Vanamonde

I profoundly suck at planes. How do you guys do it? If it has trouble getting off the ground I add an engine, but that screws with the balance so I shift the wing, but then it runs out of gas too quickly so I add a tank, but then it yaws like an anvil, etc. After struggling with it for days, I have one simple little design that both a) gets into the air, and is relatively controllable once there. Question: I make a steering change, the plane rotates a bit, but then it stops and I have to let it sort of get used to that situation for a few seconds before I can get any response out of the controls again. Does that happen to everybody or am I doing something wrong? As for NoSuperman10\'s problem of getting airborne, I find that putting canards at the nose helps wrench the nose up for the initial translation. I\'m not sure if that\'s a good idea or not, but it seemed to help me. Behold my patheticness:

When I\'m ready to come home, I set my initial periapsis to 50,000m. That way I know that even if I run out of fuel or have some kind of mishap, my little guys will eventually de-orbit. On a couple of occasions when I botched my trajectory and ran out of gas, it\'s the only thing that saved their (simulated) lives, though they had to do 2-4 loops before finally coming down in a random spot. If I get to that first periapsis and still have fuel, I\'m not commited to landing because my speed will take me back up again at least once, so I\'ll use the remaining fuel to try to bring my capsule down as close to KSC as possible. There\'s really no reason not to use aerobraking.

I don\'t think I\'m the first person to do this, but it\'s still pretty exciting when you\'re the one doing it. (That cart climbs like a fly!)

Oh, this is just great. Our new moon is only a month old, and somebody already put a crack in it. This is why we can\'t have nice things!

testing Okay, I see. Thanks matticus88.

There was at least one experimental plane from that era, and possibly others that I don\'t recall right now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XF5U (Hmm. How the heck do you link to a bit of text around these parts?) test

This thread is quite the emotional rollercoaster ride.

That\'s when it always opens. I think it\'s to simulate that the forces would be too great and rip it off if it fully opened while you were going too fast. But if you watch your instruments, it actually does have a lesser decelerating effect even before it fully opens.

The thing about joysticks that bugs me is that they all work pretty well when new, but after a couple of months of use they get a little loose around the centerpoint and then you can never exactly zero the thing again. No matter how carefully and often you calibrate them after that, rest position never stays right on neutral. But it\'s been a while since I had a game that needed one, so does that still seem to be a problem with new ones?

Caswallon, was that luck or have you been playing long enough to realize how hard that is? Landing on Mun is hard, the ground around the arches is uneven which makes it harder, and it\'s a stone bitch to land safely while aiming at a certain location on top of that. And doing it on your first mission is just showing off. I\'m envious. And it\'s okay if it was just luck. The first time I tried to land on the night side, it was a breeze. It was only after crashing on just about every attempt since that I realized that landing in the dark is really hard and it was just dumb luck that I did it the first time. Real men don\'t use mechjeb.* *Kidding!

It\'s confusing because as you approach, the purple marker is actually pointing down and not just at a compass heading. You probably flew right over it, since you can\'t see the buildings until you\'re quite close. If you really want to know where it is, my car 'ancillary' is parked there in this screenshot: ***Can\'t spoiler an attachment: Don\'t look if you don\'t want to know!***

Cool! Thanks.

As I noted, it\'s possible to spot the arches from space if you know where to look. They look just like terrain glitches, except they keep sparkling in the same spots. I first caught sight of them at 1million meters, though these are the first screenshots that captured them: (Well, *I* thought it was interesting. Hmph!)

Streetlamp, where did you get the Pan Am thing from 2001? Has anybody made an Ares and Discovery? Moonbus probably wouldn\'t be very practical.

Yeah. I don\'t know how it happened either. ^#$*@! springy landing legs!

