Vanamonde

Thanks, Ted. While we're on the subject, where do you think the best place for my newbies' moon rocket thread would be? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25029-A-moon-rocket-for-newbies It's a craft file share rather than a tutorial, but I think the people who might want it would be more likely to find it in the tutorials section? If you do move it there, then maybe move my beginners' airplanes http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25413-Trainer-and-Example-Aircraft-for-Newbie-Pilots there, too?

I learned to fly to Mun several versions before the maneuver system was introduced, but I use the nodes for convenience. As soon as I achieve orbit I set up the burn, point my nose at the marker, and fast-forward to the burn time, already lined up and not having to guess about the timing. Just drop out of warp and hit the gas pedal.

This is my standard refuelling vehicle. It can reach 300,00m+ without calling upon the orange tank's own fuel. You can download it here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25779-Orbital-refuelling-tanker

I think there are two stationary points in the game, but you can't reach them. The north and south poles of Kerbol should be rotating but not going anywhere. Since everything else moves around the sun and there are no external reference points outside the Kerbol system, all motions are relative to the sun, and it sits still with regard to itself. But of course, you hit an invisible barrier and explode at a certain distance from the sun, and so can't reach the surface at those points, or anywhere else.

Could you please move this thread http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25008-How-to-reach-orbit-and-a-rocket-that-can-do-it-a-walkthrough-for-newbies and this thread http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25425-Help-with-Docking-A-Trainer-Ship-for-Newbies to the tutorials section? Thank you.

