fulgur

Will there be any scientific benefits for dragging one of these all the way to another planet? I'm not a particle physicist but I fail to see why, irl, a particle accelerator would do anything different when placed on another body. [obviously making antimatter and other exotics is beneficial to your engineering program, but in terms of science points]

It really depends on what your design requirements are. You can do it in anything from a 10,000 tonne monster to a 11.5 tonne spaceplane if you are clever enough. Personally, I would recommend a fairly large interplanetary mothership - one which can insert itself into orbit around Moho or Eeloo directly from Kerbin with payload attached. I would also recommend that you have an ISRU lander so you can refuel at Moho or Eeloo, as well as separate ships for Eve, Tylo and Laythe (these can be combined if you are able). Of course, I didn't do any of that (see my signature).

Looks fun! It's always great to see people's design processes - Why are you using RAPIERs for your vertical rocket? Personally, I'd use Vectors or Darts as they are more fuel-efficient. - Can we see the plane (with its CoM/CoL markings?) Happy landings!

Nice update! I admire launching all the Mun rockets in succession; I always mess up and have to be manoeuvring two rockets at once, leaving one of them to just fly off into deep space forever, but you seem to have planned that pretty well. The launcher rocket is pretty good but it could be bigger Also, minor typo - do you mean hypergolic (as in fuels which spontaneously react on contact with each other)?

@febrion - you'll be able to get your pictures in by copying and pasting the image link INCLUDING the '.png' or '.jpg' on the end. You should be able to right-click the Imgur image, copy image link and paste into the KSP forums. It's an old-fashioned quirk of the software I think.

N 56

Minmus is very good for practicing building surface bases. Lots of flat areas, low gravity, lots of fun to be had.

"According to our SCANsat mapping equipment, Lu has 'a heck of a lot' of biomes," Gene reports. "It's a technical term," added Linus. "Therefore, we want some infrastructure to explore more thoroughly." Launch of the "Lucinda" fuel module. Powered by 4 brand-new nuclear engines, this is very simply a tank of fuel with solar panels attached. Approaching Lu.A low Lu-nar orbit having been established, Lucinda keeps her fuel tanks in order to refuel the future nuclear powered tug. Next up, Bill brings out an ancient design for a 3-kerb Mun exploration vessel. It should probably be suited to hopping around Lu. Valentina is distinctly unhappy about the signal to Lu. Not only is it extremely intermittent, it also has a 0.5 second delay entirely unsuitable to docking spaceships. Eventually... And finally, the launch of the Lu Interplanetary Transfer and Return Expedition. It checks in at Stronginthearm Station to pick up Jeb, Samantha and Doald for the first Lu expedition. Jeb is very excited to collect magnetometer reports from high over Pyri. Approaching Lu! It takes a fair bit of dV to capture at Lu (about 1,200ms-1). However, Jeb siphons the fuel off from the transfer stage, filling LITRE's tanks to 5,000ms-1. He carefully backs the "Lunder" lander away from the station and takes it down towards the surface. "Thrust feels a bit low... nothing worrying, but the burn will be a little long." "Fuel is dropping further than expected..." Jebediah skilfully brings the Lunder down to the Synpyrian Maria of Lu, but rather unfortunately I underestimated Lu's gravity. It turns out it is around the size of Duna, so I really want about 3,000ms-1 to land, biome hop and ascend. Everyone is glad to plant the flags and collect the science, but it's a massive shame that we can't explore the rest of Lu's surface with this craft. Jeb takes us back to orbit, and it's a good thing we didn't go for another biome because there's barely 200ms-1 left to dock. We very quickly escape Lu, and here it becomes apparent that something is wrong with my piloting today. The manoeuvre to lower solar periapsis and hit Armstrong is so very long that I am actually still burning as I cross the SoI. At this point, the manoeuvre node resets itself and is completely and utterly wrong. I had this problem once before, when exploring Gilly, and I started burning earlier to compensate; however my last quicksave was on the surface and I couldn't be bothered. Therefore I was now sat around in deep space with fuel margins. After an emergency conference with Gene, Linus, Val, and Bob, we manage to plot a course which takes us back to Armstrong. In two days, rather than one, but whatever. I've decided that LITRE could do with some additional snacks and dV, plus larger RCS, so everyone gets out and we hurl it into the atmosphere. Goodbye. Another of my workhorse Armstrong Return - Science Experiments heads up to grab the few samples we got from that expedition. It makes a nice gentle splashdown just East of the KSC. Next time, we'll head back to Lu. The story of Planetstuck will continue! ... in July.

