Trekkin

I have a full crew capsule on one part and two probe cores on the other. Having tested it more thoroughly, it looks like it just takes a bit of accelerated time for KSP to recognize the undocked section as its own ship.

I keep running into a problem in docking. Unmanned ships can dock to unmanned ships well enough, but when I build, say, a manned ship with a probe core component on it and launch that, once detached the probe part (which has enough electrical power and everything) registers as debris--so I can't dock with it. What does a ship need to be considered a ship and how do I separate and link them so that they're all considered ships?

Does anyone actually use more than one nuclear engine/lv-909 for interplanetary flight? I used to, and now I don't, but I'm wondering if there are interplanetary flight paths that need more than negligable acceleration.

I've been mucking about with the float mechanics and the problems associated with landing on jets, and this was the result. It's fairly intuitive to fly, as long as you disable flow to the nuclear engines on the takeoff from Laythe. Or route fuel lines from the ascent engine tanks to the nuclear engine, either way. Anyway, it does exactly what it says: lands a 1-man pod on Laythe, lets the kerbonaut splash around a bit in EVA, and gets it back to Kerbin. It's got a lot of extra fuel at each stage of the game, and the only really tricky part is landing--it may be a good idea to aim for water first, since it's more forgiving than land if you don't get used to the throttle lag on the jet engines fast enough and come down hard. As always, if people want, I'll put together a more complete flight log/instructions. In the VAB. Totals 235 parts. Jeb chilling on Laythe. Note the submerged engines; I figure if we don't have pontoon landing legs yet, I'm not going to sweat the slight departure from logic. Also proof that it floats upright if you land upright. Home safe, and with 40L of fuel left for the nuclear engine to burn when I jettisoned it. Absolutely needs aerobraking in Kerbin atmosphere to get into orbit; that and getting into Laythe orbit are the least forgiving bits of the flight.

This is possible, yes, but not ideal; there aren't any really good landmasses that I can see that are in a good position for equatorial flights out that work well with where Jool is. Just not a solution I'd prefer, if the above immensely complicated multicraft setup works.

So I've had a bad idea, and like I do with my bad ideas, I'm probably going to run with it. My logic goes like this. 1. we can deal with Kerbin's atmosphere because it has a runway and we can do spaceplane stuff. 2. Laythe has an atmosphere suitable for jet operations, but no runway. 3. The most runway-like part is a wing, and it's relatively easy to crash big spaceplanes gently with hoverjets. I'm seriously tempted to try to either mod-dock runway portions together after moving them to Laythe, creating some unholy fusion of a pontoon bridge and an aircraft carrier, or just let them float next to each other, overlapping boards to ensure all gaps are ramps up rather than gaps down. Since waves aren't implemented, they ought not to drift too terribly in the 1x time between local reassembly and spaceplane landing, yes? So, assuming this is not inherently impossible to hold together (ha!), how well would a bunch of strutted-together wing-shaped boards take a spaceplane landing? Do different physics apply to part-part collisions than to part-ground collisions? And how is floating implemented?

He's the guy who looks at a giant pile of hydrazine, liquid hydrogen, and assorted nitrates packed into a ramshackle arrangement of canisters with engines glued to the end, notices the total lack of reliable sensors and the almost schizophrenically anachronistic mix of capabilities possessed by the program (nuclear engines yes, rangefinder no), contemplates the prospect of spending years in the tiny capsule glued to the top without even a whisper of life support while hurtling to almost certain death in pursuit of an arbitrary goal... and smiles. And when you see someone like that, you don't dare tell them they can't fly. And that's why he's Jeb.

Your response indicates a certain optimism about how easy it is to hide something expressly designed to get hot in an enormous insulator floating above enormous arrays of sensors designed specifically to detect just that. For a nuclear reactor to enter space without anyone becoming aware of it would require the sort of global conspiracy that wouldn't need it. I think more than just the general consensus against nuclear engines, we don't have any pressing reason to use them. Most nuclear engines are designed around sustained thrust at a significant rate, and we don't launch anything heavy enough far enough away to justify the hassle.

