Vezbot

Hopefully the suit had good insulation for the kerbal to swim, otherwise it was probably similar to being slow cooked in a crockpot.

Having a close approach with an asteroid, about 2 billion meters from the sun, where the orbits intersect perpendicularly. The relative velocity was 20 km/sec, I knew I wouldn't be able to cancel that velocity. To spare years of being stranded close to the sun, I put the poor kerbal out of her misery by making the close approach 0 meters, where the ship would slam into the class D asteroid and vaporize in one frame. Glorious, but at the same time, PTSD inducing. I still get flashbacks of the kerbal's face stretched into a scream as the asteroid appears out of the clear blue and everything explodes.

I made a poor kerbal swim 20 km through a sea of Explodium on Eve and then walk 40 km to a rover to fix it's wheels and join the expedition. I put something against the left joystick went to sleep and left the game on overnight, and 2x phys warp was the fastest stable warp when making the kerbal swim. Swimming in liquid fuel heated to 150 C in an astronaut suit while the only thing keeping it from combusting is the lack of breathable air is something I wouldn't recommend doing. Don't bring your kerbals the suffering I brought mine and make sure to bring an engineer when going on a mission.

Thanks for the tips, I managed to get the rover to Eve's surface but I went with the harder way to do it, just clipping 30 tons of parts behind the inflatable shield. That was before I saw this post, so I had some stability issues and sent up another rocket to refuel just to get to Eve. I will make the double inflatable shield version 2 of the Eve rover. I appreciate the suggestions everyone! Also see my recent post on What did you do today topic for more details on the painstaking mission.

Today I sent a Saurus VI rocket carrying a rover modified for better Eve atmospheric entry, based off of my previous posts, I brought the center of mass right behind the inflatable heat shield. In fact the amount of weight in ore tanks were about 7-8x heavier than the rover itself, but it was worth it in the end. If I completed this mission successfully I would test another type of rover this time without the extra mass, but another heat shield in the back. So the mission started mostly smoothly, with the exception of the whole craft shaking back and forth about 5 degrees, then I successfully put the craft into orbit. I realized I don't have enough fuel to make the trip to Eve, (the rover weighed only 4 tons, with the CoM ore tanks attached and various other similarly sized parts, it weighed 30 tons. I sent up a Saurus VI rocket carrying an older version of my nuclear ion powered RADKOR flyer that had about 9k delta V without docking to anything. I sent it up to rendevous with the rocket/eve rover, and it docked. But due to the weight of the whole craft, the delta V for the ion flyer went from 9k to 500 m/s. The burn also was extremely intermittent and slow, so I undocked the flyer and used the rocket fuel to bring the orbit to 2-3 million meters above Kerbin. I sent another Saurus VI rocket with a claw to rendevous with the craft and refilled the fuel tanks, giving the rocket an extra 1500 m/s, and I only needed 1100 m/s to make the burn. So I made the manuever and did the burn but the craft wasn't as stable (very wobbly actually) as I thought, I did the burn at 33% thrust instead. I ended up having to correct the orbit because it wasn't the one that was in the manuever and I finished the burn with 75 m/s to spare. I knew it would be infeasible to get the orbit right in Eve's SOI after the craft travels 75% of the distance there so I spent about 30 m/s to lower the orbit to about 62 km right after I left Kerbin's SOI, 28 km below the top of Eve's atmosphere, enough to get a capture with a 450 km apoapsis. Before I went through the atmosphere to try and get a capture, I undocked the rover from the rocket in the retrograde direction, speeding up the rocket speed by 2 m/s and slowing the rovers by 2 m/s (every delta V counts!). I had the pilot kerbal climb out of the capsule and sit in one of the rover seats (the whole rover is guarded by the heat shield up to an angle of 40 degrees from the prograde direction, so having the heat shield stay within 40 degrees of prograde in all directions is crucial to keep the rover intact and not exposed to Eve's atmosphere. So the rocket and craft made their descent into the atmosphere, I kept control of the rover by pointing the joystick up, which pilots the heat shield towards prograde as I heard the rocket that was undocked explode in the background. The capture was successful and I prepared to make another descent, not from 4700 m/s but 3200 m/s, so I did a ballistic trajectory around the planet before sinking into the atmosphere again, below 70 km the heat shield was pitching upwards at 10 degrees from prograde (good thing I have the center of mass directly behind the heat shield or it would be flipped over.), soon enough the rover was travelling below 3 km/s and below 60 km but the rover was pitching up to 20 degrees, finally at 48 km and 2000 m/s, I guess it was max Q for the descent, the rover pitched upwards at 33 degrees from prograde, dangerously close to exposing parts of the rover but the craft slowed down enough. At 44 km, the craft was travelling below 500 m/s and I decided to open the drogue chute, so the rover always remains above the extremely heavy heat shield. At 10 km above the surface Im travelling 100 m/s so I decouple the heat shield. The rover falls faster than the heat shield and hits it before going below it, but no parts are damaged luckily. I open the rest of the parachutes at 5 km and the rover is at an upright position and floats gently to the ground. I hear the heat shield explode at about 2 km above the ground, but fortunately it's not directly below me, where I will be landing. The rover is floating down at a speed of 9 m/s, and once it lands, nothing explodes but the front wheels are damaged. There is a nearby craft stuck on the surface with an engineer kerbal and now I'm walking the kerbal 25 km to repair the rover wheels. Sometimes these missions can be a huge hassle lol. Eve descent Floating down! Virfrod Kerman enjoying the the view.

