Vanamonde

There\'s an Isaac Asimov short story in which they figure out how to get to hyperspace, but the speed of light there is slower.

Thanks for the guidance! My problem was that I was getting close and then trying to brute-force it, instead of setting up the conditions and letting time do the work.

BSOM180, a server glitch locked me out of the site for a week, so I haven\'t been able to thank you for your instructions. They worked, and I\'ve been having a blast driving carts around Mun for the last couple of days. Thank you!

Mun was starting to get kind of crowded, so I\'ve begun bringing my missions home. It\'s pretty easy once you know how, but figuring out the process was quite tricky and counter-intuitive. My first 3 returns hit atmo about 20 degrees from vertical at 3km/s, which I suspect is more like a Tunguska event than a landing. Did you notice that sissy little accelerometer in the cabin only goes up to a paltry 15Gs? ;D But I think I\'ve got the hang of it now, and it is rather satisfying to bring the guys home. Now to try it from Minmus.

Keeping in mind that it\'s not nice to make fun of the slow-witted, can somebody tell a newbie: Is the cart.dae the thing I need to unpack? How can I unpack if Windows says it doesn\'t know? When I have Windows look for help, it only finds commercial services that want me to download and register their products to 'fix' my computer, and I don\'t trust them.

That\'s needlessly harsh, and is the kind of attitude that turns excited 13 year olds off from science. How do people become not-ignorant? By remaining excited and curious, asking impertinent questions, and talking about the things that interest them. Misterspork should be congratulated for spending his time playing KSP rather than some mindless shoot-\'em-up. See? The poor kid is already afraid he\'ll be ridiculed if he shows any signs of intelligence or curiosity. Insulting him isn\'t going to help. The laws that we know about now say that it\'s impossible to reach or surpass light speed, but that\'s the thing, isn\'t it? Somebody often comes along and finds new laws, exceptions to the rules, or most often, that the laws we know about are special cases of larger laws that do allow things that were formerly considered impossible. Powered flight and faster-than-sound are completely apt analogies: they were impossible by the rules that were known in the 19th century, and then somebody who refused to believe the accepted wisdom discovered that internal combustion could make a powerplant strong enough to lift a heavier than air vehicle, and changing the shape of a plane could allow it to slip through the compressed air that builds up in front of something trying to exceed the speed of sound. New rules, new possiblities. Misterspork, try to find nicer friends who won\'t make fun of you for being curious and smart. Trust me: normal people are boring. The weirdos are nicer and have better senses of humor!

Am I intended to think that it\'s silly that they crashed? They landed within 20 feet of each other! I\'m envious of the piloting! ;D

Also, you\'re using the 200-thrust unit, non-gimballed motors. The greater power sounds nice, but actually the 175-thrust gimbals run through fuel less quickly, burn a little longer, and so end up being more of a match for the big ones than they seem. Once high up in thinner air, fins don\'t contribute much to control anymore, but the directed thrust of the gimbals keeps working even in full vaccuum. But they look so cool! How are you gonna impress the she-Kerbels in a rocket with no fins?

Near the Mun\'s east pole (so to speak), by Ansel Adams Kerman:

I know, I know, I\'m shockingly ignorant for someone living in the modern world, okay? But I\'m trying to get the cart mod, and I need instructions for the instructions. Is the cart.dae the thingy I need to unpack? And what doodad do I use to unpack it after Windows whines that it doesn\'t know how? When Windows resorts to the internet to find the appropriate unpacking thingamajig*, all it finds is 4 commercial services that want me to download and register their products to 'fix' my computer. I don\'t want my computer fixed! Or spayed or neutered! I just want little cars to drive around on the moons! Can some nice person help me with this? Go slow and use small words. Maybe some gestures and pictures, too. *Sorry for all the technical jargon.

I refuse to read the updates because they\'re too painful. When I hear about the things they\'re going to add to the game, I want them NOWNOWNOWNOW! Rather than inspire the mods to place restraining orders on me, I just try not to even think about it.

It amuses me that no/sometimes is consistently outpolling yes by 3:2. There are A LOT of stranded Kerbals out there!

Ah! That clarifies the thought in my own head. The point I was trying to get at is that since the game is a created thing, the makers could have had the stars out during the day or not, so what does it imply that they decided to hide the sky during day? Atmo or aesthetics?

