Scarecrow71

Can't have soup without crackers. Kraken Snack Attack Soup Lake

Greetings, one and all! During a recent mission while going through the Kerpollo Challenge, I realized that there just wasn’t a full-length tutorial on how to use MechJeb 2 for docking. I had never attempted docking before doing this challenge, and so I scoured the forums and Reddit and Facebook and every other nook and cranny on the internet, hoping to find something that would help me use MJ to dock. I was able to find pieces of information here and there, but nothing that was full and in-depth. And so, because I have received tons of help here from the fine folks playing this wonderful game, I am here now to give back with the information I’ve compiled in a tutorial that should, I hope, help anyone interested in using MJ to dock. I would like to state before we get started that there is a lot of great information out there, and that this tutorial is not meant in any way to downplay what others have already done. @Snark has a wonderful tutorial on docking that is great if you want to do this by hand. I just wanted to give people the option of how to do this using MechJeb. Assumptions In order to run through and/or perform the steps in this tutorial, I am going to assume that: You, the reader, know how to build a rocket. You, the reader, know how to launch said rocket. You, the reader, know how to achieve a circularized orbit. You, the reader, have MechJeb2 installed. This tutorial is not designed to teach rocket design, or give steps on how to get into orbit; if you don’t know either of those things, it is highly suggested you learn that first. Pre-Requisites Pre-requisites? Didn’t I just cover Assumptions above? Yes, I did. In addition to the knowledge that you should have before you pull off the stuff in this tutorial, you should also have the following in whichever career game you are playing: Level 2 Mission Control Level 2 Tracking Station Advanced Flight Control Miniaturization These are the minimum requirements in order to use MJ to the fullest extent in this tutorial. If you have more than this unlocked, great! If you don’t have these unlocked, well, keep playing until you do and then come back! Versions For the sake of posterity, the versions of the different pieces of software I am using: Kerbal Space Program 1.8.3 MechJeb2 2.12.3.0 I do have Breaking Ground and Making History installed, but neither of these is of import to docking with MJ. I also will not be using any parts from any other mods, sticking instead to the stock docking port from Miniaturization. If you wish to use other docking ports from mods or other unlocked nodes in the Technology Tree, the concepts and tips here will work. Now, with all the legalese out of the way, let’s get started! PART I – THE SETUP Rendezvous and docking maneuvers are quite possibly the most challenging things to learn how to do in this game. I won’t lie and say that everything up to this point is easy – it’s not. And while these 2 concepts are close to the last things you will learn how to do, they are, in my estimation, the most complex. You are, to put it simply, attempting to take one object in motion and move it close to another object in motion, get the speed (velocity) of both moving objects to be equal, and then take one object and lock it into place on the other object. And you are trying to do this without crashing or blowing up. This is not an easy thing to do manually. Thankfully, we can take advantage of the computer to get this done. What you’ll need here is: A ship in orbit with a docking port; and A ship to be launched with a docking port. We are going to be using the Clamp-o-Tron Docking Port Jr. on both of the example ships here: In order to dock, you need a docking port on each ship. And the ports need to be installed properly to do this. At the top of the above image is what I call a “shiny ring”, while at the bottom of the image is what I’m going to refer to as “the curtain”. I call the top the shiny ring because it looks like a shiny ring, while the curtain looks like a semi-folded curtain. At least, that’s what they look like to me. Anyhow, the docking port needs to be installed properly on both the ship in orbit and the ship to be launched. The curtain is the part that attaches to the ship, while the shiny ring is pointed outwards away from the ship. This is because, when you eventually do dock, the shiny ring from the ship in orbit will attach to the shiny ring from the ship being launched, locking the 2 ships together. For this tutorial, I will be sending the following ship into orbit as our target ship. In the first shot from the VAB, you can see that I’ve highlighted the docking port; notice the orientation of it as I mentioned above: What a name! Target Ship! It’s actually really good practice to name your vessels so that when you’ve got multiple ships up there and you are trying to deal with docking or rendezvous or other maneuvers, you know which ship you are dealing with. Don’t want to have to revert to launch all the time! Anyhow, once we’ve got our target in orbit, we can start thinking about what we forgot and why we need to dock. You’ll see in the shot there that I’ve circularized the orbit at ~128,000m. It isn’t required, but it is HIGHLY recommended that the orbit of the target ship is circular around whatever celestial body it is orbiting. Having the orbit circularized makes the rendezvous much easier to deal with. Now that we have a target ship in orbit, we can continue with our mission. But wait! We forgot to pack enough snacks for Jeb to snack on! Oh, we