king of nowhere

there is an easy recipe for a rover. take your lander, put wheels in place of landing struts, and you have a rover. once i realized that, i stopped worrying about landing systems. all my rovers have rockets on them and can land on their own. exception for the biggest worlds where you'd need a very big rocket, but those worlds tend to have atmospheres for aerobraking

i wasn't aware of big differences between companies, but now it will be my top priority too. working to produce useless stuff that's rigged to break so that we can continue producing it is not the utopian future i signed for. i don't have much decisional power to affect the world, but i can at least choose what to buy

yes, i don't know the technical words there because it's not my field of expertise, but i guess soldering is correct, and sparking is also the diagnosis that my brother gave. he suggested i have to unplug the transformer first, wait a few seconds, and only then unplug the transformer from the pc. which i will do, once i have the new piece. good thing, at least the connector on the pc side is in good shape, it didn't get ruined by it. if it does get damaged, it can be fixed. my brother already did it on a previous laptop i had, and it worked very well afterwards. he also recognizes that glue is not the best choice, but it was all he had. the first time we tried with tape and metallic wire (again, forget my ignorance of proper therminology here) and it broke in a few days. at least this glue solution allows me to use the pc for most things. i need it for working too, i can't just shut it down. and while you are correct that lenovo isn't an exception for problems with the power cable, at least with any other laptop i ever owed i could find a replacement quickly and cheaply when the problem arose. that's what i don't like, that they have their own transformers that you need to get from them, and they are very expensive, and not easy to find. also, the battery cannot be changed without opening everything - though i'm told that more and more companies are doing that.

you may also try to use RCS to counter the bouncing.

sign me up on "your trajectories were pretty bad" train. the deltaV maps are accurate, but they show the very minimum amount you need if you optimize everything well. most often, you will need a bit more. nominally, it takes 580 m/s to land on mun, but i use about 650-700 in a normal situation. once in a challenge i had to optimize things really hard, and by using a very dangerous trajectory that came extremely close to crashing on the surface, i managed even to save 10 m/s on what's nominally required. For orbiting tylo, instead, i never could do it without spending at least 50 m/s more than the map says. and you could get to jool with 1930 in theory, but 2000 is a more likely scenario. On the other hand, you can save fuel on interplanetary transfers with gravity assists. on the other hand, 2800 for a jool intercept or 4500 for a kerbin orbit are NOT normal. the kerbin orbit value makes me think you burned straight upwards until you were out of the atmosphere, and then circularized; back when i was new to the game i was doing it, and i had similar expences. you may also have horrible aerodinamics increasing your costs. not sure what you could be doing wrong for jool intercept, but there are many possibilities. anyway, you can show us some screeenshots of your manuevers and we can ty to give advice on how to improve efficiency.

It's a long story and i didn't want to make it tedious, but since i am asked.... it's not exactly the power cable that broke, but the connector of the power cable. the connector got oxidized to the point that the metal were all black and weren't making contact anymore. the connector is part of the whole power transformer piece, and since lenovo uses their own specific pieces, i cannot find a replacement cheaper than 80 euros. on the other hand, a new connector only costed 6 euros, but it had to be attached to the cable. so what was done was ordering a new connector, removing the old, broken connector from the power cable, and welding the new connector in place. but the thing was frail and it broke within a few days. hence a new attempt to keep it stable with glue. meanwhile i ordered a new piece, because i can see where all this is going. but i still have no news on shipping for the new power transformer, so for now i have to rely on my malfunctioning cable. since i am here, i can also take the chance to express my deep dissatisfaction with my lenovo laptop. Now, i'll be the first to admit that i don't treat my electronics with all the care they deserve; I figure i'd rather spend some money to get it fixed every once in a while than be careful all the time. but i had this pc for one year, and this is already the second time the connector broke. my previous laptop lasted 6 years and i had to change the power cable piece once, and I spent 30 euros for it. and i was being even less careful with it than i am with this one.