Although the main view gives you pretty pictures to look at, space flight is too complex to conduct by eyeball. That's why the game gives you two critical tools, which are map view and the navball. Most of your actual flying will be done using these tools. The navball is not something most of us are used to using, since we normally travel in the two dimensions of the earth's surface, so here is an explanation of the navball, what it does, and how to read it. While your ship moves around in space it will be facing in different directions, and that can get confusing. So the globe of the navball maintains its orientation while you move and symbols on it tell you various useful things. Think of the globe as a map in 3 dimensions. The navball is derived from instruments invented for airplanes, and so is easiest to explain in those terms. The blue side represents the sky, and so it is "up," which in space is away from the center of whatever world that governs your current Sphere of Influence, or SOI. The brown side is dirt, and so represents "down," which is toward the center of the current world. (Keep in mind that these up/down directions are relative to the world, and will change as you move around the world.) The game's navball has three modes, which are surface, target, and orbit. It will switch from one to another automatically at times, but you can also cycle through them by clicking in the speed rectangle at the top of the instrument. In surface mode, your speed is measured relative to the ground. In target mode, your speed is measured relative to a target vessel you have designated, and a couple of new markers appear. In orbit mode, your speed is measured relative to the whole game universe, and some additional markers replace a couple of the target mode markers. The numbers on the navball are degree angles (up and down) and compass headings (left and right). The gold line runs from the zenith to the nadir on the zero degree meridian (don't worry if you don't know that that means; most of the time, you don't need it). East (relative to the current world) is the 90 compass heading on the horizon (where the brown side meets the blue side. East (the 90 line) is especially important, because all KSP worlds rotate in this direction, which means you get a small speed boost when taking off in that direction, and you need to brake a little less when landing in that direction. So most of your takeoffs and landings will be done while heading east. In all of the illustrations in this guide, the ship is orbiting west to east, which is counterclockwise from the camera's perspective. The numerical readout at the top of navball is your current speed, and the spot you click to change navball modes. The number at the bottom is your current compass heading. Along the left side of the main screen navball is an indicator that shows your current throttle setting. This runs from zero thrust to full, and while it has gradations marked on it, they don't seem to actually mean anything. (They are 1/15th of full capacity per notch, for whatever that's worth.) The short version is that it's proportional, so for example, half the gauge is half thrust. (Incidentally, there is no gauge like this in IVA view, although there is a sliding throttle handle that actually does move in proportion to your throttle setting.) Along the right side of the navball version on the main view (but not the IVA version on the ships' internal instrument panels) is a meter that measures the acceleration that is currently acting on the ship. These accelerations are measured in earth-gravity-equivalents called "G"s, and so this indicator is commonly called the G meter. The meter is marked from -5 to +15. The meter indicates the sum of all accelerations acting on the ship at the moment, including engine thrust, rotation, and gravity. So when you are sitting on the launchpad with the engines off before launch, it will read 1 just from Kerbin's gravity, and when you are freefalling in space, it will read zero. Very rarely, the gauge may dip into the negative, as when your capsule bobs up again after splashing down. Anyway, the G meter is most useful as an indication of how hard your engines are increasing the speed of your ship, and how much speed you are shedding through aerobraking. There are safely low (green) and dangerously high (red) zones indicated on the G meter, and kerbals may pass out or even die if the Gs get too high for too long (if you have that option turned on). Ships are also subject to acceleration damage, and structural failures (parts breaking off or exploding) can occur at 1.5Gs or more, depending on the size and design of the ship, especially during launch. These are the 3 most important navball symbols, in a pic I stole from somebody on the internet: The attitude marker (the little -v- symbol) is kind of like looking at your airplane from behind, with its wings sticking out to the sides. It is always at the center of the ball, and the rest of the device moves around it. It tells you which way your ship is currently pointed. In the example below, the ship has its nose up (the pointer is over the blue side of the navball) and its left wing is low (because that side of the marker is angled "down" toward the ground). The other two most important symbols are prograde and retrograde. In "orbit" and "surface" navball modes, the prograde marker tells you which direction you are currently travelling, and the retrograde marker is the opposite of that marker, 180 degrees away from prograde. In the picture below, the rocket is moving upwards (prograde marker is over the blue side) even though the nose of the ship is pointed down (attitude marker is over the brown side). Thrusting toward the prograde marker will speed you up, and thrusting retrogade will slow you down. (This has other effects, too, but that's a subject for another time.) But in "target" navball mode, flying toward the prograde marker will bring you closer to the target ship, and retrograde away from it. (You can only switch the navball to target mode if you have something already targeted.) If you have something targeted, two more symbols appear on the navball. These pink markers also have "toward" and "away from" versions, but these point toward or away from the target ship, and only if you do have something targeted. Note that these pink target markers tell you which direction the target is RIGHT NOW, but in target mode, the prograde and retrograde markers change function, and indicate the relative velocity of the target ship. Burning target-retrograde reduces your speed relative to the target, which is extremely useful during rendezvous, because it has the effect of matching paths with the target and bringing your ship to a relative stop. Burning target-prograde is seldom advisable, as you are generally approaching at high speeds already, but there are times when it is useful. The blue marker only appears if you have a maneuver plotted somewhere along your path. If you have more than one maneuver plotted, the display applies to the first upcoming maneuver. The blue maneuver marker tells you in which direction to point the attitude symbol (the nose of your ship) for that maneuver. When the maneuver marker is off the edge of the navball's exposed surface, a blue arrow points to its location. If you do have a maneuver node plotted, a curved yellow bar graph appears next to the navball. This visually indicates how long your burn should be to make that maneuver, and it runs down as you burn. To the upper right of it, a numerical counter indicates how much delta-V (speed changing) remains to complete the manuever. To the lower right of the bar graph, timers count down to the moment you reach the next maneuver node (the "node in..." clock) and an estimate of how much longer the burn should last ("Est. burn:"). Note that many factors are involved in these calculations, and the numbers and bar graph are guiding approximations, and may change before and during the maneuver burn. You will see 4 other markers on the navball. These can be harder to explain. They are direction indicators useful for certain kinds of orbital maneuvers, but these directions are relative to the motion of the vessel. Radial is 90 degrees "up" from the vessel's current prograde, away from whatever body the ship is orbiting. Antiradial is, as the name implies, the opposite direction, 180 degrees away from radial, and "down" toward the body the vessel is orbiting. Burning in these directions raises or lowers the next half of the orbit, but lowers or raises the other half in the opposite manner. Usually, this is used to bring one ship's orbit closer to another ship's orbit for rendezvous. Base state After burning radially After burning antiradially. Taking prograde as forward and radial as up, normal is then 90 degrees to the left of prograde and antinormal 90 degrees to the right of prograde. If a ship burns in these directions, the height of the orbit will stay the same, but the inclination will change (assuming the ship rotates to stay facing normal/antinormal throughout the burn). That means that the angle of the orbit will change: say, from this one to this one. This doesn't explain everything you need to know to get where you want to be, but I hope it has made the navball understandable.

I can be hard to remove a strut, but it can be done if you can click on just the right spot of the origin nub. Also, if you haven't done anything else yet, you can undo the part placement with ctrl-z.

I'm not sure what you're describing. Is the navball almost all blue? If so, the controlling part of your rover is rotated 90 degrees pitch-up from the direction you're driving, so it thinks the rover is rolling around on its back. As the vehicle tilts, the orientation of the navball will seem to flail around. You may not be able to fix it on that rover, but if you add a probe module or docking port at the "front" of the rover in the VAB and send the modified version to Mun, you can later right-click on that and choose "control form here," and the navball will make sense again. 　 Example: in this pic, there is a probe module facing up at the top of the rover, and another probe module facing forward at the front of the rover, and I switch to the lower one after detaching the rover at the destination.

You should be able to simply double-click on another ship to switch to it in map view, but currently there's an obnoxious bug that usually prevents this. If you put the mouse pointer over the target ship and just rapidfire tap the left mouse button, it may eventually do the trick. Or it might not.

