king of nowhere

sorry, i missed it. very strange. i gave a better look at the image, it's a pretty simple rocket, and it's not particularly big. besides the lack of thrust for launch, everything else should be fine. and there are way more struts than necessary. my Dream Big was bigger, had a more complex shape with plenty of stuff attached hapazardly, and it got away with less struts. I'm thinking perhaps there is some specific problem, maybe some clipping gone wrong... i would suggest you share your craft on kerbalx and i could try and give it a good look, but we have different mods so i don't think it's possible

i like eeloo as it is. i would like to spend one full year on it with a life support mod sooner or later.

for that you need launch stabilizers. if the rocket is still unstable, add more launch stabilizers.

1500 tons is not all that big as far as large rockets go. here is a small guide for big rockets 1) if the rocket does not lift off, add moar boosters! 2) if moar boosters aren't doing the trick, add moar engines! 3) if your rocket is falling apart during the flight, add moar struts! the only limit is when your pc lags too badly because the struts increase part count. My biggest launch was some 700 parts and 5000 tons, i used 30 mammoth and it flew like a dream.

nope. stock game does not have geiger counter or radiation report EDIT: it's not like it's important. it's a minor nitpick for science nerds. then again, science nerds are, like, 90% of the target of this game, so perhaps it is not so inconsequential

ok, thanks for answers. unfortunately, this is the worst outcome for me. first, to choose a soundtrack i'd have to go and listen to dozens of them. this takes time, but the worst part is, i have some sort of psycological block where, if i listen to music to "judge" it, i never like it. I go in some kind of hyper-critical mode and i reject everything. I can only like new music if i hear it by accident. perhaps i should skip the soundtrack completely

When you engage a difficult, complex mission, and eventually you reach the end. Bonus points if it included using your ship(s) in ways that they were never supposed to be used, and they worked again.

Well, after a long, long time the challenge is completed. I actually succeeded in visiting everywhere and bringing back all the crew, and even the ship with all its service vessels. As it was pointed out, i do not technically fulfill the conditions, because i didn't land the same kerbin everywhere. I got confused, there is a clause on the Jool 5 challenge where you have to land a different kerbal everywhere, and i thought it would apply here too. Still worth a mention, though. By the way, I am already planning a new grand tour, with the full kerbalism isru rules - so no more using diggers to get fuel "easily" - and with the additional condition that I must land a rover and visit multiple biomes everywhere. On the plus side, i discovered how to activate the power-ups, which include the radiation decontamination unit, so small amounts of radiation over time won't be a killer anymore, and the TV, which should reduce stress (not sure by how much)

Part 11: No thing left behind DREAM BIG makes it successfully back to Duna. Digger 1 and Digger 2 are successfully recovered. The fully reunited DREAM BIG successfully returns to Kerbin and lands the remaining crew; practically everything of the original ship is still fully functional, or it was recovered. The mission achieves outstanding success rating. 11.1) Jool-Duna in 9 years 394 days 11.2) The long trek of Digger 2 11.3) Recovering Digger 1 (plus, general stay at Duna) 11.4) Recovering Digger 2 11.5) Outstanding success! From the original mission objectives: Well, I landed a kerbonaut on every celestial body (though it was pointed out that i didn't fulfill a technicality, my fault for misreading the rules). I brought every kerbal back to Kerbin. The DREAM BIG is also back to Kerbin, and it only broke a handful of pieces. Actually, it survived the trip in much better conditions than I was hoping for. I didn't even need most of the redundant contingencies. And every ship was recovered. The Diggers are all there, all fully functional, maybe missing a single reaction wheel. One Dolphin is still there, one made a reentry, one landed whole, the last one landed semi-whole. The Can was recovered - minus the Tylo descent stage, which was always intended as disposable. Trucker was recovered. FU Eve was recovered, at least the part that went back to orbit. The Wings were not recovered, but they were fire-and-forget probes. There was some lack of elegance in sending some Diggers to Dres and Eeloo alone and not recovering the crew for the rest of the trip, but all things considered, I claim confindently that the mission was an Outstanding success. Whew! I wasn't even sure this ship would be able to fly when I started all this.

today i created a video for my last mission. unlike previous videos, where i just left the background ksp music, this time i tried to use an actual soundtrack. with my limited knowledge of music i picked conquest of paradise by Vangelis, because it fit the mood. as i uploaded the video on youtube, immediately i got a notification for copyright infringement. not very surprisingly. it said that since it had protected content, the video would be demotetized (no problems there, i am just using youtube as a convenient platform to upload) and that it would be blocked in some countries. which is the part that worries me. i know very little of copyright laws, but i know (or i think i know, at least) that there are clauses for "fair use", where basically you can get away with mild stuff as long as you don't try to make money out of it. which i was hoping would apply to my video. indeed, if i was just notified about the demonetization, i wouldn't even ask. but the part aabout "banned in some countries" worries me. what's the point of uploading a video if random people around the world cannot see it? so i ask to those others of you who make and post videos - with soundtrack - how do you deal with copyright issues