can’t let Jeb sit in orbit for too long without snacks; we better send a supply ship up to him and make sure he’s got enough chips and soda for whatever long flight he has in front of him. Or, well, whatever other reason you want to devise for needing to rendezvous and dock. The supply ship, like the target ship, has to have a docking port in the correct orientation. It also must have some RCS (Reaction Control Systems) thrusters, and a few monopropellant tanks. While we use liquid fuel engines to get into space, we don’t want to use them to try and dock lest we wish to go too fast and crash. Monopropellant tanks and thrusters allow for quick, short, controlled bursts without gaining too much speed; they are the right tool for this job. And so we end up with a snack supply ship that looks thusly: I gave 2 shots here, primarily because the docking port is a bit hidden under the TD-12 decoupler. Once we get this thing rendezvoused with Target Ship, we are going to lose all of the fuel tanks and engines and, hopefully, dock without too much issue. And away we go. And we have a circularized orbit at ~112,000m. You’ll notice 2 things that are very different here from the first orbit we achieved. The Snack Ship’s orbit is closer to Kerbin’s surface than the Target Ship’s orbit. When putting the ship you are going to dock into orbit, you want to be at a circular orbit that does not match the orbit of the target ship. This is due to, again, not wanting to accidentally crash into the target ship. By being closer to the surface, we can make the assumption that we won’t crash…although accidents do happen sometimes. The plane the Snack Ship is on is not the same as the plane the Target Ship is on. While this was by design in this tutorial (I could have very easily just gotten to an equatorial orbit for both ships), you will find when exploring other bodies that you will almost never have the same plane for your orbits. So to make this as close to what will happen as possible, I intentionally shifted the plane of the Snack Ship so you can see what happens. And we are all set up to do our rendezvous now. So let’s get to it! PART II – THE RENDEZVOUS Now that we’ve got our ships in orbit, we have to get them so they are: On the same plane At the same (approximate) distance from the surface Moving at the same speed You can absolutely do all of this by hand…but that’s not the point of this tutorial. I certainly cannot do any of these by hand, and I rely upon MJ to do this for me. And that’s what we are going to do here. So, the first thing you want to do is to set the Target Ship as the target. Basically, in the map view, click on the Target Ship and select “Set as Target”. You’ll notice that the orbit of the Target Ship turned from white to yellow. This is a visual cue to let you know that yes, you have set this object as the target. You can do this with any object the tracking station is monitoring, from ships in orbit to planets to moons…pretty much anything in outer space. The next thing to do is to transfer the orbit of the Snack Ship to be aligned (somewhat) with the orbit of the Target Ship. To do this, open the MJ menu (it’s in the top-right of my screen; it may be elsewhere in yours, depending on your settings) and click on Maneuver Planner: In the Maneuver Planner window that pops up, change where it says (for me) “Circularize” to “bi-impulsive (Hohmann) transfer to target”. Then click on Create Node, and check to see how long before the node executes, like so: In my case, this will take 1 day, 3 hours, and 28 minutes. Which means we can either sit here and let the game churn away for this amount of time, or we can warp ahead. And we’ve got several options on how to do that: We can make sure Auto-warp is selected in the Maneuver Planner window and then click on Execute Next Node; OR We can use the warp controls that are part of the MET button in the upper-left corner; OR We can navigate to the Tracking Station and warp ahead using the controls there. I prefer to use the Tracking Station to closer to the time when warping. Why? Because the Tracking Station shows you how long until the next maneuver for any/all ships. Like this: Notice under Snack Ship it shows “MNV T – 1d, 3h, 28m”? That’s the amount of time it takes to get to the next maneuver node. So what I’ll do here is click the blue button in the upper-left corner to warp to the next morning, and see how close we are to the time. And after doing that, I’m still 5 hours and change away, so I’m going to use the warp arrows to speed ahead until I’m within 30-60 minutes of the maneuver node: I’m within 56 minutes of the node, so now what I’ll do is make sure Auto-warp is clicked in the Maneuver Node Planner window, and then click Execute Node. What this will do is force MJ to take over, and then the game will Auto-warp to and then execute the node. And we end up with the following orbit when we are done: Our orbit is now a bit more closely aligned with the Target Ship…but we aren’t quite there yet. What we want to do next is to fine tune our approach to get even closer to the right orbit. So, with the Maneuver Node Planner window open, change that drop-down so it says “fine tune closest approach to target”. Before you click on Create Node, take a look at the value in the Closest Approach Distance box. It should default to 200m, but I always try to get closer than this. I generally aim for somewhere from 25m – 50m, and in this case, I’ve set it to 50. Once you are happy with the value you’ve set, click Create Node and see how long until the node gets executed. Wow. In this