I did nothing on ksp today. or yesterday. or the day before that. my pc cable broke. I ordered a new one, but it's a long time coming. meanwhile my brother, who is good at this stuff, tried to fix my cable by welding. it worked, but it was very frail, and it broke shortly after. he welded it again, and to reinforce it, he stuck it with glue. unfortunately, he does not have a specialized glue, and my laptop gets very hot when using modern videogames. using ksp caused the glue to melt and run all over the plug. and then it stopped working until it was cool again. as a result, i cannot use ksp, or any other modern videogame that would tax the system too much. i can use internet, work with the office package, that kind of thing, but no ksp. i'm reading random stuff in the forum to try and get my daily fix. also fishing for some sympathy

there's a fine line to walk there. learning from previous attempts is all good and well, but if i take too much out of them, i'm no longer trying the challenge, i'm merely following instructions. and if i know a working design made by someone else, i can't bring myself to not use it. so i prefer to stay mostly in the blind, at least as long as i can go forward on my own. anyway, a pc problem is preventing me from using ksp for at least a few more days. i'll see later how well i handle myself in this. bby the way, i just remembered that there's a policy that converts part of your money to science. with that, and just "test part on the launchpad" contract, it should be possible to "win" the challenge without much difficulty. not much fun to it, though

I am starting to realize. A mun mission with all buildins level 1 is doable, but i may have to manage it without even a terrier engine. i was thinking it would be easy to do by assembling ships in orbit, but docking ports are still far away in the tech tree. and i can't even get spacewalk reports, or surface samples, nor can i refresh the mystery goo. i will probably fail at the hardest level i set

it's a 3-ton rover/helicopter to explore the surface, and a 3-ton cargo bay to store it. I'm also trying to include mining equipment if possible, because i don't like the idea of being unable to refuel on the ground if something goes wrong. So far, I can go suborbital missing 1 km/s to reach orbit, leading me to believe it can be done. i haven't worked on it in a while, though, for a mix of real life constraints, pc issues, and other challenges taking up my time I have also seen a craft that can ssto on earth, reach venus, land, take off again in rss, with stock parts and without refueling, though that uses thermal shields as wings using a glitch that they generate a ridiculous amount of lift when properly oriented. I wouldn't do that, though, because it's basically a kraken drive. a kraken wing?

this is a sane design for an Eve ssto. using propellers to get past the worst of the atmosphere and finishing with rockets is doable. i am trying to build something similar and i am close, i would manage if i wasn't also trying to have 6 tons of payload

and they didn't even need an astronaut on board to collect a sample!

never noticed this before, i'll give it a try. at highest difficulty, of course, because i tied too much of my self-worth to videogames and i pull stunts to stave off my insecurity i don't do things halfway looks like there is a simple way to finish it regardless of difficulty: wait for your contracts to expire until you get the "test stuff on the launchpad". those always give free money. but it would not be in the spirit of the challenge, so i'll try to do it honestly

you need to upgrde your astronaut complex to do eva "far from the ksc". i'm not sure what "far" means exactly, but it may just be that

this should go in the questions and tutorials subforum

actually, the orbit is specified by the parameters. i think which way the periapsis points is the argument of periapsis, but i don't know how to interpret it

exactly what i mean. at the least, make its canyon more suited as a rover racing circuit

i know for a fact that to get the achievement for the "world first" to "create a space station", you don't need two launches. or perhaps you do, but you can join your lander and orbiter in kerbin orbit and they will still give the achievement once you detach them on duna. i did a grand tour with a ship entirely assembled in kerbin orbit in multiple launches, and i got the rendez-vous, docking and space station achievements for all planets. not sure if the contract works differently.

