MZ_per_X1

Guys, thanks so much for the comments. I managed to land that beast. I could get it into Kerbin orbit with periapsis at 45km and apoapsis at several thousand. I did about 40 aerobraking orbits trying to lower apoapsis to 2000km and just managed to get the periapsis back to 72km on the last drop of fuel. It was the most painful thing to do in Ksp. As you recommended I sent a mining rig and I had to mine that thing silly. It still didn't float but did slow down enough to pop the parachutes. I feel elated. Lessons to learn : Don't get alarmed that the ship's delta v drops to two digits after capture. Makes sense considering the combined mass of 700t. On Entry my asteroid was about 48t. I left 1% resource in it so it can be shared with other agencies. I was worried how many expensive mining missions I need to send to empty that asteroid. One is enough because ***you can jettison the ore from the holding tanks***. They don't tell you that anywhere. So it's really about learning as you go. It took about an hour or so to take 90t from the asteroid so luckily that didn't take for ever. For some reason I don't trust asteroids when it comes to fuel transfer from one docked ship to another. It's probably user error but I couldn't refill the ship that I wrangled it to Lko in the first place. Never mind. Entry was shallow and only slowed down below700m/s below 10km. That gave me time to fiddle with the parachutes. They were deployed at 68km from the staging icons but they did not open so I actually had to stage them fearing that I would decouple the whole thing (which was the last stage). I would like to know how to disable a staged decoupler. Pure luck, I landed it on the North Pole. If I recover the ship, will the asteroid disappear? I want more of a memento than a surface sample. Oh and my Ps4 was really put to the test with this mission. I didn't make any kerbucks on it but got 65 reputation. Yay!

That is the contact in the title. Mission profile: The spawned asteroid flies past Kerbin on a polar escape trajectory (about 90 degrees inclination). I can launch into polar orbit without problems from Woomerang, rendezvous and dock with the asteroid. I get into Kerbin orbit. Apoapsis is several thousand km out, periapsis is around 34km. After 4 aerobraking orbits it looks like the rock is going to stay in the atmosphere and land. Except I hit 10km at about 1200 m/s and hit the ocean at about 800 m/s destroying everything. The ship 4 Klaw grabbing units, 5 Nerv atomic engines, 5 reaction wheels, RCS, bells and whistles. I have attached about 20 drogue shoots and 20 normal ones. I don't have mining units because I have just enough delta v for everything technically. This is the ship that's supposed to push this rock around. How can I land the asteroid from low Kerbin orbit? It seems like my problem is with slowing it down enough. As a result, I haven't had a chance to test the parachutes. I have a feeling they might not work or they would yank the whole ship apart as they open. I started thinking on a concept to put together a probe core, Klaw, rcs and parachutes and send about 6 of them up on a second launch possibly with an engine attached to the side of the rock opposite the pushing ship. Rendezvous in low Kerbin orbit and use the new engine to slow down a bit more? I was excited to nail the mission up to the point of reaching the atmosphere but I am bummed by not being able to land it.

I guess UK time for me. Steam doesn't say the time zone but I assume it's my local time.

Previous updates on Steam went live around 7-8pm.

The satellite was carried around docked to the mother ship. It didn't register as a new satellite. However it registered that it has a thermometer etc. When I undocked it registered as a new satellite. Kerbals work in mysterious ways.

I tried and this is what I ended up with: So I kinda gave up for now with this satellite. It is not in vain as it has a surface scanner, relay antenna. I just put it on a safe Duna orbit at 1000 km where Ike won't swing it around. I will try to match the apoapsis or periapsis later and will see if it registers as required orbit. Fun fact, in the parking orbit, the satellite registers as new.

Yeah, I have maneuver nodes. Most things are the same on console. I was combining contracts: rescue and satellite. I chose to do the rescue first because I am struggling with the satellite contract. That is why I am already in orbit. Otherwise I would have done what you do. I am just thinking why I get an Ike encounter. As far as I know Ike is in synchronous orbit around Duna and the satellite will have to be too. So technically they should not cross paths.

I managed to export a screenshot of the required orbit. Outer orbit is where I am now. Then there is Ike's orbit and going in the opposite direction the target satellite orbit. The satellite has to maintain stability for 10 seconds but it doesn't have to be on the required orbit. I have the stability checked already even though m]y orbit is much higher above Duna. I tried a couple of times to get to the designated apoapsis or periapsis but I could never circularise as I was flung in other directions. I can't fiddle with removing patched conics as I am on console. So I guess the problem is that I can't circularise at all.

