Markus Reese

The On Rails means that it is just following it's orbit path without processing physics. There is coding for these on rail vessels to be removed from game when they would be at certain conditions. That is why when something gets low enough in orbit, it disappears. The on rail also is why a piece of debris beyond the physics calculation range can dip to say 30 km without it's orbit changing and why vessel orbits don't change when you transfer orbital bodies if you are controlling a different vessel.

If you wish to do it non probe style and actually wish to send a kerbalnaut, I like blazing's recommendation of sending a care package first. When it comes to the actual rescue, I recommend the "Lawn Dart" style lander. Is my own term pretty much, but I use it for reference to aerodynamic drop pod style ships with no exposed components during re-entry phase. Here is sample pod picture for what you pretty much want getting to orbit. I prefer to fly cowboy so when I separate the mun transfer engines, I will sometimes have a bit of fuel left. 5000km to deploy the decel-orbit engines then finish landing on the quads. De-orbit so that you leave mun counter to munar orbit, a simple atmo break and you are home. I recommend following for getting it up. Attach to the lander engines the long tanks with the 45 engines powering it. Affix enough booster to get those into orbit without using them since you will need them at the moon. For early boosters, my favorite to use are a sub assembly that consists of the long tank with a tri couple on top to make them a pack of engines. I have two subs for each early on. One that attached via the tri coupler, and the other that attaches radially. This is because whatever part was attached when you pulled off for the sub is what will attach when you use said sub assembly.

:0 <3 You sir, are genius!!!!

During my rescuing of Lars from the surface of Eve, has become my Kerbal theme

For something like this, I wonder about the effectiveness of lego to actually have the flimsy fun of rockets. I am thinking back to some older toys when I was a kid where there were magnetics combined with snapping together. I like this idea because it would make for smoother construction. Depending on scale, they could make for quite detailed rockets and more parts if done a bit smaller. The advantage of magnetics allows for better decouplers, docking ports, etc. The disadvantage of course is that it involves metals and would be more expensive. other alternative might be some sort of snap together system.

Myself, I just do it the easy way and burn inwards to my orbital path. Don't waste all the fuel trying to decelerate, just burn up/down/inward/outward for low fuel requirement adjustment. Let atmo do the braking work. Duna is a bit more difficult cause you have to actually get pretty low to aerobrake from orbital speeds.

They are entirely automatic visual only. Put in because many rockets looked silly with the exposed engines.

For Mun and Minmus, I found that the single vessel works more than decent enough. The fuel to intercept and dock back up is about equal to what it would take to perform an atmospheric braking orbit for kerbin. On top of that, if you have side engines, they work well to have a wide based and stable lander. Really the main part between the Appollo missions and KSP is this fuel usage and support equipment. The orbiter had longer term survival, alot more fuel just to make a landing, plus all the electronics necessary.

They look good so I have always used them.

I have seen a fair few with an excess of intakes. Myself, I always say go by what you think is legit. I do mine without the stacked intakes. Also note that there is nacelles with intakes.

Aah yeah. That was a similar thing with my first mun on career mode. My first time was just a Mun flyby. I used 4 batteries on the ship. As long as you shut off the SAS toggle once you are just drifting, it is more than enough to at the minimum do a mun flyby. There is a fair amount of science in just getting to a lower altitude of Mun so is a good goal if you feel like you need to get more tech before actually landing. My solution to that was to toggle on/off the outrigger engines. It gives enough power for a more efficient late brake, then you can shut them off and use one for nice throttle control on landing.

Remember, the higher your orbit, the less fuel your ship needs when leaving the station. Personally, I like 1/2 to 3/4 of way between Mun and Kerbin for mine. This is far enough out that any orbit escape or capture is pretty low fuel consuming but you don't end up in slingshot. I also have made low orbit ones just for fun. Either way, the best concept for capturing the station is I like to get to about half the altitude of the station abouts. When at lower altitude, you will travel faster. Just find what position in your burn will capture. If you are 1/2 or less your station's orbit, you should have an intercept somewhere on your current orbit. If you are on the orbit and find yourself behind/ahead, the easy way to cut inside is find out how much burn towards orbit body you need to meet up with your station. When you do this, you will make your orbit more eliptical. If you make it so you start going inside the orbit of your station, you will catch up on first part, then meet up where you cross orbital paths again. Burn away, and it will catch up to you. Once you meet up, just do opposite of previous to circularize your orbit again. This latter tactic is also a good way to planet rendevous if you are one of those peeps like me who don't like messing around with optimal launch windows.