How inclined are your station's orbits? A few degrees does not matter, but more than that will be a pain. If you are going to have a lot of traffic from the Kerbin station to the Mun station I suggest adjusting its orbit to match the plane of the Mun (which happens to be 0 degrees). This will make your transfers easier. In the same way, when you get to other planets I suggest your stations match the inclinations of those planets' moons. Don't worry about your ascents, I've been playing KSP1 for years and usually have a 1-2 degree inclination in orbit. (and that's without any SAS wobble and some very carefully designed aeroplanes). I think this should be true; I also feel that I use less dV around lower gravity bodies. The Mun and Minmus have lower gravity than Kerbin, and so the orbits will have lower energy and lower speed, meaning that substantially changing your orbit should require less kinetic energy and so less fuel. But I haven't actually run the maths on this. This is correct. Minmus does not take very long to orbit and you can do option 2 twice per Minmus orbit. As you are in a low Kerbin orbit, the orbital period of your station is about half an hour, you should be able to visit Minmus every time it passes your ascending or descending node. However, since the Mun takes a lot longer to orbit, you need the Mun and Minmus to both be in the correct place if you want to go from the Mun to Minmus and vice versa. [This can be made faster by the application of what is technically termed moar dV.] However, you can also apply this logic to interplanetary transfers from the orbit of Kerbin to the (inclined) orbits of the other planets. There, the delays are very much longer but the dV required for your plane change is very much greater, which leads to the concept of "transfer windows" to other planets. Thanks!

The Ascending and Descending nodes are labelled AN and DN. Don't have KSP open right now but I do have some magic gel pens.

For reaching Minmus, you have 2 options. In low Kerbin orbit, you set Minmus as the target and the "ascending" and "descending nodes" will pop up. That shows the points on your orbit where the plane of your orbit crosses the plane of Minmus' orbit. Option 1 is to match inclination in Low Kerbin Orbit. This takes around 300ms-1 in addition to the transfer. You manoeuvre at the ascending or descending node. At the ascending node, you are moving from below the orbit of Minmus to above the orbit of Minmus, and you will want to burn downwards (anti-normal). At the descending node you will want to burn normal to your orbit. You should set up your manoeuvre so that after the manoeuvre, your projected inclination is less than 0.1deg. You can then make a transfer, just the same as you would when heading to the Mun. Option 2 is not to match inclination at all. At the ascending or descending node, set up a manoeuvre which just crosses the orbit of Minmus. Because your periapsis is at one node, your apoapsis will be at the other node, and so you will be crossing the plane of Minmus' orbit at the height of Minmus' orbit. Then use the buttons in the tool to move the manoeuvre forwards in time, 1 orbit at a time until you get a Minmus encounter (you might need a little bit of tweaking). Option 1 uses more dV than option 2, but option 2 gets you into a more inclined orbit of Minmus. However, it is cheaper to manoeuvre in the low gravity of Minmus than it is in the high gravity of Kerbin.

