king of nowhere

really nice technical achievement

nonono, absolutely not. if the vessel is on rail, and its rails happen to hit a mountain, the vessel disappear. and it's very annoying because the game does not give any message for it. i speak for direct experience

was just coming to say as @Vanamonde;; it happened to me, I had vessels in a nice low orbit that I thought safe, but there were actually a few peaks on the planet reaching that high, and maybe the orbit was stable for days and days, until at some point the planet rotation managed to align one such peak exactly with my vessel, and I'd find it disappeared. or maybe your vessel is crossing the path of a mooon. if that's not your case, then i have no idea. only times i ever heard of stuff disappearing, it was beccause they hit the ground

slate and ovok are the ones I completed. On Wal I recently crossed the halfway line, but it will still take months. In this continuity I'm planning to also do Hale (again, since I'm already here and it's small and it's got good sightseeing) and eventually Polta. but those will take a while, because I'm still running my main kerbalism rss grand tour, and I just couldn't resist picking up also the speedrun challenge.

eh, this one is an actual, legitimate bug. one we are all aware of. how do you solve it? very simple. you save before any kind of eva construction. you reload if it goes wrong. in that specific case of a rover on minmus, you could try slamming a kerbal with jetpack on the rover in the right way to try to put the rover back into the correct position. if all fails, by pressing alt-f12 you open a cheat menu that can be used to cheat, but it is most often used for testing (for example, you test a tylo lander directly on tylo without having to go all the way there, then reload the game) and for bug fixes. like, getting a new vehicle in place if the old one gets destroied by a bug. even most challenges consider this to not be cheating. P.S. driving that rover on minmus is going to be very hard, and not because of friction or bugs, but because of gravity. gravity is so low, you slide on the ground because there is little force pushing you downward, and at the first obstacle you jump and tumble. there are three ways to drive on low gravity bodies: 1) use reaction wheels. make sure to assign them different commands from the rover wheels, or assign a key to enable/disable them as needed; use those reaction wheels to keep your rover pointing the right way. if you jump it's no problem, you can control your attitude and always land on your feet. it's the easiest way, but it's not realistic - ksp reaction wheels are overpowered and working on magic - so you may not like it. you may also use rcs for the purpose, but you're going to run out of propellant eventually 2) make sure your rover can survive tumbling, and that it can push itself back into an upright position. the most common way to "fortify" your rover is by putting landing struts on the roof. to pull yourself back into an upright position, you can use a robotic arm (with the breaking ground expansion), or an engine, or reaction wheels. 3) drive very, very slowly. like, 3 m/s tops. that's the most realistic option, it's what actual astronauts would actually do on such a mission. but it is very, very boring.

the most likely option is staging. check if your staging sequence is such that it decouples the payload on launch. alternatively, it may have a weak connection that breaks easily. in this case, autostruts may help

aww, it seems like a worthy challenge. i'd like to participate, but it would take weeks, and my ksp schedule is full

I accidentally made an Ovok circumnavigation here Basically, I was going to Polta for a circumnagivation there, I stopped for refueling on Ovok, and I thought, since I'm there I may as well. I propose, since adding a new leaderboard for all modded planets would be highly impractical, to simply add another category, like "modded planet circumnavigators", or maybe "hexoplanet circumnavigators". My OPM submissions could go there. My Wal circumnavigation is still halfway. Wal is harsh, unforgiving, and -worst of all - monotonous and boring.

Part 2: The rover that went to circumnavigate Polta and ended up circumnavigating Ovok instead Since I'm already there with a rover, and I need to get to another biome for refueling, and this moon is so small, I decided I may as well run an Elcano on Ovok too.

Part 1: Pit stop amid the rings of Sarnus Dancing Porcupine doesn't have enough fuel to reach Polta in one go, so I decide to stop for refueling in the tiny moonlets of Sarnus. Turns out, Dancing Porcupine didn't have enough fuel for that either; I had to pull off some tricks to barely manage it. About to land on Ovok

