king of nowhere

I just learned a new neat technique when falling down from a moon to get a planet's gravity assist. the yellow manuever in this picture it's a useful manuever to keep all the precious deltaV you spent to go to the moon when making an interplanetary transfer, while also making use of the planet's better oberth effect. its main disadvantage, though, is that it is difficult to set up. you can fall from the moon to the planet at different times with different trajectories, and this changes completely where your periapsis will be. and if you mess that up, you end up losing any advantage. and then you also have to plan the regular manuever, in addition to this complication. well, i just thought that it would be much easier to plan the manuever if i was in a circular orbit around the planet. that way, i could plan the manuever normally, and it would be easy to see the right place in the orbit to make the manuever. and for that, i can use a different ship in orbit around the planet. it doesn't have to actually make any manuever, i just plan the manuever node with that probe, finding the best place for it. then i go back to the ship in moon orbit, i set the probe as target, this way i see the manuever i planned (in the picture, in green). at this point i see exactly the manuever i am supposed to be making, i just have to plan my moon ejection burn to set my periapsis as close to the target manuever node as possible. made my life much easier.

i wasn't trying to restart that argument. i accept the motivations given. Just saying that at some point you have to pick between realism and complexity. oh, ok. no need for report. wait, something can be done: a message. there is already a message with chemical plants and time warp, when some processes will automatically block a time warp when they would be bugged. a similar warning would at least avoid the player seeing "radiation: nominal" and seeing his crew die without knowing the reason. even just mentioning it in the play guide would help i know, i once had one in the first day of mission. no, i'm talking specifically of reaching 100% stress level. the behavior seems inconsistent.

On the other hand, there are also some realistic ISRU options that are not possible in kerbalism, most notably plain water into rocket fuel. But yes, advertising the fact would indeed be good. my frustration about the molten regolith came from a misunderstanding, where i assumed "ore=stuff good to make fuel = carbon-rich rock", while the assumption was "ore=common lunar regolith, poor in carbon". i did solve radiations with brute force, by adding 120 active shields. of course, you are unlikely to afford that in a regular career mission... on the other hand, I did spot a bug with radiations and time warp. time warping through solar storms caused my kerbonauts to suffer more damage, while they were less affected otherwise. I will try reporting it on github, since that's apparently the preferred method. Anyway, you can try that: activate notification for storms, and when there is a storm raging, keep time warp limited to x1000. it's made a huge difference for me, in that, all else being equal, time warping at x1000000 caused my crew to die in 200 days (with 90% shielding, a big fuel tank for protection, and the habitat sensors insisting radiation was "nominal"); while limiting myself at x1000, i am now 100 days in, and my crew got exactly 0% radiation damage. on the other hand, i had large problems with stress; giving plenty of living space and comfort was not enough and i had the first accidents after one year, despite the VAB screen telling me stress should be in check for 20 years. I could only protect from stress by having a large amount of redundant parts. On the other hand, i had a much less luxurious ship, and the crew in that didn't have any stress problem. So, I'm thinking that one is also a bug, and it's something else i'll try to report

don't worry, they change at every new career. we couldn't spoiler if we wanted. the amount is also dependant on difficulty level. ultimately, though, it is rather irrelevant; a decent tanker can refill its tanks in a few days. Double or even triple that time because of low ore concentration, it's still nothing compared to the time of an interplanetary mission.

don't bill have a jetpack? astronauts should have it by default. use the jetpack to go back into the command module if you can't for some reason, use the alt-f12 menu

you are not weightless on the mun. the gravity is lower, but it's still there. unless we are misunderstanding each other. also, this goes in the question subforum

no need for all those exotic options. A few mammoths will do the trick just nicely. In fact, just eyeballing it, I think an asparagus stack of 5 S4-512 tanks and 5 mammoths should be fully capable going SSTO with your tank, with spare fuel. and since they are going SSTO, you can deorbit them and recover them (put parachutes, of course), so the cost is minimal. and it won't require any mod

does the spacecraft still fly? if so, you can try normal reentry. does that fail? use the alt-f12 menu to bring it to the ground. very few people wouldn't consider a kraken attack a legitimate reason to use the alt-f12 menu. although, you tried to build a cheap command pod from a structural tube and a command seat instead of just using a normal command pod, perhaps you do deserve some kraken...