case, the node is going to be coming up on us fast – within the next 2 minutes. In the event that the node ends up coming up too soon, you can always remove the node, wait a bit, and create a new node. In this case, I’m going to let this one stand; Auto-warp is marked, so I’ll click Execute Node and end up with this for an orbit: It doesn’t look like much changed…but it did. See the red arrows to the left on the orbit? That shows the approach distance; if you hover over that both before and after the maneuver, you’ll see that the values have changed. It doesn’t look like much, but it is a big deal. Now we have to match velocity (speed) of the Target Ship. What this will do is perfectly align the orbits and make sure that both ships are traveling the same speed, parking the Snack Ship close to the Target Ship. So, in the Maneuver Planner Window, change the drop-down to be “Match Velocities With Target” and click Create Node. You’ll notice that, through all of this, I am not changing any of the defaults other than when fine tuning the approach. You don’t need to change these…but you are free to play around with them and see what results you get. Always remember that your mileage on this stuff may vary! Anyhow, after creating the node, we end up with this: It's gonna take 13.5 minutes until we reach the node, so we will leave this one and click on Execute Node. And when that’s done, we get this: My goodness, my goodness! Look what we have here! Both of our ships, right next to each other. You will notice that they are pointed in the same relative direction, which is fine. You could take control of the other ship for a brief moment and point it in the right direction, but we aren’t going to do that here. We are going to let MJ take control and deal with this. So, decouple the almost-empty fuel tanks, and go to the next section! PART III – DOCKING Well, we finally made it to the docking portion of this. I told you up front this was complex and one of the most difficult things you will do in this game. It may take some work and some time to get to this point, but it is so worth it when you finally reach the end. Trust me when I say that you will smile from ear-to-ear every time you do this. Anyhow, what we need to do is tell MJ that we are docking. We start by setting the docking port on Target Ship as the target. So right-click on that docking port – you may have to spin the camera around a bit to see it and interact with it – and then click on Set As Target: Sometimes the menu will change to show Unset Target, and sometimes it won’t. I haven’t figured out why this happens, so I got the screen shot showing the yellow words at the top; those will always display to show that you have set the docking port as the target. Now we have to tell MJ what to do. I’m going to use the commands that will be the first ones available to you when you try docking. Again, you are free to play with all the other commands and see which ones work and which ones don’t. So what we do now is, in the MJ menu, click on Scripting Module, which brings up the Scripting menu. Where it says “Time”, pull that drop-down open and click on Modules. Then to the right of that, open that drop-down and change it to MODULE Docking Autopilot. Then click the + sign to the right. What you’ve done here is to tell MJ that you want docking to be on autopilot, which is awesome. But you haven’t given it the instruction to actually dock yet, so let’s take care of that. Where it says Modules, open that drop-down and change it to Docking, and change the drop-down to the right of that to be Target Dock. Then click the + sign again. Leave the defaults alone here. Both of the drop-downs say Clamp-o-Tron Docking Port Jr., which is what we want. We can’t change the part names, which honestly would be pretty darned nice. But leave them alone or you run the risk of messing this up and having to start over. All that’s left to do now is click the green Start button and watch the magic happen! We are now successfully docked! I will state the following 2 things right here and right now: Save early and often. Just because the computer is doing this for you doesn’t mean that accidents won’t happen. I highly recommend quick-saving after every step so that, in the event of a catastrophe, you can revert just a little ways and try again. You may need to change the control point of the Snack Ship. In this case, I had to change the control point to Reversed (which you can do by right-clicking on the command module and changing the Control Point in the menu) because the Snack Ship wanted to dock in the wrong direction. This goes to point 1 above about saving early and often. Note that you may need to turn on Advanced Tweakables to do this. SUMMARY And there you have it. At this point, you should have been able to get 2 ships into similar orbits at similar speeds and docked them with one another. As I pointed out at the beginning, I had to scour the internet for some of this information, and it wasn’t entirely complete. Which is why I wanted to put this whole tutorial together: so people could find a step-by-step of the entire process in one location. I hope that this tutorial has helped you to learn how to dock in an easy-to-follow way. The last thing I want is for people to be more confused here; I was so lost on this for such a long time that I avoided it. But now that I know what to do, I find it easy and I welcome doing it. I hope you can all say the same. If you like this tutorial, hammer on that Like button. If not, please leave your comments below so that I can fix whatever is wrong!

