pebble_garden

I admit it's a little beefy, but my goal was to make a more robust lander that could 1. help new KSP players land with confidence. or 2. give accomplished players a vehicle with extra legs. Also, I wish I had a bit finer granularity in choice of fuel tank sizes. As it is the small ones aren't quite up to the task (with the fuel bug fix) and the big ones are too massive for minimal ships. In my experience, anyway.

Well done, sir. Bravo!

To which tutorial do you refer? My mission profile for the rocket? It was not intended as a tutorial, only a schedule of events to follow when flying this particular rocket. However, I did make a number of very thorough tutorials which may satisfy your request, found here.

Try here. I think that's what you're referring to?

Assuming your target is in a circular orbit, establish your vessel on the same orbit. Then, if you are behind the target, lower your orbit a km or two and wait until you catch up, making sure to return to the target orbit as you get close. If you're ahead of the target, follow the same steps but with a slightly taller orbit. Be patient. The closer you can get with pure orbital maneuvering (down to 400m or so) the easier your final RCS closure is going to be. But if you can get within 1km, that should be fine.

I agree, the three-seat capsules require such huge launch vehicles and I feel the new, larger rocket parts aren't as well-tuned as the smaller ones. Especially with the fuel-consumption bug hotfix, which is pretty harsh on delta-v.

Thanks, I'm proud of my strut work in this design, and the arrangement of the stages.

This rocket has plenty of delta-v, with sufficient fuel in the lander for more demanding Munar operations, or that extra margin of descent safety for new pilots. In all my flights it has proven very stable, and handles well. It has been tested in both vanilla 0.16 and with the unofficial fuel-consumpution bug hotfix. Flight profile: 1. On the pad: throttle to one stop short of full. Engage ASAS. Launch. 2. Jettison SRBs on burnout and continue ascent with stage 1. 3. 10km alt: begin gentle pitch-over to 45 degree climb on 90 degree heading, ending around 14-15 km altitude. 4. Throttle to idle when apoapsis reaches 85km. 5. Use coast period to rotate ship to 5 degree below horizon, anticipating level attitude upon reaching apoapsis. Use one notch of throttle briefly for steering authority if needed. Otherwise just take it slow. 6. At T-45 seconds to apoapsis, use remaining stage 1 fuel in orbital burn. Throttle to idle. Jettison stage 1. 7. Cancel any spin incurred during jettison. Engage stage-lock. Continue stage 2 burn when stabilized. 8. Engine to idle when orbit is circularized. 9. Burn prograde when Trans-Munar Injection point reached. Reduce throttle as apoapsis nears Munar orbit. 10. Engine to idle when trajectory shows entry into Munar sphere of influence, perimun altitude of your choice. 11. Coast to Munar encounter. 12. Retroburn to enter Munar orbit, using the last of stage 2's fuel. Disengage stage-lock and jettison when empty. Re-engage stage-lock and continue Munar Orbital Insertion burn on lander fuel. 13. Lower gear and land as desired. Keep touchdown velocity below 5 m/sec. 14. Take off using remainder of descent engine fuel. With stage-lock disengaged, jettison descent fuel pods when depleted. Re-engage stage-lock and continue Munar ejection burn. 15. Fly backwards along the Mun's orbit until the trajectory shows escape to Kerbin's sphere of influence. Coast until that point. 16. Once in Kerbin's SOI, continue retroburn until periapsis is about 17-20km above Kerbin's surface. 17. Coast to reentry point. Release stage-lock and jettison remaining stage. 18. Passive aerobrake and reentry. Release chute about 3km above surface.

Mission to the Terminator Here are two images from a mission that landed at a point of Munar sunset.

Not to resurrect a zombie thread, but I did manage to beat my old rocket javelin record and reach a 202.8 km ground distance. Here's my video record: Recon Drone

I've created a 6-part video tutorial called Flight of the Munitar which shows how to build a rocket and fly it to the Mun. Perhaps you'll find it helpful! (Is it okay for me to self-post a referral like that? If not, I'll take it down.)

I list all the songs and artists at the end of my videos, and it's all available for free. Some tracks are from various artists on ccMixter.org (which is searchable), the rest is from Kevin MacLeod's Incompetech.com

(laughs) He said "make a rendezvous much faster." It just takes a while to do this manually. You want a nice, slow final approach, but to do that you need very fine control over the exact orbital altitude. Being 500m lower, for half an orbit, yields a nice controllable final approach, but it's slowwwww. Sorry.

I've added three new installments to the Flight of the Munitar tutorials: Trans-Munar flight, and two versions of a Munar descent and landing. Tomorrow or the next day I'll have the conclusion done, the flight back home.

I've added the first two parts of my "Flight of the Munitar" tutorial to the original post in this thread. They're designed to help KSP newcomers build and fly a mission to the Mun. I hope they are helpful!

