Markus Reese

The level of win is strong with this one!

Hiya, first off, at the end of this, I will have an example of my lander that will give precise control over your landing. First, you say that you keep increasing orbit. I will have to make some assumptions of things until we get more info of design, screenshots of lander would be a big help. One thing that can happen is that the direction of the pod faces isn't the direction you apply thrust. This means that even if you are facing retrograde, your thrust isn't. Other assumption would be power related. You either have too little, or too much power. Both are equally plausible. The too much power is usually caused by having the craft built for being able to decelerate. Once decelerated though, the engines are too finicky to be able to control your speed on landing. Ideal control is that 50% will hold your speed as you approach ground. This is nowhere near enough to decelerate. Best option in the latter is to make use of engine toggles. The best lander setup when inexperienced is to have your core pod with a single engine and tank. Radially around this, you place lander engines. This will get you back to kerbin. Even if you run out of fuel on the lander engines, you go oops, jettison the lander engines, and make your return trip not having landing. This has a couple benefits. One, is that you have plenty of thrust to make your deceleration in a timely manner. Second is that it widens out the craft for your landing legs, making it much more stable when touching down. The core design is to make use of activation keys to toggle on and off the inner return engine, and the outer lander engines. You get decelerated, then you toggle off the lander engines, and just use the return engine to control speed. This offers much more throttle control. Ideally, you have fuel lines to run your return engine off your lander tanks. If you don't have fuel lines yet and are still early in the science tree, To make manufacturing simple, put small radial engines onto the lander tanks. Toggle off the lander engines, and toggle on the radial engines. If your power is not enough, just jettison the lander tanks, return to kerbin. Here is my design to maybe inspire. It is a bit more advanced version for moons, but gives an idea of layout. I use all five engines to decelerate, then once down to where I am close to landing, I toggle off all outside engines, and just use the center one. This was also in 0.22 before we could transfer science experiments to capsule, so now, I would have it separate at the capsule and those secondary landing legs are not needed.

I don't think probes are worthless. For myself, I sent out probes to multiple planets. Most had a return because it was much easier early on to get a probe back and down with some science gear. This is just a start though. Almost every single ship I send has required probes. Often, it is for craft assembly. For me, it is more roleplay where launching massive interplanetaries in one launch are A: tough to design mechanically efficient sometimes, and B: So monsterously huge, they are no fun to fly. So I have main craft, then up comes the other parts on a manned vehicle, deployed from manned vehicle close by, and docked with probe hear. Outside of that, every craft I send down that is manned, I first send down a tiny, unmanned probe that can scout an area. This can be a hover style, rover or a small UAV. On high gravity worlds, this is very important. By the time you realize that what you thought was flat from space is actually a slope, it could be too late to really correct your landing on your manned craft. When the game has more upgrades to the currency system, these scout probes could be incredibly vital since a crash landing of an expensive manned lander with return would be alot more than a disposable probe.

Definitely Lars Kerman. He has been my main without a single death failure since 0.17. First kerbal to every planet I visit without fail. Does make things a bit difficult since I run bone stock without any form of calculators, etc so I must plan meticulously just in case of accidental failure.

It has sorta been said before with hyper editing, etc, but I will rephrase in my own terms how I would do it. First, I would fix the error in the errored station bit. Second, I would undock the modules and have them hover just a slight bit off the module. Next can be done in two ways. One, you can deploy on launch pad, just the module. Give it a unique name, same with your bit in space. Find the one in space and copy it's co-ordinates etc onto the new part, delete the old (make sure no crew in it). It the new one should be in place of old one, and re-dock. Second way would be if you are not comfortable editing parts. De-orbit old one, and bring up the new one and dock stuff to it.

Despite what these guys say, there is a way to do it, but it requires nerves of steel, and also probably losing a bit of speed, Drop down to a low alitude, say 800m, kill your speed and deploy. Do a low speed circle to ensure it is down, then fly away. Else you have to do it from orbit. I am assuming what you have is a plane that goes out to/over biomes to collect a bunch of science, then just drop it there?