Banned for not being FutureTech

Mentioning what I've finished is more for me than it is for the challenge moderator. And for anybody else who just reads the latest posts and doesn't look at the first post in the thread. I know it will get updated in due time! Now I have to see the totality of parts I have available so I can design a ship to get to Eeloo or Moho next!

Today, I flew from Kerbin to Dres and back. This isn't a really major accomplishment, except I did it in a singular launch. And I also used docking ports. Why is this important? I've never gone interplanetary before, and I've never used docking ports before. But I did as part of the Kerpollo challenge, and these are firsts for me. A link to the Mission Report showing all the details:

And I did it! I have never gone interplanetary in this game before, and I not only went to Dres and back, but I did it in one launch. And I had to do docking as well. Woo hoo! @Superfluous J, please update the first post! This is 4 down, 5 to go (I've completed Kerpollo, Minpollo, Munpollo, and Drespollo, in that order!).

MISSION IV: DRESPOLLO The fine engineers and executives at the Las Kerbas space program believe that the planet Dres does not exist. So, being the kind of Kerbals we are, we decided to prove them wrong. I have never successfully been to another planet in the Kerbol system. I have planned and attempted to get to Duna before, but I’ve never actually gotten there. And now, as part of the Kerpollo challenge, I’m attempting to not only go to other planets, but to land on them and return. Because, you know, why not? I’m using the dV calculator at KSP Delta-V Planner (loicviennois.com) to plan the trip. According to the calculator, it will take the following: Takeoff from Kerbin: 3400 m/s Transit to Dres low orbit: 2850 – 3860 m/s Land on Dres: 430 m/s Return trip to Kerbin: 3280 – 4290 m/s The total dV required is 9960 – 11980 m/s. I’ll point out that the return trip numbers include aerobraking in Kerbin’s atmosphere, which I always do when coming back from the Mun or Minmus; there is no reason to expect that I wouldn’t do it here as well. I like to make sure I’ve got enough juice to do what I need to do, so I’ll be shooting for that upper number. If I end up having extra fuel left over, that’s a bonus. In order to accomplish this, we need the following (basic) stages in a rocket: Lander Transfer Liftoff This is going to be a little trickier than what I am normally used to; I am not the greatest at rocket design, but I have to design one now to do an interplanetary transfer. So let’s get to it. Before I get into the design information, I have to be perfectly clear and honest and state that I spent no less than 10 hours on attempting to design a craft that could do this without using docking ports. I wanted to avoid them for as long as possible because I have never even attempted docking, or performing an orbital rendezvous, or anything like that. However, I’ve also never gotten to another planet, so this challenge will be about a lot of firsts for me in the game. Anyhow, I’ve come to understand that while this would be possible without docking ports under other circumstances, the limiting nature of not being able to unlock nodes in a higher tier until the current tier is unlocked just cannot happen. I can design a lander and transfer stage, but getting off of Kerbin’s surface without access to some of the more powerful engines just won’t happen. So I spent 410 science today, picking up Miniaturization to close out tier 5, and then Heavier Rocketry and Advanced Fuel Systems on tier 6. My tech tree now looks like this: I’ll also state that I originally intended to go to Moho for this mission instead of Dres, but I’m still not sure that the parts I’ve got access to, even with docking, can handle that just yet. So I’m going to try for Dres, with a lander and an orbiting ship. Dres has, from what I gather, the least dV requirements for interplanetary partying, so here goes nothing. Lander Design We need to have a lander that is capable of the following: Detaching from the main ship Landing on Dres Getting back into Dres orbit Reattaching to the main ship The trickiest part of this is that, per the rules of the challenge, I have to leave a Kerbal on the orbiting craft while someone else goes to the surface to do their thing. And because of this, we can’t just simply use throw-away probe cores to go to the surface and leave them there. Which means we have to build a lander that sits on top of the main command pod, inverted. Yes, inverted. Kind of goes against everything I’ve built to this point, but the point of a challenge is to be, well, challenged. Were it that we had something larger than the Clamp-o-Tron Docking Port Jr., we could dock the lander to the main ship, transfer Kerbals from the lander to the main ship, and then jettison the lander. This would actually help save on weight for the return trip, increasing the amount of dV we have access to. Unfortunately, the Clamp-o-Tron Jr. only allows for transferring of resources, not Kerbals, so we need to account for this not only in overall design, but also to make sure that the lander pod doesn’t overheat on re-entry to Kerbin. Lots of stuff going on here with the lander stage. Step 1 here is to design the actual lander itself. We have 2 choices here – we can either design this upright and invert it, or we can design it upright and leave it in that position. Because we are bringing this puppy back home with us, we will design it at it will sit on the command pod. And we end up with something looking like this: She’s got 2095 m/s of dV, which is well over the minimum amount needed (in a perfect world) to land from low Dres orbit and then ascend back to low Dres orbit. It’s really nothing more than a souped up landing can with a bunch of science gadgets. TWR is 8.63, which should help both with a quick descent AND getting back into orbit without burning through too much fuel. I hope. I placed a Mk-16 XL parachute on the lander because, with having to bring this thing back to Kerbin (I can’t transfer Kerbals from this to the command pod) I need to make sure the primary chute is at the highest point. A lot of people don’t do that, but I do. I’ll be installing some radial parachutes on the command pod itself, but those won’t be enough with the total mass