Irihi

So I had a TON of extra Delta-V in the end. I don't know how KSP was calculating it, but I ended up with my Landers and their transfer vehicles in low Laythe and Bop orbits with 1/4 to 1/3 of their fuel remaining. No aerobraking, just powered gravity braking around Jool and moons. I did a stupid and built my Laythe Landers upside down. The 10M heat shield is on top of my base. So I have to reenter zenith first, then flip the ship nadir down (at which point my heat shield will be backwards at the lander/bases zenith like an umbrella), jettison the heat Shields and land via chutes and thuds. I should have just built it with the heat shield in nadir position and launched/pushed it to Laythe backwards. I also have no idea what the aerodynamic characteristics of my lander are. I think I built it cg forward of cp when flying zenith first (the orientation in which the heat shield will work), with the idea it will flip upright when I deploy the chutes. I have a lot of RXN wheels and RCS to help point it where I want, but no guarantee It won't get stuck zenith down and Kerbalsplat. Here's a pic. The base/lander is on the right. Heat shield Zenith, Thuds and landing legs Nadir where it's docked to it's transfer vehicle. Any tips on how to land? I also am using Mechjeb to land. Since it likes landers that weren't built by insane sorceresses, I'll have to quickly flip it on and off at various times during retro burns, reentry and landing while I do manual adjustments and swap control directions.

I usually remember to quicksave about halfway through my irrevocable burns. :p

You just blew my mind. So THATS why my wheeled Landers are always so tippy!

Good idea, but my mission is already gone bye-bye. The ship in question is now orbiting kerbol, and scheduled for a burn to a Jool transfer orbit in a few days. I'd have to rendezvous in deep space... At this point I think it's less effort to just deal with a (relatively) low-deltav jool capture. I can actually ram my refueling tanker into the Laythe Base transfer vehicle and use it to transfer a few thousand delta-v of propellant from its transfer vehicle. It is only a few hours behind Laythe Base on essentially the same trajectory. Since it's just a big empty gas can its transfer taxi has nuke fuel to spare.

Thanks! I WAS controlling from some weird point on the ship. That fixed my problem. I split my 22m burn into 3, and it did take less deltaV. I also learned how to use the maneuver tools mo bettah. I did Munar flybys at 15-30km (I have 3 ships headed to the Joolian system), and, yeah, I only got a Kerbol Apoapsis about halfway to Duna. Since I'm in the window for a Hohmann transfer to Jool, and I had already spent 900m/s to boost up to Munar orbit (in the wrong direction for Jool), I used the Mun flyby to redirect my Kerbin SOI escape 90 degrees. I don't have the patience to wait for the alignments to do a Kerbin slingshot, so I'm just going to brute-force a Hohmann transfer all the way up to Jool. It's about 2500m/s of DeltaV. I have 3 components on the way to Jool, each pushed by a 14km/s (no cargo) nuclear transfer vehicle: 1. Laythe base, which is quite massive; includes 2 labs, and an integrated harvester and refinery. 2. A Laythe SSTO lander which lands on wheels and can trundle over to the base to refuel. Also for hops around Laythe. Also, IT FLOATS upright! 3. A Bop mining ship and refinery which I'm going to use for in-space refueling of the SSTO and nuclear transfer ships. My problem is my ill-advised Mun slingshot and Kerbol transfer leaves me with just 500m/s of delta-V to capture 1. (Laythe Base) into the Jool system. I have an inflatable heat shield up front, so I can try aerobraking at Jool itself. I managed to make that happen last time with a smaller vehicle (after sploding lots of times before I picked a good periapsis). Otherwise I can try gravity braking or powered gravity braking around Jool, Tylo, or Laythe. I think 500m/s should be plenty, considering some people on this forum seem to be able to ping-pong around the entire kerbolar system with a kitten fart worth of propellant. All I need to do is capture Laythe base into the Jool system, then I can play musical chairs with my transfer vehicles and Bop refueling ship. The SSTO and refueling ship are very light and will have plenty of margin when they reach the Joolian system. Here's another question that could save me several hours; If I wanted to put more big stuff on a ship (like more NERV's or something) that won't fit in cargo containers, can I just blast a big ball of tanks and engines into orbit, rendezvous, and then have an engineer assemble the whole thing? I did this with MechJebs after I got that mod, but those are small. What's the biggest thing an engineer can move around/attach/detach in free-fall?

Hm... Isn't the kinetic energy vector of my propellant, in a retrograde burn, pointing in the wrong direction and counterproductive to throw that mass overboard at periapsis? Assuming I'm not going to do any gravity assists or areobraking, isn't it better to dump velocity at the edge of a SOI rather than deep down in the gravity well? Or am I physicsing wrong? Thanks for the tip on the mun. On a Laythe landing mission, I dropped down to Kerbin through a 100km tylo swing by with just 500m/s or so, so I just assumed I could get a solid kick from the mun at half the altitude, but I guess it's a pretty small body.

