jimmymcgoochie

May I suggest the Deflatable Heatshield mod which makes inflatable heatshields, well, deflatable again.

“Do I need to dock?” *concerned Bellein noises* I am also concerned about the addition of the RTGs and comms dish on that plane which will only add drag and weight- there should already be an RTG on it and you can just keep the experiments to take/transmit home from another craft. *watches to the end* OK, I have several concerns, mostly around the fact that you’re budgeting the plane’s fuel for something other than flying off of Laythe; there should be a decent reserve in it, but not that much!

You have too many engines, only one or two are necessary for a plane that size. Get rid of the wingtip pods as they just add mass and drag. The wings are also very strange- the canards in the middle will do almost nothing and the wing area is too small for a plane that heavy, add more wings near the rear of the plane and shift the canards to the front. Rapiers are very good as an air-breathing engine as they can produce more thrust the faster you go, however their efficiency in rocket mode isn’t that good and a vacuum-optimised engine like the Terrier or even a NERV could give you better performance once out of the atmosphere. It’s really hard to make an SSTO that can then go somewhere else once in orbit

You probably need more parachutes for that plane- in my experience it still lands pretty hard (>12m/s) which can trigger explosive disassembly with just those five chutes. Landing horizontally is even worse though due to the small wings and heavy fuel load.

I’ve always wanted to try this planet pack out but never found the time to do so. I shall be following your progress with great interest.

OK, so I went to Tylo instead of Vall. But first, Gerdorf, the Nuclear Space Tug and what's left of the Laythe Plane had to dock to Temerity. With that done. Meg assembled the Tylo lander and headed inwards towards Jool's largest moon. The timing for this trip was just right- the trajectory going to and from Tylo avoided the outer belt and Tylo was right at the edge of it when Meg arrived, minimising radiation exposure. Getting to Tylo wasn't difficult- standard transfer burn then a quick plane change just inside its SOI to turn a polar orbit into an equatorial one- but landing on Tylo is a much more challenging task. High orbital velocity (comparable to Kerbin) but with no atmosphere to aerobrake in, it takes a lot of delta-V to land safely and the terrain is far from hospitable. Add to that the challenges of landing in daylight and on the not-irradiated face of the moon and a few attempts were going to be required... And by a few I mean about twelve. Either the landing stage ran out of fuel just before touchdown or the whole thing tipped over after touchdown, or sometimes both. This was usually terminal for the mission as the lander can't get itself pointing the right way up again in this gravity. But, after a lot of attempts, finally a safe landing with the pointy end up and the fiery end down. Plant flag, grab sample, do science, launch back to orbit at the next opportunity and get out of there before Tylo moves deeper into the Death ZoneTM as this lander has relatively light shielding. Despite having carried both the Laythe and Tylo landing crafts to their respective moons and back, the Nuclear Space Tug still has a huge amount of delta-V left- and a burn time of about 90 minutes. One seventy-day orbit later and Meg was back at Temerity. All docked up, fuelled up and ready for the next landing, which will actually be Vall this time. After that it's over to Duna and then back to Kerbin, with a brief stopover at the Mun before the mission is over. Flag count so far: 9! Next time: Vall landing.