Walt Kerman (Public Relations) has determined it to be a non-acronymable name. With three Kerbals stuck in orbit, Gene decides that the best thing to do would be to create a more permanent space station for them to inhabit, rather than attempt to bring them back to Armstrong's surface. So Jeb, Val and Bill settle into a very basic space station. Stronginthearm Station is later joined by Iggy Pop and its passengers. We now have a full space station for 6 kerbals (more if you include the docked vessels) but we don't have any data in the lab. However, before we select our next target, we need to do some surveys. A very reliable, high dV design is produced and Jeb and Val take it in turns playing with the remote control piloting. Launch of the "Hector" interplanetary mapping satellite. Upper stages contain around 5,000ms-1 dV. Valentina makes sure to extend the local omni antennae and point the dish back towards Armstrong. Approaching Lu. "Is there something wrong with the ship? She won't move when I - oh, there it is." Val had just discovered the nasty effects of an 0.3s speed-of-light delay. So the orbital insertion is done by the RemoteTech computer. Bill, who is creating a makeshift dV map, notes down that it takes around 1,200ms-1 to get a Lu intercept and a further 1,200 to capture. That's a total of 2,400 to Lu orbit (with up to 400 for a 0.7deg plane change if necessary). Similarly, here is a photo of the other Hector outside Garner's SoI. Being so deep in Pyri's gravity well, it has an incredibly small SoI, extending just 40km above the surface. Technically, this is not high enough to get some of my SCANsat readings, although I ended up with maps anyway after I moved back to the space centre. While the mapping is ongoing, we take another brief trip to Desmet. It turns out there are 3 biomes there we haven't hit yet. Firstly, we send up another Armstrong Return of Science Experiments to dock with the station. The "Desmeeting" is designed to bring all 5 kerbonauts to Desmet for the first time (except Bob, who has already been). It turns out that sticking a pole in Desmet automagically grants pilots the ability to hold towards manoeuvre nodes with the push of a button, so they do that. It only takes us half an hour to approach Desmet and, soon after, enter its orbit. However, with such slow orbital velocity, it takes a very long time to land. [Desmeeting has enough fuel for the trip, but not so much that we can burn hard towards our landing spots.] I believe these to be Desmet's Equators. In this position the gravitational force is less than the required centripetal force and so Desmeeting floats gently off the surface. Jeb cleverly taps the RCS to maintain ground contact and allow surface readings to be taken. Heading south towards Desmet's Craters. It's rather scarily dark as scientist Samantha Kerman plants a flag in the Ingress Basins. It appears that something very big smashed a hole into the bottom of Desmet, and in the pitch darkness she can't help but remember the ancient tales of the Deep Space Kraken... Back to Armstrong! All the science is done, so Jeb runs away from the Kraken very, very fast. Jeb moves slowly in to dock. With the frequent use of RCS to perform small adjustments around the surface of Desmet, he has to be very careful to ease Desmeeting in towards the station without running out of fuel. Some of the samples are kept in the laboratory to be analysed in a zero-gravity environment close to that of the surface of Desmet. However, we have two sets of most samples and so they are transferred into the return vessel, which deorbits. The re-entry goes just as it did the other two times, but Jeb is still holding his breath as he begs the craft to have enough fuel left to land. Luckily, we do, and this land is much flatter than the mountainous region we landed on last time. *** We have enough Science! to unlock nuclear engines and some bigger fuel tanks. Next stop: Lu!

1.875m or 2.5m heatshield attached to your Klawing ship would work easily. I tend to use a small probe with just the reaction wheels & batteries (to keep pointing retrogade) on the top stage, and a separate deorbiting stage.

