Rylant

How is everyone using maneuver nodes for interplanetary burns, to say Jool. I find that they are almost impossible to work with as is. I find that I need to have Jool as the focus in order to tweak the node, but then I have no window to see the maneuver node to adjust it. Also, is there no good way to to move the maneuver node forward or back a bit, or even to the next rotation? I have been clicking and dragging the node in order to move it forward or back, which is very clunky and difficult to get a more precise node. To me, the way it is in game, is virtually unusable to to distant planets. Within the Kerbin system, it's fine because you are close enough to your destination in order to have Minmus or the Mun as your focus, and still be able to interact with your maneuver node. Plus the node is more forgiving to be off a bit for a target so close. Am I missing something here?

I dont think that is it. I always lock to prograde as I approach the upper atmosphere and reduce the throttle huge so that my apoapsis doesn't get away from me. I always ease into it so that my circuralization burn is really light. When it happened to me the first time, my apoapsis was around 75 and my periapsis was inside the atmosphere, but over zero. There was next to no throttle at all. This happened several times with more than one different ship. I finally turned off heating in order to resolve this. Seems like the wrong solution.

I agree with this. I built a satellite with a fairing and it had a lifter stage which purpose was to get almost to orbit. Every time I launch it, I get to 60 or 65 thousand meters, and THEN the fairing heats up and is destroyed. After the fairing goes, all of the other more sensitive components get destroyed. It makes no sense that this would happen at the end of this stage when the air is so thin. It's a really normal ascent profile too. Something goofy is going on.

I just got a contract asking me to put a station on a solar orbit with like 8k monopropellant and 10k electrical charge, all of the other standard station requirements (cupola, docking station, power generation, etc), but it asked me to put it in a stable solar orbit less than 1 million km. All of the parts are on the verge of exploding due to heat. I can get the periapsis that low, but it's like another 11k delta v to circularize. Lol not sure this is correct or not? Is there a trick to getting a stable orbit that close to the sun? Rylant I have been using it. I think Ckan may not list it as current but it still works. For me anyway.

Hey all, I remember previously having tourism missions to take 3 tourist out, for instance. After completing the contract, the tourists would become a pilot, scientist or engineer as a permanent part of the roster. I might be misremebering as well. Does anybody remember this? Was this an old game feature that doesn't exist anymore? Or maybe a mod? Or maybe I am crazy lol. I have looked around and can't seem to find it. Rylant

I also would like to say that Mike Aben videos don't get the love that they deserve. I find that he has a way of explaining things really well. He does have a video which explains rocket tipping during launch. I thought it was great. Rylant

One of the options is split the ship in pieces and launch it in multiple launches building it in orbit. One question. Are you playing in career or science mode? And if so, do you have the entire tech tree unlocked? I know that I generally try to keep my launches ideally at 1.3 TWR at launch. If it's higher than that, I intentionally lower the thrust of the engines. I find a 1.3 TWR to be a bit of a sweet spot for control at launch. Rylant

Hey all. So I have established a surface base on Laythe on one of the flatter islands which I can land a small SSTO on. I also have a simple orbital base in Laythe orbit. My intent was to dock my interplanetary ship with the orbital base, transfer crew to the SSTO, fly them to the planet to get the flag plant, and return them to the orbital base to continue the journey. The surface base has mining and ISRU ability, but I am not sure how to transfer fuel to the nearby SSTO for refueling. Is it possible to do without docking the SSTO to the surface base? Rylant

It’s cheesy, but one thing you can do is add a bunch of EAS-1 external command seats to your build. Then don’t use them. Each one of the seats is light and an easy way to increase your station’s maximum Kerbal capacity, without really adding a lot of weight to the build. Rylant

So the new alarm clock feature. I can add a maneuver mode. However, when I move away from the vessel, the alarm clock doesn’t move the time. It sticks on 2 days, 4 hours, for example. If I go back to the vessel say a day later, the alarm clock updates the time, but when I move away from the ship, it halts the timer in the alarm clock again. Anybody else experiencing this? Rylant