United Airlines be like:

When I first played, I chose sandbox as my first gamemode (big surprise). My first rocket, I can barely remember, it was in 2017. But it had a plane cockpit, it was mounted on top of a structural fuselage, which was in the structural section, not the fuel section so it had no fuel. I didn't put an engine on it, or wheels, or any power or batteries for that matter. So when I launched it, it didn't do anything, and then it fell over and the fuselage exploded. I named it, "The Needle", and after the flight I changed the description to "it doesn't do anything". Then I moved on, my first attempt at flight was hilariously bad. Good times.

Thanks.

Years after the Tiny But Mighty Crew docked to a class B asteroid was thrown out of Kerbin's SOI due to the Mun, I decided last night to pilot the craft back to Kerbin, and then low Munar orbit where the asteroid will stay permanently. It is also a good place to rotate my crew and get the craft to finally release it's grip on the space rock. The orbit was slightly different than Kerbins and a bit inclined, but doable. First I matched the orbits and put it slightly lower than Kerbins. Then I time warped and watched the faster craft, once behind the planet by about 90 degrees, close in and get closer. When it came within half a billion meters to the planet, 250 Million M closer to the sun + 250 million M behind the planet, I pointed the both the asteroid and the craft prograde and ignited the ion engine.(which normally has a delta V of 15000 meters a second with the RADKOR craft version 1, the mass of the asteroid brought the DV to 2000 m a sec). Definitely doable, even if the burns are long. After the prograde burn was completed, I went from 1200 m/s to about 900 m/s, but the orbit was now in Kerbin's SOI. In fact, the relative velocity to Kerbin was so low, that I didn't have to do much to actually get captured. Only 45 m/s relative velocity. Soon after I had adjusted for a Mun encounter, but the approach was at a 90 degree angle if you compared the trajectories. Because of this, I needed to get rid of 500 m/s and I was in a retrograde trajectory in the Mun SOI. After a painful capture and inclination change. I started to lower the orbit and finished with 200 m/s left. It was good enough for me to release the crafts claw on the asteroid and make their way down to an area on the Mun where they can join another crew to head back to Kerbin. Sorry if my posts have been long lately, but I have been more active on my PS4 with KSP and seeking ambitious and fun missions to do.

-72 (-)

Thank you for listing these options, I will find out where the center of mass and center of drag are in the vab, for the rover module only. I could try putting detachable ore tanks behind the heat shield radially attached to the rover and another 10 m heat shield pointed in the opposite direction in the back?

Pointing in the same direction? Or opposite directions?

