king of nowhere

thanks but that's way farther than i am. my problems are - putting a rotor on a boat and activating it will not propel the boat forward - activating the rotor on the boat will cause the boat to rotate - the rotor does not follow commands except for right-clicking on it i have tried this very simple boat design. none of the commands i tried will activate or do anything for the rotor. when i activate it manually, the boat does not move forward, but it starts spinning on itself. what i need to understand is why this basic thing, that should work by all physical laws, is not working. and what i need to make it work.

with my rocket rover capable of going anywhere up to duna's gravity, explore everything, refuel and take off, exploring most of the system is just a matter of time. only three planets are off-limits for my rover. tylo, where i can still go if i launch a module with extra engines and fuel, and eve and laythe, because atmospheres. so, i'm thinking of missions to those two planets. for laythe, i am envisioning a boat rover. perhaps some weird mix with retractable wheels that can go over land and water both. for eve, i am envisioning a helicopter to take advantage of the thick atmosphere. perhaps i could even try to make an helicopter lifting a rocket, to get out of the worst part of the atmosphere. maybe it could even work as ssto on eve. probably not. regardless, i must learn to use rotors for this plan. which is harder that it should be. i tried a design as proof of concept. nothing fancy, just a rotor with helix blades attached, some batteries and a command module, sent on laythe to see if the thing works as intended. it doesn't. it does not move on water. instead, the whole boat starts rotating! i tried to add two tanks as floaters on the sides. the boat still keeps rotating, lifting the tanks out of the water. actually, this creates a kind of movement as the boat rolls over the water on those two tanks, but that's not what i'm looking at. i tried different configurations, especially with the helixes, but nothing. i cannot produce a thrust on water. i also have no idea how to control a boat besides right-clicking on the engine to tell it to move faster or slower. i haven't tried an helicopter. i figure i need some answers first.

but then, if you wait 10 minutes to recharge the batteries to run 20 engines for 1 minute, you may as well have 12 engines running for 2 minutes, or 6 engines for 4 minutes, and so on. it doesn't change much, your thrust is still limited by how much electricity you can produce. and i'm afraid there are no other solutions. getting so much electricity has a price. i'd try with a mix: instead of 20 tons of rtg, only 5 tons of rtg or so, and about 40k battery power. that's enough for 3 minutes continuous burn, with a dozen minutes to recharge. it should be enough to make small manuevers in one go, while you'll still need multiple burns for the large manuevers anyway, and it should be lighter than 300 rtg

wait, what? in a 75 km LKO i can do a 1000x warp, at least. i only have limitations if my periapsis goes below 70,25 km. even then, it's 50x as long as i'm out of the atmosphere. and i have no mods installed. i do have the breaking ground and making history expansions. why this difference?

of course; and in this case, i maximize fun by trying to maximize efficiency. after all, this game is a big sandbox mode with no real objectives, so we have to make our own. otherwise everything is pointless. why even go farther than minmus? you can unlock the whole tech tree while staying on mun. why make space stations? they provide no tangible benefits. by the way, the launch window planner has nothing for going from minmus to interplanetary.

yes, i was doing the same, flying my ships with just enough fuel to get to minmus and refueling there - sometimes i even had insufficient fuel for capture, i had to send a tanker on a rendez-vous on intercept trajectory just to catch the ship. but i'm wondering if it would be more convenient to send the fuel to LKO and refuel ships there. if for some destinations it is more convenient to launch from LKO than from minmus because of oberth effect, i want to resupply in LKO. To that purpose, i already sent up a giant space tank that i'm slowly going to fill.furthermore, it is much more convenient to make trajectories from there, as from minmus i need to have minmus itself in the right place along its orbit for maximum efficiency, while with LKO i just need the correct placement of kerbin and the target planet - and i can skip even that if i'm willing to go on an elliptical trajectory and make an intercept in two manuevers. is there a way to calculate whether it is more convenient to launch from LKO or minmus to a given destination? besides using the debug console to place yourself in the various orbits and trying all the options, of course.