Stupid question about the VAB Craft Folders. So I can create a folder, but I can't figure out how to organize the folders in game, or to save a new craft to a new folder. I can't figure out how to drag and drop or anything. Or is the only control that you have here in the actual file directory? Rylant

It's out and I am starting a new game. Now, how long until Kerbal Engineer Redux and Better Time Warp are compatible... Rylant

This is something I do quite regularly. I try to set up a rendezvous with a station, or satellite or something with the intent of docking, or repairing it, or rescuing somebody. Something. I always line up our orbits and try to make my orbit 20 or 30 km lower or higher than the target, to set up an easy rendezvous. At this point, I often realize that our orbits are 180 degrees off essentially reversed; he is going around the celestial body one way, and I am going around the other way. If I had realized 20 Kerbal days ago, I could have set up a slight correction burn to move my orbit to the other side, but no... I know, the orbit is dimmer in the direction you are heading... I have done this countless times, you would think I would learn. It's embarrassing... Rylant

So I have tried versions of this contract now several times, but it never seems to work. The first time I did it, I never noticed it didn’t complete until after I landed. I just assumed I had done something wrong. Tried it a few times now, and I can’t get it to complete no matter what I do. Anybody else have this issue or am I doing something wrong? Rylant

So had a contract for a satellite with a ridiculously low Solar Orbit and decided to put a Xenon Electric Propulsion engine on it to get it to the final destination. It has lots of room for the maneuver and lots of delta v, but the burn is like 4 hours... Do you guys just start the burn and go to bed? LOL. It will be resolved in the morning. Or is there a fast way to execute the maneuver? I am assuming I can't start the maneuver and then leave the craft and time warp? Thanks, Rylant

Hey all, so I have finally got a nice design for a lander ship with about 5k vacuum delta v with ISRU and mining capabilities. It also has enough thrust to weight to get off any body including Laythe, except Eve. It’s big; like 700 tons. I can get it into LKO and from there it can go pretty much anywhere. Moho is tight though. I find that I don’t have a lot of wiggle room for wasted delta v if I am doing a Moho return. And I tend to waste delta v; lol I am sure there are players out there who will say “You can’t land in Moho from LKO with 5k delta v? I can get there and back with that much!!!”. Sadly, that’s not me. So, I was wondering if I could launch my 700 ton lander into LKO and then also launch a transfer stage into LKO as well. They could dock up? Then I could use the transfer stage at least for that initial 1600 k burn and ditch the transfer stage. Then I should have ample delta v for the Moho land and return. Is that feasible? Can I dock the main lander to a transfer stage head first, initial burn to Moho, and undock and ditch the transfer stage? It’s probably easier to get that size of ship into LKO with 2 trips, rather than just adding the transfer stage to the 700 ton ship for the initial launch? Rylant

Hey All, So in my career mode, some of my subassemblies don't save when I drag them and save them in the VAB. It looks like it saved. It asks me what to name it, I name it and hit save, but nothing shows up. I am using steam and when do this, the subassembly craft shows up in the folder directory, but nothing is there in game. The funny thing is, that some files save normally, but some behave like this. Thoughts? Rylant

Doing orbital rendezvous is one of those things which seems really daunting at first, but after you practice it a bit, it becomes remarkably simple. I remember at first it took me hours of setup and painstaking planning with lots of saves and reloads. First getting into orbit, then matching planes, then setting up the encounter ensuring it would be for less than 100 meters, then the spacewalk and transfer. Now when I do a rendezvous, I don’t even bother matching planes if it’s close and I try to get within a few kilometres. To rescue somebody in orbit now in Kerbin space will literally take me a couple minutes to do. Practice it. It is fun and will get easier quickly. Remember my method is great once you get more comfortable but you probably want to be more careful if stranded in low orbit as my adjustments could take you into the atmosphere. Rylant

So I have never used fuel cells as delta v is precious to me lol, and I waste it, a lot. So if I have a ship with some fuel cells and some solar or RTG, will the ship prioritize using solar or RTG power and only use fuel in a fuel cell if necessary? Or will it constantly burn fuel to help with energy even if the solar capability is enough to keep up? Rylant

