Markus Reese

Did it myself as well. There is one twist to our iva and real life. The real moon landings had teams of ground control feeding tracking information, calculations, etc. Just a moon landing isnt too bad with the ADI and ground radar. Also did it right from launch :3 I love IVA landings now.

I love the IVA! The view from my long range single capsule. I couldn't bear to make Bill do a solo flight in the mk1 pod and no windows....

To me it looks like a nightmare from eve (online)

Hey there. I never really have had a flight stick for pc. Only consoles, go figure. But with ksp, I decided I had to get a flight stick for IVA, and well worth it for flying space planes. I got myself the Attack 3 cause of it's low cost. Too bad it lacks a z-axis rotation. Enough buttons for doing commands such as brakes, your yaw and ASAS commands. Setting new efficiency records on my flights too. What joystick do you use and how is yours configured? On mine, the buttons beside the joystick I use for gears, braking and rcs toggle. On the joystick buttons, I use a left and right button for my yaw, and the ASAS toggle and trigger in the middle. Having a trigger for stage separation just makes launches more fun as well. Edit: swapped my rcs toggle and stage separator buttons after accidental stage triggerings. Is too sensitive

Yup, like above said. Once you get that first orbit, you don't really need a whole lot of engine to get going. A couple well fueled nuclear engines will get you most anywhere. Get the minimal stage you need for space, though if you are like me, you like big rockets anyways. Typically a tumble on launch is due to wobble. You need to strut along the length of your ship, especially across couplers. Getting rid of the wobble and making sure your ship is symetrical plus using the ASAS should eliminate wobble and therefore tumbling.

The key to changing your orbit plane is burning perpendicular to your plane on the direction you wish your orbit to move. Remember your orbit pivots by your current location and will always have an axis passing through the orbit body. (Kerbol when trying to capture planet, your planet when trying to capture moon, etc). To sum up, first you want to have your orbital axis relative to you aligned with the orbit path you are trying to capture. Imagine an infinitely long line going from your ship to the sun extending forever out in both directions. When this line also crosses the orbit path you are trying to match, that is when you want to begin your burn. To do your burn, You need to align yourself perpendicular heading to your travel direction but still aligned to the horizon. Atm, computer trouble so all I unfortunately am getting is red x for images so cannot reference yours specific (on my end, not yours I don't think) So if you have a 90 degree heading and need to have the direction you are orbiting to be on a downward plane, you burn south or 180 degrees. 90 degrees perpendicular. The orbit will pivot along the previous imaginary line, keep your perpendicular burn until plane is aligned. For extreme angles, you will need to adjust your heading as you go, but always keep aligned to horizon. Hope this helps.

o/ Nothing fancy for me yet. I am working with the IVA stuff. I probably should have vidcorded it, but ahh well. Successful traditional Mun landing using only IVA controls. Same for orbital launch etc. I did use map to make sure I had orbit, but outside of map usage, it was all IVA. Next stop Minmus with a three man, then to the planet hopping! Will add this as well. In the mk1 pod and I assume the same for the mk 3, when you cannot see the horizon, ground or anything and all you can see is the instruments the ADI really makes you freak out. Never notice watching it external, but it goes into a freakout mode momentarily on touchdown. I thought for sure I blew it. Yay radar altimeter! I was so excited to hop down to see how close to the mark (a small crater) I was that I forgot to deploy the ladders and sort of fell to the surface ^.^

I predict alot of save/reload happening for this one. I think we need bonus points for only using srb or something XD

If you can get to mun and not minmus, my guess is the problem is the angled orbit path of minmus. What you want to do is when you get kerbin orbit, use the map to line yourself up so that you are seeing minmus orbit path as a line only. When your rocket's orbit path intercepts visually the minmus orbit path, burn north or south to horizon to cause your own orbit path to pitch until it is the same glide slope. this is a basic way of stating a more advanced technique. Essentially if you burn perpendicular to your orbital path, in the x,y trajectories (aimed at horizon) your orbit path will pivot axially on your ship in that direction. If you burn Z axis (towards/away surface) it will change apoapsis/periapsis. If you are losing altitude and burn away from planet directly, your min will increase, max on orbit will decrease. Off topic there though. Anyways, the most difficult part of minmus is getting the orbital planes aligned. fter that, you simply need to burn prograde to increase your orbit out to minmus orbit path. Because you are going faster than minmus, make sure minmus is ahead of you. If you burn too soon, you will arrive at orbit before minmus. In which case, you want to burn a bit more to extend your orbit a little bit out beyond the minmus orbit. This will allow it to catch up to you. Once your orbit is a bit beyond minmus, you can circularize your orbit a bit more to increase the duration you are beyond minmus until you capture orbit. If you got there too late, simply do the reverse. Keep your orbit within that of minmus and circularize it so you gradually catch up or capture.