I have changed the skybox to Pood's Calm Nebula skybox. It will turn up in future screenshots SoonTM. Emboldened by the success of the Temporary Ship and desparate to recieve some surface samples from Desmet, the KSC launch "Temporary II," a ship with much more dV than the Temporary I. It soars up through Armstrong's atmosphere, its shiny boosters invented after poring over a cryptic note in one of Bob's orbital studies, which simply read "MOAR". Underlined twice. In red pen. Temporary 2 coasts to a nominal orbital insertion. It's rather a shame for Bob to leave the nice, comfy "Temporary I" with its spare habitation space and extra supplies, which have been diminishing at a slightly faster rate than normal. He carefully jetpacks over to the Temporary II. While burning for Desmet, Bob also tries to keep the fuel balanced. Without the aid of fuel lines, it's quite difficult to keep emptying the external fuel drums and a slight torque is introduced. "Bill, why hasn't this ship got fuel lines?" There's a slightly static noise over the radio, and Bill replies, "I'm not sure how we used to make them. We'd need to see how materials were affected in deep space. Like in your science kit thingy." After a half hour watching the latest series on Kerbflix, Bob pulls in to an "orbit" of Desmet. Linus says it's a perfectly valid, Keplerian orbit, but Val thinks that if you can move to escape velocity with an especially big sneeze, it doesn't really count. From personal experience, Bob disagrees with Val; a small sneeze is all you need to escape Desmet. Landing near the equator, a small sneeze from the engine is required to keep ground contact and ensure that we can run all our experiments "landed at Desmet". Bob plants a flag, gaining 15XP? If he ever makes it back to the surface of Armstrong, he'll be an incredibly effective scientist and a boon to the R&D program. The R&D program whose goal is to leave Armstrong forever. Planting flags on the steep slopes of Desmet's Highlands. In the dark, as is only right and proper. Having hit three obvious biomes - Highlands, Lowlands and Equator - a course is plotted back to low orbit of Armstrong. The little experiments box above Bob's head now contains precious tiny samples of different materials' behaviours in deep space, as well as several samples of Desmet' surface. We also arrange a close flyby of Buzz, grabbing some Goo and Science Jr. experiments from a low flyby. With the Temporary II back in a fairly low Armstrong orbit of 100km, it is now time to design an Armstrong Return Vehicle for experimental data. Bill and the team spend several days producing a careful design which maximises dV while ensuring that the craft will survive the heat and still have a TWR >1. It promptly explodes. So does the next one. The final version, containing an incredible 7 Sparks in the final stage, does not actually use a heatshield at all, but instead simply annihilates orbital velocity through a 2-stage system. But, inelegant as it is, it managed a safe splashdown in the seas not too far from the KSC! It's around this time that we get a call from two stranded Kerbals. It turns out that Samantha and Doald Kerman didn't like the look of Armstrong - quite correctly, as it turns out - and so spent several months floating around in low orbit. Since we'd need one anyway, a new passenger transfer vessel is sent up. Painted in the only fashionable colour combination I have yet inflicted on my dear readers, the Iggy Pop 1 transfer vessel can take up to three passengers anywhere within the Armstrong system. Or it can take in passengers from anywhere in the Armstrong system! Samantha Kerman, Scientist takes a good look at the packets of snacks awaiting her. Later, Bob carefully carries his box of snacks science over to the Iggy Pop. Delicious, Desmetian science. The Iggy Pop then proceeds to rendezvous with the Armstrong Return - Science Experiments, situated in fairly low orbit. The procedure for this descent is to "burn very very hard". As in, "doesn't need a heatshield" hard. Like that. Although, preferably not in a mountain range. ["Who plotted this descent?" screamed Gene Kerman, watching the flimsy box of expensive and important experiments come closer and closer to some incredibly steep slopes, half the planet away from the KSC.] An eminently successful mission! We gathered rather a lot of science from this, so I think our next stop may be Armstrong's trojans, Lu and Garner. Trojans occur at the lagrange points, π/3 ahead or behind the major body. The tracking station says that Armstrong, which is tidally locked to the star Pyri, rotates once every kerbal day (6h). So a transfer to Lu should take 7 hours, and to Garner should take 5 hours (with the opposite times for returns).