So I have an issue with landing a rover on Eve. There are a bunch of stranded kerbals on the surface of Eve, basically anything that I land on Eve is doomed in that purple bottomless pit where nothing can return from, because I have no crafts currently suitable to lift kerbals to Eve orbit. I decided to build a rover to mount on top of the Saurus VI rocket to send to Eve. So far the construction went well, or so I thought. When the rover reached Eve, I quickly noticed after detaching the rover from the main ship to pilot down to the kerbals, that I couldn't do my deorbit burn with the atomic engine. I put a decoupler between the engine and the main body of the rover, and the main body was a fuel tank. I didn't run a fuel line to the atomic engine so I couldn't fire the engine, and it would have been heavy on the front, due to the center of mass mainly balanced by the atomic engine and the heat shield that was supposed to decouple after a successful descent. I also noticed after detaching the atomic engine, the structure connecting the left wheels came off. So the rover lost half it's wheels. I gave up and went with it, I made my descent with the defunct atomic engine attached to the back of the rover and after burning off all the orbital velocity at 62 km above the ground, the rover altitude dipped to 50 km, where the aerodynamic forces pushed the rover away from facing the prograde direction. This caused the heat shield to no longer be in the front and exposed the rover to the heat and blew it up. I tried it over and over again to no success. I closed the game and went to bed. The next time I got on I kept the rover in orbit and made it into a space station. Then I redesigned my much bigger Mun rover which is a hundred times more stable and reliable then the rover I sent to Eve previously. This is when I used the 10 meter heat shield for the first time. I connected the heat shield to the front of the rover and sent it to Eve at the next Eve launch window. This time there were no design flaws and I thought it would survive entry. But the problem with aerodynamics repeated, this time the heat shield is pushed out of the prograde direction at much higher altitudes, anywhere below 70 km. This problem persisted just like last time, and the heat shield always moves and then turns, exposing and destroying everything behind it. The heat shield is 10 meters wide and the one previously is 3.5 meters wide, but none of the heat shields remain stable when crossing a certain point in eves atmosphere. 3.5 meter turns away from prograde at <60 km 10 meter heat shield turns from prograde at <70 km, destroying the craft. And both crafts need to drop below 45 km to slow down enough for thermal issues to no longer be a problem. Please help.

To think that the kerbal that was rescued after 10 years stranded in orbit survived the mission rather than the trained pilot that launched from the KSC, lol

Warning: this will be a long story, it describes a Mun landing Odyssey of two kerbals, and a robotic Mun lander. I created a new lander prototype for my Mun lander city, the lander is controlled by probe core but it has a habitation module that can house 3 kerboanuts. The reason its a Mun lander city is because I have a ton of different landers in a 2 km area of each other, and I sent a rover that docks with landers and transfers fuel between them, also its good for crew rotation, especially with the geriatric kerbals who spent 200 years on the Mun and just want to end their mission and get home on another fancy new lander. I started the mission with Sidnard Kerman to test the utility crew module, and the ship is fully remote controlled with no command pod to prevent two control points from interfering with each other. The plan was to send Sidnard to Mun orbit and undock with the robot lander and have it land near the other Mun landers. What made the mission more interesting is that when the rocket carrying the lander reached orbit, it was only 15 km away from a nearby stranded astronaut named Jeblong Kerman. Since rescue missions don't happen often, I rendevoused with the poor kerbal and let him in, then the rocket did the transfer burn to the Mun and then they parked in low Mun orbit. I changed the plans up and Sidnard stayed in the ship and Jeblong went down to the Mun with the lander. This is when I discovered how many issues there were with the landing part of the mission, unfortunately no amount of quickloads would save Jeblong from the horrible landing gear and how it would tip over every time, and how there was no rcs to correct it and have it point radial out. I gave up and it bounced off the surface and crashed on its side, losing both xl solar panels in the process. After this happened, Jeblong got out of the doomed lander and flew 1 km to another one. Once the ship passed above in orbit, Jeblong's new lander took off. The lander only had 700 m/s, enough to get into orbit but not enough for me to rendevous with precision, after burning all the fuel the ship was travelling at 400 m/s in the direction of the orbiting ship, I knew it wasn't enough so I got the kerbal out and flew him the rest of the way. I watched as the lander went down into the Mun and exploded as I got Jeblong into the cabin. The trip back was uneventful and the ship decoupled to the point where it was only a capsule with retro srb rockets and parachutes. The ship touched down in some mountains and landed safely. I went into the map however to see stuff passing overhead and then the camera broke, it was fixed by me panicking and putting the capsule into a spin, destroying every part but the capsule and then the kraken took over. I phys warped to x4 but it only spun faster. I tried to get Sidnard out but he was instantly killed, I knew the kraken was gonna destroy the capsule, but the capsule hit the ground at an angle where it slowed down the spin, then I turned on SAS and turned on radial out to have it stuck pointed to the sky and it slowed down all the way this time. Overall it was a fun mission and I got more than I expected even if the initial mission was a failure and the original pilot was killed. TL:DR: I launch a lander mission to the Mun but constant detours lead to the destruction of the lander and the death of the pilot kerbonaut on the way back.