Moon landings so far have required two launches a couple of weeks apart and a lunar orbit rendezvous, but not any more. Yellow Marimba is a single launch system that uses the same lunar Gemini and lunar lander as previous landings, only launched on the same rocket. While that mission was en route to the Moon, Blue Mandolin Ceres' launch window opened. It was all going according to plan, until... That stage still had several km/s left in it and was required for the braking burn to capture into Ceres orbit. Looks like this is a flyby mission then. Back to the Moon as Yellow Marimba 1 captures into orbit. Notice that the lander is between the Gemini capsule and the upper stage, which is a problem as the upper stage is required to send the capsule back to Earth. Some docking shenanigans are required to extract the lander and reattach the capsule, not helped by the fact that I forgot to add batteries to the booster so it's completely uncontrollable unless docked to something else. A little bit of shimmying around later and Klaus completes the docking while Vera prepares the lander for her descent. Klaus did the last landing, so now it's Vera's turn. The targeted landing contract wants a landing site in the highlands. Good news, there's a big stretch of highlands right under their orbit; bad news, it's on the far side and also pretty rough terrain. But a few craters weren't going to stop Vera getting her long-awaited Moon landing! (Look at that Parallax terrain scatter... And that's not even Parallax 2.0, though people are working on configuring that for RSS.) Once the science was done it was time to head back to orbit to complete a crewed lunar orbit contract, which requires two crew. Unlike previous landings, this time I decided to put the lander to use afterwards by sending it into a high-inclination orbit to use its TV camera as a biome scanner; after pilfering all the useful supplies for the crew, of course. The solar panels are more than adequate to keep it running and there's a decent reserve of fuel to shift its inclination. Once the contract was done, it was home time. A highly successful mission all around- lots of contract money, lots of science and big delays to Klaus and Vera's retirement dates. Re-accepting the crewed lunar orbit contract and spending some KCT points later: Coming soon: Rearranging the research queue to avoid speed penalties for researching stuff too soon, accepting contracts I probably shouldn't have accepted, and maybe I'll actually fly the plane this time?

Tylo is difficult. Hint- that whole craft is supposed to be pointing UP! About a dozen attempts later and I managed to land it on flat enough ground that it didn't fall over. Nine flags planted, only five more to go to complete the set. Did you install it correctly? KSP 1.12(.3) > CKAN > RP-1 express install will get you everything you need. See: https://github.com/KSP-RO/RP-0/wiki/Installation

Judging by the delta-V you've listed, your rocket is actually overkill for a lunar flyby- it takes about 9km/s to launch into LEO (call it 9.5 for ascent inefficiencies and the higher inclination) and another ~3.2km/s to get a lunar intercept, so about 12.8 in total. Make the second stage smaller and the third stage larger so that the third stage does all of the trans-lunar injection (TLI) burn on its own and the second stage merely has to put the third stage in orbit and you might find it a lot easier to get there. You could try launching to the same LAN as the Moon which would mean your relative ascending and descending nodes would be aligned and so an intercept would be easier, or launch polar so that your apoapsis meets the Moon's orbit. Either way it'll require a lot of careful timing and a little bit of luck to get a good encounter with the Moon. Doing so without a parking orbit will be doubly difficult.

Jupiter can throw probes out of the Solar system with a single gravity assist, so the reverse will also be true if the trajectory is just right. Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are also decent targets but Jupiter's sheer size means it'll give the biggest slingshots. Aerobraking, on the other hand, would almost certainly not work due to the ludicrous speeds involved. I once sent a probe flying past Pluto at a relative speed of 30km/s; despite Pluto's negligible atmosphere the probe was instantly incinerated the moment it entered the atmosphere, and while there was no heatshield on that probe I can't see how any amount of shielding would protect against a sustained aerobraking pass in the atmosphere of one of the gas giants.

You could try loading up older saves to find one where the craft is still there, though this would mean you lost whatever you did after that save was made. There are some backup save files inside KSP/saves/(your save name)/backups that might be useful for this, copy and paste them into /(your save name) and they can be loaded in-game.

Please, please, PLEASE learn the difference between prograde and retrograde orbits! You’ll save yourself so much hassle when your orbits are going in the same direction rather than opposite directions.

