Arrowstar

True. And the docking mod is available here.

Hi everyone! Yesterday I used the new docking mod by Erkle to perform an Apollo-style mission. Here are some pictures of my adventure. Lunar landing vehicle approaching Taurus I with upper stage LMI stage still attached. Docked and ready to depart to the Mun. Trans-Munar Injection burn is underway. TMI burn complete, departure stage separation. Having separated from Taurus I, the munar module begins its decent to the surface below. On the surface! A bit of EVA is obviously in order now. After departing the Mun's surface, the munar module hooks back up with the Taurus I. Jettison of the munar module prior to entry interface. Separation of the service module prior to entry interface. Chute deploy! Back home safely.

Yeah, the docking part has a tendency to explore if you warp enough.

I use it for orbital information and pointing functionality (prograde, etc) only.

90 degree inclination (over the poles) and as low as you can go. Bonus points if you can tell me why this is so.

Sure. Use the Ascent Autopilot to fly up to something in orbit. Once you get close (>10 km), use the rendezvous module to null out relative velocity (RVEL-), then burn towards the ship (TGT+). Rinse and repeat until you get close. Btw, r4m0n, another bug report in this regard: MechJeb ascent autopilot's 'wait for LPe" thing does not work on the Mun. Regardless of which spacecraft I choose to rendezvous with in orbit, it consistently just fires me off as soon as I hit the Engage button. Any thoughts?

If you scale a cube up by a factor of 2 in all dimensions, you get the following volume increase: 2x * 2y * 2z = (2^3)*(xyz) = 8V, where V is the original volume, V=xyz. If volume increases by a factor of 8, mass also increases by a factor of 8 for constant density. Sorry, Nova.

Hey R4m0n, I found a bug with MechJeb. When you get close to another spacecraft, the TGT+ pointing does not work. The MechJeb seems to know that there's pointing error (it says so) but it stops and does not move to correct it. Can you investigate?

If they have zero force, they're not true anythings. Might as well not even bother if they won't influence the state of the spacecraft.

This picture is wrong. If you want to extend your semi-major axis in the direction opposite Eve's motion (that is, solar retrograde), you need to burn in the morning. Call it 6 AM if you will. Burning at "noon" will extend your orbit away from the sun, which doesn't get you anything.

I do indeed! As a professional astrodynamicist, I believe it to be a wonderful reference text with lots of applications, both basic and advanced.

Nope, pretty steady. Haven't tried warping yet, but if that works, I'm going to drag a docked lander/orbiter pair to the moon, I think.

I present to you: Docking! This is using that mod that was posted on the Docking Mod thread. Not the mod in the videos, but the one posted by erkle64.

I love the Munar polar regions. I've set up a few landers there. It's *very* tricky work to land there as the ground is quite treacherous. However, if you can pull it off, it is also quite rewarding. Btw, MechJeb has a tough time in the polar regions given that it doesn't take the slope of the ground into account when finding a landing spot...

But he hasn't finished the focus switch bug yet.

Sounds like Squad has some competition, lol

Now where did you get this idea? I doubt anyone but the devs really knows when anything is going to be added. Heck, I doubt they even know everything at this point.

Right, but I thought there was a 1.0 release upcoming?

Heh, Nova, you guys have competition now, lol.

Looking good! Can't wait to see Kethane and energy come out!

Nevermind.

The bottom axis is the time at which you depart. The left axis is the time at which you arrive. The intersection of lines extending off those axes tells you either A) how much energy is required to get to your destination, or the speed at which you arrive at your destination (which you have depends on what analysis you choose to do). The higher the quantity, the more fuel you need. The "optimal" departure and arrival times will be at the low points in the plot. Does that help?

Can I help clarify anything? What are you confused about?

So yeah, I've actually considered that. Say you were on the Mun and wanted to get to Bop, a moon of Jool. Basically what you'd do is run the high-level trajectory first (say, Kerbin to Jool). Then you'd have to compute Kerbin-centric trajectories that enforce the outbound hyperbolic velocity vector from the high-level trajectory. You'd do the same for the Jool-centric trajectory. Now, here's the big problem. When you get to Jool's SOI, your target is Bop. And you know your inbound hyperbolic velocity vector as well. So you should have enough information to fix an orbit (a position and a velocity), but I haven't worked out how yet because those vectors are valid at different times. You'll have the same problem leaving Kerbin's SOI. Your departure point might be the Mun, and you know your outbound hyperbolic velocity vector, but how to resolve that into an orbit is a challenge. Anyway, let me perfect the single-SoI flight plan stuff first and then I can upgrade to an iterative process as you've suggested.

Awesome.