The problem with Armstrong, the new KSC had determined, was that 1.75g and 0.06 bars were not very conducive to returning to the surface. It was fine on the ascent - sure, you needed more thrust and dV, but the thin atmosphere meant that you could just ignore drag. No, what was keeping Bill up at night was his complete lack of design for any return vehicles. In the hope of discovering something useful, we sent up a Terrier-powered probe, the Skywards VI. Skywards VI has a fairly difficult time plotting a trajectory which will take it skimming past Desmet, a small but non-inclined moon fairly far out from Armstrong. Val can only hope that the batteries will last long enough with the complex manoeuvres sent over the flight computers - oh, it's a half hour flight from Low Armstrong Orbit to Desmet. It would take us around 500ms-1 to circulalrise here, but Val's not bothered. And like clockwork, a mysterious Kerbal from the World's First Record Keeping Society pops up in Mortimer Kerman's office, hands him a stack of worthless credit chips and one official-looking "science point", and subsequently disappears. There's a new certificate hung in one of the VAB offices, too. We send a similar probe to Buzz, which is highly inclined but in a fairly low orbit. Thanks to our transfer from an equatorial orbit, we spend two minutes in Buzz SoI at around a thousand metres per second of relative velocity. Buzz looks like great fun. Jeb and Val are getting tired of controlling probes intermittently, when they pass by the KSC dishes, so we send up a series of relays. A man from RemoteTech pops out of a sattelite phone and hands us several thousand credits. *** With this money in hand, it's now time for our most audacious mission yet. Our space probes are alright, but they're hardly intelligent; they can't even tell us what our Mystery Goo is doing with any degree of accuracy! A fairly comfortable ship is designed, with hab space and supplies for around 15 days, and there's only one kerbal who we can send on this one-way journey: accomplished scientist and master experimentalist Bob Kerman himself. "We are go for launch, Temporary Ship. I repeat, we are go for launch." Val's soothing voice came over the intercom as she prepared to launch the vessel, named the Temporary Ship in the hope that the next ship would be far bigger and more comfortable. "Copy that, KSC" replied Bob. He was thrown back in his seat as the four Thumper engines were lit, pushing hard against Armstrong's 1.75g of force. Just as she had done with the previous space probes - in fact, far more easily with the upgraded HECS core keeping the ship stable - the Temporary Ship was guided smoothly into low Armstrong orbit. Bob prepared to leave the capsule as it left the dark side of Armstrong, moving round towards the tidally-locked side permanently lit by Pyri. The bright, orange light of Pyri lit up the green-and-black paintwork characteristic of a space station. Sheltering from Pyri behind the capsule, Bob manages to jot down some clear notes about the appearance of Armstrong's atmosphere and regolith, which will be invaluable in the design of future ascent vehicles. He also takes a short pass by Buzz, which allows the scientific program to better comment on likely chemical compositions and geological features the tiny moon holds. With over 200 science points obtained from the trip, it seems like time to return to Desmet...

The official challenge definition is above, which includes all of your points I think! It has to be 1 ship leaving Kerbin SoI. [That ship can subsequently make "detours" so a full Grand Tour/Ultimate Challenge is also a Jool-5.] You can assemble it in low Kerbin orbit, it can split up into multiple landers at Jool, you can take it to orbit whichever moon you want and of course you can do ISRU. It can be more impressive without, but you can do some pretty impressive stuff within those parameters anyway.

Playing "Planet Jam 2," in which the homeworld Armstrong is very very deep in the star's gravity well, and um... Subsequently, the game crashed. KSP.log is here. For context, Dord is a very small asteroid even closer to the star than Armstrong. It likely has a SoI in the tens of kilometers and is probably fairly inclined. Also, the tidally locked Armstrong has an orbital period of 1 day (6h). However, it should take maybe 5-6x103ms-1 dV, not 5x1013ms-1. Also, the game should not crash.

The incredible Distant Object Enhancement, which also allows you to glimpse your vessels/space stations outside the 2km range.

The launch of the Skywards I was a great success. Every Kerbal on Armstrong - all 20 of them - came to watch the tiny rocket, filled with goo and explosions, lift off into the air. It turns out that one Flea is just about enough to break through the atmosphere. Mortimer Kerman, whose project management expertise meant that he was overseeing the metal-mining and fuel-processing operations on Armstrong, rewarded us with √48000 credits. However, the ball of pilot-goo we stuffed in a metal sphere was unable to send experiments back to the Armstrong Space Center. Here is expert pilot Valentina Kerman taking the Skywards II science vessel for a short hop of around 100m. "Excellent piloting, Val!" - Jeb "Ouch, my face..." - Val Skywards III launches us further from Armstrong than the colony has ever gone before. Unfortunately, a lack of steering on the first stage meant we were very far from orbit. [not sure if this could have made orbit in the end - ed] The piloting goo tries valiantly to keep the ship pointing in the general direction of Space - but nonetheless, it explodes in the sunny upper atmosphere. However! Bill has finally remembered how radial decouplers work, and so Skywards IV launches during the total night. A much larger liquid fuel stage allows the piloting goo a little control over its vessel, even if it isn't exactly able to hold a proper heading. The Goo does manage to keep itself pointing roughly Skywards, and so... Armstrong orbit achieved! One entirely useless lump of bronze-painted metal is floating proudly around Pyri. Several experiments are subsequently gathered by our semi-reliable science hopper, pictured here collecting Flying Low measurements for pressure and science Jr. Mysteriously, the Scientific Committee for Advanced Navigation appear to have agents permeating the known universe as a contract appears on our desk to create maps of Kerbin. The "Oliver I" mapping probe barely squeaks into a fairly low orbit, but in a few weeks it should successfully be able to cover Armstrong's surface.