I didn’t have time to add this part earlier… If you’re willing to consider mods, there are a few that can make base building much easier: Simple Logistics, a simple and easy to use mod that allows resources to be shared between nearby (inside physics range) landed vessels even when they aren’t connected, but only when you’re looking at them- it doesn’t work in the background. Saves a lot of the hassle of connecting stuff up but you have to babysit it a lot. KIS/KAS (Kerbal Inventory/Attachment System), aka EVA construction before it was stock but with hoses. You can use KAS hoses and attachment points to connect vessels up so they become one craft, just like docking, but with a lot more flexibility. My experience doing this was a bit mixed though, even on the Minmus flats things had a nasty habit of bouncing into the air or just completely breaking apart when the vessel(s) loaded so if you choose to use these mods, save regularly! I think MKS (Modular Kolonisation System) has both a system to share resources across an entire planet/moon and flexible connector parts to hook different modules together, but it’s not a mod I’m familiar with so I can’t say for sure. The Breaking Ground DLC’s robotics parts can be helpful to connect stuff up on uneven ground, but they’re also prone to drifting out of position and/or adding unwanted forces that can build up and shake the whole thing apart. I tried a modular base attached this way and eventually gave up after it kept shaking itself violently within ten seconds of loading it, plus having so many parts in physics range at once really hurt the frame rates. A single monolithic miner has an advantage in that respect- a lot fewer parts needed since you only need to land one thing not several- but regardless of how you build your miner, do not use the miner to haul fuel to orbit! All that mining stuff is dead weight that’ll hurt the delta-V and reduce your payload (fuel for other vessels); instead, build dedicated fuel tankers so the mining base can keep on mining 24/7 (or 6/428 in Kerbin time).

If you’re going about it in an entirely stock (i.e. no mods) then you have a few options: The monolithic mega-miner: a huge, heavy lump of a machine that has drills, ore tanks and ISRU converters all in one place. Easiest to design since everything’s there, but hard to get where you want it due to the sheer size and mass. Very expensive craft and one failure will lose the entire thing, but only needs one (admittedly LARGE) rocket to get it there. The modular mining base: why send everything at once when you can break it down into bitesize pieces and send them all separately instead. Send the ISRU converters, drills, solar panels etc. separately and then stick them together on site. Assembling a mining base on the surface isn’t easy with just stock parts because the terrain is rarely smooth and flat, but you can usually find a reasonable area (or one of Minmus’ flats) and connect them up by using wheels to drive them into each other. Multiple vessels that all need some parts (command, power, control, rockets to land, wheels etc.) and multiple launches make it a more expensive option overall, but it’s a lot more flexible and lower risk as losing one module is only part of the total and a replacement is cheaper to build. Requires precision landing skills to land within close proximity of previously landed modules, but since you’ll need wheels to attach everything on the ground “close proximity” can be a few kilometres away. You can also expand it if you need e.g. more drills or more power generation. The featherweight fueller-upper: Make one small mining module with the bare minimum of equipment to operate the system. Cheap, easy to launch and land, but the small drills aren’t as efficient and the 1.25m ISRU converter is horribly wasteful (it has a 10% fuel yield from the same amount of ore compared to the 2.5m) so it’s more of a prototype/baby’s-first-mining-base option to dip your toes into off-world fuel production. Make it a rover and add a surface detector and it would make a good prospecting vessel or a mobile fuel station to fill up other small vessels to extend their operational life. The space-assembled super-base: much like the modular base, but you attach everything together on orbit before landing. Only really feasible for places with low gravity and no atmosphere since the assembled base will likely have centre of mass/thrust/drag imbalances that would make controlling it much harder on larger bodies, but docking in space is much easier than docking on the surface especially with 1.12’s rotating docking ports. It might be hard to judge how much fuel you need to land though.

You used up all the helium firing the RCS on the top because that tank is misconfigured, hence the capsule’s RCS was unusable. It would be a lot more sensible to set that RCS to use the same propellant as the capsule’s own RCS so they both use the same propellants, or set it the same as the SM’s RCS instead (but with the proper tank setup). Station contracts are easy money, send a crew up and you can complete three or four contracts at once: new crew, expanded capacity, power module and (if there’s a crew there already) rotate crew. You could also leave the mission modules behind each time you visit to give subsequent crews more room- I haven’t looked at the D-2 but the Apollo Block 4 module has a lab in it. The CBM port on the end of Dawn 2 isn’t very useful, it got scaled up like the other SSPX parts but now it’s too big and heavy so normal vessels can’t use them; send up an adapter with another hub to dock to that so you have multiple ports (and different types?) on both ends of the station.