that's very curious, it didn't happen to me. the top heat shields, many of them collided with each other and exploded. the rest took irregular trajectories and eventually reached the ground in scattered formation. and while some thermal shields broke on the impact, most survived. at least, when they didn't have a 400 ton lander drop on top of them. i wonder why the difference.

there's nothing strange there, it's absolutely normal. When you set up the manuever node, say, 10 orbits for now, in 5 hours because you have a 30 minutes orbit. then you start burning well before the time, and your orbit changes. it change time. so now in 5 hours you won't be on your manuever node again, you will be in a different part of the orbit. but the game still think you will want a manuever node in 5 hours, because manuever nodes are set in time, not in position. So, of course to perform the same manuever in the completely wrong part of the orbit, you would need a much higher amount of deltaV. But then, keep burning prograde, you will achieve a 33 minutes 20 seconds orbit, and 9 of those orbits will get you at your manuever node in exactly 5 hours, again! so the burn time will go down again. And then your orbital time will again go up, and your manuever node will be screwed, until you will increment orbital time enough to get 5 hours in 8 orbits. and so on. Just make the manuever node anew after every incremental apoapsis raising.

I could do great with an ISRU ship, going to pretty much all planets out there, on all biomes, then recovering it. but it would take soooo long. perhaps a "no isru" clause would help disincentivize this?

Do not feed the troll! by sending missions to Dres, even hateful ones, you acknowledge its exhistance, and you give it a reason to continue. You encourage it. A better challenge would be to ignore Dres. Here, post your pics of your missions not to dres! In this image, it shows the time i didn't land there ok, not very effective. and I am going to go for Dres soon enough. I'd gladly skip it, but I am going for a grand tour and it's part of the package, you know how it is...

congrats @Popestar. I especially appreciated the creative use of a cargo bay. Now that you broke this wall, making more complex rovers will be much easier. May I shamelessly plug my own stuff and give an example of what can be achieved with a complex rover when you add in enough functions? https://kerbalx.com/king_of_nowhere/dancing-porcupine-the-indestructible-rocket-car

Part 6: Welcome to the hotel Duna-Ike In this second part of the trip, Home and Trucker rejoin at Duna. The DREAM BIG is fully refueled and resupplied. So far, malfunctions are limited, but there is a promise for more to come. Kraken attacks take their toll. Weaknesses in the original plan are discovered, and the mission plan is revised accordingly. Thanks for the support guys! This update took longer because all those refueling trips were very time consuming. Don't worry, I'll see this endeavor to the end, for good or bad. If I ever stop updating, it's because I've had some kind of real life accident. 6.1) Reaching Duna 6.2) Refueling & Repairing 6.3) Ike 6.4) Updated mission plan

where do you get this? I am not telling you to dock, with rcs or otherwise. perhaps you miss the meaning of the two words? rendez-vous: bring the two ships close, and with similar speed. docking: join the two ships together I am telling you that before you join the two ships, you need to bring them close, so a docking guide will also discuss rendez-vous. Anyway, if you also want to try docking (which i suggest, after you rendez-vous you may as well try), i also suggest you start docking small ships without rcs. rcs is an unnecessary complication, small ships dock perfectly without it and i never even felt the need for anything more while i was limiting myself to the 10-ton range. Now I am routinely docking 200-ton ships to 4000-ton motherships, and for those, rcs is needed. but it's an additional set of commands to learn, you may as well wait.

before you dock two ships, you necessarily need to rendez-vous them. so, any docking guide will also start with rendez-vous. the theory for rendez-vous is quite simple: the larger your orbit, the more time it takes. so, make sure the two spaceships orbits touch each other; then make one of them longer or shorter (in this last case, without crashing into the planet) to coordinate the time and make both ships arrive in that segment of the orbit at the same time. besides that, there is nothing else i can add that others haven't said already anyway, you should learn docking too. you will need to assemble ships in orbit, and to recover your landers. basically, you will need it for all the complex missions.

you can try to make one with robotic parts from the breaking ground dlc. it's not a perfect replica, and very hard to properly control, though

