Unistrut

I'm just going to jump in with another vote for "Don't try and haul all your fuel with you". The original "Grand Tour" was a series of slingshots off planets, so they didn't need to do any serious burns. If you're planning on orbiting and landing on places you're going to need to do some pretty major dV changes at each stop. So, get really good at docking and leave fuel barges and resupply ships at each destination.

Mine was called MUN BASTARD something ... I think I was up to FOXTROT or HOTEL by the time I was successful and it landed on winglets like something out of a Buck Rogers serial since we didn't have no fancy landing legs yet. Sadly I don't think I have any screenshots from those heady early days. I'm not even sure I knew what the screenshot key was back then.

My first few attempts at docking were disasters that resulted in a cloud of debris so large I gave it a name. I finally got the hang of it, and now happily assemble ships in orbit and dock fuel tankers around other planets. Here's a step by step tutorial I typed up earlier: Now. Here comes the start of the tricky bits. Once you've made it into orbit, take note of whether you wound up in front of or behind your target. We're now going to use what I call the HIGH ROAD / LOW ROAD system to get closer. As in “You take the high road, I'll take the low road and I'll be in Scotland before ye!†Your speed is inextricably linked to your orbital height. Higher = slower, lower = faster. So if your target is orbiting at 125Km and is ahead of you then you need to go faster and should make your orbit at 121Km. If you are in front of your target you need to go slower and should set your orbit at 128Km or so. Yes, this does mean that if you need to catch up with a target in front of you you do a series of burns away from them. Yes, every science fiction movie is ruined now. You're welcome. Anyway, the difference in your orbital heights should be about 3-5KM unless you've totally fluffed your launch window and your target is on the other side of the planet in which case you can go higher or lower to fix that problem more quickly. Once you get closer (1/8th the planet radius or so) you should get within the 3-5KM range. Once you've gotten into the correct orbit we need to planarize … planify? Plantificate? Nope, spell check doesn't like any of those. Co-plaginate? Nope. Anyway, we need to make our orbits co-planar. To do this, select the orbit target. This may be tricky. Especially if you haven't been keeping LKO clean. The selector algorithm loves selecting debris, followed by ships orbiting the Mun, followed by any other ship in Kerbin orbit. Only if there is no reasonable way it could possibly select one of those will it allow you to select the ship that is right under your pointer. However, if you click it too many times in frustration it will transfer you TO that ship, so be careful and keep your orbits clean. If you can't select the ship from the orbital view you can select it from the main view once you get close enough. Simply wait and then go to the main view. Set your camera to “Free View†so that it remains pointed in the right direction and aim it forwards or backwards depending on who is chasing whom. Remember that the Backbone of Night lies along Kerbin's orbit, so your target should appear along there. Unless you didn't follow my advice above about using an equatorial orbit, in which case GOOD LUCK. You then wait until a purple bracket box appears and double click on that. Anyway, once you've managed to select your docking target you will now have a second green orbit marked on your map display and somewhere between two and six new markers. The important ones are the ones marked AN and DN for ascending node and descending node – the places where your current orbit crosses the orbit of your target. Set a maneuver node on one and adjust it until your difference is 0.0* If you've done this properly the other four markers should now have merged into two. These show you your closest approach – one marker is for you, the other is for your target. Focus on Kerbin center those markers and turn on turbo time. And wait. WAIT – Time for a song! Now, at some point that target position is going to switch from one side of the your position marker to the other. Now is the TIME FOR GLORY. Switch to your main view, Free Camera. Find your target. If you are in a lower orbit it will appear to pass over you. If you're in a higher orbit it will appear to pass under. If you forgot to make your orbits co-planar it will swing from left to right and you should have FIXED THAT EARLIER. Also, look at your navball. It should now read “TARGET†instead of “ORBITâ€Â. There are