1. That's a great point and idea. I think I could split up the burn into 3 or so. What is the maximum number of nodes one can pre-program? 2. I think I could make my munar slingshot push my apoapsis close to jools SOI with just a few hundred dv in course correction, especially if I do it 50km over the munar surface. The problem I have is that I'm not getting course projections after I leave Kerbins SOI. Is there a way to get the map screen to project the course after more than 3 SOI entries/exits? Id never heard of the oberth effect before. Thanks for that. I understand that prograde burns should happen at periapsis when possible, what about retrograde capture burns? Would those be more efficient far away (and slower) from the hyperbolic focus/periapsis?

Yeah, I just didn't expect it to fall so much. I've got 3 large and 1 medium fuel fuselage pushing 2 science labs a mostly empty fuel tank (final landing burn) some thuds, a 10m heat shield, a refinery, drill... Hm.... I guess it is a lot. Thanks for the tip on control points. That could be it! That's gotten me before. I docked using the docking port sr. As a control point And the one on Laythe Base is facing "backwards" So it's very possible I've got a upside down control point.

Yikes! Thanks. I didn't see the gameplay forum. I'll go there.

I have a Laythe base docked to a nuclear-powered Intersolar Transfer Vehicle (ITV). The whole ship is pretty massive. The ITV started out with 14,000 km/s, but only shows about 3500km/s when docked to the base. I think that might be an error due to the number of parts and various fuel tanks. There are 3 NERV's propelling the whole thing. 1. I'm planning on a departure burn to a Mun swingby for a gravity assist at about 50KM periapsis to fling the whole thing out into Kerbol-centric orbit, 2. where I'll do another burn to raise Apoapsis into Jool's SOI. 3. After that I'm going to hunt down a Joolian moon for another gravity assist to get joolian capture. 3.5. Somewhere in there I might do a refuel with a Bop mining ship (coming along on a different transfer vessel) 4. Then some more maneuvering to get into Laythe orbit and drop the base. The problem is that my 900km/s 18:22 departure burn isn't going off right. I Start the burn at t-9:11, but the deltaV immediately starts climbing, as does the burn timer. It gets up to around 1000km/s and the timer freezes at about 20:00. My orbit ends up just being an elipsis around kerbin. I've had this problem before with smaller stacks of ships, where I just had to re-do the burn and it would go off correctly. Is this a bug, and is there any way around it other than a complete rebuild of the mission to not use nukes? Can KSP just not handle pushing really big ships with really small engines? I also get a really bad wobble when I try to physics warp during the burn. 4X gives me super shakes. 3X can go for a few minutes before getting some small shakes. 2X is stable. The incorrect burn seems to happen with or without physics warp. Thanks for your help!

I plunked down science labs on the Min, Minmus, and kludged together a space station early on. With EVA experiments and gravirol etc. I got to full science and completed the tech tree just after my first Duna probe landed. From then on, I always put the expensive disc shaped flight assist controller aboard. So my engineer or scientist can give me full control with all the fixins. I basically bring pilots along as eye candy these days. The flight controller also seems to have the ability to store unlimited science data, so I don't have to overwrite my atmospheric readings from jool with those from Laythe or wherever. What's an autostrut?

I don't want to look at the steam hour log to see how much of my life has been dumped into ksp. I've been playing "seriously" since maybe last summer. Here's my Bop mining refinery hopper (solar and thermal retracted) docked to it's ITV. I put another large docking port on top, but it's off-center compared to the CG, so it's a bit useless. I cheat and pump across tanks that are AGU connected (thus all the grabby bits). I figure the kerbalnauts could be rigging up hoses or something. Also, I thought I was clever and put relays, batteries, and solar panels on those big nuke fuel tanks. When they're empty, I can drop them as relay stations, but I'm not sure if they'll work without some sort of pod... Also, I'm not certain I won't forget they're not just debris and accidentally terminate them one day.

Laythe Aerocapture. Kinda got sideways. Nothing essential exploded. This is the entire stack after jool Aerocapture, minus a rcs tank I unwisely dumped. Yay! We made it! Only the second crew to step foot on another planet outside of Kerbins SOI. (I did an Apollo style Duna landing prior to this) For my next Laythe mission, I'm sending a flotilla of 3 of these monstrosities. That's Laythe Base Alpha docked to one of 3 Intrasolar Transport Vehicles. The other two ships are a mining and refinery dropship (for Bop) and an SSTO dropship for Laythe ups and downs.