This is going to be my third report of this series, dedicated to rover circumnavigations. What? You've been looking, and there is no second installment? That's true, because my second rover circumnavigation - of Wal - is still halfway. It's going very slowly, because it turns out Wal is a lot uglier than I anticipated. Meanwhile, I got an idea and I wanted to at least start it. The idea was to run a circumnavigation of Polta, another OPM moon of Urlum. Back when I landed there in the A'Tuin mission (chapter 9.5), I really liked Polta. I went as far as calling it my new favourite solid body. So, perfect place to circumnavigate. But I couldn't do it in that mission because it was inside a radiation belt. Here exploring it with the rover I had for that mission, the Horseshoe For the occasion, I also wanted to bring back from retirement my old first rover, the Dancing Porcupine So called for its strut armor devised to protect it from the consequences of reckless driving in low gravity, this rover was my first major accomplishment in this game, and I did drive it for thousands of kilometers - especially in my Jool 5 science challenge. I'm still very fond of this rover, and it still offers a fun driving experience. As I adopted kerbalism to make the game more difficult, I tried to adapt this rover, but I couldn't. Dancing Porcupine is made to be self-sufficient in a long trip. Once you add in the requirements for food, decent housings for the crew, and replaceable spare parts, the whole concept couldn't hold. I would need to couple it with a mothership, but that defies the whole purpose of this rover. Also, Dancing Porcupine relies on its rockets to climb steep inclines, because it has low wheel power; and without the easy ISRU offered by stock, this function just couldn't be sustained. Now I'll get a chance to drive again on that moon I like so much, using this rover I like so much. Or at least, I will get a chance once I finish my current Wal circumnavigation (which will probably get its own report eventually).

i'm not a specific expert in this, but I am an expert in using stuff with many parts. I can tell you than in stock ksp, 1000 parts lag a bit but nothing that a normal pc can't handle. mods and some modded parts can make things worse. in the stock game, my biggest, more complex ship was the navis sideralis neanderthalensis, at 800 parts, made of small modules connected by docking ports. it lagged a bit, and it took several seconds to load in physical range - but nowhere near a minute. conversely, my bigger ships made with kerbalism are in the kilopart range, they take 1 to 5 minutes to load, and they lag heavily, i can only assume life support and chemmical processes require lots of extra calculations. this should give you a good baseline. having 500 parts in physical range is ok, 1000 parts is acceptable, 2000? probably not so much

first, you can make them high quality for 2 ignitions. second, an engineer can service the engines to restore their ignitions and time. this helps with some designs.

yes, reaction wheels are slow, but if you only need to move a few hundred meters they could be the best option. you could also try to have a kerbal in eva push the thing with the jetpack. and yes, it won't be fast, it won''t be comfortable, it won't be pretty. but you are trying to move a rover without wheels by repurposing parts that were not supposed to move a rover; what else could you expect?

check that all conditions are met. maybe the experiment requires a lot of electricity, and you don't have it, and so it goes slower. or maybe it requires some other kind of resource. for example, the stake experiment requires 27 electricity/second. that's a lot, and if you don't have it, it will go slower. it also requires that the crew be exposed to small doses of radiations. the trapped experiment produces over 5000 samples, and if it fills your sample containers, the experiment will stop - and proceed at snail pace while a scientist in a lab slowly processes those samples into actual science, making room for new samples. so check if there are issues like that. if there aren't, then it could be a legitimate bug

depends. that plot is for what transfer? I've seen a lot such artifacts fro transfers to dres and eeloo, so I guess it has to do with inclination and eccentricity. but aside from that, I really have no idea. do notice it is mostly a mathematical artifact. you can make a transfer in that line of inefficiency, at the cost maybe of a small correction manuever. but that plot does not account for that.

actually, being minus gives you chances. because you can drive a rover just with reaction wheels. thanks to the low gravity, your reaction wheels may be enough to lift your vehicle. in this case, you may make it roll to move it.

I don't know about anyone else, but to me manually warping at 10x first, and then activating higher time warp, helps. Saving often and reloading if needed is also the general panacea

Part 9: Make Jupiter small again: the conquest of Io The Cylinder module goes to Jupiter. In this first part, Spider lands on the innermost moon Io. A combintion of high deltaV requirements and radiations turn this into the most difficult landing so far. Stunts I had to pull in this chapter include, but are not limited to: 30 gravity assists, the creation of an entirely new and unplanned vehicle configuration, a 12-hours burn with ion engines, Bill reaching 90% radiation damage twice, recovering a vehicle drifting in the void with fuel exhausted. It took over two years of game time. Flag planting with bug 29: the sun shines through Jupiter 9.1) Going to Jupiter 9.2) False starts 9.3) Fat Man takes the slow route (including a special insert with ALL the 21 flybys) 9.4) Dolphin 2 takes the expensive route 9.5) Exploring Io 9.6) More false starts 9.7) Fat Man takes the expensive route back 9.8) Spider-Dolphin takes the slow route back (including a special insert with ALL the 9 flybys) With this most difficult moon cleared, the rest of the Jupiter system should be explored without too many problems. Bugs compilation updated Broken parts recap

the kerbalism window for a vessel always reports, in the environment section, a voice called "gravioli" - as seen in this screenshot and it always says "nothing here". I've run multiple grand tours, I've literally been everywhere, and I didn't ever notice this voice saying something different. what is that? is it just a joke based on the gravioli detector fluff text mentioning that they are very elusive? every other voice in that windown is something important for a spaceship.

