jimmymcgoochie

Green Huckleberry 4 has waited patiently in lunar orbit for the landing site to be both in daylight and vaguely near its orbit. Time to land. *ahem* That whole "landing upside down and having to roll side to side with the RCS to get the right way up again" was not the plan; stupid MechJeb tried too hard to chase the retrograde marker and ended up landing at an absurd angle, which would have been survivable if not for some minor wheel weirdness causing it to suddenly pivot over onto its back. No harm done though and it's driving towards the contract waypoints now while scraping up all the science it can. Staying with the theme of landing on the Moon, it's about time I put another pair of boots on the ground up there. Much the same as last time, it'll be a two-launch, lunar orbit rendezvous deal and the lander, Yellow Xylophone 2, is up first. During the trip I noticed that the upper stage's avionics was wrong: instead of holding RCS propellant, it was full of batteries which just added a load of unnecessary weight and required some propellant to be stolen from the lander itself in order to get there. I thought I'd fixed that... It'll be a while before the crew can launch, during which time a few things need to be taken care of. First up, a heavily modified (in more ways than one) Green Banana probe was designed to be launched all the way to Saturn; it only just scrapes under the 350 ton weight limit and should have just enough fuel to make it to a flyby trajectory of Saturn. Assuming it doesn't do what it did in the simulated launch and end up burning vertically up because MechJeb made a right mess of the launch. Trying to get the necessary delta-V without straying over the weight limit or ruining the TWR on the pad was tricky, but I think I got there in the end. Assuming MechJeb can fly it properly, it should be more than adequate for the trip out to Saturn. A few days later and the crew of the Yellow Timpani space station have been in orbit for thirty days. Thirty days of continuous tumbling due to the lack of avionics control, constantly short on water as the solar panels produced too much power and the fuel cells didn't run, yet the experiments still got completed and partially processed in the experiment module's little lab. Time to come home. A safe splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico and the contract paid out. Not to mention the science: And a bunch of free KCT points, which were spent on R&D to unlock the new stuff faster. Coming soon: Moon landing #2!

If you want more impact force, don’t burn retrograde, burn surface radial in- retrograde removes velocity, radial in will add more vertical velocity to hit harder.

That's the neat part. You don't. According to Ye Olde Delta-V Mappe*, you need about 7km/s of delta-V to go from low Kerbin orbit to low Moho orbit, about another 2km/s to land and return to low Moho orbit and a further 5-6km/s to get back to Kerbin (assuming full aerobraking). Call it 13km/s for the ship and 2km/s for the lander. Chemical engines just aren't going to cut it for Moho as they lack the ISP to get enough delta-V. Your options are a) use the superior ISP of the NERV to build a large and probably quite ugly ship that can carry a small lander to Moho and back- I managed to throw one together that uses two large Mk3 liquid fuel fuselages and four NERVs, with a dinky lander and space for one crew, for less than 140 tons in LKO; or b) make a smaller NERV-powered ship and add mining equipment so it can make enough fuel on Moho to come back. Option A is simpler but would require hours of burns in total to get to Moho and back; option B would probably be lighter to launch to LKO and involve shorter burn times all around, but also comes with the risk of not being able to refuel and getting stranded. Don't subject yourself to ion engines; they're incredibly efficient, but also incredibly weak compared to the other options- and yet still tens of thousands of times more powerful than real ion thrusters. Discarding empty fuel tanks along the way with some clever staging is one way to boost your delta-V numbers, since an empty tank is just more dry mass which directly reduces the mass ratio and so reduces delta-V. Extra tanks attached via decouplers with crossfeed enabled or fuel ducts to feed into the main tanks are a good way of doing it, sometimes with extra engines on those tanks to compensate for the really low TWRs you get with those kinds of big, heavy, slow ships. The other option is c) cheat with mods. Add some stupendously efficient yet reasonably powerful engines (such as those in Near Future Propulsion, for example) and you can get huge delta-V without suffering too much on the hours-long burns front.

There's nothing wrong with that image at all, you might just be getting confused by the patched conics mode. Inserting the image you linked above: The orange dotted line is your trajectory after the planned maneuver is completed; the purple line is your trajectory inside the Mun's SOI; the green line is your trajectory after leaving the Mun's SOI. The purple line you see floating in space nowhere near the Mun is just patched conics displaying the trajectory relative to the body you're currently orbiting (Kerbin), which can be pretty misleading until you get used to it. If you focus view on the Mun, you'll see the trajectory relative to the Mun which should be completely normal. TL;DR this is fine. Really. Try changing the patched conics mode in the main menu settings and see if a different setting works better for you.