the deltaV map is very accurate for how much you need to land on the various moons. you should add a bit more for safety because using the minimum is very difficult, and only doable with high twr. that said, you do indeed need 2 km/s to arrive on jool. you should be able to shave some of that with gravity assists, but it is very difficult; duna is never in the proper place, and eve requires multiple passes. at jool insertion, you don't need a capture burn, you can use a laythe gravity assist to stay in the system for free: two examples don't worry about setting an encounter when you launch from kerbin; you can intercept laythe later with a very small correction manuever (as shown in the second image) afterwards, you should try to orbit one of the major moons with a low intercept deltaV. i tried for a long time to lower my apoapsis to get a cheap encounter with laythe, but to no avail. i'm sure it would be possible somehow, but hard. much easier to set up a cheap encounter for tylo instead, like in this example 60 m/s of correction manuever and a second laythe assist, and i could enter tylo orbit with only 170 m/s. if you have a classic lander/orbiter approach, then i suggest going to tylo first, because the tylo lander has to be very heavy, and getting rid of it will increase your fuel efficiency oitherwise alternatively, you can get inside laythe's atmosphere on your flyby and aerobrake your way to laythe orbit directly. but you need a VERY good heat shield for it from there on, you can't really cheat anymore, though.you need to circularize and land, and there's no way around that. circularizing around tylo requires some 800 m/s, which must be paid both arriving and leaving (add that to the 170 m/s injection burn and 2300 to land, and the 3300 figure is correct). for laythe it's about 600 m/s, but you can aerobrake on your way in. vall is cheaper, around 250 m/s. going to bop from the inner moons requires about 800-1000 m/s, and from bop to pol a bit less. so, to recap 2000 to get in jool intercept from kerbin, can potentially be reduced to about 1300 with lots of skill in multiple gravity assists 500 to enter an elliptic orbit around tylo (some extra because gravity assists are tricky and i was very lucky to find that one for 250 m/s). OR a good thermal shield and aerobraking to inject into laythe directly. 3300 from elliptic tylo orbit to land, and the same to go on other moons from the surface free landing on laythe with aerobraking, but 2900 m/s to orbit and 600 more to go to other moons 2000 from vall intercept to land, and just as much to go back about 900 to get to bop, plus 500 to land and orbit again about 800 to get to pol, plus 300 to land and orbit again about 1200 m/s to get from pol back to kerbin intercept, plus 1000 m/s to stay in elliptic kerbin orbit, from which you can aerobrake (again, you can skip the 1000 with a very good heat shield) all numbers include a little bit of extra for safety i'm not going to give you a total, because that will depend on your exact setup and mission profile. but that should give you a good idea of the costs involved. the alexmoon planner can give you accurate measures of how much fuel you need from one moon to the other

I have this work-in-progress that's supposed to be an Eve ssto that can release a smaller rover. it's not good enough for eve yet, and it may never be, but it's already fully functional for Kerbin and Laythe this is the main craft rear view. the nerv engines are good for deep space manuevers with low consumption, and can use the wings as fuel tanks. the vector are for taking off those propellers are used in the low part of the atmosphere. On eve the design can get a bit above 13 km. on kerbin it flies much worse, but it can at least take off. I'm not 100% sure this thing can fly with propellers on laythe; but one thing i did test is that those propellers are enough to move forward the seaborne spaceplane. you can't take off from the sea, but you can use the propellers to reach land. once in rocket flying, the cargo bays are closed to reduce drag from propeller blades it is made for Eve, so it would need more solar panels for laythe. and this is the cargo bay. it can contain the smaller rover. the robotic arm can pick it up and put it down in a very graceful way. it also has isru capacity (though i just noticed i forgot to put back the convert-o-tron). I've never made a successful reentry from orbit, but then again, i also never made a successful reentry with any kind of spaceplane, or a safe landing with any kind of plane, so i put it down to lack of piloting skills and not necessarily to a flawed design and this is helicopterover. I already tested it and it is fully operational. it can fly as helicopter, its 3 rtg are enough to stay in the air indefinitely even at night (though not at top propeller power) and it can perform all manners of science experiments. On laythe's thin atmosphere it only works at low altitude, but that's enough to go around the oceans. the wheels are for smaller, more precise movements over land, like when you want to go back into the cargo bay or to scan some surface features. the parachute is because i don't trust myself to land an helicopter. it has a crew of 2, suggested a scientist and an engineer.