For big rockets, I have little tidbits I like to pass along. They should help reduce the girth and in doing so, help with the rest. First, nibb31's rocket might get there, but uses mod parts and I suspect a bit of the fuel bug. Where is the fun in exploiting bugs? Second and foremost, reduce weight whenever you can. Remember that in lower g environments, you don't need as much thrust plus engines work more efficiently. From experience I can tell you that using for of the 2m half tanks with the efficency engines is overkill. I usually use the small booster ones radially mounted around the large core tank much like you already have in your single man lander. Possibly your mid engine, switch to the half tank instead of full tank. That would reduce alot of weight and help the launch considerably. Third looks like you are already making use of. Fuel crossfeed. Try to avoid nonpowering engines whenever possible on launches. The outer ring of engines and their tanks should also feed towards your core orbital engines. Remember your engines are burning so much fuel per second so the faster you get to orbit, the more efficient your rocket will be. So while those outer ones timewise will run out of fuel sooner, they should, depending on weight balance, run out of fuel at a higher altitude which is really what is important. The outer tertiary ring and the secondary ring of engines if all firing together should do alot for your launch, but again, already looks like you are doing that. Lastly is SRBs. Use those SRB engines on the ground to get that initial hit of velocity and into thinner atmosphere. I think if you removed that tertiary ring of tank and engines, replaced those with SRB it would be a considerable gain. Depending on when you are running out of fuel however, it might just need that initial speed boost at launch only. With the large tanks, there really is no way around the struts, atm, the connections for the 2m parts are weak, so liberal struts are required. Also on the pad, try to use the launch stabilizers. Put them in your engines ignition stage so they launch the same time as the rocket stabilizers release.

In progress as we speak, work load keeping me busy so kerbaldarn it. Is looking wild though, came up with a new and stylish booster design I like superspaceships, I havent built one since a Tim Barrett challenge. HEY TIM! If you see this challenge, give us other guys a chance first before posting you extreme machines ^.^

270 gets you there faster though But quite true on the fuel with the recent changes. The 90 degree is also a good practice to get into for performing slingshot maneuvers. A good and close 90 degree slingshot around the moon can get you a seriously nice launch out of kerbin orbit. At 270 degree, you pass by too fast to make any significant use of it.

One of the interesting parts about rendevous is that altitude plays a big part. If you just try to fly and use speed to catch up, you will extend your orbit altitude an fly past it. Try to slow down and you will come below. My preference for a capture is first off, patience. Second, if you are behind, you actually can catch up by dropping altitude and slowing down slightly your rendevous will start to pass overhead and then give yourself some altitude gain. When you get on the same plane and getting close, then can slow yourself down, or if ahead, speed yourself up to match the orbital velocity and angle.

Hi there, somebody else posted the same problem, copy and paste reply ^.^ For that, it sounds like a weight imbalance combined with lack of controlable thrust. The ASAS just auto controls the rocket to keep it pointed where you want. SAS act as spin counters. The cause of the flippy rocket isn't related to this. At 13-18km, you start losing the ability for aerodynamic control. If you have a weight imbalance or are using all non gymbaled thrust, it can cause a tip to start to form with no way to control it. Try posting up a pic of the rocket and maybe we can see for an asymetric fuel tanks or what engines if you cannot see any of these. Try having some gymbal engines engage at this point so you can use thrust to help guide the rocket.

For that, it sounds like a weight imbalance combined with lack of controlable thrust. The ASAS just auto controls the rocket to keep it pointed where you want. SAS act as spin counters. The cause of the flippy rocket isn't related to this. At 13-18km, you start losing the ability for aerodynamic control. If you have a weight imbalance or are using all non gymbaled thrust, it can cause a tip to start to form with no way to control it. Try posting up a pic of the rocket and maybe we can see for an asymetric fuel tanks or what engines if you cannot see any of these. Try having some gymbal engines engage at this point so you can use thrust to help guide the rocket.

Minmus next? Not hard to tell who their designated pilot is. I guess somebody forgot that low-g environment might have some unforseen side effects. Hope it doesn't affect the tips.

My final challenge I did and yet to find something I want to do that can top it was originally a challenge issued on the forums here. What I did set up a space plane, land on both Mun and Minmus. Each time I captured orbit and grabbed a specific landing site. Following this, I returned to kerbin on a polar orbit and snapped some nice pictures of the poles. Finished off with bombing and capturing KSC 2. Was quite the adventure and loads of fun in getting a unique and stylish ship that can do all of that. I recommend trying.

Welcome! Hope you enjoy the community. Great place for new inspirations, challenges and ideas! Many new things are in the works so check out the dev blogs. Be sure to post up your works!

I found the most common cause for a flipover in space planes is either a fuel burn imbalance. This often due to extravagant fuel tank setups, or thrust imbalance. If you engines off the z axis centre of gravity and not enough arial control surface, the trust alone will cause your vehicle to begin to rotate.

Been there!

Definitely Bop! Just for the name, and it makes me think Titan AE and planet Bob. You cannot call a planet Bob, so might as well turn that b upside down.

Last picture! Roflcopter! I highly recommend cutting that pic of the kerbal down so you can put it as your avatar picture! That is an awesome pose!

Grats of the mission! Bob says to Bill, "Why are you screaming now? We have perfect orbit?" Bill, "You would not believe the dream I just had!" @robly18 Minmus is actually the easier one to land on. It takes a little bit more fuel to get out there, but not a whole lot. The greater challenge is knowing how to maneuver your rocket to get a proper capture since Minmus is on the non parallel orbital trajectory. Plus the distance out makes it take a bit more planning to ensure an efficient interception. Moon gravity means you also need to keep a constant control burn to prevent an overspeed landing. Minmus can land with just the pulse thrusts.

I really cannot wait for a docking mechanic for this very purpose. For one on my KSP mods version, I set up an entire series of rockets and parts designed to be coupled together for a large station. Do it ISS style where everything had to fit within the 3m hull plates. Personally, I think this also would make for alot more fun on interplanetary missions. Build your main rocket in orbit by sending up a series of booster engines.

It is impossible to land on kerbin with the RCS thrusters. Might I propose a different change? How about RCS return from Minmus (is this possible? I need to try?) and have the kerbal picked up by a rescue craft in orbit around Kerbin. This is how I will do it. The rules don't say how to land, only that must EVA pack home.