as ssto goes to orbit in a single stage. nothing then says it cannot use stages after it's gone to orbit. my donkey launcher is an ssto for 25 tons in LKO. it drops the payload, then deorbits and gets recovered. so, it i send the donkey with a 25 ton probe in orbit, then deorbit the donkey and make an eeloo mission with that probe, i have made the mission with the ssto. or would i have to bring the whole donkey launcher to eeloo? how about landing? if i orbit eeloo and then detach a lander, the lander lands and orbits again, rejoins the orbiter, then goes back to kerbin, does that still count as ssto? and what about isru? if isru is allowed, then the objective really becomes "bring an ssto with a convert-o-tron to minmus", because once you start refueling, you can go anywhere. the challenge needs to be defined better

nono, don't get me wrong. it was just for information

i guess it depends on what you are trying to optimize. if you are optimizing mass and cost, then i guess it's right, it's cheaper to make a first stage propeller than to strap big boosters to everything. on the other hand, if you go for simplicity, once you already have a big rocket, adding moar boosters (here boosters is defined loosely as lateral fuel tanks with extra engines, because it's better to use liquid fuel) is easier than devising an entirely new propulsion system. especially because propellers are tricky. it's also much easier to land a rocket on parachutes than it is to land a multi-hundred ton spaceplane. as far as i am concerned, the ideal would be an ssto, so that i could make a grand tour and recycle the spacecraft entirely. if that lofty goal cannot be achieved, then i'd rather go simple

the way it is worded, it would mean that i can make an ssto, then once in orbit ditch stages. which would be easy, it's just a matter of an ssto with an eeloo rocket as payload. then again, the other interpretation - no stages whatsoever - would be exceedingly difficult, as it would require some 8000 m/s in a single stage. though most of it can be provided by ions, so it should be feasible

you yourself stated the solution to your problem you just need a lot of deltaV. i tend to use 3 stages; one to go from the ground to 10 km of altitude, straight up. it has a lot of engines because they are less efficient in eve. the second reaches all the way to 50 km, where i should be in a suborbital trajectory or close enough. it starts to circularize around 20 km, the atmosphere is still too dense before that. the third stage starts around 50 km and circularizes. of the 8000 m/s listed as necessary for eve, 5000 are really just to get out of the first 50 km of atmosphere. it is even possible to make an eve ssto with a spaceplane that uses propellers and wings to get to at least 15 km of altitude; this removes most of the cost. i've seen people doing it; my design fell short by 1 km/s, though.

where are you getting all the money for those missions? I guess you are meanwhile running dozens of survey missions with a single probe in a polar orbit which shifts the question to "where the hell are you finding the time to run all those missions to make money, run all those mun/minmus missions, and still make daily updates"

i've seen someone on youtube already did the same thing. not that it detracts anything from your achievement

why you say that the physics engine wouldn't let you return? i can see two problems: 1) aerodinamics is now bad and you burn up in the atmosphere. which shouldn't happen, i brought back whole boosters from orbit without any kind of thermal shielding. as ong as you rprobe does not contain sensitive parts and you are starting from a low orbit, you should be fine 2) rocket misaligned with center of mass - so burning your rocket now send your ship spinning. which is an actual problem, but can be mitigated by using the rocket at low thrust, or by giving short bursts and then stopping the rocket and letting the sas system realign the ship. in both cases it's basically like having low thrust. a good gimbaling engine helps a lot. if none of those helps, post pictures and we can try to sort out your problems

i would disagree that liftoff is 1000 m/s straight up, as i generally start turning around 50 m/s with the objective of hitting 500 m/s with a 45 degrees inclination... but then you mentioned caveman. so you flew a lot of small rockets with inadequate parts and no fairings, so you have much greater problems of aerodinamics. in which case it makes sense to launch straight up for a while.

another possible option is that the station parts you are trying to launch have some probe core mounted backwards, and it is the one controlling the rocket. in that case the rocket will thing forward is backwards and viceversa. but yes, aerodinamics is generally the main source of flipping rockets, and yes, we can't tell without pictures

i tried to find it last time i was at bop, and i couldn't find anything at the coordinates reported. it probably was a glitch that was mistaken for an easter egg

I come from the other side of the issue. i always start burning too late and crash down on the surface the first few times. perhaps we could pilot a rocket together and then we'd land right...

ah damn. seems a kraken attack. it's definitely not something that should happen have you tried saving/reloading the game? reloading a previous save? i see you are going slightly uphill. if you remove the brakes, will the rover start downhill? you can try going downhill for a while and then see if anything changes. you can also try to use the alt-f12 menu to move your rover around a bit.

brakes are on. see that yellow symbol to the right of the altitude indicator? that means the brakes are activated. press b again to unlock them

impossible to avoid. you are coming from very far, a small difference in thrust will make a large difference in your trajectory around tylo. and then you get a gravity assist from tylo, and a gravity assist magnifies any small difference in trajectory. in my kerbalism grand tour i make a similar path around jool, where i have two ships coming from the same direction and a difference of less than 1 m/s in entering jool's SoI changes the gravity assist so that one goes to laythe and the other goes to Pol. and finally, you have a third gravity assist from laythe; all the careful alignment is further magnified. it's like bouncing a ball around two obstacles; the smallest change of trajectory will make a big difference in the first bounce, which will entail an even bigger difference in the second. on the plus side, you do not need to carefully align everything. as long as your first gravity assist gets you to laythe, a small course correction manuever afterwards will suffice to put you back on the right path.