that... is a surprisingly good idea. it will make sure dres will be properly feared and hated i guess dres hates me, because i visited it twice. dres wants to be left alone, that's why he put itself in a position so difficult to reach, to discourage visitors! don't worry dres, i may want to reach you one more time eventually to make a full grand tour, but then i will have no more reason to bother you again.

i would love dres if it was like ceres. ceres is geologically active, it has the bright spots that are basically a kind of cryovolcanism, and it may even have a liquid ocean inside. dres has none of it

Dres. What's it good for? It's basically Mun; similar size, similar look. But it is much harder to reach. It's too small and too difficult to reach to use effectively for gravity assists. And it has nothing remarkable. Really, why would one want to visit Dres, except to say "i've been there"? it has no personality. even Pol has something special about it, and it's a serious competitor for the title of "most useless rock around kerbol" otherwise. the only remarkable thing about dres is its canyon. So i went and tried to drive my rover through it. I did drive my rover through Mun's canyons, and it was a marvelous experience. I could get speed, then i would find a crater rim and make a really cool jump. the canyon oriented north-south was especially good as a racing circuit. maybe the dres canyon would be a cool drive? maybe the planet would have this one redeeming quality? Never. the surface is too irregular, the gravity is lower. whenever i try to get to speed, i lose control. worse, the surface is so rugged, it's a real danger. my rover is armored so that it won't take damage from crashing. indeed, i did drive it for hundreds of kilometers around mun, and i never broke anything at any speed below 35 m/s. I often survived unschated up to 40 m/s. But on Dres, I managed to break wheels already at half that speed. And the canyon? the bottom of the canyon is all angles, without any soft path. it's impossible to race through it. i decided to go and vent a bit of my dres hating around

