have a ring of flags around the Kerbin Solar system because we are united with one voice, one program, and I present you ONE science container. "Within this science container there are reports, gauge readouts, and surface samples! this is precious information that has traveled millions of meters and I present it to you, the Jebediah Rescue Committee, to analyse and study for we need new technologies to enable the safe collection of additional valuable scientific data which in turn will enable discovery of additional new technologies and in so doing, we will forever move closer to the ultimate goal of sending out a rescue mission to bring home our Geatest hero Jebediah! Jebediah! JEBEDIAH! JEBEDIAH!" At the last "JEBEDIAH" the entire room was on their feet shouting "JEBEDIAH" The atmosphere was electric. Everyone wanted to know what Megwin and the Munar crew needed. Valentina, as the head of the rescue committee, came forward and looked Megwin in the eye and said "what do we need to do?" Megwin replied, "We need a vehicle the likes of which have never been seen before! A vehicle capable of traversing the vast grey landscape of Mun. A vehicle able to store more of the precious data that is within this container. A vehicle that can travel from biome to biome without having to burn fuel and oxygen. We need wheels, we need a way to dock vehicles on the ground. I hereby challenge the research facility staff to take this container and study it and invent ways and means to produce a vessel that will ensure fewer kerbin lives have to be risked with orbital manouvers to collect more science. We need a rover!"

Can some tags be added to this thread along the lines of "attach image", "insert image" "add screen capture", "screenshot" etc... I was trying to figure out how to attach images and none of my searches on this forum found any hints. It wasn't until I discovered this thread that I found out how. I think it would help other forum newbies like me to find this thread with some tags around attaching screenshots. I've found this thread very useful

After purchasing Kerbal Space Program, 1st thing I get into is the tutorials.... I worked my way through the tutorials while running a parallel game in science mode trying out that which I learnt from the tutorial. After some fun with suborbital and orbital flights, I do the "to the mun - part 1" and think that sounds fun so go into my science mode game with the idea of making a rock to duplicate the tutorial only to find that I haven't unlocked enough science to have all the required parts, so start making rockets with the science module Jr, and thermometer and barometer to collect science, and think why don't I go to the Mun and collect science in orbit. So, I create a ship to send to the Mun to go into orbit, as I don't have landing struts at this stage, and Jebediah volunteers for the mission. I get Jebediah into orbit, and perform a trans munar burn to intercept the Mun. I now proceed to set up a maneuver node for a Mun orbit injection burn, and wait for the maneuver node to approach, and then I hit the "z" key... I'm watching the burn timer and wondering why it isn't decreasing as fast as I would be expecting ... still too new to KSP to recognize all the markings on the nav ball, so I did not understand what was happening... Suddenly, Jeb is shouting at me "Kill the thottle! Kill the thottle! you forgot to select the maneuver node on the SAS!" I hit the maneuver node button, instead of killing the throttle and the ship spins around in the direction it should have been going, but the damage has been done, and Jebediahs ship slips out of Kerbins sphere of influence and into solar orbit. Having exited the game and returned later, I discovered that you can't revert a flight after you've left a ship to it's own devices, so Jebediah is now stuck... So I have set myself a mission... To rescue Jebediah... From this point forth, the entire Kerbal Space Program has dedicated all its resources to figuring out how to rescue Jebediah. Valentina has been volunteering for as many missions as possible as she does not trust any of the other pilots in the space program. It has been Valentina's tireless efforts that is driving everyone in the space program to continue their efforts to rescue Jebediah. Since Jebediah has some precious science points on board, the Kerbal Space Program Committee tasked with returning Jebediah decide that they need to mount a rescue that enables Jebediah to fly his ship home and re-enter Kerbins atmosphere so that Jebediah can emerge triumphant from his ship. To this end, it was decided that research must be done into newer technologies to enable bigger and faster rockets, so a delegation was sent to the research center to ask about fast tracking some research into newer technologies. The delegation came back with a report stating that to discover new technologies, science would need to be collected to expand understanding of the universe. So new missions were devised to collect as much science as possible. A smart-allec scientist suggested sticking a thermometer out the window of the research facility, to which a team of engineers immediately set to to build a rover to drive around the Kerbal Space Complex to see if there was a difference between all the different buildings. Due to limited technologies, this rover looked somewhat like a stubby jet plane . The scientist and pilot assigned to drive around the Space complex thought they would show the researchers how dumb the idea was, and how stupid the science rover looked, and collected samples from all the buildings, and even planted a flag on top of the Fuel depot. Upon returning with all their data, they were shocked that research staff were over the mun with excitement with all the data that was brought in, and their jeers were turned to amazement as the researchers produced landing struts that looked like a glimmer of hope for actually landing on the mun. So, moved onto the next lot of tutorials to learn how to land on the mun and return. Back to the Science mode game, and now Valentina has been able to declare "Thats one small step for a Kerbal, one giant leap for Kerbal kind rescuing Jebebaby" Now that I can land on the mun it seems like a good idea to visit all the biomes for science. So I built a lander for collecting science, however, it doesn't have enough fuel to do one maybe 2 landings, so building a space station seems like a good idea.. somewhere that I can refuel before returning to Muns surface to get more science... Of course, the Rescue Jeb Committee decide that if we are going to build a space station in Munar orbit, we 1st need to build a space station in Kerbin orbit... so Whack a couple of Rockomax X200 tanks together with a 4 radial clampotrons (only Jr version available at this stage... and a PPD12 Cupola Module at one end and another clampotron jr at the other. Will need a source of monopropellant on the space station, so a stack of monopropellant tanks attaches to one of the 4 radial clampotrons, and a couple of lander cans and a hitchhiker module whacked together make a "living quarters" ok so now I have my Kerbin orbit space station (haven't yet figured out how to insert images in this forum...) time to build a space station for the mun... Extra science has now unlocked the Rockomax jumbo, so make the mun station components with the Rocomax jumbo tanks rather than the Rocomax X200, so launch the LFO module, monopropellent and habitat modules into kerbin orbit, and string them together like a long train. then send up a big rocket to push the lot to the Mun in one burn. so perform the Trans Munar burn, and start heading towards the mun... do the usual "warp" to get there faster... oh bugger! warping such a long ship is not a good idea... kracken pulls the whole lot apart and it ends up looking like a space ship grave yard... Ok, so individual module transfer and build in munar orbit.... That worked... now several refueling trips later, the fuel station is full and ready for business. (pro-grade orbit) so so now I put my lander on top of a ship that has a science storage container, and send it up to the mun. I dock my lander on the docking port on the end of the fuel tanks and the ship that pushed the lander up goes onto one of the remaining 2 radial docking ports. I transfer fuel to the lander to prep it for traveling down to the mun. and then undock... whoops, the pilot and scientist are still on the space station... and no control of the lander... I shouldn't have played chess with the kerbals moving them around their new quarters so time for some EVA practice... Valentina goes EVA and successfully boards the drifting lander, and re-docks with the station so the scientist can board. (to be continued... running out of time to relate the rest of this story tonight...)