I'll bet! I love struts! They're like duct tape. If it wobbles on the launch pad, just add more struts!

Thanks! I'll try that out. Any suggestions for a good site to host my screenshots? Also, I know this isn't the place for questions, but any idea why mechjeb sometimes screws up a long burn? Is there a way to avoid this other than using SAS and babysitting the end time myself? I guess I could just do a search for the answer. Anybody else think pilots are useless? I always stick a flight control pod on my vehicles for experiment storage if nothing else. Seems to totally negate the need for a pilot. Then again, I can't build a working aircraft to save my life. Maybe that's where pilots shine?

Haha. I've got some save points for posterity. Do I screenshot just like normal? Ctrl prntscrn? You are going to laugh when you see my janky nuke ships, like "she put THAT on top of a booster!?" I typed all that because I couldn't play KSP instead. Thanks for the welcome!

At first I thought: "I'll just get to the Mun and back. That's it. Then I'll be done." Then it was: "Just plant a flag on Minmus, that's enough." "Just see how mining and refueling works..." "Just rescue my Kerbalnaut stranded in Munar orbit..." "Just plant a flag on Duna..." And for a while, that was enough. I did the rendezvous and docking tutorial. One go at that tedium was more than enough. I was even getting a bit bored babysitting every single burn. Going elsewhere with robots was unexciting, and flags and footprints meant docking. Nope. Crew transfers or rescue missions for me meant either planting both parties on an airless celestial body, or MAYBE a orbital rendezvous. Either way, it involved a LOT of EVA propellant and a long space/moonwalk. Then I heard about MechJeb, and KSP took over my life again. I got misty-eyed as my three, helmets-off, intrepid explores watched Jool phasing overhead like a giant lava lamp / clock (waxing quarter at nightfall, full at midnight, and back to a waning quarter near sunrise) in the Laythian night. So, Hi. Nobody in my life plays KSP and I just can't keep all this wonder to myself any longer! I'm also too impatient to wait for moderator approval. So now I'm going to write a book (feel free to not read): LAYTHE 1 - 2-part launch - Grabbing (not docking) in Kerbin orbit - Flight to Minmus - Grabbing and refueling from a Minmus miner/refinery ship. - Then off to Jool's SOI! Jool Aerocapture My first mission to Laythe blew up 6 times (and ended up sub-orbital once) trying to Aerocapture into Joolian orbit because: - I designed and built it wrong: Fully fueled lander W/asparagus staging being pushed by a single-engine nuclear intrasolar transfer vehicle (that was also pushing a lab module) with insufficient fuel. - I'm too impatient to figure out all the parameters for the online Aerocapture tools, so I just kept trying different periapsis until I found one that was sorta manageable. - I docked the lander to the NERV-powered transfer vehicle using the AGU rather than a proper docking port. My engineer kept having to spacewalk to reconnect broken struts that I installed post-connection. At one point, she had five minutes to get outside, climb down a ladder, repair the broken strut, climb back up and get TF back inside before they hit the atmosphere. - I didn't put enough AIRBRAKES (and RCS thrusters and reaction wheels) on to compensate for the 10M heat shield waaaaaaay up front. The whole stack (more like a train) was pretty unstable and I just barely managed to keep it straight even after pumping as much of the fuel to the forward-positioned lander tanks as they would hold. The tail got pretty cooked and I ended up rolling the entire ship (during my successful-enough Aerobrake altitude) at periapsis to keep everything from going completely sideways. Something exploded, but I guess it wasn't important. (I don't know how to access mission logs to see what broke). But I made it! With a small retro burn right after exiting Jool's atmosphere, and jettisoning a full RCS tank (whoops, ended up needing that later). Laythe Aerocapture I think I only blew the ship up twice during the Laythe Aerocapture. All this time, I was just guesstimating the amount of fuel I needed to get the crew home. - I also don't know how to calculate delta-V for vehicles before I've dumped some of the stages, so I didn't know how much DV I'd need to push my much-diminished stack home. Laythe Landing Turns out that a 10M heat shield is unlikely to make a stable reentry when you undock the 100-meter lab, fuel tank, and NERV engine that kept it sort of stable during aerocaptures. I was doing okay until I ran out of monopropellant. Then my lander went Mary Poppins on me much higher and faster than I had planned. Funny, but terrifying. Good thing engines have a pretty high thermal tolerance. I think it took me 3 tries to actually land in one piece, on land. I wanted coasts, but I ended up on a mountain after mashing the "LAND SOMEWHERE" button in desperation. Laythe Jool is SO PRETTY! I love the noon eclipses and the giant green nightlight! I landed on the rim of the big crater so it was almost directly overhead. All my Kerbalnauts developed neck