Stability fins made for a smooth descent. Be wary, though, that they are horrible when launching from kerbin. I had a lot of stability issues there. so much, in fact, that if i were to do it again i would launch those top fins as a separate craft, in a payload fairing, and dock them to the main lander. anyway, once you are at eve, they definitely beat a dozen trusses. though in some cases the lander would still flip. the problem is not the heat shields, the problem is eve. I found entering jool at 6 km/s and reaching low atmosphere is easier than landing on eve. Anyway, through trial and error (meaning, lots of reloads) I devised a sequence working for my craft: - enter eve orbit with rockets, intercept speed is too high - with a periapsis of 75 km, gradually aerobrake until you are in a low orbit(this bleeds 1300 m/s of extra speed) - final atmosphere reentry. hold still until the part with the flames has finished. when reaching 50 km altitude, deactivate time warp (in time warp, the lander flips). Do NOT activate chutes, as they would deploy too early and then get destroied - the atmosphere will be enough to slow you to less than 200 m/s. when your speed starts to stabilize, only then get rid of the upper heat shields and deploy the chutes (i moved those commands in the same stage) - set the parabrakes to deploy at 5000 m of altitude, to have plenty of time to slow. actually i set 4 of them to deploy at 5000 and the rest to deploy in sequence a bit later, to make deceleration less brutal - set the main parachutes to deploy at 3000 m - after speed stabilizes to around 20 m/s, only then can i get rid of the lower thermal shields. and dropping them from this high means they disperse far from the landing site. But that's not required (see later) - at this point, i'm falling at 20 m/s. when I am close to the ground (less than 100 meters), i activate the engines to slow down to a safe landing. this only takes a tiny bit of deltaV. the vehicle reaches orbit with over 500 m/s left, there's plenty spare. however, i later found out i did not need to actually drop the lower heat shields. Instead, falling at 20 m/s, I could simply let myself fall, the shields would hit first and explode, but they would slow me down and protect the rest of the ship. and the mammoths have excellent impact resistance anyway. So, the last 20 m/s i actually lithobrake, and it works. I made a couple mistakes in that lander, though. First, i attached the chutes to the main body; i should have put them on a separate staging with the shields, so i could jettison them before reentry too. Second, my last stage, the one actually reaching orbit, is overengineered. that's because i use it to land on laythe too, but it would have been better to make another ship entirely; as it is, it is too draggy and too heavy. i could get away with a smaller rocket if i had used a smaller thing with a terrier engine. So, I have stability issues going up. Most important, though, I made a classic model with lateral boosters, and that turned out to be a problem; upon first stage separation, the wind pushed at least one of the boosters against the main body, destroying the ship. If I had to make it again, i would have a first stage detach entirely from the bottom, to avoid the problem. as it was, i learned to shut down the first stage engine, decelerate to 100 m/s, and only then detach the boosters. and wait until they separate and go their own way before turning on the engine again. this, of course, is inefficient, but luckily i packed extra deltaV. the first stage goes up straight, at a speed of 250 m/s (above that, it's flipping time and horrible death). the second stage accelerates to 7-800 m/s (it could go faster, but drag heating would then destroy the last stage. I really hate eve) and to 50-60 km of altitude. It also starts turning after crossing 15 km altitude. the last stage is now in a barely suborbital trajectory, but it has 3500 m/s of vacuum deltaV, enough to circularize with some spare. All in all, it was a grueling ordeal, and i exploded dozens of times before finding the correct sequence of actions to avoid all the horrible deaths. so, don't worry if it happens to you too.

that's the wrong answer, because it works when orbiting gilly too. when orbiting gilly you have 15 m/s orbital speed, which is negligible, but you still can return to eve cheaply. xavven actually found the answer to the original question having different frames of reference adds to the confusion, but that applies to any discussion on orbital mechanics.

i said lower your kerbin periapsis enough to aerobrake. as in, leave mun's SoI and get back to kerbin with a 40-50 km periapsis. actually, i was interested in the real world orbital mechanics. that's why i posted this specifically in the general forum. there are no questions about gameplay here

Good job! I was going to ask why you burned your tanks on reentry since you still had 2000 m/s available to rocket brake some more, but i realized I'm not the only one who's overly optimistic on aerobraking. I feel i found a kindred soul

Lately, I keep forgetting to deploy the solar panels once i am in orbit. Most fligths were crewed, so no big deal - though it's always a bit confusing at first when i try to point towards a manuever and the ship does not comply. but in the last three days, i twice had to reload because i lost contact with a probe after forgetting to deploy solar panels Now, as penance, I will write "I must not forget to deploy solar panels" 100 times