to eve, yes. i spend 400 m/s extra in getting out from minmus, but i save 930 m/s on getting out of kerbin SOI, so it's a net gain for me. but as i move to other destinations, quintuplicating the cost of the interplanetary transfer orbit will soon outweight the 900 m/s i save in getting up to minmus. and it's not just a matter of getting more fuel - as you pointed out, it's free - but of needing bigger fuel tanks.

damn. i will have to rethink all my refueling logistics then.

i'm looking at the deltaV map, and it says i can get from a kerbin intercept to an eve intercept with just 90 m/s. indeed, i verified it; from LKO i could get an eve intercept with a bit more than 1000 m/s. nice! so i have a ship orbiting minmus (it stopped there for refueling), and i figured, from there i need 150 m/s to escape minmus - actually i am in a high orbit, i can escape minmus with 25 m/s, and if i do it at the right point in the orbit, i am already in a kerbin escape trajectory. so, if i angle my escape from minmus correctly, i should be able to get to eve with 90 more m/s of deltaV. total 115 m/s. make it 150 if the orbit is not just right. make it 200 because from minmus i lose some oberth effect. instead, i cannot get a eve intercept even with 400 m/s. do notice that for the sake of this experiment i'm not even trying to get an actual intercept, i'm just trying to see if i can get a periapsis with kerbol of 9,5M kilometers, which is eve's orbit and is what would be required for an intercept. my best effort goes to 9.9M km, with 400 m/s of deltaV. I'm trying to figure out the exact mechanics. am i doing something wrong? i consider myself well versed in orbital mechanics, and i don't see how i could improve the trajectory. from everything i ever tried, the most efficient injection burn is made on the planet, so waiting until i am out of minmus orbit to make another manuever gains me nothing - indeed, simulations confirm this. i already am exiting from the kerbin SOI with the best inclination, straight backwards compared to kerbin orbit - or at least close enough to it that it should make little difference. the only thing i can think of that could possibly explain why i can't get to eve is oberth effect: on minmus i am slower, i get less juice from my thrust. i am fully expecting that i'll need more for this reason. i was expecting those 90 m/s may even become 180. but i need 480 m/s! that's 5 times more than i would have needed from LKO. can oberth effect here explain a 5 to 1 change in fuel efficiency? i read that you can get similar effects with jupiter, but on an earth-sized planet? and if it's not obert effect eating all my deltaV, then what? if this is normal and there is no way around it, would it be more convenient to send my ISRU fuel back to LKO and refuel ships there? i thought by refueling them on minmus i would save those 900 m/s needed to get there, but if from minmus the cost of moving anywhere is quintuplicated... on a related note, how can i calculate reliably the cost to get from mun to minmus, or from one of the various moons of jool to another mun, or to somewhere else?

besides the swivel/reliant, i'm not aware of any other case where you have two similar engines, one with gimbal, one without. so, in most cases you won't worry about gimbaling anyway, because there is no choice. most of my launches use either the skipper or the bobcat (i seem to prefer payloads in that weight category), both of those engines are unique in their thrust. there is nothing else coming close. so, if i want that specific thrust, and i don't want to use clusters of engines (which often ruin the aerodinamics) then i don't have any choice. in the case of the swivel/reliant, if you want more control, you are probably better off adding a reaction wheel. you get extra control, but it's much lighter. and if you put it in the last stage, you also can recover it afterwards. it's a bit more expensive, though.

With mine, I strapped landing struts all around it, so it can bounce harmlessly on the ground. it's surprisingly effective: those struts are rated for 12 m/s of maximum impact speed, but most rover accidents involve glancing the ground rather than falling straight on it, and so the struts can take much more punishment.