Get a circular orbit around Kerbin. Wait until you are on the opposite side of the planet from a point 60 degrees ahead of Mun's current position, then point your nose prograde and burn. Turn the engine off when you get an intercept. It should look like this:

It looks like you've placed an ASAS module on the plane. It will prevent the plane from turning, as it was made to keep rockets pointed in a consistent direction. Remove that and stick an avionics ASAS cone on the back of the fuselage, and you will find that SAS mode then helps steady the plane, but does not prevent it from turning, because avioinics was made for that very purpose.

To prevent a ship with a lengthy payload from wobbling, build the launcher around the payload instead of under it. For example, this delivers this. That's a robotic fuel tanker which you could dock to your station as storage. If you'd like, you can download it here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25779-Orbital-refuelling-tanker

When you are on the opposite side of Kerbin from a point 60 degrees ahead of the current position of Mun, point your nose prograde and burn. It should look like this:

Congratulations and condolences on your first station.

It's already named the Kerbal Space Program, however, they do give all of their contracts to

I have around 98 missions in-progress. You'd have to pry my persistent file from my cold, dead hands.

Returning from Jool. I call it, "Incinobraking."

Al Jolson?

When you exit KSP, it saves itself so that when you return to it, you pick up from that same moment. Quicksave will do the same thing, but it can also return you to the quicksave point from before the exiting autosave. Unfortunately, there is currently a bug in which resuming a flight that has its landing legs extended will cause the landing legs to fall off. Quicksave before extending the legs. I don't believe that turning off damage will prevent that, as the legs seem to simply fall off rather than take damage, but I could be wrong. To function, RCS thrusters require a source of RCS fuel (there are several tank types that are listed as "monopropellant"), but also either manual keyboard commands, or the installation and activation of an ASAS module somewhere on the ship. The ASAS will automatically use the RCS to try hold your current attitude, but it can run through your fuel quickly.

No pictures?

egnio98, were you aware that Minmus is on an inclined orbit? Rotate the map view camera down until you are looking at the plane of Mun's orbit, then zoom out. You'll see that Minmus bobs north on one side of its orbit and south on the other side. That means that ships launched toward it from the equator will sometimes seem to arrive below or above Minmus. That's easy enough to fix, though. Halfway to the moon, check and see if you're going to miss above or below the path of Minmus' orbit. If you are going to pass below, point the nose of your ship due north (where the gold line meets the horizon on the navball), and burn until you are arriving at Minmus closer to its equator. If passing above, burn toward the south. You'll still need to do another plane correction burn when you get there (most efficiently, while passing over the equator), but this should get you pretty close.

This is a really old thread, but since you mention it, this has happened to me a couple more times. Somebody suggested, and it seems to be true, that it happens when you leave something in a very low orbit. Even though the ship or station should be high enough to clear any terrain, the game seems to get confused and say, nope, you crashed. But the really frustrating thing is, there is no notice when this happens, so there's no way to gather clues when you don't even know when it happened.

Well, we still don't have our mission reports sub-forum back, so I guess I'll put this here. The project I've been working on for a while is fully reuseable interplanetary ships. I've already got a reliable one that has made trips to Duna, Eve, and Dres, but now I'm working on a longer-ranged improvement of that design. I assembled it on orbit, loaded it up with a cargo of 2 rover deployers and a small station, and launched it to the Jool system. I was planning to aerobrake, but happened upon a Laythobrake situation instead, and arrived at my destination of Vall. There I deployed the small science station, and landed the rovers. Then came the real test; did it have enough remaining fuel to return to Kerbin? Getting back was a nasty chore. Plotting a return trajectory from Vall orbit took multiple attempts over the course of about 90 minutes, but I did finally find a window, at least with the help of a fairly substantial mid-course correction. And so the ship was able to return home, with a bit of fuel left in the tanks. Though the incinobraking manuever was pretty intense. Now for the bad news. Although the ship has proven itself capable of making the trip, I can't imagine myself flying it there again. 1) When loaded with cargo, the part count is so high that my poor little PC can only run the simulation at about 1/4th real time, and the interplanetary burn took well over an hour. Turning the ship for manuevers could take another 10 minutes each time. 2) Although the ship had been stable during assembly in Kerbin orbit and under thrust, once in Vall orbit it would pick up random but gradually accelerating rotations. With only the torque of the single probe core, SAS mode was unable to stop this. Of course I knew that the probe core would not exert much control force when I built the ship, but the thing is, it shouldn't have been rotating in the first place, with no real forces acting on it. So the ship did make the round trip while delivering a substantial payload, but the feat was somewhat bittersweet.

I use trigger for screenshots or suspend SAS (the F key) depending on my mood. The buttons on top I have set to RCS translate up/down/left/right, the two buttons on the left of the base are RCS forward/back, and the two buttons below the grip are roll left/right. The stick itself I leave on pitch/roll for aircraft.

It is VERY fuel-expensive to put yourself in a polar orbit after you arrive. However, you can do it for peanuts if, when departing Kerbin, you angle the transit burn slightly north or south.