This is the only answer that makes sense. I was basing my assumption on kerbostationary orbit, actually; I am pretty sure, the time i had a contract to reach it, it took more deltaV to raise periapsis than to raise apoapsis, because of oberth effect. So i assumed something similar would be in effect here, where going down would be just as expensive as going up, plus oberth effect. but i must be remembering wrong, because i just made the attempt now, and it takes more deltaV to raise apoapsis than to circularize. And it takes less deltaV to lower orbit than to raise it, when i assumed it would be equal. this is what I get from going by memory. The question then shifts, though; why is raising periapsis cheaper than raising apoapsis, despite oberth effect helping you in the second case? all this time, i've been told that prograde/retrograde manuevers are more effective at high speed. except, here i am seeing evidence to the contrary. there is still something missing from the puzzle

Huh. Not really sure i get what you actually ask, but let's try... So, you start with a rover. you said you already have one, so I assume you don't need extra explanations. i must point out that the spaceplane hangar is best suited to build rovers, because of the symmetry it uses. but then you must couple the rover onto a rocket, and the sph is not good for building rockets. So you change the editor to the vab, you rotate the rover in vertical position, and you start building the rocket underneath. to be able to attach the rocket to the rover, of course, you need to have left some pieces of the rover with open nodes. and the result is something like what voidsquid is showing in his picture: notice how he attached the hecs2 (which controls the rocket) to the rover docking port. then he built the rocket down from there. Landing a rover is the trickyest part; the easier solution, for low gravity world, is actually to have the rover being a capable spaceship on its own. use some fuel tanks in the body and attach some rockets (be careful of balancing with the center of mass; better to use engines with gimbaling), and your rover can land itself. if you don't want to do that, there is the sky crane arrangement. which is basically still like putting rockets on the rover, except they get jettisoned later. For example, you could place a ring decoupler on top of your rovemate. then attach a large fuel tank over that decoupler, and then attach some radial engines to the tank (thuds or twichs are good for that). so, use those engines to land the rover, then activate the decoupler and fly the tank away (it wouldn't do to have the rover crushed under it; of course, you need to have some control left once you decouple to be able to do that). Regarding the antenna, it's not a matter of antenna power. Some antennas can act as relays, meaning that they can also make communications for other spaceships nearby. some antennas cannot. as a rule of thumb, there are two antennas for every power; the heavier is the one that can act as relay. Finally, you may not find benefit in pictures, but WE certainly would. It would be MUCH easier to figure out what's your problem if you would post pictures of your rover and mission and what happens when you lose control. I hope i could be of help

I just thought about it, and i'm now very curious. I am decently expert in orbital mechanics, but not enough to solve this. Say you are orbiting Mun. It's orbit is at 12000 km. from low mun orbit, you can use 280 m/s to lower your kerbin periapsis enough to aerobrake. Yet, if you were just orbiting at 12000 km in a circular orbit around kerbin, it would take over 1000 m/s to lower your periapsis that much. and when you are orbiting mun, you are also orbiting kerbin at that height. why being around Mun makes lowering your periapsis so cheap? first possible explanation: oberth effect. being around mun gets you some oberth effect, so that going back is cheaper. however, that explanation does not hold up to close scrutiny, for several reasons. First, mun is smaller than kerbin. if it takes 850 m/s to get from kerbin to mun, the reverse trip being cheaper for oberth effect would require mun being bigger than kerbin. second, you get that cheap return even from high orbit, where oberth effect is small. third, you get it even in very small moons with too low gravity to have a significant oberth effect, like minmus and - most notably - gilly. Gilly is especially the last nail in the coffin for the oberth effect theory, and for any theory involving different orbital speed. Orbiting around gilly you move at 15 m/s. It can't have any significant effect on your orbital speed around Eve. Though gilly also corroborates the idea that oberth effect may play a role in it, because returning to eve from gilly requires 500 m/s, which is about half as much as it takes from eve to gilly. A much smaller saving than for Mun. So, perhaps oberth does play some role there. But it certainly cannot explain everything. Second possible explanation: an artifact of the game gravity. in reality, gravity from all bodies is affecting you all the time. in ksp, only one body is considered at any time. this is a decent approximation when you are in a low orbit, but it certainly generates artifacts when you are close to the boundary between spheres of influence. It's possible. I don't know enough of orbits to figure it out. Yet I can look up real deltaV budgets from wikipedia, and here I find for the earth-moon system: 4 km/s for LEO-Low Lunar Orbit, and only 900 m/s from LLO to LEO. So, this effect happens for real too. At this point I have discarded the few explanations I could come up with, and I have no idea what's the actual reason. I would be very curious to find out, if anyone knows.