once, long ago, there was a rover. it was a simple rover, if a big one, designed for one purpose: to ferry fuel from a fuel production facility on the ground to another craft that would bring the fuel to orbit. the rover didn't need to go fast or far, but it still was at risk of capsizing. and it was too big to be upturned by a robotic hinge. So I added to it an engine, pointing on a side to generate torque. and the rover did what it was made to do. then i had to send another similar rover to another planet. I was studying various concepts to make it land, when i suddenly realized: i already have an engine, i only need to add another engine, and this rover can fly itself. no need for transfer modules or sky cranes. the original plan called for two rovers, one for mining, one for science. but science instruments are so small and light, the big mining rover will barely feel the extra weight if i just give them to it. And so this rover could support mining and science, and it could upturn itself when it fell. well, except when it exploded. which, being a fuel tank strapped with delicate science instruments, it did often. and so it was not so fun to drive. I tried to make it more resistant by applying some landing struts on its top, so it could bounce off the ground and keep going. And thus dancing porcupine was born. And i kept adding new functionalities to it as long as i could keep them light enough to fly Dancing Porcupine can - cruise around planets at over 30 m/s - routinely survive crashes at over 30 m/s - land and take off from any planetary body no bigger than Duna - refuel itself - fun to drive from cockpit view - go up cliffs - collect science everywhere - drive by night - fall down cliffs and survive (which will surely come in handy if you drive by night at full speed) - dock with anything - carry fuel and ore - complete with launcher - launcher does not need manuevering here are its major functionalities A complete highlight of the porcupine armorTM. It is virtually indestructible below 30 m/s (i only took damage once, when a ground feature managed to hit a battery), and it is fairly reliable up to 40 m/s. Above that it's practically guaranteed to break something, though even at 60 m/s there is a fair chance that the pilots will survive, together with enough pieces of the rover to retain at least some functionality. Warning: - when driving, you go forward. when deploying your rockets, you go upwards. you can fly with your rockets folded, in which case you go downward. remember to always set your control point accordingly. the manufacturer is not responsible if you crash on a hillside because you tried to fly by pointing the cupola upwards - the porcupine armor can resist normal accidents in all conditions, barring extreme speed or extreme bad luck. It cannot resist the driver incidentally trying to destroy it, or doing something bloody stupid - driving this rover will give you a sense of invulnerability that will push you to do something bloody stupid. Like throwing yourself down a crater just because you can. - remember to fold your rockets back after using them; while extended, they are vulnerable - flight is a bit shaky, with the hinges causing vibrations and the center of mass moving as fuel depletes. If you think this is a flaw, perhaps you are not fully appreciating that this thing actually flies in the first place. DOWNLOAD LINK https://kerbalx.com/king_of_nowhere/dancing-porcupine-the-indestructible-rocket-car

i was driving a rover by night, with the lights in my room turned off. just me and the area illuminated by the floodlights, and nothing else on the whole planet.

i also suggest that you not do the correction manuevers at ascending or descending nodes. that's for matching orbital plane, which is not what you need to do here. what you want is simply to intersect eeloo's orbital plane. the reason for delaying the correction manuever is that you get more precision if you do it later, and you get more efficiency if you do it about halfway. i'm not sure on the exact reason, though i assume it's a compromise between making a manuever earlier meaning a tiny change in speed has more time to produce a large deviation, and making the manuever when your ship is slower being more efficient. Anyway, i haven't gotten to eeloo yet, but i guesstimate that the best place for such a course correction would be bewteen duna and dres orbits. from there, make a normal/antinormal acceleration to intercept eeloo's orbit, and then fiddle around with prograde/retrograde and radial/antiradial until you get an intercept.

i also think your problem is orbital plane. to get to minmus, you need to change your inclination. set minmus as the target, so you can see the ascending and descending nodes. then correct your inclination, and then getting an intercept is not a big deal. that's the easy way. the efficient way is to change your orbital inclination later. it's much cheaper to change inclination when you're farther away from kerbin. i found the best place to do so is after passing mun's orbit. that's harder to set up because, if you want to visualize the intercept, you need to set up two manuever nodes while you are still in LKO. anyway, since minmus is much farther than mun, it is only natural that slight modifications of your original trajectory will have a bigger impact on your destination. you have 5-10 days of travel for those small deviations to accumulate, instead of just one for mun. so, to get a precise insertion you really need a course correction manuever halfway from your target. it's not a bug, it's just how things are.

