colonel0sanders

So...Eve is 1.457 times denser than Kerbin?

Well heck - that's what I get for not reading back to the original statement. Nevermind all that then

I've just played around with it, and managed a perfect keosynchronous orbit without using the map view at all. On launch, I managed an apoapsis of 107k by blind luck, circularized that, and went from there. With a little figuring I managed to transfer from keosynchronous to munar orbit (harder 'cause you can't just burn when the mun rises), and finally broke down and switched to the map for the first time. Good thing, too, since I was on course to smack right into the middle of the Mun.

Yeah, without the UI would be extremely difficult. I would think getting to the moon would be harder than landing on it - landing would be much easier to eyeball than orbital insertion or TMI

One challenge I'm thinking about writing up, which would make things much more difficult (and kinda mathy) - is a challenge where you just have to perform basic tasks (get into orbit, land on the Mun), but *without* using the map view at all. We used to do it before the map view was implemented.

I'd love to see a mod with a balloon that would function similar to a parachute. A balloon would allow you to "land" (i.e. shut off your engines and float indefinitely) in the atmosphere of a gas giant, wouldn't it?

In 0.15 I managed to get a rocket out of the atmosphere (not into orbit, still working on that) using nothing but RCS. The thing had no fuel tanks or engines, just RCS tanks and a slew of linear rcs ports on the bottom....

"* Added a button on the Tracking Station to terminate an ongong flight (prompts for confirmation)." Will this work for unmanned debris or just controllable flights? If it does work for debris it could make cleaning up spent stages and whatnot a lot easier...

Success! I managed to get that thing to the mun, land it relatively close to where I wanted. Picked up two stranded Kerbonauts 3km away, and managed a safe splashdown on Kerbin A quick note to anyone using this design: the three engines on the half-tanks (the "ascent" engines) give zero thrust unless the landing legs are deployed. I pulled the legs up as I was leaving the Munar surface and nearly lost the ship and crew until I figured out the problem and redeployed them. Still had fuel to spare, but not nearly as much had that not happened.

After making a few 3-man landers, I wanted to try something new. It's been designed, and partially tested, but I haven't attempted a landing with it yet. It's a design where the pod is the lowest element, with the legs attached directly to it, and everything else (descent and ascent stage, asas, rcs, etc) is above it. I like the wider base you get from putting the legs on the pod itself. I'm going to give a try setting this thing down sometime tonight I think...

After a second, much more intensive survey mission, I managed to collect 65k data points after orbiting for 10 (in-game) days. And - after reading the section on QuikGrid again, managed to put together a map with slightly more detail: If you KGSS folk want I can upload my data csv to add to the collection. This was a really neat idea, and I\'ll definitely be mapping any new moons/planets myself before selecting a proper spot for the first landing.

Really like this idea and find them quite interesting. I even managed to follow the directions to start my own homemade map of the Mun: Using over 7000 data points collected from a 25k circular polar orbit (at 50x warp). Next, I just need to devote some time to upping the resolution a bit...

I tried to land my all-stock rover next to my z02-mining lander (on the left) on minmus (the rover was built before I installed the zoxygen mod so it doesn\'t currently have a system). So the rover lands upright on a platform with the descent engines (picture about 30m into the background). The descent platform lands, then lifts the legs (which opens the landing gear on the rover). The plan is to the decouple from the descent stage, use rcs to pitch the rover forward, and drive along just fine. This worked well on the Mun, but on Minmus the super low gravity got to me, the rover flipped, and came to rest in its above-pictured state. At least the crew will (possibly) be able to EVA over to the other ship (with the zo2 mining drills) for the return trip. How many kerbals can you stuff in a capsule again?

Nice video! Just this morning I got my first geosynchronous orbit in 0.15. Also, it was my first flight with the zeoxygene mod, and I lost one of my brave kerbonouts due to lack of ZO2. Apparently you shouldn\'t plan your transit burn to be mostly in the shadow of the planet... But I have a nice looking ship parked neatly above the planet with two (mostly) healthy pilots

Success! Tried this again today, after modifying the rocket a bit. I scrapped the outer 6 stacks (which had 3 fuel tanks and an engine each) and replaced them with 6 SRBs on radial decouplers. This left me with what turned out to be the perfect amount of fuel. After only jettisoning empty fuel tanks, and resetting my decoupler order to where it should be, I easily descended to the surface. And the landing was smooth as can be, with about three halftanks of fuel to spare: Took off, returned to Kerbin, shed some excess speed to not hit the atmosphere very hard, and splashed down successfully. Fun challenge!

Well...I made a rocket that can do it. Kinda. I went a little overboard, made a rocket that got the 10-piece station into minmus orbit with about 12-15 extra tanks of un-burnt fuel. The ship: Minmus orbit: So I started the descent to the surface, using the extra fuel (and jettisoning a bunch of it). The plan was to get a couple hundred meters off the surface, drop the last big engine, and descend the last little bit using the two little engines mounted to the side. On the way down: At about 500m from the surface......I realize I have my decouplers set incorrectly, and instead of dropping that final descent stack, I drop the whole thing, from a low enough altitude to watch it explode into the surface, hovering in that little return craft mounted to the top. It wasn\'t a complete loss, since I did manage to bring the three guys back to Kearth alive. But it was awful disappointing to get 500m away..... One thing, though, it that rocket is solid. I may try this again tomorrow. EDIT: All stock, no MechJeb. Did have a single ASAS unit, though