Hey all. So I want to look at setting up a refueling station somewhere in the Jool system. My first thought was in orbit around Laythe. The reason being I have had some landers able to get off Laythe, but not have much fuel left when they enter orbit, and a station could help that. Also, Laythe encounters are ridiculously easy. It is quite far from the outer moons though, so maybe not ideal? Also, resupplying the station wouldn’t be super easy. An orbital Pol or Bop station would be easy to resupply, but far from the inner moons. I guess the other possibility is to have the station in a Jool orbit, which I never really strongly considered, but maybe there is a good reason to do that which I haven’t thought of? Thoughts on where it might be best? Rylant

Interesting. Honestly, I have literally never used fuel cells. Just the thought of burning precious delta v kills me, especially because I am so notoriously wasteful with it. What I need to do is sit down and actually calculate power production vs consumption. Is that listed somewhere in vanilla? Or are there good energy usage readout mods? Rylant

Hey all, so I have been running the Jool moons with a lander I created which has mining/isru capability. The ship is huge. It has a converter, 4 of the large extending solar panels, 4 of the large extending heat panels, 8 of the RTGs, 1 of the largest batteries, 1 large ore holding tank, 2 drills and a converter. I land, extract all of the panels, deploy the 2 drills, and start the converting process. So the process continues for a bit and the power slowly drains. A couple game hours later, I run out of power and the drills stop. The power builds until it is full and then I start the drills again. Of course, this takes forever to fill my fuel tanks. This happens through day even without a sunset. Now I understand that Jool tends to be far from the Sun and solar is weak. The strange thing to me is, this process continues for several days of starting and stopping the drills as the power wanes. However, at some point, the process continues uninterrupted without the drills and converting draining the power. I go from getting like 100 delta v, then the power runs out. I build the power and start up again, get another 100 delta v in fuel, and run out of power. This continues for days, and then suddenly the process goes uninterrupted for several thousand delta v without me having to restart. The power doesn’t get interrupted and it keeps going. I can’t figure out what happens then, to allow the power to keep up. Any ideas? I may want to look at the power setup more in detail. Obviously this isn’t much of a concern on Moho or in the Eve system as solar is more effective. Rylant

Hey all, So I am using a few high delta v landers with ISRU and refueling capabilities. If you use them over and over again in places like Duna and Laythe, does going through the atmosphere to the point where you are seeing overheat indicators, damage the parts at all? So everything survives re-entry, but there was some overheating. Once safely on the ground, have they taken some damage and are that much closer to being destroyed on next re-entry, or if you survive the process, are the parts as good as new? Rylant

So the entire ship was 1.7 m. I managed to tweak it to actually be smaller, more efficient with the launch and cheaper. The entire thing is like 1.2 m now. Essentially, the ship is a cylinder with the command module on top followed by the converter, science stuff, holding tanks. There is 4 cylinders in the side of the main cylinder. These 4 cylinders each contain fuel tanks and a rhino engine. The launcher is a mix of asparagus staging and a few Clydesdale boosters. The launcher gets the entire ship to 100k Kerbal orbit leaving the main ship in LKO with 5.4 k delta v, to go where I want. Overall I am quite pleased with it. Interested in seeing how it takes on the Jool system tomorrow. Rylant

Hey all. So one thing I have noticed is that all of my landers are basically the same. They all have room for 3 in a MK1-3 Command Pod(I like to bring a pilot, scientist and engineer on every trip). My ship to the Mun is the same as the one I use to Minmus. My ship to Duna, Dres, Eeloo, Jool and the Eve system are all essentially the same. There are some minor differences in that Eeloo has some RTGs because solar isn’t very effective that far from the sun. My Duna ship has air brakes which I am not even sure help lol. I find things that I feel work well and go with it. This ship is stable on the ground with its landing struts and flies well, this has lots of thrust, etc. Then essentially, all of my landers are the same. Doesn’t matter where I am going. Do you guys have different ships depending on where you are going? Do you have an Eeloo ship, a Dres ship, a Duna ship, etc it do you essentially use the same ship for everything? Do you design a ship specific for what you need at the time? Rylant