king of nowhere

My exploration of the whirligig world planetary pack reached the first interplanetary destination: the superearth Valyr, and its main moon Oshan Here the mothership Boundless is about to aerocapture on Oshan. Oshan is very similar to Duna on size, gravity and atmosphere. Valyr is the blue planet behind. I gave Boundless enhanced aerobraking capabilities (nose cargo bays enclosing the engines and solar panels retractable inside cargo bays for thermal resistance, thermal shield used as parachutes for increased drag) because whirligig world has a lot of atmospheric bodies that can be used. Following this piece of debris gave me the only close pictures of ohsan so far. it's dominated by ice plains (or seas?) with continents emerging from it. A great sunset as the lander Phoenix (twin of the one I used on Derbin a week ago) is aerobraking on Valyr Valyr is a superearth, some 25% bigger than Eve. It's kept warm by greenhouse effect, and it's mostly covered by oceans, with scattered islands. A bit like Laythe, but with triple gravity Phoenix splash-landed, and found evidence of life on the planet. Apparently, you can play golf underwater Follows a bunch of images of flying over a few mountain islands, spoilered for brevity

For a while I had the feeling that when I pitch up, it was less responsive, But now I noticed, it's really like that In this first image, I am pitching up. You can see in the box in the bottom left corner, the gauge for pitch is barely moving; the rover is applying a lot less torque than it could. Here instead I am pitching down, and it works normally. Yaw and roll work normally. I tried going in space, it still malfunctions. i tried to launch a new copy of the rover, it works normally. I verified by spinning around in space, the effect is real. pitching up is noticeably slower than pitching down. So, there is some kind of bug where my rover is just not applying its full torque on the reaction wheels when turning in one specific direction. And it's a bug that happened at some point in time. anyone has any idea what it could be, how it could have happened, and if I can fix it somehow (short of getting a new rover)? thanks

I have no idea how that mod works. would docking port works? decouplers? parts that are not tanks? i think you just have to experiment.

though only @JacobJHC can give a final answer, if those are the only modded parts you used you should be fine.

I suspect you need to hit f4. it highlights close targets, if it's toggled off you won't see the ship

I do not know mods changing the exhaust, but in any case it would be a lot easier for someone else to answer if you post a list of mods you're using and some pictures of the exhaust

Landed on derbin (whirligig worlds) and flew a plane around the place. wonderful! I found a continental shelf with a massive cliff to provide better viewing opportunities, I included a mk2 module facing downwards to look at the surface i also included a cupola on the back of the plane. As I built this vehicle a couple months ago, I don't remember if I intentionally mounted it upside-down to get a better view of the terrain, or if it was just a mistake. I also forgot the exact sequence of dropping the thermal shields during reentry, which forced me to find it again by trial and error. the dot in the center is the planet mesbin. I can definitely recommend the whirligig world planetary pack, and bringing a plane to derbin. make it a fast one, though, because derbin is huge.

the main thing to realize is that bodies in higher orbit move more slowly, and you can therefore changing your orbital time by making your orbit higher or lower. so, you have your two ships in orbits touching each other. the one in the llower orbit will move faster, so it will gradually catch up with the other. at some point it will overtake the other entirely; then you will need to raise its orbit to slow it down. or you can lower orbit for the ship in a faster orbit. in both cases you should see the markers converge and overlap. be careful with the acceleration, a single m/s will throw you off by many km. sometimes it's better to manually reduce an engine's power.

that time I reached the green monolith on gilly I never could exceed 4 m/s. even then, I was just bouncing and not really driving. then again, I had a rover that was optimized as multipurpose vehicle, and not purely to drive. but reaching 10 m/s on gilly seem weird. I did get those speeds on wheels on ovok, which is roughly the same size, but ovok is very flat. and when I got to 10 m/s, at the first jump I covered maybe a 10th of the planet before landing.

what do you mean your craft does not show signs of movement? did you actually execute the maneuver? it does not matter whether the line is gold or purple, the game just uses different colors.

while only the challenge keeper can give an official answer, I had a similar problem three years ago and the answer was no. here pasting the quote so you can look up the whole conversation if you want on the plus side, I put three cargo bays lined up, and wrote that I'd pretend it was a single, longer cargo bay. so the rtgs would occupy one and a bit of a second. that was deemed acceptable

kerbnet does not seem to be functional. whenever i try to open it, i get this (notice that there is connection to ksc)

I'm having a nerdgasm just by reading some of those names. Exotic nuclear propulsion experimental electrostatic thrusters microwave power transmission awesome

whether the line is gold or purple makes no difference, the game just uses different colors every time you change system or reference. I can't understand what you mean by "craft shows no sign of movement". where was your craft?

