AHHans

Well, using the terrier engine for (or even during) atmospheric entry has two major problems. One - that I hope will get fixed soon - is that it suffers from bug #23924, i.e. there is currently a bug in KSP that prevents the terrier from being protected by heat-shields in most cases. The other issue is that the terrier is a pure vacuum engine! At Kerbin sea level it has less than a quarter of the thrust it has in vacuum. So if you want to land in an atmosphere(*) it is better to e.g. use the spark engine, that one has more thrust in atmosphere than the terrier, and it is lighter. So while I think that your problem is due to the bug I mentioned, the real question is: Why are you trying to use a terrier in an atmosphere? And about you other questions: which planet are you trying to re-enter anyhow? P.S. (*)Here Duna counts as having no atmosphere. But Duna's atmosphere is so thin that if you manage to burn up your craft entering that then you probably deserve some kind of award for that. (Even if it is a Darwin award.) P.P.S. Like for other questions here in the last day I'll recommend to the moderators to shift this thread to the Gameplay Questions and Tutorials section of the Forums.

Well, the classic mistake is to have your satellite orbit the other way around than the requested orbit. Did you check that? If that's nor the problem, then could you look which of the green tick-boxes are and which aren't checked when you look at the contract summary while controlling your satellite? Well, and let us know what's what there. I'll also recommend to the moderators to shift this thread to the Gameplay Questions and Tutorials section of the Forums.

The short version is that 10 km/s in LKO is enough to get to Jool and back to LKO, with even some dV to spare for maneuvers in the Joolian system. For more complete planning I'd suggest that you have a look at: If you need help interpreting that then please let us know. I'll also recommend to the moderators to shift this thread to the Gameplay Questions and Tutorials section of the Forums.

Well, the answer to you question is: yes there is something to scan. It's not particularly easy to see from far away, but you'll notice it when you are close. (I.e. it is not as hard to find as the green sandstone on Minmus.) Edit: Here is the section of the config file that says in which biomes it appears.

As @Dirkidirk and @5thHorseman already mentioned: that eccentric orbit around Eve mean that you need less dV to leave Eve's SOI. And a quick check (with a test craft and the cheat menu) shows that only need ca. 500 m/s to get onto an orbit around the sun that reaches up to Kerbin's orbit if you burn at Pe at the right time. So, yes, it is possible to get back to Kerbin, if you wait for a good transfer window. The best transfer window would be when a burn at PE will eject you from Eve's SOI in the direction that Eve is going around the sun and at the same time when there is a transfer window for a transfer from Eve to Kerbin. You can either wait for such a "double transfer window" to happen, or you can (try to) use the ca. 400 m/s spare dV to tune your transfer to get back earlier. I would wait for a window when the ejection from Eve is in the right direction (which happens once every Eve-year) and then try to tune the transfer - including plane change burn in solar orbit - to get back to Kerbin. If that doesn't work out during the first window then I'd wait another Eve-year and try again, until it works. One thing to keep in mind is to plan out the whole trip with all burns in advance and to keep some dV as reserve for corrections. (In my quick&dirty test I needed 630 m/s for the Eve-ejection burn into an orbit well outside Kerbin's orbit and 250 m/s for a plane-change burn fairly close to the apoapsis.) Well, in general that is an excellent suggestion but in this case the period of his orbit is less than three hours. And waiting for one Eve-year that way can get a bit tedious.

Give it another try. If you are sure that it doesn't work, then it helps if you could add a screenshot with the PAW (the "right click windows") of the deployed modules open.

Well, does that violate rule number 5 of the challenge? Anyway, don't assume that a craft that looks like a flying trash heap is not airworthy or hard to fly. From my three iterations the last one, the Most Gauche, is the one that flies best and IMHO the one that looks most irregular. Once I got over my impulse to make a craft that isn't symmetric (not that I'm sure that I really got over it) it is remarkably easy to balance it out: just add another piece somewhere on the side where you need more weight or lift, or move one of the pieces around for fine-tuning. In fact there are IMHO only two issues with the Most Gauche: one is that it has a tendency to veer off the runway at higher speeds. You can counteract that but it is actually easier to either pull the nose up and take off, or switch the props into reverse and/or hit the brakes and stop. The other is that the unbalanced propellers induce a wobble that keeps SAS from really locking onto a direction and eliminating the pitch-down tendency. The latter can be remedied by switching the propellers for a jet engine. I think it flies well enough that I even put the Most Gauche on KerbalX.

A sneak peak of the latest iteration, the Most Gauche: Now with complete mining equipment!

@Klapaucius, about my question: In the rules it says: Does this mean that using the reaction wheels in the - well, in one - cockpit is O.K. but that using extra reaction wheels is not allowed? That would explain your reaction, adding extra cockpits and probe-cores to add more reaction wheels would violate the spirit of that rule. I though that means that no reaction wheels - internal in a cockpit, command pod, or explicit reaction wheel parts - are allowed and the only steering-assist allowed is the KSP SAS (as compared to mechjeb or whatever).

Answers in order of the questions: Yes. Yes. Well, there is no green monolith on Jool or the sun. The positions of the green monoliths are random, but there is exactly one green monolith on each CB that you can land on.

Not that I know of.

Hmmm... I can't find anymore where I got that from, but I have in my mind that this "faster reentry mean higher peak heating but lower total heating" is also true in real life. But what if I want my bacon fried? Who is going to do that for me?

