Blackbird

I just recently managed to finish my new Space Station in LKO. I'm pretty happy at how it turned out and the asteroid just went by so i took the chance and glued it to the station..for science!^^ http://imgur.com/f5zW69x http://imgur.com/tt7kAJa http://imgur.com/FGZfry9

never happened to me before and i think it isn't supposed to happen either. If you don't have the steamversion try a new clean install, might be a bit "overkill" but it should fix your problem 100% ^^ Did this happened before or is this your first time launching?

yes it is possible to extend solar pannels via EVA with a Kerbal, so if you are able to get a kerbal to your probe you should be able to fix the problem and save your probe. But just as a little sidenote: you should allways put bateries on your probes (they sun is not allways there to support you )

^indeed, with bodies without atmosphere it more or less comes down to your personal preferences, but at bodies with low gravity i recomend a higher orbit for a station. about 80-100km should be fine. Its easier to meet with your station and you dont loose that much of Delta-V due to your high orbit since it requieres only a few Delta-V to get you back down, also you have a higher timewarp wich often makes things so much easier. I got my mun station at 80km, minimus at 90km and vall at 50km (just to give some examples) While a lander only goes up to about 20km on mun for example. Just try around and you will find your own preference, just remember that a lower orbit means you normaly save Delta-V. But if its about how low your orbit can be....well, as low as the highest mountain rly.

so, is there any way to increase the range of the scaners so that the "dots" they scan get bigger? Like editing something in the .part or other obvious stuff i might miss? i got a little probe around laythe at a 150km orbit and it takes forever to get some good scans since those dots are only about 50m² on the surface or something like that ;D

since everyone has such awsome Munar bases, i decided i needed an awsome base, too. Turned out pretty well and has proven usefull so far: The Momuve, a modular munbase capable of driving around the surface at speeds around 20m/s, providing excelent utility whenever needed. Why build rovers when your whole base can be one? (so far one of the most stable vehicles I have ever build. It can drive at max speed without even thinking about loosing control or geting airborn.)

BEHOLD! The Tower of!...OF!....well, whatever. We lacked the paint for other words on the side of the station, anyway. And here the super-modern escapepod for the tower. Jeb just wanted to take that first ride back home.

just gonna drop some of my pictures here for you guys. I'm still on 0.19 though: A small spaceport for most of my SSTO's to refill: I wanted it on my Spacestation first but it doesn't fit the design and would lag like hell. Here is my station in LKO: Gonna start with a new one in 0.20 today, allready got some great designs in mind

yeah, I almost only play LoL with RL friends, too. Doesn't make that much fun without someone to scream and fool around with over Skype I think the main point is just that KSP is the only singleplayer game that is able to hook me over a long period of time. Most other games I start to play are droped after a week or two. I don't know what this game does that other games like Skyrim or GTA can't. I started KSP with 0.13 and I still can't keep my hands off it.

should be a close battle between KSP and Leauge of Legends, the only two games I realy play over a longer period of time.

So I have made some testing and found a solution of the problem. here are some pictures to explain everything I have found out so far: tested this and it seems to work that way. however, if you don't have any winglets on your craft there is another rule that works pretty well for me. You take your craft and draw a line trough half of the craft (in lenght). The one half in wich the Center of gravity lies is also the half that points towards your way of movement while reentering: I used hyperedit to put it into the atmosphere so i dont loose fuel and the COM shifts. Pointed it upwards to see wich way it turns: The COM turns towards your prograde, wich makes some sense (thinking about physics) : I don't know how your craft looks like, but i asume that the problem is your center of mass being to close to the rear (to your engines) rather than the other side, since your tanks are drained/empty and your engine is probably to heavy to keep the center of mass inside the other half of your craft.

np mate, happy I could help^^ -BB.

if it's a biger craft with winglets or other lift, the center of mass is normaly ahead of the center of lift at reentry, so if you point your craft retrograde it should look like this: way of movement ---> [< center of lift -- center of mass <] --> way of movement symetry can be a problem, too. Your craft starts to spin if there is more drag on one side as on the other. hope that helps somehow. -BB.

Fuelline > normal flow, so you actually just need one simple fuelline to solve this Edit: it's a fuelline running from the first tank all the way back onto the engine, not onto the last tank! Don't think it works if you put it from tank to tank -BB.

yeah, seems to makes sense. Don't want to loose eye of sight to earth or they can't watch TV anymore ;P . Thanks guys^^ -BB.

Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question, but now I'm curious: what is the actual advantage of this 8-shaped free return trajectory? Does it save any kind of Delta-V at any point or do they "just" do this to get savely back to earth/kerbin if the engines or something else went nuts. I did this maneuver once but I just can't find a use for it since we don't got those "errors" in KSP. -BB.

Try to spin your craft before releasing the outer tanks so they get "thrown" away from your craft due to the rotational forces or whatever they are called

don't they need electricity? other than that if you realy got a fueltank, a kethane tank and a converter together it should work

in a geosync orbit the magical word is inclination. don't put your satelites in the same inclination since this gives the satelites more "vision" to have contact to the other ones. Try it. Now.

what I am realy interested in now is the fuelflow. You got a lot of sections with a lot of dockingports on there and i wonder if you tested it and if it drains every tank the same so your center of mass stays in line with your thrust because it often doesn't work for me ;(

I guess fuel costs more, at least where i come from ;D

little tipp: you should consider removing those normal engines and just useing the nuclear ones. you don't have to break your orbit after the first, second or third burn. if you have to make 10 burns to brake kerbin orbit that doesn't matter but you will save a lot of fuel if you only use like 3 or 4 nuclear ones and remove the weight of the normal engines. little question: why retract the solar pannels? there is no drag to brake them or do I miss something?^^

You still have to consider that this is a game and not real life. If you play a game for about 3hours, "die" and start all over again because there wasn't a save-function I would consider it bad gamedesign or bad gameplay. I think squad did well in not forcing you to use the quicksave and the game doesn't save itself so you have to decide when to do a quicksave. I know that a lot of people want this to be a realistic game but i think things like this don't go into the "realistic" part but rather into the "game" one

Sorry, didn't noticed that. Well you can change your cameramode with the V-button (standard) into "chase mode" wich follows rotations of the craft and puts the screen in the right position so that up is up (if you get that^^) but yeah it realy comes down to how you prefer to fly your crafts and what you are used to.

the chutes shouldn't just move into the same actiongroup. You probably mean stage(?). The easiest way to do this is as you stated: make an actiongroup with only the parachutes so when you push e.g. the button "2" the chutes will deploy. If you use the abort sequence dont put the parachutes into it or they will deploy.