Yup, I agree with technical kerbal. I would get close, align on a docking trajectory, eva Jeb, then switch back to your rover. Set target again and let it just drift in. If the magnets wobbly it around for a minute, I would just let it.

I know... I went to change number of poll questions, but it posted and I couldn't edit it...

I am a big time roleplayer for KSP to keep things interesting for me. With career mode, this has prolonged the time it has taken for me to complete the tree with my limited play time. Recently, I have started using the LV-N for interplanetary. Because I assemble the rockets in space, my LV-Ns are delivered by manned crafts and docked by probe control. The idea with this is almost a form of asparagus. When I get to my destination, I transfer the fuel from one set of tanks into another, then remove the empty. Well, that was the plan. Anyways, I get to Gilly for this mission and sure enough, didn't quite use up half of the fuel getting there with a much lighter payload on the return without lander craft and fewer drive engines. So I start thinking to myself, I cannot just dump nuclear engines through Eve's atmosphere, that would be wrong. Suddenly I get the idea! I should make nuclear engine storage areas until I can get the tech up better to recover them properly. In this case, I parked them at my gilly landing location! When I get back to Kerbin system, I will lock them together in orbit around Minmus. How do you dispose of your LV-Ns? Edit: Hrm, I changed it to be 5 poll questions, but it posted instead. I guess polls cannot be edited since I wanted to add "Crash and Burn" :-( Can moderators edit polls to add it or is it messed permanently?

Yup, career definitely favours a more slow, and mission plan style of play. I found it is best to do more detailed mission plans just from a roleplay standpoint. Oh, and with Minmus having biomes, if you want alot of science, grab yourself a multi lab jr science vessel and hop to a few different biomes. Tons of science and will be quick into interplanetary. Should get at least a few nodes a mission if you plan it out. Also, you can transfer results to your capsule by right clicking any science module or lander when on EVA

Yup to the above. One main thing with the LV-N is to never have the decouple and activation in the same stage. Also, I always have them throttled off before activating for a more stable de-coupling.

My favorite name is Lars Kerman. I have been transfering him from persistence all the way from where he first appeared in 0.17 with the BadS = True. I modded the persistence to make him my primary over Jeb. Now if only I could give him a unique suit. Having that unique name or kerbal that you like really changed how you play. I am always extremely cautious to ensure there is an abort system triple tested or a way back to kerbal. Since that day, never lost a kerbal outside of goofing off in sandbox.

Not in game right now to grab a screenshot, but I can get you mostly there and a bit of help finding it. Hopefully somebody can give a wee bit more detail. 1. Firstly, it is near the equatorial belt. This doesn't exactly narrow it down, but next point will 2. It is on the south side of one of the large craters. 3. If you wish to find it, and if waiting for somebody to post up a pic, I recommend sending a small probe on a low orbit around the mun at equator. You should see it as a flickering object if your graphics are not turned to minimum Really, this is how I found it by accident. I landed in a crater, but up a slope a bit. I could see something beyond the terrain scatter (boulders) that was quite far away. Many KM of rover travel later (I shoulda just flown there.... way to much quicksave) I found the memorial. I really hope my memory is correct

Must be something local. Ever since docking has come out, I have been building multi-component interplanetary space ships and never had a docking problem :s ???

For me, I have a few that sort of creep me out. First is Gilly: I just get nervous when there because of how one oops can be unrecoverable. Sure some you can send a rescue party, but on gilly, you just de-orbit and risk even leaving Eve SOI. I hate being there (alas, that is where my current mission is going to) Second is Eve: I thought it was a neat place until I did my Lars Kerman rescue video. Getting down there, doing the vid at night crashed on a shore, really made it creepy. Plus the hassle of the rescue. My roleplay then kicked into overdrive as well with somebody stranded on a planet for months and only a small spaceplane, originally designed for not Eve, then months of return, well, that is just sad Lastly, Laythe. My first story video, (no longer on youtube because of a fanagle with copyright a year after posted) I finished a landing there. Yeah, it is grey, but has nice water and that clear blue sky. Suddenly you are roaming around, and see a Joolrise and feel very very far from home and begin to question as to whether the return craft is going to actually work or not.