Launching straight up to the Moon never works due to the arcing of your orbit compared to the Muns, and the relative velocity will the the orbital velocity of the Mun going on it's path. The problem with launching straight up is that the Moon is a long distance away from you, and having the rocket pointed where the Mun is won't do much in terms of orbital velocity, and distance. If you point at the Mun and launch straight up the Moon will have moved farther in it's orbit, and you will be in empty space in the Mun's orbital path. To get launching straight up at the Mun, you need to point towards where the Mun would be, nullifying the going straight to the Mun because you will create an orbit as you make your burn and start your ascension regardless. Physics will never allow burning straight towards the Mun. If I missed anything or explained improperly I'm open to a discussion. Have a good day!

Wow that's far from Kerbol, I haven't played KSP in a while but are comets part of the KSP add-ons? Seems like it would make for a good mission to practice in sandbox. haven't done any deep space missions yet, but I did a fairly ambitious mission trying to dock with a class E asteroid in an inclined, eccentric and extremely close to the sun orbit once. I still have flashbacks from trying to rendevous and failing cause the relative velocity was 20 km/sec.

Well, thanks for the advice, I will be sure to utilize those techniques next time. I may have to split the utility section of Cygnus Station into 2-3 pieces because I believe the problem revolves mainly around the fact the payload nearly the same size as the rocket itself. My saurus VI ship height is 50 meters by itself and the utility section of the space station is 30 meters tall. The first two pieces were only 10 meters in height and the rendevous was perfect, and I was going to make the utility section the final section before I add the habitation modules on the sides. After all that I just raised the space station orbit to 350km and I will probably design a new rocket that is scaled up from my previous one, so the rocket size will be significantly bigger than the payload itself this time, but I think a fairing will cover the the station piece, it isn't too big. Also the rcs flyer that detaches from the station and brings the next piece in to dock sounds pretty cool. I might design something like that and attach it to the station as well.

Yeah, the game can be difficult at times. Even 2 years later after I started I find myself making mistakes like launching unstable sections of a space station not secured to the rocket so during the ascent the whole thing is wobbling back and forth at angles of 10 degrees from straight up. After several orbits I'm doing a rendevous correction burn to set up a rendevous of 34 km, Then I realize the command pods in the utility group in the vab actually have no controls at all so when I detach the utility section of Station Cygnus, I cant do anything at all, no rcs, nothing which means I can't dock with it with the rest of the space station. Set me back 2 hours and I ended up de-orbiting the 30 meter long space station section with Jeb and 4 others before finally crashing the pod with the 4 kerbals face down because my parachutes only reduce the speed to 20 m/s and kill everybody but Jeb.

And he only shows up when you terminate missions, where he will then appear and snatch the souls of that crew

At least it works!

Yeah when the mission control at the KSC picked those three (can't remember their names, haven't looked at it on the tracking station in about 10 years of ingame time) and said they were going to Eve, they thought they meant orbiting Eve. They thought wrong. Sometimes I will spend a couple of hours just walking their pilot around just to explore Eve. Fortunately for them I have planned to send a rover there.