Don't land! Tourists can't EVA and need to be returned to Kerbin for the full contract to complete; you'll get a little bit of money for landing them on the Mun but the vast majority of the payment only comes once they're home. If you land, getting that tourist back home will be much harder to do due to the lack of EVA-ing, whereas from orbit it's a (relatively) simple matter of docking and transferring the tourist to a return craft, or stapling some extra fuel tanks to the sides to get the necessary delta-V to return.

Trying to find out how fast a plane could fly on Rhode’s moon Lua, I accidentally ended up on a sub-orbital trajectory- of Rhode. Yup, flying in the atmosphere below 2km yet it had the speed to launch itself right out of Lua’s gravity and travel all the way back to Rhode. Now all that’s left is to figure out the trip from Rhode to Lua and runway landings on Lua; my first attempt at VTOL rocket engines didn’t work due to lack of thrust and Jeb’s Cobra manoeuvre resulted in a 20m/s vertical “landing”, which somehow damaged nothing but left the plane stranded on its back.

Phobos-Grunt never made it past LEO due to engine failure IIRC, plus it’s almost impossible to orbit either Phobos or Deimos as Mars’ gravity will drag you away again. Also: don’t mess with the polar terrain spikes, they can be nasty and destroy you without warning due to phantom terrain. Even in RSS it’s A Bad Idea.

I'm getting the following error when loading with the latest version of this mod, it seems to be similar to what Zelda reported above but relates to a different mod: The mod in question is Special Delivery - Stockalike Cygnus.

Wow, has it really been that long since I posted here? I have three whole Imgur albums waiting to go... This might be the last Blue Violin lunar sample return mission I launch, and the last uncrewed lunar return mission too. The contract payments are nice, but they'll inevitably run out, while the science gains aren't that great over sending a rover to drive around and get better science from more biomes. A few minor upgrades to the design (mostly MOAR ENGINES) give the lander a higher TWR, meaning it can put the upper stage's remaining fuel to good use instead of throwing it away. I aimed for the Oceanus Procellarum, the largest of the Moon's "seas" (so big that it's an ocean, in fact). So obviously I managed to find the one crater for many miles in all directions and aim right for it. The crater walls were steep, but the floor was relatively flat and smooth and landing wasn't difficult. The lander will stay in place for a while to gather science data before launching back to meet up with its return probe next month. While that mission was waiting, Blue Guitar 1 made a course correction burn to set up a Mars encounter. There should be enough fuel to capture into some kind of orbit, but what that orbit looks like and how many of the probes on top make it to their targets remains to be seen. From Mars to Mercury now with a twin flyby: Green Banana Mercury 2 arrives a few days before its sibling and finally completes the flyby contract (that the first mission technically completed but the game didn't register it because it was in the background, probably) for almost million funds. This flyby was almost too close... The velocity at periapsis was over 14km/s, even after expending almost all the probe's fuel to slow down after entering Mercury's SOI. So naturally I get offered contracts for Mercury orbit, landing and rover. Mere days later Green Banana 3 flies by too, forsaking the braking burn in exchange for a potential second flyby in a few years' time. Worth a try, right? Green Banana Vesta also got in on the course correction action, setting up its encounter with Vesta with enough fuel left to capture into orbit. This time I'm almost certain of it. And now for something a bit more substantial: Yellow Timpani 1, the first space station. So what if it's a couple of cheap crew modules with a Gemini pod and service module stapled to the top? At least the crew would have a means of escape if something went wrong with their own capsule. Placed in orbit, a problem quickly revealed itself: avionics. It can't fly itself, let alone with a multi-ton Gemini docked to it as well. Oops. But not as big an oops as what happened next: Check your staging, boys and girls! Make sure the launch clamps release all at the same time instead of one rogue clamp detaching with the booster separation stage. Not the first time that particular issue has cropped up, but the first time I haven't noticed it until too late. Let's try that again... Much better! Docking to a target that has no control and is ever-so-slightly spinning isn't easy, but the crew got there in the end and took up residence in their new home for a month or so. Back to the Moon and Green Huckleberry 4 is launched to become one of two active rovers on the lunar surface (the first two are now officially dead due to chronic power shortages) and pick up a nice contract along the way. The flight to the Moon went fine, but the landing site is a) way out of alignment with the rover's orbit and b) in the dark, so landing will have to wait. On the other hand, Blue Violin 5 has both daylight and orbital alignment, so lifts off from its crater and heads back to orbit. The samples are transferred over to the return capsule, which quickly plots a course back to Earth leaving the lander in orbit to collect what scant science remains there. The rest was routine. Final scores for this report: Coming soon*: Rover to Moon, station crew to Earth and the final evolution of the Green Banana. * No, really!

When landing, it’s better to set the SAS to surface radial out for the final descent as this will point straight up; following retrograde can cause a lot of wobbling at slow speeds which can cause landers to tip over and/or crash.

