Poppa Wheelie

OK , I'm back from vacation. And, I successfully completed the mission I attempted earlier, Mun landing and return, using only parts from the initial tech node. Launch weight: 137.32t But, I'm not the first to report a successful landing on another celestial body and return to Kerbin using only the initial tech node. I'm sure there are more, but I've found these 3: @Nnamleips reported a Mun and return mission in these forums on 31 December. Here's that report. The Kerbin reentry method was a large retrograde burn right before reentry. Gregrox reported a Mun and return mission on reddit on 6 January. Here's that report. I asked how the reentry was done, and here is the reply: "Kept the tanks and fins attached. Started with a retrograde gliding reentry but ended up just wobbling back and forth a bunch until I slowed down enough to land normally. It took three tries." And Matt Lowne did an Eeloo landing and return on YouTube. Here's a link to that one. Matt's reentry method was some intentional wobbling, plus some empty "ablative fuel tanks" (he let some empty tanks absorb the heat and blow up). No retroburn. My reentry method was a 1500ms retro burn right at atmospheric entry. Full album here (45 images, I think): https://imgur.com/a/2mQ7E0h Highlights: I had to do lots of fuel transfers, sometimes during burn, to make this whole thing work. Here I'm transferring from the orange to the black tanks right after achieving orbit. I had some troubles with lost orbit lines, and plenty of troubles with decaying orbit around the Mun. I found my decaying orbit issues were happening when below 9000m ASL, so I established orbit above that line I was kind of busy with the landing itself, and didn't take any screenshots during that phase. Then I landed in the dark. Time warped forward until sunrise. Val did EVA, planted a flag, and returned to the capsule. I did one more fuel transfer from the tanks below the green line to those above the line. I also don't have any screenshots of the ascent. I did a direct ascent (did not establish Munar orbit but burned continuously from Munar liftoff until I had established an exit from the Munar SOI and a good Kerbin orbit with Pe in the very upper atmosphere. Right as I was entering the Kerbin atmosphere, I burned all remaining fuel (about 1500m/s of dV). Here's a shot right after that burn completed. All 4 of the lateral tanks overheated, and 2 of them blew up. After the heat effects subsided, I separated the capsule, and the rest of the landing was "nominal". Mission Complete!

I support all of your asks. In addition: I want to be able to drag and drop the portraits into any order I want.

In your first 3 screenshots it looks like you have some form of Map View displayed on the CRT. What is that, and how did you achieve it?

I updated CKAN today (I had to force the update, it didn't do so on startup as it should have according to the settings), to 1.34.4, "Niven". The reason I didn't see these updated versions may have had something to do with needing this update, because with this updated CKAN I can now see MicroEngineer 1.6.1, as well as SpaceWarp 1.7.0 and UITK 2.4.1. I updated everything to these latest, and looks like I'm good to go now.

From CKAN, SpaceWarp: 1.6.0, UITK: 2.4.0

I don't seem to have any Micro Engineer functionality with 1.6.1 or 1.6.0 installed. When I go down to 1.5.1 I have to turn Micro Engineer OFF for it to work properly. KSP Log: Ksp2 20240103.log Player Log: Player 20240103.log With Micro Engineer 1.6.1 installed, I don't see the Micro Engineer window, or the Apps button. I went down to 1.6.0, same result. I went down to 1.5.1 and got this: Next, I thought I turned Micro Engineer OFF, but then it appeared to be working properly (still on 1.5.1)

This!