Here's a lander that can get one kerbal to Duna and back direct ascent. No docking, no rendezvous fanciness. It also has enough fuel in the Duna ascent stage to escape Kerbin gravity, and a lot of spare fuel in the LKO assembly, so it can probably do other things with added fuel tanks/engines. Note you do need MechJeb and Protractor. If people want, I'll add instructions. Anyway: Imgur album, with pic of the craft and a very patchy flight log: http://imgur.com/a/tC27W#0 .craft file is attached.

Well, what I did was to economize by removing my kerbin-to-duna nuclear engines, and using my one duna-to-kerbin nuclear engine for both trips. That cut down on enough mass that I can get by with only 16 tank stacks, which seems to have solved my precession problem. It looks like the root cause was the engines spreading out from each other under the thrust. Incidentally, what's Duna's gravity relative to Kerbin's?

Of the 1250 or so tons at launch, about 120 or so. I spent a while cutting down on engines until I was near the minimum. Back to cutting down, I suppose. The thing is, going from Kerbin to Duna and back in one go via direct ascent needs a ludicrous rocket, in my estimation of the delta-v involved. I had thought that since my 33% larger rocket (636 parts!) made it to orbit ok, the size might not be the issue, but I'll see if I can minimize more.

I mean it tends to rotate purely in the xy plane, taking z as my original direction of travel. Since I'm usually into my gravity turn by then, I end up drawing a circle passing through the horizon. And then ripping my rocket apart and dying. Here, though, is the rocket: http://i.imgur.com/3dVmt.jpg (linked for size). It's designed around asparagus stalk staging, first with the big towers of tanks, then with the little ones. It usually falls apart once those central 8 stacks lose the first pair of stacks. And I can't really not use mechjeb, since the lag on launch makes manual control impossible.

This happens every single time I fly anything larger than a Mun rocket: Once I get to the upper atmosphere, almost totally ex nihilo, my rocket will start spinning around its z axis with considerable angular acceleration. Then, at a rate not normally considered normal for precession, it starts doing exactly that, until I either end up in a flat spin or have my rocket ripped apart. ASAS doesn't help, fins don't help, RCS and a boatload of nozzles do not help; it's like the rocket just decides it wants to pretend to be a top for a moment, and damn any attempts on my part to control it. Is there some logical reason for rockets to precess so violently at high speeds when the centers of mass and thrust line up perfectly, and is there some way for me to halt the process, either in design or in flight? I can't get my design for a Duna land-and-return craft small enough for this issue not to pop up.

Is there any way to integrate the whole orbit-to-orbit transfer injection into MechJeb's autopilot, rather than just a list of phase angles? That would make so much more possible.

Is there any way to enable support for the highest warp? As it stands, interplanetary journeys take...a while.

ASAS can help reorient a rocket that small without needing RCS, which can remove at least one fuel worry. You might want to swap the liquid engines on the lower stages for the higher-thrust ones; gimbaled engines are great when you need to maneuver, but within the atmosphere you mostly just need to go up and then gently nose over.

And then launch enough atmospheric rendezvous craft to save everyone!

One thing you might want to try is knocking some of those fins off, or at least moving them down. You get more torque, and thus more responsive controls, the farther from your rocket's center of mass they're acting. If that lets you remove some fins and keep your rocket controllable, all the better; fins aren't exceptionally heavy, but the drag they cause (which is what they're for, after all) is fairly painful.

Why use so many RCS blocks? I was under the impression the individual thrusters were lighter. EDIT: Never mind, i was wrong. Great design, by the by.

I've done eight legs before when I was using four engine pods. It's handy as a way of making the landing footprint as big as possible, especially for Minmus with its hugely sloped terrain. It also helps to come in the last meter or so with RCS and ASAS on, since the bounce will be counteracted by the ASAS generally. Even if you do bounce back up, at least it's with the legs down.

Same here. It\'s hardly unexpected, though; the spikes in usage post-update must be horrific.

608. When you suddenly realize fuel lines go the other way.

He\'s not; he\'s a mod. I suspect most of those posts would be moderator actions.

Thanks, Damion. I know the problems associated with transparent development usually outweigh the returns; it\'s nice to see that dealt with in a positive rather than a negative way. So thanks for the update; we\'re all rooting for the best possible development process you all can experience.

Well, how have people done solar flybys and the like, then?