Moon landing using a two-launch system- the crew capsule and lander go up separately for a lunar orbit rendezvous before landing. All is well, the lander sets down gently on the surface, time to do the EVA and plant the flag- Wha-? WHY IS THE LANDER CAN EMPTY!?!? F9

No, you don’t waste fuel on a plane change or a weird radial burn, you do a prograde burn at the Jool periapsis to boost the apoapsis beyond Tylo’s orbit so it falls back straight into its SOI at the descending node; Tylo’s gravity would take care of the rest.

This looks better than my quick and dirty hack, use this instead.

A ModuleManager patch is your best bet. Try something like this: Adjust the cost and maxThrust numbers to suit what you want, write your own title and description if it works. You'll need to put this in a .cfg file inside KSP/GameData and install ModuleManager (which you almost certainly have already). *Note- I haven't tested the above at all so it may or may not work.

The final launch before Temerity departs is carrying the two crew for the mission: Meg and Gerdorf. Or Meg'n'Ger as I'll probably be calling them from now on. Docking was easy, but took a really long time due to the 4FPS and chronic slowness that ensued. It was only after the crew had moved over to Temerity and their pod undocked that I realised I had forgotten a probe core, so the pod is now uncontrollable. Which is an issue, since it's supposed to be their ride home again once their mission is complete. Oops. Meanwhile, a dead stage falls out of orbit... It got most of the way to the ground before the engines suddenly overheated and exploded, followed by most of the rest of it. What was left (a fairing base, decoupler and a QBE probe core) fell to the ground in the desert mountains and were destroyed on impact. I might launch one final rocket to add a tiny probe to the return pod so it can be controlled, but other than that Temerity is ready to go. Too bad it'll take almost half an hour to make the burn to the Mun- without the massive time slowdown from having so many parts.

If you're willing to expand "runway" to include "any launch site where the plane can be recovered with some vaguely flat ground around it to land on" then you have two options: In KSP 1.12, the nearest launch site is Glacier Lake- it's one of the new sites added in 1.12 and so you won't see it on the map unless you find it first. If you have the Making History DLC, there's also Woomerang launch site which is quite a bit further south in the same direction: In both cases, fly directly away from the KSC and you're going in roughly the right direction. Glacier Lake can be found pretty easily if you look for the lake that's touching the ice caps (hence the name) while Woomerang has a ridge of mountains running east-west to its south. 2D map of Kerbin with Glacier Lake and Woomerang marked: The next nearest launch site is probably the (hidden) Cove launchpad, but that's practically on the KSC's doorstep and probably out of range.

Without any specifics it's very hard to give you any concrete answers. Screenshots of your rocket in the VAB with (MechJeb!) delta-V displayed and a link to said video would help the most. There could be a number of reasons why you're getting less delta-V than the video: Different versions of KSP/RO/related mods like RealFuels. Not so long ago some additional realism was added in the form of engine residuals- fuel in the tanks that the engines can't use- which means you'll lose a little bit of burn time when acceleration is greatest and so has a disproportionate impact on delta-V. Other variations exist between different versions of mods and even between versions of KSP. Vacuum versus surface delta-V. Atmospheric delta-V is always lower because the air gets in the way of the rocket exhaust, reducing ISP and thrust; you might be looking at surface delta-V whereas in the video it's showing vacuum delta-V. Different engine configs. Most engines in RO have more than one available config to reflect upgrades and improvements to the engines made over time. If you're using the first available config for the engine but the video is using an upgraded one with better stats, that could explain the lack of delta-V. Different fuel tanks. There's more than one type of fuel tank in RO and they can make a huge difference to delta-V: balloon tanks are the lightest and have the highest mass fraction (ratio of wet:dry mass) so give you the most delta-V, then integral structure tanks, then separate structure tanks, then service module tanks; this is further complicated by the different materials that can be used for each tank type -some of the best separate structure tanks will outperform early integral tanks- and by tank pressurisation for pressure-fed engines such as the AJ-10 which adds a lot of dry mass. Make sure you're using the proper tanks. Different propellants and ratios. The RD-0105, RD-58, F-1, LR-89 and Merlin all use kerosene and liquid oxygen as propellants, but the proportions of kerosene and liquid oxygen can vary considerably; the RD-107/108 run on kerosene, liquid oxygen and HTP but they use slightly different propellant mixes even though they're almost identical. Make sure you've got the right mix for your specific engine or you'll be carrying fuel (or oxidiser) that your engine can't use, adding to the "dry" mass since it isn't burnt and so reducing delta-V.

In order to take a surface sample, you need: One (1) Kerbal (hint: it's called Kerbal Space Program for a reason ); A level 2 Astronaut Complex (to allow EVAs)*; A level 2 Research and Development (to allow surface samples to be taken)*. *Note- these only apply in Career mode, not Science or Sandbox modes where all buildings are level 3 by default. Get your Kerbal, send them out on an EVA and scoop up a sample. You can do it literally anywhere, as long as you're on solid ground or water, but each Kerbal can only hold one sample at a time. Try it out on the launchpad with a single pod with a Kerbal in it.