we’ll have at that point hurtling through the cosmos and ready to slam into Kerbin. Return Stage The return stage has to not only get us from Dres back to Kerbin, but it should also be capable of performing capture burns at both Dres and Kerbin. The initial transfer stage will probably have enough fuel to do the capture burn there, but I want to over-engineer the ship intentionally just to make sure. I don’t want Kerbals getting stuck and then having to do this all over again. The minimum amount of dV needed is 3280 m/s, and I’m going to go over this. The design I’ve got for this stage looks thusly: This stage has 4542 m/s of dV, which is above the upper amount of 4280 shown on the dV map. This stage is a less-souped-up lander can than the landing stage, but packs enough punch to get us home from Dres. It’s got a Skipper as the engine, with 4 Rockomax X200-32 liquid fuel engines, and is outfitted with an inline stabilizer and 18 solar panels. I’ve spent enough time around Dres running out of power to know that I need a lot of power generation on this trip. Yes, I am using lander cans for both the return and landing stage. Because I only have access to the Docking Port Jr., I can’t transfer crew from one pod to the next. And I’m not good enough with EVA maneuvers to fly a Kerbal from one to the other, so I’ll be bringing the lander can back home. It’s not ideal, especially when you consider I’ll need plenty of parachutes to bring this thing down safely. I’ve got 4 radial Mk16’s here, so when coupled with the Mk16-XL on the top can, this should slow it down enough for a decent descent where nobody dies. Notice I said “nobody dies”, and not “nothing blows up”. Big difference there. Transfer Stage This is where we have to build something to get us from low Kerbin orbit to Dres. According to the map I’m using, that requires no less than 2850 m/s of dV. This begs the question: why does it take less dV to get to Dres than it does to get back to Kerbin, especially when you will be returning with less weight than you went there with? My guess is it has to do with transfer windows and all that, but it makes no sense to me. Anyhow, we engineer the following stage to handle this for us: That’s 3406 m/s of dV in a vacuum around Kerbin, with a TWR of 1.07, which is more than the minimum of 2850. That’s not leaving a lot of room for error here, but it is what it is. I could add some side tanks to this, but I still have to engineer a liftoff stage, so let’s see how that goes first. I added a lot of struts to this stage, connecting all of the engines on the outside as well as crossing through the inside. I’m hoping this keeps this stage stable enough to actually be usable. Liftoff And your standard liftoff stage, which requires ~3400 m/s of dV to get into LKO. This is the easiest stage to understand due to the dV requirements never changing…but it can be the hardest stage (in my opinion) to build because the weight of the craft you are currently building is always going to change. But I think I’ve got this figured out with the following: Total dV for this entire stage, at sea level, is 5,186 m/s, with an initial TWR of 1.00. The actual dV is going to change while we are in flight, and will definitely go up once I hit the upper atmosphere. This seems rather over-engineered considering I’m aiming for a circularized orbit of ~100,000m, but I don’t want to short myself on fuel. And any extra I carry with me now can always be used for correction burns and in the event that emergencies pop up. Which they invariably will. I think this should do it. Now to test this bad boy out on the launch pad. Launch So I’ve done this enough times to know that the transfer window is just over 2 years away from the current in-game time. So I decided to do a Transfer Window Planner: You’ll see that the departure date is 2 years and 81 days away from the current day. So before I do anything else, I’m going to fast forward to close to this time, hopefully within a day or two. That way, if I have to revert back to launch or the VAB, I’m closer to that date than I am now. Save the game now, and then warp ahead. Queue the Jeopardy! music, Alex. And a check of the transfer window information after warping: So, I’m now within 1 day of the launch window. Which means after I launch, I won’t have to fast-forward for too long. A quick-save here, named appropriately, in the event I miscalculated the launch window. Sitting on the pad, waiting to be launched. Bob and Valentina are taking this journey; I need Bob so I can collect as much science as possible, and I need Valentina (or any other pilot) due to the rules of the challenge. Gotta leave 1 Kerbal in orbit now that I have docking ports…which I still am not sure how to actually use. Or, rather, I have never attempted docking, so this ought to be nice and fun. Is it just me, or does this look like something Batman would use? For some reason, the lander at the top looks like a Batman symbol of some kind…although that could be simply due to my just having watched The Dark Knight. Anyhow, liftoff, with a circular orbit at ~100,000m. And another shot of the Mun. I’m either lucky, good…or the game just likes me. I’ll take 1 and 2 for $2000, Alex. Plotted the ejection maneuver to head to Dres. I have 1533 m/s of dV remaining after launch and circularization, which is more than I budgeted for the liftoff itself. This is going to leave me a lot of extra dV once I get to Dres, which I am sure I will need. Anyhow, here is the plotted maneuver. So, the maneuver is coming up in 31 minutes, which is awesome. This means I timed everything just right with fast-forwarding 2+ years. And the dV requirement is 1531.1, which is right on the money for what I originally budgeted. Leaves ZERO room for error, and I’ll have to cut into the return stage a bit for a couple of correction burns. But, what’s a little planet-hopping without some excitement? A quick-save here, and then warp 30 minutes to the maneuver burn. So the burn is complete, and I’ve got the trajectory for Dres. The transfer stage is now gone, and I am going to go to about the half-way point to Dres to collect some science and do a minor correction burn to get some kind of encounter. Before that, though, I took another picture with the transfer stage decoupled. Yet another shot of the Mun…but look at all those pieces