Yup, pretty possible actually, provide you don't have some sort of extreme structural linkages. When I do my slingshots out of system, I skim the moon sub 6km. Still get nervous as my big rockets go around. I also have to constantly be on the stick to keep my nose pointing horizon. I once ripped all my booster sections off when I tail dragged the top of a crater wall...

Agreed, when landing, my lander is typically as wide, or wider as it is tall. Athetically they look pretty good since the outer wide parts are my lander engines and part of the connectivity for my launch engines. For picking landing spots, with the new terrain, I have started attaching scout probes to my rockets. On zero atmosphere, I make a hopper style that just pulses fuel until I find a nice spot. With atmosphere, mini probe planes. These then serve as excellent landing beacons.

Well, the fuel lines just allow you to use less engine on landing, but are not critical. In fact, in the pics I posted earlier, it lands entirely on the fuel on the outer engine. Without lines, the center will not be used at all is the only difference. On landing, still using the same thrust efficiency and same fuel source so biggest difference is slightly slower on decel, and a bit more on touchdown. I always tell people who do have trouble getting a rocket to work is to work in reverse order, just like how you build. So to get the feel for building the more complex rockets with what you have, get each step one at a time. 1. Return module using one piece (my pic), or deployable science pod if you bring it. The latter simply is using a decoupler and radial parachute on the science module to deploy when you get to low altitude (sub 10km) 2. Return drive. This is pretty tough to get wrong in solar system. One fuel tank to match pod and one of the high efficiency engines will always get you home. In my rocket, the half tank and the single engine is enough to de-orbit mun AND re-enter atmosphere. Trick is to do your decel at high Ap. 3. Lander engines. Just fiddle around. Might take more than one flight, but fortunately if your return drive is working, you can abort a landing if these run out of fuel. 4. Munar engines. This stage is what I like to use to de-orbit and capture munar orbit. Preferably, you can have a little bit of fuel as you begin your landing just to help slow down a bit quicker, but ideally, your lander engines should be able to capture. This section is more important to the high fuel consumption portion of de-orbiting Kerbin. 5. Launch engines are pretty standard. They either work, or they dont. Most important part is to remember that if you do this with multiple engine stages, that any non fired engine is just extra mass you are burning fuel to move. Without fuel lines, it is best to have all boosters running from start or have a long burn high thrust with a lower thrust small secondary booster to get from high atmosphere to orbit. Again, refering back to the one I did, I have the heavy cluster of SRBs to get me up out of the worst of the air resistance, then I engage my tri clusters of fuel where it is more efficient to get high atmosphere. The singles capture orbit and begin my transfer. The other way to do this is how I did it in ye olden days. I had shorter side liquid fuel boosters that ran the high thrust. The inner engines had more fuel, but were more efficient. In this way, I had assist in getting fuel to higher atmosphere, and was able to jettison the outers as they ran out of fuel. Edit: That rocket I took to minmus, I think I use the full size tank (not double size) for my mun lander, but cannot remember for certain...

Back in 18, I did a rescue mission to eve. Managed to successfully rescue Lars after an error put me into too low of an aerobrake orbit. Since it was my favorite Kerbonaut stranded, made a little movie for it using previous versions as kind of a really crappy tech race thing. Was a way to kill some spare time. Be warned, cheesiness is strong with this one... Also, I had upped the engine fuel efficiency some on lander simply because my comp at the time didnt like really big rockets...

I have probes I send down to the surface to better judge my landing area. I can do hover hops until I find a good spot on low G, when I get high G, I use the rover probes. This ensures that the decent landing side from orbit doesn't turn out to be some random 45 degree slope.