That sounds more like a phantom force than a problem with Principia. If you use the 'set orbit' cheat and position an identical probe in a similar orbit, does its orbit also change? If you save and reload, does the orbit keep changing? I'm not sure how much visibility this post will get here, but if you go to the RO/RP-1 discord server there's a dedicated channel for Principia-related problems and you're much more likely to get help there. https://discord.gg/6EFMFsnT

Which service bays are you referring to, the stock ones? There’s a big difference between a service bay and a service module, the latter of which will hold supplies etc. The Kerbalism config engine is only meant to be used in the VAB or SPH to get the right ratios of food/water/oxygen or liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen for crew and fuel cells respectively. If you’re using fuel cells, though, you’ll have a nearly-continuous supply of water and if you have a lox-to-gox converter then you’ll have a supply of oxygen too, so use the config engine as a guide but pack loess water and oxygen than it gives you. The Kerbalism window should be on the (stock) toolbar on the bottom right of the screen in the VAB/SPH. There are two Kerbalism buttons- one opens the vessel information which gives you the estimated time your power and supplies will last in the VAB and gives you control over science experiments and processes in flight, while the other shows all science experiments and which ones you’ve completed where, which can be filtered to only include the experiments on the current vessel to show if you’ve already completed them or where there’s some science left to be gained. They should be right beside the stock message button, both have an ECG (wiggly line) and either a transmitter dish or (I think) a science symbol . Screenshots would help.

I forgot one of the golden rules of KSP, with predictable results: Always- ALWAYS!- check your staging. Stupid launch clamp was one stage up from where it should have been, so the rocket was stuck on the ground until the next stage fired and detached the boosters at the same time. Whoops.

Making a geostationary contract satellite wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be- a three-stage 350 ton rocket is enough to put 2000 units of payload into GEO orbit with plenty of fuel left to get to a specific longitude. With that design completed, it's time for some real missions as 1967 begins with a Mars transfer window. Montage! Green Kiwi 1: The second stage engine was swapped from an RD-0110 to an RD-0213 which provides a lot more thrust, something that future missions using the three-stage setup will copy. I had to angle the rover so that the skycrane wouldn't block the solar panel, but it seems to be working well enough. Blue Guitar 1: Staggered staging on the solid boosters didn't work, the second trio were still burning when the first stage ran out of fuel and had to be dumped. The transfer burn took about ten minutes in total and required a significant amount of off-plane burning, which required a significant course correction burn to get on course for Mars. I may have to drop the landers early and hope they can survive a direct descent. Green Kiwi 2: Launching later in the transfer window than its sibling, this mission will take a slower but lower-energy route that should leave it more fuel to slow down before hitting the atmosphere. Only requires a small course correction, unlike the other Mars-bound missions today. Blue Guitar 2: The transfer window was more favourable for this Blue Guitar, resulting in more fuel remaining and a smaller course correction to compensate for the looong transfer burn. And following close behind all those was Blue Mandolin Vesta. No fancy multiple probes on this one, just a single orbiter that should make it to low Vesta orbit and transmit a whole heap of science. In between all the launches, Green Bananas 2 and 3 had their own course correction burns to get on course for low flybys of Mercury. Both probes will arrive within a few days of each other and scrape up a lot of science. I think I might try to get a second flyby with one of them to increase the science gains, though it might be difficult to do so. Coming soon: With the interplanetary stuff out of the way for a little while, it's time to focus on crewed missions again: an Earth orbit space station and a second crewed Moon landing. Better get those astronauts trained up again...

You’ve fallen for the trap of the stock resource display- just because it seems to suggest there’s ore there, doesn’t mean there actually is. You need to increase the cutoff to at least 50% to filter out the dross and be left with the real hotspots. Ore is biome dependent, so find a biome with good concentrations and all the locations of that biome will have similar levels.

If you have RCS on the shuttle, use that to move the shuttle away from the satellite; alternatively use the satellite’s propulsion system (you do have one, right?) to give a brief impulse away from the shuttle. Alternatively, mount the satellite on a decoupler that’s angled so that when it decouples the satellite gets thrown out of the shuttle payload bay with the decoupling force.

The Kerbol system is too similar to Sol system, as are a significant number of planet pack mods. Most exoplanetary systems found so far look nothing like our solar system, yet the pattern of small to medium rocky planets near the star, gas giants further out and some random icy lumps at the outer edge is almost ubiquitous in KSP. In trying to make the Kerbol system more like Sol system for familiarity’s sake, I think a great opportunity was lost to make it something more unique and interesting.