also two new markings on it. So, your prograde and retrograde vectors are now RELATIVE TO YOUR TARGET and the new purple marks are TOWARDS TARGET and AWAY FROM TARGET. It will also show you your speed relative to the target. This is an absolute value, so if you are heading towards the target at 5ms it will show “5msâ€Â. If you're heading away at 5ms it will ALSO show 5ms. This isn't normally a problem, but keep it in mind. Now, we need to start moving towards our target. Switch to Chase View and rotate the camera away from the side on view (seriously, has anyone ever used the chase camera in any position other than behind and slightly above? I've wanted it off to the side like that approximately NEVER times, but I HAVE lost half a dozen planes while trying to fight it around to a useful position). Find the TOWARDS TARGET icon and if you can see your FORWARD marker then set your heading so that it is on the opposite side of the TOWARD TARGET icon from your FORWARD marker and thrust. Use your main engine if you can – the first rule of orbital rendezvous is that you never can have enough RCS gas, so you should spare it if you can. Anyway, thrust until your forward vector is now heading toward the target. I generally try and keep my speed equal to roughly my distance / 100. So if I'm 3.5km away, then I should be going about 35ms. You may need to change this if the ship your trying to dock is exceptionally sluggish. Now as you get closer you need to slow down and keep your vector pointed at the target. If you boost towards your target your forward vector moves TOWARDS your heading. If you cut it moves AWAY. So if you've drifted off to the left and want to correct that AND slow down, then you point your ship in a heading that is on the far side of your vector from the target icon and decelerate which will both bleed off a bit of forward velocity and “push†your heading back towards where you want it to be. Now, once you get within 2.2Km KSP will load the other ship. This will cause a momentary spike of lag that can range from “noticeable†to “time to go get a sandwich†depending on how large your target is and how beefy your computer is. Try not to be doing any violent maneuvering as you pass that threshold. Once you get to about 1.2Km it will switch from KM to M and you will usually immediately panic as that number seems to suddenly be getting smaller faster than it was a minute ago. Just stick to the 1/100 rule and you'll be fine. The first time you try a rendezvous you'll usually be going way too fast. 20M/s is pathetic by interplanetary travel standards, but when you're trying to dock with another vessel that is only tens of meters away you suddenly remember that 20m/s is about 55 mph. Once you get to about 100m away from your target, quicksave, kill your forward velocity, turn on your SAS, turn on your headlight if necessary and find your docking port. If you need to switch over to the other ship for a second you can do so now, just try to leave your other ship gently floating away so that if you take too long you don't suddenly get rammed. Once you've found your docking port, GENTLY RCS over to it. You may want to hit “fine controls†at this point as well. Keep in mind that it may be easier to switch over to the target vessel and rotate it around than try and fly in a circle around to a docking port on the far side of a craft. Now, get perpendicular to your target docking port. Now use your translate controls (remember those?) to get lined up with your docking port. Now gently thrust towards it. Once you get with 50M you can right click and select the port and target it. This makes one important change. All the markers on your navball are now relative to the docking port. Make sure you're still lined up and correct as necessary. Once you get with a meter or two the ports will pull towards each other. If the ships are bouncing too wildly you can try and correct with your RCS jets, but you generally just leave them alone and let your SAS dampen the bouncing enough that you actually dock. Once you're docked you can transfer fuel by selecting a fuel tank and then alt-selecting a second fuel tank (or RCS tank) and using the “in†and “out†buttons to transfer fuel and oxidizer. You should be good to go at this point. Good luck up there!

Exactly what it says on the tin. I've docked spacecraft around more planets and moons than some people have visited. Why? Because I am terrible at figuring out how much fuel I'll need and invariably wind up stranded at my destination with an empty tank and have to dispatch a fuel barge. So, what skills have you developed to a high degree to compensate for being absolutely dreadful at something else?