Thank you for your suggestions, everyone. I have been thinking and searching. I found an interesting video that shows the concept I'm thinking of. Looks finicky but I will try when I have mustered the patience.

So I picked up a satellite contract that requires me to put a satellite in a specified synchronous Duna orbit. The problem is that the required orbit is almost on Ike's orbit and going in the opposite direction. No matter how I go about it, I keep bumping into Ike. How is this possible to achieve this?

I have used a skycrane to successfully land simple bases and rovers. I would like to build larger bases with ground assembly. It seems that skycranes could do the job, meaning pick up parts from the ground using docking ports and move the base parts to dock them to other parts. Let's say there's a skycrane parking on the ground. I lift it off the ground. How do I make it hover over to the object I'd like to pick up by docking. Main engine only? Rcs? Sas? I am a bit lost with this. I can fly a crane but not fine fly it, if it makes sense.

Wow. All of that sounds like my life. From paranoid naming conventions for saves to exploding ships. It all seems to be self propelling. The crashes mean you have more saves, particularly on long missions. More saves mean more crashes. The thing is, I had it on PC first. I liked it but I wanted the visual experience on the big screen so I got it on PS4. Also, I am rubbish with the keyboard. I got used to the ps4 controller and I find that it works for me. I don't need mods and cheats. It gives me challenge. (I have nothing against mods, SpaceX and NASA have automation too.) Although the tracking station shows upcoming maneuvers, it does not warn you like Kerbal Alarm Clock. So you have to plan and sequence missions (ie, while going to Eve, you need to check back at the minmus base to transmit science.) Yesterday I landed on Gilly, did science and planted a flag. I got the trophy for it. Yay! I When I got through so many crashes, I just wanted to forget about the mission and take my Kerbals home. Got to KSC only to realise that even though I got the trophy notification and I wanted to check it, it showed error. I got so frustrated with the Gilly mission that the crashes just took away all my excitement. I haven't built stations of thousands of parts. I have some satellites, a small Minmus base and a Mun lab. I do quick runs between Kerbin and its moons only. I have done one fly-by of Duna and Ike, one of Eve and Gilly. So I don't have that many things yet. I will get a screenshot of the ragdoll Sentinel later. It just looks bad in its current state. But it still did the mapping during the eve mission. Now I will probably terminate it because I can't be bothered to have that ugly thing floating in space.

First, KSP crashes once or twice a day. And that is a good day. It is so annoying to make quicksaves to counter this. Anybody else getting paranoid about such things? Next, you pick up a contract to move a satellite to a different orbit. Only when you switch to it you see that it is like a ragdoll. Or just starts pinning out of control sending engine, thrusters and antennae in different directions. Sometimes when you switch to tracking station and back it fixes itself. Sometimes it doesn't. I had a Sentinel that morphed into the LF tank and just the red dot was peeping out while the antenna was dangling. Another time when you switch from map to ship, the screen stutters, shakes like mad and the ship is about to disintegrate. Also, occasionally (when you have just made it to Gilly, for example), you try to perform a maneuver only to realise that the ship is not responsive. Antenna won't unfold, ship won't lock prograde, can't fire the engine. Then it turns out it is not that the ship is not responsive. You can't switch to map view or can't even bring up the options menu. So the game is REALLY buggy. I am unable to provide screenshots because these are not idle, lovely pictures like a landing and a flag next to the ship. Each time these happen, I am trying to quickly prevent a disaster from happening and a ship from desintegrating. I can't think about screenshots at the same time. When can we have an update?

Thanks AHHans. I tries lowering the thrust of the engine so that I can fine tune the process. It didn't help. Most likely there is a difference in the orbits. When I did it during rescue mission around Minmus or the Mun, I could come to a stop relative to the target and burning towards target and then slowing down from there and edging towards the target was easier. It always aligned orbits in the end. But such maneuvers don do that around Kerbin. I could edge as close as 100 m from the target by losts of small correction burns. Burning towards and away from target to make sure that the distance is less and less. After 2 hours of trying, I did a save here and will come back to the actual rescue later.

Hi everyone again. The saga continues. I have another rescue mission to do. This time it's in LKO. I have successfully matched orbits, inclination but I can't come to a full stop. When at the close encounter, I switch to target mode and turn retrograde. The speed difference is small, around 10 m/s. I start killing off the speed, the numbers are going down. When the numbers get to about 0.4m/s the markers jump around on the navball and the speed is increasing again. I also noticed that I could not lock the ship to either prograde or retrograde and the markers float around the navball. I need to nudge the navball to get those options back. I had many tries and once I got to 0m/s. A second later the speed between the two vessels increased. Why would a ship not come to a stop? And why is my navball acting weird? It's so much easier when not in LKO.