When to make the gravity turn depends a lot on your launch vehicle. I like to wait until it's climbing at 300m/s before I think of making the turn. But that generally happens between 10-20km. You don't want to turn too early or you spend too much time slicing diagonally through atmosphere. Yet you don't want to wait too long either, as it can waste fuel. I've found that if you make the gravity turn to 45 degrees pitch and your velocity vector drops below that, you've turned too early. On the other hand if you adopt the 45 degree angle and the velocity vector doesn't follow, you've turned too late. Ideally they should move in synch. Once you're above 45-50km you can feel free to rotate to any pitch angle you like; the atmosphere is too thin to cause significant drag issues. So at that point I start pitching over to horizontal (or even a bit below that!) to start thrusting sideways and putting energy into my orbital velocity. One trick I've learned is to mouseover your apoapsis and watch whether it's rising or falling as you start to burn sideways. If it's rising above your target orbit height you can burn a few degrees groundward to stop that. How many degrees you burn down depends on how far around your orbit you are from apoapsis. I don't recommend cheating down across that angle by burning more than 5-10 degrees before the phase angle of your apoapsis.

That's really clever. Nice workaround!

ctrl-alt-shift-d, if I'm not mistaken.

Too funny! I'm still laughing quietly at my desk, trying not to attract attention. "Anger the Kraken" strikes me as the KSP analogue of "Taste the Rainbow", but explodier!

It's pretty easy to line your orbit up to cross over your intended target in the map view. I like to make it overshoot a little and then cancel my horizontal velocity as I cross over the landing spot. Then it's a matter of making a straight drop down, with a little thrust vectoring to land where I want. The thrust vectoring (or RCS use, if you are so inclined) isn't terribly hard, but it can take a little practice and requires a firm understanding of the attitude indicator and flightpath markers. I plan to make a tutorial on this very subject as soon as my day job isn't as crazy (a week or two from now).

Congratulations, maro. Orbital rendezvous is one of the most satisfying accomplishments in KSP.

Wow, this looks like fun. I'll have a go at it when I get home. Thanks for posting the challenge! PS the X-15 is one of my favorite aircraft of all time.

You are to send a recon drone to look for possible survivors from an aborted space launch. Current intel suggests the crew might have been able to reach the pair of islands approximately 165 km NE of the Space Center. Time is of the essence, and an aircraft is too slow. We need eyes on those islands ASAP, and the drone can get there in five minutes. Use the recon drone provided or design your own. Send your unmanned/uncontrolled vehicle to glide over the island at a distance of not more than about 5km lateral distance, and take clear pictures. Target trajectory example: Recon photo example: Instructions 1. Drop the Recon Drone .craft file in your Ships\SPH\ folder. (Or design your own, following the guidelines set out in the Rocket Javelin Challenge: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/17857-The-Rocket-Javelin-Challenge!) The craft must be unpiloted in any way, and made of stock parts only. 2. Open it in the spaceplane hangar and adjust the launcher heading and up-angle to get the drone to the island. You can do this by clicking on the crew pod/ launcher and using the Shift-W/S keys for pitch and Shift-A/D for heading adjustments. Save the modified launcher with a new name and fire it off. 3. Wait for the green ready light to appear in the lower left part of the screen, then hit the space bar once to fire the engine, and a second time to decouple it from the launcher. Then quickly press the right bracket key, "]" to switch the camera to the unmanned drone. 4. At this point you're just along for the ride. The drone will fly to wherever you aimed it, and ultimately crash. 5. When you get within about 5km of the islands, take a screenshot with F1, and post it. 6. If you didn't get close enough to the islands, adjust your launcher angles and try again. 7. Be aware there's a little randomness in the direction the drone ends up gliding out. You may have to try more than once to get just the right final heading, even if your ballistic trajectory is perfect. Scoring Bronze - You got within sight of the islands, but not close enough for a clear picture. Silver - You were able to get clear pictures of the islands. Gold - You glided directly over the islands, and have the picture to prove it. Platinum - Your drone lands/impacts on one of the two islands. Final Notes Of course there's nothing on the island to see, but getting there is tricky. Remember the planet is rotating eastward, so the islands will have moved by the time you reach the end of your trajectory. Lead your target! This challenge grew out of my obsession with the Rocket Javelin challenge. I don't want to say how much time I've spent on it...but it's a lot. Over time I decided it might be fun to try to hit the two islands NE of the space center. It proved surprisingly tricky because the glider doesn't always end up gliding in the direction I want. And maybe I was also inspired by my recent nostalgia regarding Lawn Darts and other dangerous toys I had as a child. I'm very proud of my Recon Drone craft. There's not a single extraneous piece on it, it's all stock parts, and it flies well in both the powered- and terminal-glide phases. Well...it does have one quirk in the ascent phase. As you'll find out! See if you can figure out how to take advantage of it.

Here's my entry, the Javelin 05: I managed to reach a ground distance of 182.457km, with a launch angle of 35 degrees, and an apoapsis of 62.486km. If I depressed that angle I might gain some distance, by continuing along a 90 degree heading rather than arcing over to 270, and skipping off the atmosphere as others have done. I got lucky in that my ship turned out to be self-righting (the bracket, I think) and self-leveling (gotta love canards). Launch: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27964403@N08/7849001024/in/photostream/lightbox/ Apoapsis: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27964403@N08/7849011400/in/photostream/lightbox/ Splashdown: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27964403@N08/7849005754/in/photostream/lightbox/

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/12329-0-16-Multiversal-Mechatronics-Fixed-Camera-1-1%5DMultiversal