Unless you have already set up for it, there is no way that I know of once in space. The way I would do it is to burn up most of it during takeoff phase if I knew I wasn't going to use the jets much anymore. I would burn it down to what I would need to land, then launch or adjust what you take with you on launch so they burn out equally. However, I think the most efficient way would be a drop tank. Just transfer into a tank that is empty or emptied on launch then jettison else you are editing the persistence file.

Heya, actually I remembered I have a video where I did everything using stock parts and "Aerodynamic" designs. The actual video is a story I did, but at this time point, you can see how I assemble my vehicle in space to get it to Eve and the entire thing looks correct for every stage of landing. Even the complex lander for when I get back to kerbin is pretty decent. Not embedded video simply because that doesn't use timesets. http://youtu.be/OLDXaEyR_LM?t=8m3s

What I do, and what other people do is use the structural beams to assist in compact probes. It is quite easy to get a probe into the 1m space and looking differently. I also used to use KW rocketry fairing packages to really smooth it out. Back in the day, I would make all landers etc specifically to fit into the 2m fairing packages. The KW pack has a ton of stuff, so is best to save somewhere else then edit it just for the parts you want. Anywhoo, well planned, once in space, jettison panels (I do it before my circularizing burn just so it burns up) and then commence unfolding. Note that doing it this way for stations and such can mean more joints which can equal wobbly so some clever thinking can be required to make sure you get stong joints or low mass. For heavier parts, I actually put probe controls and panel onto my booster. When I dock a large section up, I can jettison and control the probe part into a de-orbit. This step not so necessary now that we can select crew compliment for a mission. I don't have any recent screenshots, but here are some old ones that I did for a mun base challenge a long while ago to give some design ideas. All of what you see fit streamlined with fairings at the 2m size. For the most part, or I made it a rocket that was steamlined with side attached. They still looked good. Lastly, here is a rocket with an underslung probe. Easily hidden if I used 1m fairings. I use it specifically for pinpointing mun landing spots before I send down the bigger lander. Having the target really makes things more fun!

Yup, I am a bigtime roleplayer, and with KSP, I tend to be much more complex on my science missions then I need to be. As result, am pretty slow to unlock science. However, I do also like to challenge or experiment in sandbox from time to time just to experiment with mechanics idea as apposed to full on missions. Once things such as currency come into play, it will almost be a mandatory thing to fiddle in sandbox and tutorials to learn the mechanics.

With mun, if you can get orbit, and have radial decouplers, you pretty much can get to the mun. My landers are always a five engine lander. I use five to decel to moon, deactivate outer four, then use just a single engine for speed control. Liftoff and return, I drain my outside engines, then can return on just the single without problem. The following pictures have stuff from when I roleplay. This first one is a full setup with the probe underneath used to pinpoint a landing spot first. It can be made much simpler than that as I had done my mun landing before solar panels and the long tanks. It is a bit of overkill for the mun, but the main point to note is the core of the lander design engines. If you can build that lander, you are on the mun.

... Yoink!!!

Welcome to the forum! It has to do with your post count for now. Easiest way to share for now is to put them up on imgur or another image hosting, then share the link ^.^

If you wish him back immediately, you can go back to the persistence file and edit it. Delete the mia record, and, if memory serves me right, Change STATE = 3 to STATE = 0 Copy first... But I did this before when one of my favs was missing in .22

Meh, time is irrelevant. Debug them infinite fuel, and have mega strength 10000000 thrust engines!

Aah, I asked about the above earlier in regards to launching, and it is distance relative to source of propulsion. Without creative or anything attached, it ends up being just a beam cannon (hrm.......) the probe core and parachute on mine is entirely because without, the beam, even tossed at ground level, doesn't survive the impact. I honestly didn't think it would throw so far originally. At best, I got was 2km. Also, once you hit above 12000, the rotation of kerbin begins to take effect, and as such, a loss of reference point. Of course I am always up for modifying or doing a ground level throw ^.^