they should atuo-transmit by default. but transmission can be slow. i get the same problem because some experiments accumulate data faster than the antenna can send them

I specifically said landers. yes, my motherships also use nuclear engines and twr 0.1. But landers, I learned through harsh experience (in particular as detailed in my DREAM BIG mission report, part 5, Moho landing) that it's worth sacrificing some deltaV to get a bigger engine with better twr. besides the strict math, it's also easier to drive and more forgiving

make a different rocket, obviously. can't really say without specifics. that's quite a difficult contract to fulfill.

wait. maybe this is your problem. you are an engineer, so you expect things to work exactly like in engineering, you do things your way, and get mad when they don't work? look, there are a tons of bugs with this game (I compiled a list for my latest mission report, and I came up to 28 so far), but most of those you call such, aren't. or they are the innocuous variety that can be avoided easily. let's start from engineering. this game is exceptionally realistic. except, it's still a game. it's still only realistic up to a certain point. there are some acceptable breaks made for convenience, and some for simplicity, and some because this is still a simulator, with all its limitations. So you can't just say "I am an engineer and this thing should work, if it doesn't it's the game's fault". You must still adapt to the game. And before you complain about realism, find me a game that does this kind of simulation better. If you know one, I may play it instead of ksp. in particular, if your craft explodes, you can fix it. it doesn't matter how you think it should work; I successfully made 1500-parts, 50000-tons ships, and while it took a lot of effort, they did not explode in the end. In any case, "three fuel canisters in a series" should never be a problem. if you get wobbling with three canisters, you may be more skilled than I am, because I'd be at a loss on how to replicate such a feat. really, the exploding ships is not really an issue until you start making big stuff - which, as a self-proclaimed new player, you probably are not. as for launching asymmetric crafts, there are ways. here I'm flying a plane with asymmetric thrust, simulating a broken engine and here I'm flying an asymmetric rocket after a booster got hit by debris and exploded, but engine gimbaling is correcting for that, and I completed the launch sucessfully regarding aerodinamics, indeed the aerodinamic model used by the game is not very accurate. probably because it's primarily meant to replicate space rockets. the game was made by a relatively small company, which probably had limited resurces and decided a more realistic aerodinamic model would not worth the effort. anyay, there is a mod that makes aerodinamic more realistic, I don't know its name but if you ask, you can find it. regarding rovers, every surface behaves like ice and that's not particularly realistic, but your traction problems absolutely are. low gravity interferes with driving. low gravity means your rover is not pushed against the ground, so the wheels skid more. and you have less stability, you bounce more and a small bump may send you flying. absolutely normal in low gravity. you accelerate more slowly, and you brake even more slowly. I did drive rovers long distances on every planetary body, and I never had any problem that could not be reasonably pinned to gravity and terrain. mosty, accept that you'll go slower. (EDIT: actually, perhaps rovers were messed up by the latest update. i don't know if the current issues I have are caused by that, or by the mods I'm using) that is not the case. I can get to any planet without any eyeballing and without rcs - there is need for small correction manuevers, but real space missions need those too, so I see no problem here. Summing it up, look at this from an outside perspective. You are a self-proclaimed new player, and you came here stating that the game is all wrong because you can't do X. Then we told you that yes, you can actually do X if you do it in a certain way, and you claim that the game is wrong because it should work like you want. You further reinforce this attitude by claiming that you don't need to learn anything, you already know how things should work and refuse to try it any other way. because you are an engineer. unless you specifically are a senior rocket engineer working for nasa or spacex, i don't know how relevant your engineering experience is. you seem like you want the game to behave like you want all the time, because you are calling "bug" every instance of the game not doing exactly that. I hope you can see this is not making you look good. furtermore, engineering does not work like you claim. most of us here are engineers or scientists too. actual engineering does entail trial and error. I've never seen any kind of science/tech project that didn't have some surprises along the way, some things not working exactly like expected. And then you figure out what is the issue and find ways to fix it. which is a large part of how this game works. a final word on mods: yes, some mods improve on issues you may have. but all mods can have compatibility issues, and can have their own bugs and glitches. generally, mods destabilize the game.

there really isn't much to do; the asteroid is big, so to move it you need a lot of fuel on the plus side, it is on a very high orbit, it's gonna becheap to get a minmus orbit. even though it orbits retrograde, fixing that is going to cost a few hundred m/s.. So you just need a bit more fuel. if you were in a different orbit, you could try stuff like aerobraking and gravity assist, but not in this case