Unless there's a whole level of "cheap hobby motor" I have not experienced, even the solid ones from the hobby store have their own oxidizer. Might need to make sure the igniter would still work, but if you got the motor lit it would go just fine. I even had one travel underwater for a short period without trouble. I mean aside from the "my rocket is in the pool and not the sky" trouble.

I'm glad you were able to figure it out - I'm still in crazy time at work. I've had three days off this month so far and don't get another day off until July. When I go on vacation for two weeks.

When it starts to get annoying I edit the worst bits out of my persistence file using Notepad++. For a while I'd intercept with and shoot down the stuff in Kerbin orbit using the lasers from Romfarer's Lazor mod, but even getting within 2.2Km of something takes more time than I really cared to spend. It did make me much better at intercepting and docking (to refuel after doing all the burning to intercept targets).

I currently have thirty missions in progress. Most of them are mapping satellites (one in orbit around every planet and moon), but there's also a fuel station and a big multi-ship science mission at Jool. The most craft I've had to deal with at once was nine, when I sent an armada to land a rover near each of the Duna anomalies. For the curious, that was three landers, three return lifters, Kerbin return ship, refueling barge and a mapsat.

If you're using Moustachauve's generator you'll need to ask him - if you're using the GIMP / Photoshop version make sure you're saving it as a .jpg instead of a .psd or .... .xcf? Whatever GIMP's equivalent of a .psd is. Sorry I haven't been more productive recently, March - April - June is far and away my busiest time of the year, with more than a few instances of getting to go to work fifteen days straight. Once July hits everything calms down.

I got about 2/3rds the way through this - anyone else is welcome to finish it. To the tune of , a Kerbal Space Shanty:Brave Kerbals we launch with the dawn Way, ay, launch an' go! Our ship and our spacesuits are all from the pawn On the Rocketship Randy Dandy O! Fire the stage, oh, fire away, Way, ay, burn an' go! The fuel is on board an' the snacks's are all stored, On the Rocketship Randy Dandy O! Soon'll be warpin' her out through the void, Way, ay, burn an' go! Don't burn 'er for too long or we'll be unemployed On the Rocketship Randy Dandy O! Fire the stage, oh, fire away, Way, ay, burn an' go! There's capstan on board what the hell is that for? On the Rocketship Randy Dandy O! Now we turn and head for the Mun Way 'ay burn an' go! Or Minmus maybe if we fi-re too soon On the Rocketship Randy Dandy O! Fire the stage, oh, fire away, Way, ay, burn an' go! The fuel has run low an' we've miles to go On the Rocketship Randy Dandy O! Against all odds we have intercept Way ay, burn an' go! But the lander construction's completely inept On the Rocketship Randy Dandy O! Fire the stage, oh, fire away, Way, ay, burn an' go! There's no map on board and the cap'ns got bored On the Rocketship Randy Dandy O!

There's a group up in Northern California that does a bunch of right crazy things with pulse jet engines. They've got a big one: You can power a pretty sweet go-cart with one (skip to 1:30). Or a slightly uncontrollable hovercraft. My apologies regarding the video quality, I didn't film it. So yeah, I'm pretty excited about being able to fire my Kerbals into the air with my very own pulse engines, and OP - that sound is fantastic.

My three most useful, and repeatedly utilized designs are the following: PROBE BASTARD FOXTROT Built to replace a probe series that unwittingly abused the heck out of the old RCS bug, the FOXTROT, with it's LV-N and drop tanks, has enough delta-v to get anywhere, map that place, and if the gravity is low enough, land. I've currently got one of these in a polar orbit around just about everything. One was event sent to Gilly Ike to chase down the [REDACTED]. These little guys are so ubiquitous I actually forgot to name them. They go up with every piece of cargo that needs to be pushed around and have been dragged to Jool and Duna to help shuttle around bits of those missions. I guess they'd be TUG BASTARDS. The humble FUEL BASTARD. Like the slightly less rudely named "Topper" earlier, this is simply a gas can with enough RCS to get it to dock with something and refuel it. These have also been fired off to Jool and Duna with the Science Armadas so that there would be enough fuel to get back. In this screen shot you can actually see versions of all three of them. This is the City of Pomona, her mission - carry some modified FOXTROTs to Jool. A FUEL BASTARD has arrived, carrying spare drop tanks and a pair of TUG BASTARDS. The TBs fitted the drop tanks to the City of Pomona and then each grabbed a PBF to carry it off to one of the Joolian moons. The FUEL BASTARD then refilled the City of Pomona's internal fuel tanks and then went into permanent orbit around Jool in case anyone else stops by with a need for some gas.