Part 17: The north pole of Tal Poles always have interesting terrain.

autostruts is pretty much the only thing I can think of

the golden line is your trajectory inside mun's sphere of influence. the purple line is your trajectory in kerbin's orbit. so if you execute the maneuver you will go on the golden track, up until the circle - that's where you will escape mun's gravity and be back in kerbin's gravity (in case you don't know, the game considers the gravity of one celestial body at the time, for simplicity of calculations). after you escape mun and end up on the purple track, you will stay in that orbit - until eventually you'll cross mun again, but that's a different issue. your maneuver is not working because it's poorly made. why do you have a 222 m/s radial component? there are times when you make radial maneuvers, but it's very rare. most of the times you'll only pull a few m/s radial as course correction. try a 280 m/s prograde maneuver in that same spot, and you should return to kerbin. if it does not work, try to move the node a bit. mun is in a high orbit around kerbin, and while you are orbiting mun you are also in such a high orbit. to return to kerbin you want to lower periapsis into the atmosphere, so you can start aerobraking. and to do so, you need to burn retrograde. and it's exactly what you do. except that your frame of reference is mun, not kerbin, and you will get an additional deviation by mun's gravity, and so there are some changes to take that into account. basically, you want to exit behind mun - that will mean you're slower than mun, so your orbit will get lower. what you are apparently trying to do with your maneuver instead is to aim straight at kerbin - of course it does not work, because you are also rotating around kerbin at the same time. in fact, if you read the full instructions shown in your screenshot, the advice is better worded. it says drag the prograde handle until you have an escape trajectory. now move the node and watch as kerbin's periapsis changes. if you can't get less than 2000 km, then increase the burn - more prograde, not radial - and move the node again. incidentallly,, if you miss your mun return and end up in kerbin orbit, it's not a big deal; you can just make a new periapsis lowering maneuver one in kerbin's orbit. it's going to be less efficient, though

Part 16: Let me out of this Talhole! Dancing Porcupine descends into the Talhole. The mouth of the Talhole seen from inside. Unlike other holes, it's almost perfectly rectangular

does a 7000 ton mothership landing somewhere and spending some 10 years slowly refueling counts? you misunderstood. you are not supposed to go interstellar.

pitching or yawing is only a matter of how your rocket is rotated on its axis. completely irrelevant. just aim for 90 degrees. it's not different from orbiting kerbin. what do you do when orbiting kerbin? as soon as atmosphere is no longer a concern, you aim 90 degrees. unless you want a polar or retrograde orbit, but let's not make confusion. on mun is the same, except that there is no atmosphere and so you can go for a much steeper gravity turn. also, with the lower gravity you need a lot less speed to orbit. incidentally, as long as you pick up horizontal speed, any direction will give you an orbit. 90 degrees is just more convenient for inclination

Oh, one last bit; since a vessel you're not controlling is set in his solar orientation, the easiest way to travel a long time is to orient your vessel properly (recommended ways include waiting a solar storm and turning it around until radiation level becomes nominal), then go in the tracking station and time warp from there. If I recall correctly, this avoids the bug. I ran four grand tours with kerbalism - two of which with expanded planetary packs - and I wrote extensive reports; they probably contain the most detailed informations on how to deal with kerbalism radiations - and other issues - available anywhere on the planet. I'd refer to those, unfortunately the information is scattered around descriptions of interplanetary transfers, tracking of life support resources, and sightseeing

VERY effective. even a small part, like a 2.5 m battery, on top of a crew cabin will completely negate solar storm radiations if the ship is properly oriented. however, there are a few important caveats: - if the ship has multiple crew modules (anything with a living space, including greenhouses), the game takes an average of all of them. it doesn't matter if you keep all your crew in a single compartment, and that is shielded. the game takes the average. - unless you completely surround the crew pod with other stuff, you have to point the ship in the right direction to keep it shielded. if you leave the ship, it will just save the last orientation; but if you stay with it, it will slowly change over time, causing your crew to be irradiated again. So, prepare yourself for a slow interplanetary trip where you have to stop and fix orientation (and possibly run repairs) every once in a while - also, this only works for solar storms. It has no effect on radiation belts (for those, shielding is the only real option) and background level (that one can be covered by an active shield, or a RDU running full time). - finally, importantly, this effect is bugged. at high time warp, the game does not register your ship as shielded even though it is. I noticed this behavior with my DREAM BIG ship, where at x1000 warp I was perfectly fine, but if I warped faster I would get radiations again. that time, I just slowed down at every storm, and took many hours for a duna-jool transfer. later, with longer missions, I just set shielding efficiency at 100% when taking interplanetary trips, making all radiation problems moot (since I always used max shielding). I brought shielding efficiency to the default level when approaching planets. All in all, you may be better off just deactivating solar storms in the first place.

One mistake in the map: nissee is indicated as having a relatively large, vall-like deltaV to orbit, when in truth it's smaller than minmus. it should be 120 m/s or so

you can put max shielding in all parts, and increase shielding efficiency in the difficulty options. you put it to 100%, and radiations won't affect you at all. it will cost some extra mass, but it's reasonable.

This is actually from a few weeks back, but I just realized its significance At first glance, it looks just like a rover - on a world with a yellowish texture that some may recognize as Tal, from the OPM planet pack. A more accurate look will notice a helmet under the rover, almost covered by the trusses. It's Bill being run over by the rover. Well, I just realized it's probably the very first instance of a car accident on Tal. I don't know how many people visited the place, but I'd bet not many brought a large rover, and probably nobody tried to jump over it with a jetpack while the rover was moving and ended up being trampled instead. A poor pedestrian goes all the way to the outer system to avoid car traffic, and ends up being run over anyway.