Multiple saves sounds like a great idea. Not sure how the "no damage" cheat might have helped... surely my rover would have ended up on its back, and I'd have been stuck at the bottom of the crater? I guess the "no damage" would have potentially saved my rover enough that I might have been able to transmit the science, except I think my antenna was destroyed before I'd hit F5... Oh well, nothing like lessons learnt the hard way

Maybe a newbie warning needs to be added to the "F4" key that says "Are you sure you didn't mean to press F5 for quick save?" Actually, worst thing I did, was trying to use a rover to collect science from Mun... I must have had about 4 hours real-time driving around from biome to biome and collected several K of science... regularly hitting F5 (because going too fast, bumps would cause my rover to start flying uncontrollably...) and I was edging my way down into a highland crater and accidentally flipped my rover... went to restore my quick save, only to accidentally hit F5 instead of F9, so my quick save was half a second before my rover exploded .... most recent save before that that I could find was from 3 kerbin days earlier before my launch...

Thanks! I'll give that a go! I tried searching for a solution, but couldn't find the right search terms Is that something new in 1.4.4? or just a random newbie thing with me pressing the wrong buttons not knowing what I was doing? Cheers, John ---- update just did a search for key bindings.. I must have accidentally hit F4 when I was trying to quick-save...

Thanks for that. I'll post up something later tonight when I'm at home and have access to my Kerbals...

Thanks for the welcome. Perhaps I should start a "Saving Jebediah" thread somewhere. My family keep asking me if I've managed to rescue Jebediah yet :D

Hi all. my Brother has been playing KSP for a few years, and I finally decided it was time for me to start... so ive been playing for about a month now... only mod I have installed is Kerbal Engineer anyway, my 1st attempt at getting to the Mun, I forgot to select the manoeuvre button on the SAS when trying to get into mun orbit, and by the time I realised my mistake, Jebediah was irreversibly in a Solar orbit with no fuel, so I’ve made it my mission to save him Cheers, John

I’m not quite sure what setting I’ve changed, but the range indicator is missing. That is when I’m trying to dock with another ship, that yellow square with the distance is not there. Makes for interesting docking without knowing how far the target is. i have managed several dockings without that. Only mod I have is Kerbal engineer, which I found does have a pop up that displays the distance which I have been using for my most recent dockings. So how do I turn that target range back on? regards, John

Just updated to 1.4.3, and can confirm that my from the Mun tutorial issue has been resolved. So OP’s issue must be unrelated

Hmmm. I only downloaded 3 weeks Ago and assumed I had the latest. Just looked now and the downloaded installer says 1.4.2. when I start the launcher, it says current and latest version ID is 2110. and bottom right of the 1st screen says 1.4.2.2110 so definitely 1.4.2 And your right. It is From the Mun I’m having issues with. let me see if I can update

I don’t think it is related to any mods. I’m new to KSP, and don’t have any mods, and I’ve found the To the Mun part 2 tutorial doesn’t work because when it starts, the rocket is slightly below the surface of the Mun, and the landing struts explode immediately. I was looking for a discussion on my issue with the tutorial when I found this thread describing a similar issue. latest ksp on windows 10