floating around in space. Empty tanks, engines, and a few decoupler rings. One of the things I love about this game is the detail given to some of this stuff. I know the game could have been done without this stuff, but it sure is cool. Anyhow, the first correction burn: Not bad. Got to a Pe of 1,694,180m on that one. The second correction burn will get me even closer than that: That’s pretty darned good, if I say so myself! A Pe of 81,138m after a secondary correction burn. Now just gotta get into the SOI and do a capture burn on Dres, get a little science, and quick-save! That’s an Ap of 86,413m and a Pe of 19,631m. Not bad, but I could have done far better than that; now I have to circularize at ~19,000m. Oh well. Time to collect science and then land! And touchdown on another planet: I’ve got 1,363 m/s of dV remaining to get back into orbit and rendezvous with the mother ship. That should be enough…but I’ve gotten this far plenty of times to know that no matter how much dV you have left, you don’t have enough. Ever. Anyhow, collecting science, quick-saving, and then attempting to get back into orbit so I can dock. So, I got back into orbit, and I’m using MJ to plot the rendezvous for me. I used the instructions at this link: MechJeb2 tutorials? - Add-on Discussions - Kerbal Space Program Forums And I ended up with this node: Yeah, that’s 2 hours away. It actually started as 10 days and 2 hours away, so a little auto-warp followed by a quick save. Luckily, the first burn here is only 25.6 m/s and will take less than 1 second to accomplish. I’ve got a couple more burns after that to fine tune the approach, but this will get me started nicely. The only thing that is really bad about this is that you can’t warp faster than 10x while under 300,000m. I was able to go into the tracking station and warp until about 10 minutes to go, so we should be good! Another quick save, a few burns, and here is what we have: The lighting isn’t the greatest, thanks to being on the wrong side of Dres here. But now to attempt to dock… Woo hoo! Holy cow, I was able to dock! My goodness, my goodness! Ok, so I did nothing here. I used MechJeb’s auto-dock feature, which saved my bacon because, to be honest, there is almost no way I do this properly otherwise. This isn’t simply landing on a surface; it’s lining up to moving parts that are really small and getting them to touch at a speed so slow that I could float faster. But it worked, and I ain’t complaining! Now to get that trajectory home and see what I can see! Wow, 1 year and 21 days away. Looks like we get to auto-warp until we get close enough to let MJ take over, huh? On the positive side, this maneuver is only supposed to take 1,656.3 m/s of dV, which is just over half what I have left in the first of 2 remaining stages. I’m hoping that I can actually do this properly! So I’ve got 1407 m/s of dV left in the transfer stage, and I currently have a Kerbin Pe of 63,186,083m. Definitely need to do a correction burn at the half-way point, but Mama…Mama I’m Coming Home! Correction burn 1: Kerbin Pe of 2,343,735m. I could have gotten closer, but what I want to do is get into Kerbin’s SOI at a decent altitude, and then do a capture burn before I start messing with aerobraking. Besides, I’ve got this quick-saved at this point, so if I muck this up I can at least come back to this point and try again! Second correction burn. Had to do this because the first one just does not get me close enough to do a capture burn and have any fuel left to land. In fact, I run out of fuel after that first one before capturing Kerbin. So I’m going to try using an aerobrake maneuver here at 51,044m. Coming in hot! Woo hoo! I did it! I got from Kerbin, to Dres, and back to Kerbin in 1 launch! With docking! And that’s a boatload of science I earned. 1,931, which allows me to unlock the rest of Tier 6, with 171.2 science left. I was hoping to get into Tier 7, but I’ll take what I’ve got. Why? Because I did it! Woo hoo! Lessons Learned Slow down. I know I’m trying to get this done, and I want to get it done right. But I also have to slow down so I’m not relaunching a billion times unnecessarily. Don’t trust that maneuver nodes you set will still be accurate if you quit the game before executing them. MechJeb is wonderful at setting nodes, and is far better at it than I am. But if you set a node and then save and then quit, it won’t be right the next time you come into the game. So either set them and execute them before you quit, or just set them the next time you come into the game. Save early. And often. I can’t state how many times I’ve had to revert back to an earlier quicksave and then have to go through the tedious chore of fast-forwarding to the launch window again. Always check your flight crew before going to the launchpad. If you want to bring a scientist, or engineer, or even a second pilot along, you better make sure they are in the seats or you’ll end up having to revert after you’ve tried landing on a distant world. Never put a reaction wheel on a ship just before a fairing end. The whole ship wobbles uncontrollably during retrograde burns, which eats up fuel, power, and time. Next time I do this, I surely won’t have this piece right here: Ant engines look great in the VAB when calculating dV. Unfortunately, they chew up too much fuel upon both landing and ascent back into orbit, which means you will more than likely severely under-engineer what you need. I had to revert all the way back to VAB once I realized that the amount of dV I had remaining to get back into orbit and dock (~600 m/s) was about 1,000 m/s short of what I needed for the Ant engines to pull this off. I had 2 of them; I should have used Terriers or Sparks. Kerbals do not have unlimited range to do things around them. The Scientist, for example, has a range of ~1.85 meters in which to reach and deal with science gadgets. Which means that he may have to move around slightly in order to collect data and reset experiments. I did not know that prior to doing this challenge. When warping in the Tracking Station, the ships/objects on the left will display any upcoming maneuver nodes and their time until you reach them. Never think you have enough fuel. Ever. Over-engineer whenever you can. You never know how much fuel you will have, because even the calculator is wrong. MISSION END