I\'m actually a purist and not big on modding. But it always seemed that no matter how carefully I piloted, I always ended up just on the wrong side of the hill for the view I wanted, so I finally broke down and got the HSTW cart (I think it\'s called) so I can go sight-seeing. My vehicles are just that cart with a few dummy pieces stuck on top to make it look like a car. The cart is really well-made, handles beautifully, and is surprisingly hard to tip over. Oh, dang it. That second screenshot was supposed to be this one:

How else do you keep them from running away? Is the photosynthesis thing a players\' joke/supposition, or is that something they\'ve actually talked about?

That\'s a good idea, if you\'re patient enough. Most of the time I\'m buzzing low over the surface and say, 'That looks like a scenic spot. I\'ll land there! BURN!!!' (That last part\'s the engine noise. I don\'t actually say it.) ;D

I haven\'t noticed the arches levitating, but my 2nd KSC buildings are a few feet in the air. Can that vary from one person\'s game to another? (Attached is my cart partially under the VAB causeway.)

Oh yeah, I\'ve landed without damage on Mun about 20 times now (many more not-so-nice landings and catastrophic crashes), and I\'m still panicked and terrified every time. I don\'t know why, since it\'s obviously just a game and I can always load my quicksave if it goes badly. But it\'s part of the fun! I haven\'t made up my mind about the optimal number of landing legs. More does distribute the shock better, but I also found that more legs means more chances of springing back into the (lack of) air and more chances to snag on the surface and spin the ship around. My big problem when I was first landing is that I would touchdown gently, then go sproing-flip-boom. I found that my lander would 'stick the dismount' better when I reduced the number of legs to 3 or 4. That\'s especially true if you aren\'t landing on flat ground. Anachronda, I forgot to mention that. If you\'re still crashing, check to see if you\'re coming down on a lump or a slope. It\'s very hard to tell when you\'re looking down from above, though, and I don\'t have any advice about avoiding that. I mean, I know you can pan out and rotate the camera to look for parallax on ground features, but I\'ll be danged if I can ever manage to do that on top of everything else I\'m trying to do at the same time while landing.

You\'re doing fine and just having the same problems everybody had to learn to get through. Firstly, the altimeter reads from 'sea level,' whatever that means on the Mun, and doesn\'t tell you how high you are off the ground. You have to look past your ship on the main screen and watch the terrain rise up to meet you, because that\'s the only way to tell when you\'re about to touchdown. Secondly, 17m/s is a bit fast. Anything over 10m/s and you risk damage to your ship. I actually try to keep it below 7m/s or so, to be on the safe side. Thirdly, some of us like to use RCS for last-minute extra-braking, but there\'s difference of opinion about that. Other than that, it just takes practice. And seriously, crashing a few times beforehand just makes you feel that much more triumphant the first time you pull it off. Take lots of celebratory screenshots. Good luck! Also, you might want to consider changing the name from 'Death Machine 2,' just for morale purposes.

Road trip!

Figure #1: Right at the Mun\'s north pole... Figure #2: there is a very steep hill that looks a lot like a pyramid but isn\'t artificial... Figure #3: but is sharp enough to get stuck upon. Figure #4: But the scenery up there is worth the drive.

Sensible suggestion, but there IS no place lower than sea level on Minmus, and the plateaus don\'t seem smooth enough to get up to speed. Thanks. I figured it had to be something like that, otherwise the car would have just tangentially floated away from the surface once I got going that fast. Oddly, you don\'t get much additional impression of speed once you get over 100m/s. I think it\'s just too fast for the animation to give the impression that the ground is flowing beneath you. By the way, the cart was still picking up speed when I hit the hill. There doesn\'t seem to any upper limit to it.

What\'s better than the Bonneville Salt Flats? The Minmus Methane Seas! Perfectly flat, goes on for miles. I\'m trying to, well, drive to space. I hit 961.8mph, and then I hit that little slope, which I figured was too abrupt, but was the gentlest one I could find and I needed a launch ramp. That proved unfeasible. But despite reaching 4x orbital speed before that, the car never rose so much as a milimeter off of the surface. It gets (lack of)airborne going over bumps at 30m/s but can\'t lift off at 430m/s? What gives?