And Sidkin has successfully joined my team of pilots. I took it very slowly during the approach so that I can make small adjustments as markers float apart on the navball. I went at 10 cm/s and the two ships were a mere 2 meters apart. I was afraid that when I do EVA the spinning shipwreck would bump into the rescue ship. The left joystick only needs small nudges during EVA. I basically touched the rescue ship with my helmet and hovered around the ship to find the hatch. As soon as the 'grab' option popped up I pressed so quick like never before. However the game wouldn't let me board. I thought I had deliberately left an empty seat in the mk1-3 pod so tried to transfer them to the crew cabin (pesky tourists wanting to go to the Mün all the time and maybe they wanted the seats in the pod after all). Crew cabin was full. I was starting to think the flight had been overbooked and was wondering which tourist to ditch to rescue the kerbal. (Don't worry, I saved everyone.) I was hoping that in the meantime I don't lose the kerbal stuck to the outside of the pod, banging on the door. Luckily I realised that poor Sidkin was not exactly at the hatch so I gently moved him up a bit and then I could board. Lessons to learn: If the rescue vessel is in line with you and meters away, don't try to break. It's going to send the stranded ship away from you. You need small rcs puffs instead. Also at the end of the mission remember to switch to orbit mode else you won't be able to get back. Thank god for quicksaves! And thank you guys.

So I managed to get the rescue ship and the stranded kerbal to 8 meters and came to a stop. I went on EVA with the stranded kerbal and turned on the rcs. The kerbal was always going in other directions than the target rescue ship. I hate the EVA controls... I can't figure out left /right, forward /backward motions. Only L2 /R2 for up and down. Any other button doesn't seem to start the jetpack. And also I don't get the camera thing. Am I always traveling the direction the kerbal is looking?

Thanks guys. Putting all the wisdom together, I kinda know the issue now. The tutorials (in game, YouTube etc) are not explicit about the two stages of the process. I thought braking when the orange markers show close encounter brings the ships together. So then the only thing that happens is that you are traveling at the same speed. Then you should do fine tuning which is the part I need to master because I can't visualize what is happening and the navball is the only thing to rely on. (For me, the orange encounter marker part is easy because I can see what I am doing and the effect it has on my ships.) To fine tune, burn towards target bring prograde marker on to target marker. Ensure that you didn't gain speed. Retrograde marker onto anti target to slow down and get speed under 10 m/s (or to 0?) And how do I know when it's enough? I kinda understand it now (not necessarily the difference between target and prograde markers and what it means to burn away from them to have them actually line up) and will try to fiddle with it more. Here's a video that was talking about similar things to what you were all saying :

Hi I am playing career mode on playstation and I have a rescue mission contract. I know it's not supposed to be easy but I am ready to throw the controller at the wall. Scenario: rescue kerbal orbiting the mun (reverse and inclined orbit). Main ship has a 2 star pilot (retro/prograde, anti/normal, radial in/out). Most videos and posts refer to pc version of the game and not the playstation one. So community to the rescue please! This is as far as I got: successful rendezvous, matching orbits, markers show 1.9km closest intercept. Once I get close to the intercept, I bring the speed to close to 0m/s in target mode, burn towards target and then make sure the speed is below 10 m/s. I switch to the shipwreck and watch as the main ship gets closer. I have no idea how close it is going to be after the previous maneuvers so at around 500m I EVA the stranded kerbal, activate the jetpack and try to close in... ... except I don't seem to be knowing what the heck is happening. I don't see how I am moving compared to the main ship. Left, right, up, down. I see the rescue get close (2-300m) then the rescue ship just flies away. Possibly because I just messed things up with the jetpack maneuvers? Didn't make the kerbal face the main ship? Should have watched the navball? Should have set the main ship as target? So I have no idea how to get the kerbal jetpack to the rescue ship. Please help.

Hi I have been playing Kerbal on PS4 and got used to the Dualshock controller now. (Was a pain but it works for me.) I recently bought KSP for my laptop so I can take it with me on holidays etc. So my question is, could I use the Dualshock controller to work exactly as it controls the game on PS4 (X works as Space on keyboard, etc, Throttle up with L1 and arrow up)? That way I don't have to get used to the keyboard. I found older posts for older versions and they didn't seem relevant anymore. Thanks