Ah, I see you've visited JOE'S FUEL STOP. It looks like a discarded booster stage with a hab block bolted on one side ... because it is!

The official order is, or at least was, can't remember if it made it back after the site nuking, "choosing the mission that was the most AWESOME or your FAVORITE". Although generally most people go unmanned probe - lander - rover, manned capsule - lander - rover and then go to the above rules when trying to pick between station, base or multi-part ship. I personally display the station device for Kerbin and not the multi-part ship since of course it's been in orbit around Kerbin, that's where it was built. In my mind, big ships like that are only really impressive when you manage to fly them somewhere. Technically one of my big MPS has been to the Mun as well, but I like my epic Munar rover journeys much more, so I keep the rover device.

You mean Zeroignite's super detailed planet maps?

Okay. Let me see what I can do.

Technically yes. If you were to take a ship, launch it from Kerbin, slingshot off Duna to Jool then you would qualify. The original "Grand Tour" was a series of slingshots anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Grand_Tour

You get pips for moons, but the big shield itself requires a second non-Kerbin planet, mostly to keep swinging by the Mun on the way out to some other planet from qualifying. As for the sub-vessels, if they were carried from another world by the mothership, then they are part of the Tour. Edit - The "No moons" thing is why I don't have a GT award...

A ship needs to visit at least two planets other than Kerbin to be eligible for the Grand Tour shield.

Could you post an example? I might be able to fix it, what with having the source image an all that.

I'm trying to avoid any "This, but LARGER" devices as you start getting into lovely arguments about what exactly the cut off should be. You say twenty tonnes, someone else will argue zealously for fifteen or twenty-five or whatever. So I'm sticking to fairly distinct classifications - manned / unmanned, mobile / stationary, completely without spacecraft, etc.

I was on a Balinese dance music kick for a while. Was listening to the Akira soundtrack, which inspired me to look up what some of the instruments they used were - I knew the bell like percussion instrument was a Gamelan, but I was trying to find the more wooden sounding thing used in Kaneda and Against the Clowns. Turns out it's called a Jegog. Listened to a lot of that. Now I'm listening to sea shanties because they make the baby sleep better. Do a search for "Johnny Collins" and start with "Leave Her Johnny" or "Randy Dandy Oh". I've been sort of half heartedly turning the last one into a space shanty (Brave Kerbals we launch with the dawn! Way ay, launch and go! Our suits and our spacesuits were bought at the pawn! On the rocketship Randy Dandy Oh!)

I call most of them bastards. It's part of the naming scheme even. My current science armada being dispatched towards Jool consists of two TYLO LANDER BASTARD BAKERs, two LAYTHE BASTARD BAKERs, two LAYTHE RETURN BASTARD ABLEs and the City of Fresno which, as a reusable craft, is named after a backwater California town.

For me it is simple, a Kerbal cannot attain paradise unless he has been killed in the interest of SCIENCE! The harder it is to find a piece large enough to bury, the more glory he receives on the other side. They're like little green science vikings.

Put your launch clamps in the stage after the jets, so you can ignite them, get them up to speed, and then let go of your rocket. If you're also going to fire up rockets, put them on the second stage with the launch clamps. My medium cargo lifter rides jets only to about 15km and then an action group shuts them off and the next stage dumps 'em and fires up the rockets.