Done! I made an awesome attempt using all the tricks I could conceive with a 3 stage vehicle. I had 100 kg left of weight to add, not enough for an extra tank, so I used a 100 mt high launch stability enchancer to clear up some atmosphere. I repeated the launch several times to get the best outcome. i pushed every manuever to the limit, landing on mun and orbiting from it with less fuel than was needed according to the deltaV map; it entailed reaching below 1 km altitude still at full orbital speed. in the end, i arrived back on kerbin's atmosphere with 12 m/s left. there i spent a long time deorbiting, but when i entered the low atmosphere the reaction wheels were too weak to keep the ship pointed retrograde. it would flip prograde, and then it was too aerodinamic to slow down, crashing into the sea before the parachutes could deploy. So I went back to mun orbit and instead of using the 275 m/s burn needed for a kerbin reentry, i gave myself a small nudge to stay in a high orbit around kerbin. there, i used multiple mun gravity assists to gradually lower my periapsis, and after 100 days of orbiting i managed to reenter atmosphere with 33 m/s left! not much to slow down from orbital speed, but the terrier engine has gimbaling and can be used to help the reaction wheel pointing the ship correctly. still, not enough. I still would flip around 1000 m/s. I also tried altering the ship attitude to gain some lift, but it was useless; at the altitude where i could do it, there was too little drag to make it worthwhile (considering without solar panels battery power was very limited); and at altitudes where the drag was useful, it was impossible to manuever around without spinning the ship. I reached 2000 m altitude still at 500 m/s. there, in desperation, i would deploy the parachute while still in red. it would deploy without breaking. then it would open without breaking. the ship would suddenly slow down... and at around 300 m/s, the parachute would finally snap, sending the ship to its doom. I repeated this thing many times. Of course I could not detach the engine and fuel tank. the 40 kg of the decoupler would make me lose some 50 m/s of deltaV, and I could not afford them. So, I went back to the drawing board to get more deltaV, and I used my old trick of putting stages on top instead of bottom. the old design had a first stage with a reliant that would push it to around 20000 m and 700 m/s, then a terrier would finish circularizing, and the third stage had a second terrier to shed the weight of the empty tank. of course this uses 3 engines. worse, the terrier is not powerful to push stuff in orbit. in order to reach orbit with that low twr, i had to make a less steep gravity turn, which was less efficient. Instead, I placed the second stage tank on top of the command pod. this way it would save one terrier engine. with the half ton saved, i was able to add a small fuel tank, and i added it to the first stage, giving some extra power to the reliant. because of this - and because the second stage was now lighter, having the same fuel but one less terrier engine - i had enough twr to execute a perfect gravity turn. I didn't adopt this configuration at first because i was worried about aerodinamics, but it actually flies well. the parachute is unbalanced, and it was a small issue on some manuevers, but by putting it on the east side, i was able to make the parachute's asymmetrical drag a natural part of the gravity turn here i just disengaged the reliant here i am getting into orbit with close to 3000 m/s remaining. I could stop posting here, as I think we all know that with 3000 m/s in orbit you can go to mun and back with a safe margin. i pushed for a close intercept, for more oberth effect and less altitude to prepare for landing (i actually ended up at 6500 m periapsis). i also positioned very carefully the manuever to reach mun with the minimum speed. here i temporarily stopped the injection burn to shed the second stage tank i circularize on a very low orbit i prepare for landing. to save fuel i make a very gradual fall. I picked the area just southwest of the big crater to land because there is a nice stretch of relatively flat land with few craters; it's one of the best landing spots on mun at 1 km from the ground i still have not braked. but don't worry, due to my trajectory i still have some 30 seconds before impact. the terrier is much oversized for this small lander, but having a high twr allows me to make those kind of manuevers. getting closer touchdown! the lander is small enough that it can eschew landing legs. I landed with exactly 580 m/s. I managed 570 in my earlier try, here i've been a bit wasteful on the last part (and it turned out i could have waited a few more seconds before braking) to show that the ship is actually stable and i'm not holding it in place with SAS, i decided to go out and plant a flag. leaving mun. again, for greater efficiency i use a very inclined trajectory. the high twr helps. It took 587 m/s to get back into orbit. i could have been a bit more efficient, but the asymmetric parachute is making my ship tilt to the side; I unintentionally gave a bit of inclination to the orbit, losing some efficiency. it's the price for placing the second stage over the third. I will still have almost 400 m/s left. it turned out having an open node in the front of my capsule didn't hamper my aerodinamics as much as i was hoping, and the lateral parachute makes me more prone to flipping. i have to use the rocket to keep pointing retrograde; if the rocket flips, i won't be able to recover it and it won't slow down enough for the chute. the rocket still flipped, but slower than in the other attempt, so the chute didn't break. yes, i could have just added a decoupler to jettison the engine and tank, and the capsule alone would aerobrake all right. but i like recovering parts. did I just end on a river? no, i ended on a ravine. the engine exploded because of the impact (i should have saved a bit of fuel to cushion it, but i was more concerned at increasing my chances of saving the pilot). the tank exploded rolling down the incline. luckily the command pod itself is sturdier. and i stop in the river. It was an interesting challenge at first, though once i found the right rocket to maximize deltaV, the rest became mostly trivial. also, it was poorly named. this has little to do with early career. no upgrade on the launchpad makes little sense. it is much cheaper than other upgrades. a much more realistic "early career" scenario is to have a level 2 launchpad and a level 1 tracking station. heck, last challenge career i made, i went to the mun that way; and i did it with my second flying mission, so it certainly qualifies for "early career". the mass limit is the only real limitation. adding just a few tons of allowed weight would mostly trivialize the challenge, even with no tracking station and a level 1 pilot.

what's an elcano? the name comes from the captain who completed magellan's expedition after magellan's death, but i doubt it has anything to do with getting your main crew killed, so... huh?