the best way to go everywhere is to mine your own fuel in space. minmus is the ideal place, with its low gravity it is very cheap for a mining vessel to land and take off. nowadays all my missions only have enough fuel to go to minmus, where they are refueled. it would be evencheaper to send fuel from minmus to LKO and only send rockets big enough to get there (smaller rockets, and all the extra fuel spent to send from minmus is free) but it would take many more manuevers to keep a refueling station and make regular trips on it. really, that's the only way to get really high deltaV at low cost. the rocket equation is a harsh mistress. with a few tons of fuel and a terrier engine you can get 3 km/s in orbit with a reasonable payload, and it takes a reasonably small rocket to lift that. but if you want more, you need a lot more fuel (or you need a bit more fuel and another stage, with another engine). and to carry that extra weight to orbit you need more fuel on the second stage too. but then your engine isn't powerful enough to lift this, so you need a bigger engine. and then you need to make the first stage proportionally bigger. there's no way around that. if you want a lot of deltaV, you need a big rocket. you can optimize your engines and staging all you want, but in the end, but at best you'll end up with a slightly less big rocket. i mean, the real space agencies are all studying ways to mine fuel from the moon. and every plan for a mission to mars entails getting fuel out of mars atmosphere. and doing it in ksp is much easier than in real life. aside from that, i can't add much. my ideal TWR (measured on kerbin, because what you really want is acceleration) are 1.5 at launch, 1 for the second stage, and 0.5 in orbit. the last one is a compromise between saving on engine mass and making manuevers in a reasonable time. you could get away with less if you don't need to rocket brake on landing, but getting out of kerbin's SOI with 0.1 TWR is booooring.

it's quite common. only a week ago i had the same issue: i had an onion command module (they have a decoupler incorporated), and the game assumed that i would drop it immediately. even if it wasn't even part of the staging.

it happens sometimes. it happened to me too. it generallly happens when the game misinterprets staging. in your case, i think i'm seeing some decouplers between the central tank and the rockets? the game may be thinking that you intend to detach the rockets before burning anything. i can tell you you don't need to worry, the rocket will work normally. unfortunately you won't be able to see your remaining deltaV. as for how to fix this, though, i'm not sure.

i looked around a bit, and i found both options.

oh, looks like it's more complicated stuff. I won't do it then. one thing is wanting to post my best vehicle on kerbalx with a good presentation, but learning advanced video editing is taking it too far

i discovered how to use the game bar. i recognize now it was it that was sending the messages in the past. and i'm trying to figure out some functions from shotcut thanks to everyone if it's not too much bother, can someone give me some directions for shotcut too? I would like to take a bit of my original footage and accelerate it, but i don't know if it's possible. I have a rover with an "armor" made of landing struts on top and on the sides, and i want to show that it crashes at high speed and doesn't break, so i took a video where i accelerate and capsize a few times in a row. i would like to speed up the parts where the rover accelerates, as they are boring. i would cut them entirely, but i don't want to give the impression that i crashed 20 times and only selected to show the few times where i remained whole. i want to show the unbroken footage to show that the system is reliable, that i can do it several times in a row, but without half a minute of the rover just picking up speed. hence speeding up the boring parts of the video. also, i would like to write some comments on the video

that worked. nice trick!

i tried both ways, and both work poorly. making the secondary command module a root part worked. then i restarted flight, and the piece (together with everything attached to it) had disappeared! i suppose the rover i'm launching is complex enough to attract some kraken after all. then i tried to zoom into the fairing, but trying to hover with the mouse over the command module only seemed to select the fairing. other pieces could be selected easily, only the command module seemed to have this problem. i had to find a very specific angle to select it eventually.

yes. you can have simple rovers, complex rovers, cheap rovers, expensive rovers, manned rovers, rovers for mining. you can even strap on rockets on your rover and move from mun to minmus to other places. but there is one thing they all have in common. they will capsize. in low gravity, they will capsize. a good rover must be able to deal with it.

if i make the right probe core the root part, and then reinstate the previous root part (the previous root part was NOT a command module; it was a fuel tank), will that keep the probe core as the control point? i never tried. i had no idea it was possible