problems from looking up. Also 90 degrees is not easy to pan to. I wanted them to have a swim, but I didn't have the patience to watch them hike for however many physics-warped hours it would take to get down to the water. I disembarked all 3 crew at the same time. What could go wrong? Ladders. Ladders that don't work the same way after a save on an uncrewed vehicle (or something). I tried everything to get my crew back onboard, including welding a solar panel as a "catch plate" for them to jump to from the top of the ------ ladder. Didn't work. And that's when and why I "discovered" the gravity hack. Laythe Launch The lander had launched just fine during a practice run on Kerbin. Not so on Laythe. Probably because I used up all my monoprop trying to survive reentry, and none of the ascent engines, I chose, gimballed. Yikes. My engineer pulled off every piece of "unnecessary" equipment she could reach, tried to compensate for a nasty yaw defect by rebalancing the amount of propellant in the various tanks and changing the staging order. It worked well enough that the lander limped to an orbit above Laythe's atmosphere with just one somersault along the way. Needless to say, Mechjeb was useless for the ascent on my catawampus ship, so it was all seat-of-the-pants. The intrasolar transfer vehicle was able to dip down and rescue the MK-3 reentry pod. Yay! Homeward bound! Jool Escape My Kerbalnauts didn't have enough remaining DV to escape Laythe, then Jool, then lower Periapsis to Kerbin's orbit. Not even close. Whoops. MechJeb said I needed 6000 m/s if I waited 300 years. I had maybe 4K. Luckily Tylo happened to be wandering by when I was playing with impossibly-expensive return trajectories. - The first time I got too excited, did a mountaintop-clipping swingby, and later realized I had dropped the ship's periapsis into Kerbol's corona. Whoops. - Second time I got it right-ish and made it back to Kerbins SOI for around 1000m/s. WOOT! And that was that. - I had enough fuel to straight-up decelerate into Kerbin orbit with a 60km periapsis. - Jettisoned the MK3 pod - Had the intrasolar transfer vehicle climb back to a 400km orbit. As a bookend to the crazy mission, the pod bounced off the atmosphere for 3 orbits and ended up running out of battery (I had left the solar panels on Laythe), and coming in totally dead stick with the ablator on its heat shield completely burned up. Still, any landing you walk away from.... especially one with 6K worth of science! ... which I promptly sold out to finance LAYTHE 2: This Time We're Staying! Laythe 2 Design: - Minimize aerocapture. There are sooo many Joolian moons, and sticking a 10M heat shield on every lander just sucks. - Permanent Laythe Base - Miner/Refueling Ship (probably aiming for Bop) built similar to my overpowered Minumus miner and refinery - SSTO dropship with no ablators. It's supposed to go down and land fully fueled, exchange crews, then fly back up and meet with the Miner/Refueler. It will make the transfer to Jool empty and need to be fueled prior to the first drop on Laythe. - Each component gets its own Intrasolar Transfer Vehicle (ITV) with 3 NERV engines and 14K deltaV (when not docked to something) - Docking to be done with REAL docking ports (the large one), except when refueling. The miner/refinery has a couple of AGU's and LOTS of RCS. Launch: - No problems with anything but the ITV's. Those launched fully-fueled from KSP space center and were heavy as sin. Mechjeb couldn't handle it, so I manually pushed them into orbit. The first one took a couple of tries until I got the hang of it. Currently I have all 3 ITV's fully fueled and docked to their respective mission components. I started building this mission with $9,000,000. Now I have $745,000 left. I have full science and am selling 95% of any new research for cash. A lot of the cost came from hiring Kerbalnauts. 3X ITV's each with Pilot and Engineer + Laythe Base: 4 Scientists, 1 Engineer, 1 Pilot + SSTO: 1 Engineer, 1 Pilot + Mining Ship: 1 Engineer (4 stars) , 1 Pilot. So that's 16 crew in total, and I think I hired 12 of them just for this mission. Lots of greenhorns. Current Issues: - MechJeb keeps blowing up mid-burn for long-duration burns. I have good alignment with the Mun to launch the Jool fleet with a nice flyby gravity assist, but I noticed the target drifting on my first attempt and I had to scrap and restart to a pre-departure save point. This isn't the first time this has happened. - I don't think it's possible to do simultaneous burns and keep the fleet together. Even if I could get a mod that let me fly all the ships at the same time, they have different masses and probably won't stay within physics distance during the long nuke accelerations. That means I'll have to space the ships' departures out by 30-40 minutes or so. Not a big deal, but kind of a bummer and a hassle to re-rendezvous outside Kerbins SOI, if I want to for some reason (like . - I am out of money! - Not super confident that I can land the base and the SSTO within a reasonable distance of each other. The SSTO has wheels but I'm not great at building rovers and it's pretty tippy. - KSP has taken over my life!