Hiya, I have a setup that I like to use. It is fairly simple setup as well for a moon land. Here is complete for my munar landings. The probe was just from my roleplaying. I would land a probe before I would land the lander to scout landing area. All five landing engines are enough to decel and get down onto the moon. When I reach a low altitude, I toggle deactivate the outer engines and run it just off the center one for better throttle control. The purpose of the landing legs on the science canister is that on landing, they are needed to dampen impact and preventing it from being destroyed. It also cannot land on water unless you add some radials. The main focus of the design is using the lander engines to also widen out the landing platform making it alot more stable. No need to worry about the ladders. Remember low gravity so can use your jetpack to get off and on the lander.

I like the solar panels as well. You can always turn with gyro if you have electricity even if not having any rcs. Cannot do anything if you power out. Should be good for no RCS until you start building docking rockets and large enough interstellar rockets.

It is possible, I have had it happen by accident with space junk The main thing is never to time warp after you get everything set up, when you bring it out of timewarp, the numerics can be slightly different resulting in your 100m spacing It is a bit of trial and tweak. Mostly getting the orbital planes exact, then focus on just tweaking elevations each time they go past eachother. if you miss. Myself, I find it tough to get the within 1m on a perfectly circular orbit simply due to the fact that the orbital indicator Ao and Po start to freak out as you perfectly circularize an orbit.

Camera oriented jetpack !!!!!

Shrug, Never bothered to calculate the tweaks. Liquid engines used to be worse for fuel. SRB in space used to be viable due to their low mass to power output. Sure not efficient, but used to be better than hauling high power and heavy engines when you wanted to stop fast. Comparatively, the T800 with a T-30 engine. The weight exceeds offset of its efficiency. Is the price for control. Poodles would work better for that but who knows. In my mind, there is more to it than just dV. I never calculated it ever. I do enough of that at work so I just do staged trials and go by feel/look

User, what you suggest is perfectly plausible. As always, Save the persistent file as backup. If it errors, mess up you can paste it back. Now I have done this a few times. It is easiest in space but even works for minor changes on landed vehicles. 1. Set up your vessel on the launch pad/ground exactly how you want it to be in new location with a different vessel name. Note that docked vessels count as part. Easist thing to do is undock and move them just slightly away. 2. Save and leave game 3. Find the original orbiting vessel in your persistent file. Copy the location/rotation/velocity portion and any crew over to the new vessel. I cannot remember header name top of my head. 3. Rename replacement to original's name and delete the original vessel. 4. Reload and cross your fingers. This is what I personally do when I make something really dumb for an error on a complex mission. Notably accidental blockage of crew hatch, or more often, when I get landed on Eve and realize I forgot ladders....

At the end of the day, you have so much mass to get there. If you have two ships, you just split the work in half, but then need the capsules etc to fly them so each rocket is smaller, but it takes more. There is a trick I use however to slow down. It adds a little bit more weight, but is what I like most. 1. Bring along braking solid rocket boosters 2. Affix braking engines to your booster tanks. example, the four outer tanks there to burn off their fuel. Remember, as your fuel is consumed, less dV needed. The latter works when you plan for obsolescence. Example, you only need the orange engine to escape, so use a different less efficient engine for braking. Ditch some interstellar boosters on way or something possibly as well. The 2m smalls aren't too heavy. In addition, there is something else to do in conjunction. Don't try to decelerate all your speed. Instead, as you just enter the solar system or get close, adjust your flight path for atmospheric braking. For Moho and the other small bodies, not really effective with their low/no atmo, but it can help. Is how I always capture Duna with it's lower gravity. Just skim down nice and low to save alot of fuel. Edit: And returning to Kerbin while really low on fuel, saves lots of burn time the further out you make your tweaks. Catch it right and you can capture orbit without needing a burn at all.

When it crashes, you should get a crash report. Try sending it off to them. Aside from some strange mod conflict, that might be only way to get a remedy.