Well, may I present the More Gauche In many ways she handles nicer than her predecessor the Gauche, she doesn't fight the controls in the same way and is much more willing to fly in a straight line. But once in the air she feels a bit underpowered, one has to actively manage the propeller blade pitch to get her up to speed, she is a lot less nimble when doing aerobatics, and will stall out if one looses too much speed. Maybe I need more solar cells. But the better handling together with the sturdy undercarriage means that she is quite easy to land without breaking off pieces. Even landing on the runway is not a big deal with her. (Actually the biggest problem is not veering off the runway after landing.) P.S. Th full imgur album for both craft is at: https://imgur.com/a/QOJX5mu

O.K. So here is the "Gauche 2", now with less battery and more fuel cell: Flies even worse than the Gauche, but only slightly. And - of course - a single fuel cell is not enough to power the rotors. But it does extend the battery lifetime. Thanks! And I want to confirm that no Kerbals were harmed during the development of the craft. But what is the policy about probe cores? The rules only mention reaction wheels, but the cockpits have reaction wheels with the same strength.

Yes, I included it because it can store 1000 EC. That's all it is used for (well, and as ballast). As you can see from the PAWs I disabled the reaction wheels on both cockpits and the probe core. [Edit:] I also didn't find anything about probe cores in the rules in the first post.

Well, I take your word for it. Here is my try to make a propeller powered plane with the parts from the BG DLC. While using each size of propeller blades only once, the Gauche: Documenting this craft posed an extra challenge for me: it turns out I can either keep this plane steady during take off and landing - assuming you accept "nothing actually broke" as a working definition of "steady" - or I can hit <F1> to take screenshots. Trying to do both lead to lots of work for the clean-up crew. (But fortunately not to dead Kerbals.) This craft doesn't want to stay still even at rest on the runway with with the brakes set. Due to the asymmetric thrust it is recommended to carefully advance the throttle during take-off while trying to keep the craft steady. Once you are sure that you'll loose that fight pull back on the stick and increase the throttle (= prop. blade pitch) to two thirds. In nine times out of ten this results in getting the craft into the air without loosing too many parts in the process. Once in the air the craft is comparatively easy to fly. It is consistent enough that you can trim it with manual trim into a fairly steady flight. The second safest way to land it is to choose a wide flat area and land at a relatively high speed, about twice the take-off speed. Once on the ground set the throttle to zero to use the propellers for reverse thrust.

Could be. I only tested in 1.9.1.

Well, I understood his comment to be about what happens when the planets intersect, not just when the orbits intersect.

... and a fairly recent change (in 1.9.?) actually disables their ground stations for that case. (Before that the other launch locations were still working as ground stations, no matter what.)

O.K. A few (up to 10 or so) "corrupted" files are normal because KSP generates some files "on the fly" when it starts, so they are a bit different than the version in steam so the steam client thinks they are corrupted. But 120 files is way too much. (Could be that the update of KSP to a newer version went wrong and it was mixing files from different versions together.)

Hmmm... that should be enough. Why do you say that? Are you trying to fly that more like a plane or like a rocket? What does your flight-profile look like? (Which altitude and speed do you aim for when flying the plane?) Is the craft struggling to gain altitude, to get through the sound barrier, to gain speed at supersonic speeds? The trick with space-plane SSTOs is to get as much out of the air-breathing mode as possible. So fly it like a plane until you have at least 1000 m/s at 20 km altitude before you switch the RAPIERs to closed cycle. My guess is that this should work even with all the (probably high drag) stuff on the surface of the plane.

Sorry, not going to happen. Have a look at the velocity curves on the jet-engine wiki page (you'll probably need to expand the relevant section to see them). The air-breathing mode of the RAPIERs is the engine that can work up to the highest speeds (Mach numbers), but even that drops sharply above Mach 4 and looses all thrust when it gets to Mach 6.2.

Well, yes. The engines consume fuel much faster than the ISRU can generate fuel. So if the ISRU stopped because the fuel tanks are full and you then run the engines for a bit (e.g. to get from Mun onto a transfer to LKO) then it will take the ISRU a while to convert enough ore to fill up the fuel tanks again (assuming that there is enough ore in the tanks). And this converting will happen during any time-warp that you are doing.

Are you sure that they are really switched off? And not just stopped because all the fuel and oxidizer tanks were full? In the latter case the ISRU will start consuming ore once you burn some fuel by running your engines.

Nope! Capsules like the Mk1-3 Command Pod with a heat-shield attached get the Pe set to well below 30 km when still in interplanetary space (or even in orbit around the other planet) and just slam into the atmosphere at interplanetary speeds. (Bill and Bob regularly pass out from that, but Valentina is made of sterner stuff.) More fragile craft with e.g. with a capsule and a crew cabin get a more relaxed re-entry profile. (In particular when there are tourists on board, they always start complaining when the g-forces get a bit higher.) But that varies between "OMG, I hope they don't burn up" and "Well, I guess they'll do another orbit". Spaceplanes coming back from high orbit (e.g. from Minmus) get a first Pe at 50 - 60 km and usually do multiple passes to bleed off speed before they do their final entry. Spaceplanes from LKO or on their final entry get their Pe to about 30 km above the KSC, and then I adjust the attitude to get them to land at the KSC. (High-drag = belly forwards, low-drag = nose forwards, and gradual variation in between.)