In this topic on 7 December I posted the above. Today I did a new Kerbin return to see if it was possible to return from Mun with no heat shield. I don't think this will work with the current version of the heating system. I just put an identical vehicle into a 12,000,000m orbit above Kerbin (a little past Mun's orbit), then at Ap I lowered the Pe to 60,421m (almost 100m lower than the mission above). But the lateral fuel tanks overheated and blew up almost immediately (while still above 60km). Next, I put the vehicle in a LKO and lowered the Pe to 60,495m. The lateral tanks also overheated and blew up well above 60km (64,548m, in this case). So, I'm not sure if it's possible to return from orbit without a heat shield. I don't intend to try again any time soon, at least until we get an updated reheating model, or until someone else figures out a way to return from orbit without a heat shield. Maybe you have to zero your horizontal movement and fall straight down? Someone else is welcome to give that a try. Small but significant update: I ran a little experiment to see if I could get a capsule with parachute from orbit to the surface of Kerbin by focusing on velocity at the 70km mark (versus my normal reentry focus of Pe setting). I made several runs, but these two show the boundaries within which success is possible: Velocity at 70km: 1998m/s - FAIL Velocity at 70km: 1684m/s - SUCCESS! With heat warnings

Update, 20231220: I don't think this will work with the current version of the heating system. I just put an identical vehicle into a 12,000,000m orbit above Kerbin (a little past Mun's orbit), then at Ap I lowered the Pe to 60,421m (almost 100m lower than the mission above). But the lateral fuel tanks overheated and blew up almost immediately (while still above 60km). Next, I put the vehicle in a LKO and lowered the Pe to 60,495m. The lateral tanks also overheated and blew up well above 60km (64,548m, in this case). So, I'm not sure if it's possible to return from orbit without a heat shield. I don't intend to try again any time soon, at least until we get an updated reheating model, or until someone else figures out a way to return from orbit without a heat shield. Maybe you have to zero your horizontal movement and fall straight down? Someone else is welcome to give that a try.

Yes, especially right now in KSP2, while I'm trying to avoid landing legs, I often build my landers to land on fuel tanks.

Very nice! On this lander used at least for Minmus, what part do you have under the side fuel tanks - the part that is actually touching the surface as your "landing feet"?

Now the game freezes when I enter IVA (with 'C' key). After I edited the Patch file earlier today, I restarted the game, but went to a vehicle in flight to try out the changes. This time I started a new save, with no vehicles in flight, went into the VAB, loaded up a vehicle, launched it, and attempted the IVA. Game froze. Tried from scratch a second time - game also froze. Logs: KSP: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AijA8HUkaaOEmQRjep1Mq1WcBRop?e=q5afma Player: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AijA8HUkaaOEmQVWnsY-6mYYsKHp?e=evV5kG Update 20231215: All is well after I replace the modified Patch file with the original. So, my game is fully functional. I'll just work within the 80 total character limit for now.

Are you saying the changes I made to the patch file should have worked? Or is there something I should do with the kOSMonitor.cs file you linked to?

Thanks. Any thoughts on where I would look for that? In the patch file you sent me on 29 September in this thread, I see "consoleWidth" set at 80 on line 50 and on line 105. I changed both of those and repeated the "set" and "print" test above. No luck.

I have another question, along the same lines. Is it possible to set this mfd terminal width to something even greater than 80? I've noticed that if I print a string (with kOS 'print') that is longer than 80 characters, then the string is split into two, and each is printed as if two print commands were used. Even if I specify the row to print on with "at" (such as "print myString at (myColumn, myRow)."), what I actually get is myStringPart1 on myRow and myStringPart2 on myRow+1. I want to print 40 or fewer actual printable characters to the screen, but with color change codes embedded, my strings are often coming out larger than 80 characters. Each color change requires 9 characters (eg, "[#rrggbb]"). If I want a string with 40 printable characters and 5 color changes (45 more characters), I'll bust the 80 character limit. I tried the straightforward "set terminal:width to 160." But then when I follow that with "print terminal:width." the response is "80". Can this be done?

I went to the Mun and back, using only the tech from "Starting Rocketry", the first node in the tech tree of the upcoming For Science! release.