@18Watt Love the design on that Eveollo lander/ship! I've got an idea I want to put into practice once I get through with Dres (and I get better parts) for the multiple world/moon landings. Just gotta get through Dres first!

Yeah, I wasn't aware of the interaction range. I know that if the service bay was on the other side of the decoupler between the lander and the mothership that it would be out of range because, obviously, it's on another "ship", so to speak. But on the same ship? Wasn't aware that was a thing. I mean, hearing it now...it makes sense. Kerbals don't have arms that stretch to the outer limits of the cosmos. I just wasn't aware that same-ship had a range is all. But thank you for the clarification! That should help in the long run!

I have a ship en route to Dres, and about halfway there I open service bay and do some science stuff. I send my Scientist (Bob) on EVA to collect the data...and the only menu option I get is to Aim Camera. What? Why can't I collect the science from the gadgets here? NM - I simply had to move Bob down the ladder a bit. Sigh.

Not sure I was articulate enough, but how do I do anything if I have to fly straight up all the time? I have to turn at some point, and I will have to eject boosters. I've never had this problem until trying to do Kerpollo.

The big issue is that I stage after I've started turning, and the boosters always fall into he ship. So I'm looking for a way to prevent that.

Yeah, I've done that. And ther still doesn't seem to be enough force on them during ejection. When I stage, the boosters merely fall off, sliding straight down instead of being pushed away from the craft.

I'm not sure what the issue is, but Kerbals can't go EVA when off the ground until you upgrade the astronaut complex.

So, I've been having a problem with my Drespollo rocket when staging in that boosters and empty fuel tanks aren't being ejected far enough away from the main ship when activating the radial decouplers. I've done a bit of searching on this. And the common answer im seeing is to place the boosters so that their dray center of mass is just a hair below the middle of the decoupler. So what is the problem? Well, I can't seem to figure out how to display the dry CoM on a given fuel tank. There is no option in the VAB or SPH to show this on a given part, only on the ship as a whole. And at that, it shows current CoM; to show dry CoM on the ship, I have to drain the tanks. How does one display the dry CoM on a tank? I'd like to get this sorted so I can eject boosters properly without them crashing into the rest of my ship and blowing it up.

Banya was funnier than Seinfeld.

Banned for the evil laugh

MISSION III: MUNPOLLO And so here we are attempting to land on the Mun. I know for a fact that the last ship I built will get us there and back, but that’s kind of overkill. I might update it so that we aren’t dealing with all that leftover fuel…but maybe not. It ain’t like we gotta worry about funds, right? As always, the opening shot of the tech tree: I am starting here with 65.2 science, and only 3 nodes on tier 5 to unlock. I am not going to unlock miniaturization unless I absolutely have to; I don’t want to deal with docking just yet. Maybe on the multiple-body missions where I gotta save fuel to get home. Maybe. Anyhow, the ship on the launchpad: I did make a few changes to this thing. For starters, I added 4 solar panels. Secondly, I changed out the landing legs for sturdier ones, and I upgraded from 4 to 6 of them. Finally, I added an Advanced Inline Stablizer so I can get better control of the ship during flight. The rest of it is just like the one I used to go to Minmus. And now, off we go! The maneuver to get me to the Mun, followed by the stable orbit: That’s a stable of orbit of 1.53998Mm for the Ap and 17.7185km for the Pe. And now to collect some science…and then a quicksave before I put this puppy on the surface. Even MechJeb lands like garbage sometimes. On a hill, so I had to spin and spin until I righted this ship. That was a pain in the ass. Thank goodness I put the solar panels on there! Anyhow, collecting science, and then back to Kerbin. Now, before I post the rest of the images on this mission and state I’ve completed and all that, I want to talk about this: I know that there are asteroids and stuff floating out in the vastness of space, and I’m ok with that. I’m also aware that these objects are going to come close to Kerbin, and I’m ok with that. But Class E (Huge)? This is an apocalyptic event just waiting to happen to our poor Kerbals. Thankfully it’s so far away from me that I’ve got time to prepare. And it’s giving me ideas on how to complete the later missions (capture an asteroid and use it to refuel, perhaps). But Huge? I now feel so…tiny. Anyhow, we now return you to the arts. Or, rather, to Kerbin. That middle shot there was something I didn’t expect to see. When I’m coming back in to Kerbin, I like to keep the vehicle dead center of my screen, on a nice horizontal axis; for some reason, this helps me orient where I’m at and where I’m headed. Now, sometimes, I’ll do a quick spin around the ship to see what’s coming up, but in this case, I spun the camera the opposite direction. Which showed me the cool effects of the Atmospheric thing-a-ma-jig with the trailing flame and all. But I also caught the Mun in that shot; I was not expecting to see it so clearly while in flight over Kerbin during the day. I ended up collecting another 537 total science from my travels, which allowed me to unlock Aerodynamics and Propulsion Systems on Tier 5: Notice that, even though I’ve got the science points to do so, I have not unlocked Miniaturization. I do not want docking ports in this game just yet. I want to hit at least 1 other planet and return before I deal with that. No sense in rushing off to get stuff you don’t really need just yet, is there? And that should complete Munpollo. Next stop…Moho? Duna/Ike? Eeloo? Dres? I’m not quite sure at this point. I do know that I’m saving Eve/Gilly and the Jool-5 for last.