Planet Jam 2 is an incredibly exciting and beautiful planet-pack mod, created by a very long list of people including the great @GregroxMun. This is my attempt at a career-mode mission report. [Obviously there will be spoilers for the planet pack ahead.] To this I have added the following mods: * * * Aboard the K-Drive interstellar colonisation ship, HKS Orbles: "This is your captain speaking. Outside the port windows you should see the inhospitable Ilio-Pyri system. The ladders are providing a perfectly nominal 1.60 krakens of movement and we will arrive in our destination system in around five d-" Jeb's practised speech was interrupted violently as the craft suddenly decelerated, throwing him forwards into the cupola window. "Wernher! Status report!" he shouted. "We've got a loss of integrity in the left ladder drive," Wernher replied, "so we won't be able to escape Ilio's gravity. Besides, the runaway gravioli reactions will no longer be safely contained within the ladder structure, so-" He stopped abruptly as Val ran past him, dragging him into one of the escape pods. An alarm began to blare and every kerbal aboard the ship was racing to one of the escape pods. With a nudge from the engines, Val set a course for one of the major atmospheric planets. It was official procedure to land somewhere habitable-looking, or at least landable, and wait for the kerbs back home to come rescue you later. *** Several weeks later, Gene was sitting outside their slowly expanding underground shelter, fiddling with a homemade radio reciever. Listening to its tinny, whistly signals, his face fell. He wandered back inside and told the four kerbonauts the news. "Looks like the folks back home have declared us "mysteriously missing." We might have to make our own way off this rock." ***

Something looking like the Space Shuttle tends to work quite well. The Shuttle cockpit is nice looking and quite heavy on the front of your craft. Of course, it is very hard to launch asymmetric Shuttle-looking craft; in KSP1 I also have had a lot of success with big, Mk3 refuelling SSTOs.

If your craft goes into a flat spin when re-entering, try to pump any fuel remaining into the forwards tanks; that usually works for me. It looks to me like you have the big inline docking port in the middle and the engines at the back, which moves a lot of your weight towards the rear of the craft. What happens if you make the rear wings bigger / the forwards canards smaller?

Surprisingly enough, I was about to give the exact same bug report! My log files should be available in this folder, containing KSP.log, ModuleManager.configcache, and the contents of Logs/Kopernicus. If I haven't set up the right permissions, just ping me. Having got errors in a heavily modded game I downloaded only the latest versions of the mods that are stated to be dependencies in the OP, using the links in the OP. This continued to refuse to load. I have also created a bug report in Github because that's something that needs to be done by someone. I'm slightly disappointed because this looks like an amazing, unique and beautiful planet-pack. Also, I don't think all the loading screens turned up as I saw about 3 of them on repeat. (The Pyri system map from Pyri to Bifrost, the one where someone is parachuting down next to their crashed command pod, and the one which is inspired by the stock screen which has 3 alien!kerbals experiencing high g-forces). This might be a coincidence though. EDIT: Only 3 loading screens were in the zip that I downloaded from the Github. This is because I did not compile from source. EDIT: For me at least, the problem was with Kopernicus Expansions Continued; I had to get the version from June 2021 from their github, which is linked as one of the dependencies in the OP of this thread. @ShinyMouse, does this solve your problem?

Attempting to download 6.99.3. Error 0x80004005: unspecified error model000.mbm and Error 0x80004005: unspecified error landingpad.mu when attempting to extract ZIP file. CKAN also refused to allow the download. Does anyone know if I can fix this myself, or do I have to wait for @taniwha to find out what's wrong?

Today I landed on Kerbin. Yesterday and several days before, I had landed elsewhere.