Do the modules have to be connected together or do you just want to share resources between the different sections? If it’s the latter, SimpleLogistics could solve that problem by allowing all vessels within physics range to pool their resources so that, say, a power module can supply power to everything else, though you still need at least some storage for everything you need on each section e.g. ore on an ISRU module. It’s less glitch-prone than attaching everything with KIS/KAS hoses but doesn’t work in the background as the vessels are still separate.

The welsh word “Saesneg” (English, the language) and the Scots word “Sassenach” (English, a person from England) both derive from the Saxon part of ‘Anglo-Saxon’, whereas English and England come from the Anglo part (Angle-land > England) as do words like Anglophone (someone who speaks English).

Mk2 parts have very high drag because they’re also considered “wings” and generate lift. To keep drag down, angle your wings by a few degrees so the front (leading) edge is higher than the rear (trailing) edge- this will make the wings generate lift when the fuselage is level and so generating minimal lift. Rapiers work better the faster you go so build up speed before climbing, you can easily hit 1500m/s in air-breathing mode and then climb to space. Four Rapiers are a bit overkill for a plane that size and you definitely don’t need four shock cones, try two engines and a single shock cone on the nose- switch to the in-line Mk2 cockpit for that- and ditch the wingtip nacelles to save weight and reduce drag. Canards near the nose might make the plane handle a bit better by giving it more pitch authority and would also balance the increased lift from angling the main wings. Removing two engines would also move the centre of mass forwards though which might mean canards are less useful. You should also look at any parts you don’t absolutely need (the docking port perhaps? and/or swap to an unscrewed design using the Mk2 drone core and a mk2-1.25m adapter instead of a cockpit) and remove them to reduce mass and so increase delta-V; even removing any unnecessary propellants can help, with the NERV running solely on liquid fuel you only need enough oxidiser to boost your way out of the atmosphere and unless you’re docking you don’t need any monopropellant.

Weird that nobody has mentioned this yet…

Perhaps if you did your departure burn so you were leaving prograde relative to Vall’s orbit of Jool instead of going almost straight outwards, you’d need a lot less fuel. Which, coincidentally, would also have been a departure near the ascending node and so would have greatly reduced the effects of the inclination.

Just when I thought your Tylo ascent was the worst I’d ever seen, you went and did that. Aiming at about 290-300 degrees on lift-off and pitching aggressively towards horizontal is the way to do it.

You can sort your mods by install date in CKAN to undo the most recent changes. Click ‘install date’ at the top of the list twice so it sorts them in descending order, newest first, then downgrade to older versions or uni stall as applicable. Not sure why you’re using KSP 1.11 with RO/RP-1 since they’ve never been properly supported and you’re more likely to get weird issues by doing so (I know because I did it before RO/RP-1 were updated for KSP 1.12, would not recommend), is it a really old save or did you just use the wrong version of KSP? If it’s the latter then I recommend creating a new copy of KSP 1.12.3, adding RP-1 and dependent mods and then copying your save over to it.

Stock delta-V is disabled by RP-1, use MechJeb’s instead because that one actually works.

If you have less than 1km/s then you don’t have enough left to attempt a landing *in one piece and with a functional craft afterwards rather than explosions and scattered debris* Better?

Logs and either/both of a mod list and/or screenshots of KSP/GameData please. Did you install the mods through CKAN or by yourself? Do you have all the required dependencies? The error message tells you how to find KSP.log, the ModuleManager cache and the Kopernicus logs, without those it’s almost impossible to say why it isn’t working.