I also use the method of directing my attitude to kill horizontal speed. I find it easier than using RCS. However, as you\'re changing attitude to direct part of your thrust horizontally, that component of the vector is no longer being applied to vertical thrust; therefore, your descent speed can vary. Furthermore, if it builds up while you\'re steering, when you resume vertical flight you\'ll need to shed the additional momentum as well as resume counter-acting gravity, which would require throttling up from what had been an adequate setting for a slow descent before you built up the vertical momentum. Which would subsequently require throttling down again, so that you don\'t overcorrect and bob up like a cork. Rather than throttling up and down to maintain my rate of descent against these factors, I get it close to where I want it, then fine tune with RCS bursts. Then I can leave the throttle at a constant setting, and it\'s one less thing to worry about. I doubt their burners were scaled to make a serious change in the ship\'s momentum, but the ones in the game are, so why not? Also, I imagine their throttle was more sophisticated. For me, the difference between climbing, hovering, and sinking is about notches 1-3 out of 15 on the game\'s throttle scale, so changing it at all can make a huge difference in my trajectory. It\'s too gross a tool for fine control. Anyway, we could have a thread for landing strategies if somebody wants to start one, like the ascent path discussion. I\'m sure there are other valid methods. This works for me. And like I said, the RCS can come in handy in other ways. Once crews persist and gain experience, I will definitely bring them back. For right now, I just figure they\'re camping out and toasting smores. ;D

I notice that at night on Minmus you can see the stars and milky way, but they fade from view when the sun is out. Since in real life that would only happen if an atmosphere was scattering the sunlight to overwhelm the lesser lights, does that imply that Minmus has a considerable atmosphere? Or is it just an aspect of the game\'s lightning effects? I\'ve had a ship orbiting 4000-6000m for game-days, with no apparent slowing due to air resistence. The same conditions apply on Mun, which I think is supposed to be a scaled-down version of our own Moon, and therefore would seem to be airless by intention. Then again, it\'s larger than Minmus, so if Minmus does have an atmo, why not Mun?

Au contraire! It\'s true that even big ships can turn without them, so I leave it turned off until the final phase of my landing approach. Then I have 4 of the linear RCS thrusters aimed straight down, which I use for bursts to fine tune my descent rate, and then to bring myself to an almost complete stop just before touchdown. It\'s MUCH easier than trying to throttle-up/throttle-down continually to maintain descent rate because you have finer control and faster response time. So as long as I have the tank installed anyway, I might as well go ahead and add the 4-way thrusters, for versatility. They don\'t weight much, and can add to the vertical thrust. Besides, I\'m still pretty new at the game and not that great of a pilot. On several occasions I\'ve limped a crash-damaged or out-of-gas ship home on the delta-V of the RCS system. When your weight is down to your last stage, it can serve as an auxiliary propulsion system, if you have time for the sustained burns it requires to build up effect. I\'ve tried to build a Minmus lander that uses RCS instead of regular engines, but it burns through the little tanks too quickly. Produces more than enough thrust to liftoff, though. RCS: don\'t leave home without it! Attached: closeups of the RCS arrangement of the lander in the pic above, and my Minmus lander.

At first I was so happy to land alive that I just left the guys there so I could come back and marvel at my achievement. Now if I land in a place that turns out not to have nice scenery, I take off and practice coming back to Kerbin. Otherwise, I leave them there so they can pose for postcards:

'Warning: this vehicle makes frequent impacts.' 'If you can read this, your fate is also sealed.'

Oh my god. Who\'s flying the ship?!

I still have trouble staying oriented as well. There\'s up on the screen, up on my instruments, and up relative to the local world as well. Very confusing, especially when you\'re flying backwards for a deceleration burn or landing. I like to put some clearly visible part, like a fin, over the windows on my capsule so that I can tell at a glance which way is 'capsule up' or 'instrument up.' Then pitch-up will turn my ship in the direction of my fin, pitch-down away from it, and of course yaw-right and -left are to the right and left of my fin. In this otherwise radially symmetrical ship, for example, the curved fin is pitch-up:

No hurry. Thanks a bunch for doing it at all. Okay, now I can visualize the video. Thank you.

AAARRRGH! Pant! Pant! AAARRRGH! I just spent 3 hours trying to rendezvous. It can not be done! You guys who think you did it just imagined it! The attempts drove you insane, and you were delusional. Kosmo-not, I\'ve read your instructions 3 times and I can\'t visualize them. Is there any way you could make a side-view sketch?

Science bulletin: close examination has unlocked the mystery of the dark green patches on the surface of Minmus. They are dark green patches. Also, a nice view of the Murky Way from the northern lattitudes of Minmus.

It occurred to me while I was posting. Relativity says acceleration is acceleration, regardless of the cause. ;D By the way, when I was talking about how hard it was to be precise, I was thinking of my attempt to use this method to dock with another orbiting ship. It wouldn\'t be that hard to make a reasonably round orbit this way.

I did consider several reasons I might be off, including the sidereal/synodic thing, but I confess it never occurred to me that Mun\'s 'altitude' might be measured from Kerbin\'s surface, since that\'s not a useful figure for orbital math. It\'s always the obvious stuff that one overlooks. So is the map\'s altitude surface-to-surface, surface-to-Mun-core, or what? And if I follow Mun at 542.5, will I approach or draw away or just sit there?