MISSION II: MINPOLLO I should have stated when I started this that there is a specific reason I never get anywhere beyond Minmus: I suck at rocket design. I know that the general rule is “moar boosters”, but I don’t want to do that. I need to get better at efficiency, otherwise I end up playing for a month or so and then put the game away for several months because I can’t do anything. Challenges like this are a good way to either force me to get better…or to uninstall the game. Anyhow, I know I need a lot of dV. I’m not good at the math of all of this, so I find that I use old threads and youtube videos on what needs to be done. I need 3 distinct stages: liftoff/orbit, transfer, lander/return. The parts I currently have don’t have enough juice to do all of that, so thankfully, we can farm the KSC, which I’ve done with this nifty little roller: I found this in the Caveman thread where people were talking about how to get any science on the harder levels when you start with no cash. And a design similar to this came up, and so in true fashion, I stealed it. I was able to farm 89 net science from the SPH, R&D, VAB, and the Administration Building, and I think I may have forgotten to do the EVA report at the SPH. But hey, I can always use this one again to farm more science if I need to. Spent 45 on Advanced Rocketry, and then spent 45 on General Construction. I should now have enough things unlocked to do a decent Mun landing mission. The current tech tree: And a quick-save so I don’t lose any of that science. Anyhow, I’m semi-following the design from an early career Mun landing thread. The thing here is that while Minmus is harder (technically) to get to, it is easier to land on and return home from. And the same basic rocket design for going to the Mun should work to get to Minmus. Which gives me this sitting on the launchpad: 4665 m/s of dV sitting on the launchpad. I believe the term everybody uses when things don’t work is “moar boosters”, which is what I’ve done here. I’ve got 2 stages each with 6 Thumpers; I’m hoping I can use these to get to a decent orbit over Kerbin before transferring to Minmus. So let’s see how this goes. Stable orbit of 164.689 km Ap and 89.4119 km Pe. Definitely not circular, and I’m sure I could have done better on this. But it leaves me with 3665 m/s dV to get to Minmus, land, and back. As we launched this thing with Bob on board, we’re gonna take some science readings in several places: in orbit high over Kerbin, in orbit high over Minmus, in orbit low over Minmus, and on the surface of Minmus. Man, I never appreciated having a Scientist on board before. Why am I not using Bob more? Anyhow, the orbit of Minmus eventually comes out to this: Stable Ap of 1.55623Mm, and a stable Pe of 14.3835km. Leaves me with 2524 m/s of dV, which should be more than enough to land and get home. Take some science readings as I mentioned before landing, though; I don’t want to miss out on those tasty points. I ended up having to circularize the orbit prior to landing, mainly because I didn’t want to come in at a really bad angle. But guess who manually landed for the first time in…well, I think forever? This guy. Right here. Gather some science data, quicksave, and then heading back to Kerbin. A shot after having escaped Minmus’ SOI and re-entering Kerbin’s: Now I just gotta burn appropriately and put this thing back on the ground. Like so: And I landed in the desert, which means more science gathering. I netted 768.4 science. Holy. Crap. Wow. That’s more science in one run than I’ve ever done before. My goodness. Have I said how under-utilized Bob has been in my games previously? Being able to collect and capture that much science in one run is ridiculous. I was able to unlock Aviation and Flight Control, which kills the 4th tier. On the 5th tier, I was able to unlock Advanced Construction, Advanced Flight Control, Electrics, Fuel Systems, Heavy Rocketry, Landing, and Space Exploration. My tech tree now looks like this: That leaves me with 65.2 science. You’ll notice I’m avoiding docking ports right now. I know I’ll need them at some point, but for now I’d like to just not have to leave something in orbit when I hit the ground. This should, if I’m correct, complete Minpollo. The Mun is next!

Granted, but you can now no longer handle basic graphics. I wish I had the ability to view things down to the individual pixel. A super-sight kind of power, but with the ability to zoom way in on something to view 1 individual pixel if necessary.