OK, I'll go first. I needed to run this mission before 0.2 comes out, because I will begin holiday travel shortly after that, and won't be able to get back to KSP until January. So this was done in v 0.1.5. I only used parts from Starting Rocketry. To The Mun and back. Launch Mass: 42.86t All images for the entire mission can be found here: https://imgur.com/a/RWBogQW Here are some highlights Launch to Orbit Transfer to Mun Mun Landing Game Bugs On Return Direct Return to Kerbin (with no Low Mun Orbit) 30 Aerobraking passes of Kerbin So I didn't even attempt to meet the OP's requirement for keeping atmospheric velocity under 2000m/s. If there is going to be aerobraking, speeds will be above 2000. I have to believe that, even with the heat system we get with version 0.2, this vehicle would easily survive the aerobraking and final descent. The engine and fuel tank sitting under the crew capsule should be sufficient "heat shield". This would definitely work in KSP1. @PicoSpace, I request that you remove this 2000m/s requirement. I won't be able to do anything with this mission after version 0.2 comes out until I return from holiday travel in January. If I need to rerun this landing in 0.2 to demonstrate that it works, it will have to wait until then. Here are two tables that show the velocities I measured during the 30 aerobraking passes, and during the final descent (31st atmospheric entry) 31st Atmospheric Entry and Final Descent and Landing on Kerbin

In map view, it's very difficult to manipulate the map when looking directly down at the north pole of the target body. All mouse movements from this perspective cause far too much movement. We need the ability to make very small scale movements from this view, just as we can when looking directly at the equator of the body.

OK, great! I didn't recognize any fuel lines in your screenshots.

Use vacuum numbers only, for the whole thing. Your 3400m/s target for achieving orbit is the vacuum dV total of all stages used from Kerbin surface until orbit is achieved. You should use the sea level setting of the dV calculator only to make sure TWR is within range.

I think you threw away a lot of fuel. Your 6 tons of fuel consumed was spread out among all remaining tanks. Initially, with 12 drop tanks, when you reach the 6 total tons consumed, each drop tank has emptied 0.5 tons, but the remainder of each of those tanks is full. With 9 drop tanks remaining, the 6 tons will be spread out as 2/3 ton per drop tank. With 6 drop tanks left that will be 1 ton per tank. Etc. In order to make sure each drop tank is empty before dropping it, you'll need to transfer the remaining fuel out.

I recommend you use CKAN. With CKAN, you select which mod or mods you want, and CKAN does all of the installations.

Agree. All text for all return trips is incorrect, because the approach being used is just to mirror the text used on the outbound trip. The tool does return trip text incorrectly in every case. I was just using Mun as an example. Agree that even a powered landing on Kerbin won't need most of the 3400. To be generic enough to cover all cases, let me change my recommendation for the tutorial. The tutorial should specify that all or most of the dV for the "low orbit" to "landed on" step will not be needed for a body with atmosphere - the more significant the atmosphere, the less of the listed dV will be needed.

I'm copying @Casellina X's image here This is not the way to read the dV map. All of the text for the return trip is incorrect. This will definitely be very misleading to new players. From Kerbin surface, to a Mun landing, and back to the surface of Kerbin, should read like this: 3400 Kerbin to LKO 860 LKO to Mun Intercept 280 Mun Intercept to Low Mun Orbit 580 Low Mun Orbit to Mun Surface 580 Mun Surface to Low Mun Orbit 280 Low Mun Orbit to Elliptical Kerbin Orbit 860 Elliptical Kerbin Orbit to Low Kerbin Orbit 3400 Low Kerbin Orbit to Kerbin Surface And then the tutorial on how to use this tool should explain to new users that they can skip the last 2 steps (and associated dV) if they aerocapture at the LMO to EKO step, or that they can skip the very last step unless they intend to do a completely powered landing.

UI Elements and pop-up windows Ability to move any of these objects to anywhere on the screen Ability to move any of these objects completely off the screen, as stand-alone windows outside the game window, including onto another monitor Ability to re-order the kerbal headshot cameras Coloring Tool: Ability to specify RGB Ability to "color pick" colors of a part already present in the VAB Parts: Ability to name any part of an existing craft, while in the VAB or in flight Vessels: A vessel naming priority system, similar to KSP1 Docked vessels should take on the appropriate name Undocked vessels should each retain the appropriate names One button screenshot capability, like the F1 from KSP1 Better lighting in the VAB, especially during in-game night