wildkittyv1

Yeah, basically at this point I have a lot of parts and mods installed and would like to rename some of the parts in order to put them in better order to keep things more organized and easier to find. I\'m just wondering if this will break the craft I have built but not launched, and if it will also break the ones I have flying. Does the game call for the name of the part in its config when looking for it, or is it some other type of unlisted ID? I figure this is going to break stuff since I don\'t really see anything else in the part configs that the game would use as a reference except for their names. If this is the case, is there any way to work around it? Thanks in advance.

I\'ve never really messed with the saves in this game, auto or manual. When I make a quick save does it make a copy of the persistence in the same folder with some sort of time stamp? Can I access this save at any time, or does the load feature only access the last save made, whether that save was made manually or automatically? I doubt I have a save of that time to access, but it\'s no biggie since landing that hunk o\' parts is actually a bit of a challenge, I would just like to avoid this happening in the future. In regards to prevention, is there a way to 'safeguard' myself in a general way? If I went into the file and edited the heights to be 2 or 3 what the game saves them as, would they 'respawn' each time at that 2 or 3 above height (assuming its measured in meters and not by a coordinate measured differently) each time I got close enough to have the game load their physics/models? If this worked, would the game overwrite the edited height each time and, thus, risk this happening whenever I try to land something else nearby? I assume craft with proper legs would be able to survive a 3 meter drop from a standstill on the Mun. Thanks for the suggestions, I\'ll look into what I can do. It\'s just a bit bothersome because I was really happy that I managed to get that close during a pinpoint landing on my first shot, and then it destroyed my most difficult payload to deliver. I don\'t mind bringing it up there once more, but I don\'t want to have to redo it too much since the decent from 50km takes me about a half hour because of its size and having to babysit it.

Hey guys, Firstly, I\'ll just toss up a picture of the first 'craft' I got to the Mun to begin establishing a base there. Anyway, that thing\'s been stable up on the Mun for a few in game days (it exploded once earlier while switching to it from another craft -what gives?) and I built another ship to land a smaller capsule next to it. I got the new payload to the Mun and landed down the first time about 1 km away, but I brought enough fuel to do a second takeoff and maneuver myself closer - it\'s right on the ridge of the large crater on the Mun\'s equator to give you a rough idea, but the second vehicle landed on the inside of the ridge so I couldn\'t see the other base. Anyway, I\'m kind of hovering the thing over towards it, and I end up over-estimating how much thrust I needed to get there, so I miss it the second time. I land and come back for my last try as I\'m low on fuel and I keep getting slightly closer, but not as close as I wanted - the second time I was about 600m away. So I come back in for the final try and everything is looking pretty solid. I get to about 600m away (coming in mostly vertical), at about 20 m/s, and the game locks up. I figure the landing craft is going to end up hitting the surface and explode on me - no biggie, I wanted to try again and get it right the first time, anyway. When the game stops lagging, there is an explosion, but it\'s from the base already landed/established, and then the second craft comes in explodes since I didn\'t have time to slow down. I was probably about 150m away on the horizontal when the explosion occurred. Anyone know what gives? When the base exploded the first time, I figured it was because I switched from an accelerating craft (or one in orbit at a constant velocity) to that one, and the physics engine was carrying over some of the momentum or something. No biggie, I got the 10 tons of dead weight back up there and landed in roughly the same spot. I don\'t get what happened this time though, does the engine get wonky when vehicles get too close to each other on non-Kerbin surfaces? How close is too close? If this is the case, how does that 'Community Game' work where there\'s upwards of 5 craft in a small area? Any help is much appreciated. Thanks

Yeah, I know, but still... it\'s funny to think about. Maybe something strange happened to the sun, or the universe in general, which impacted gravity and/or the density of matter around 'here' and the earth shrank, causing our people to grow smaller, while elongating their heads, and embellishing them with a greenish skin tone. It doesn\'t make any sense, but that\'s what I\'m going with since it\'s unlikely we\'ll ever have any kind of official lore for where Kerbin is located or which universe it may or may not reside in.

607. When one of your wings gets clipped off during takeoff of an already unwieldy aircraft, but all three pilots have a giant grin on their face, oblivious of their impending doom. (Note: SAS actually kept the Minnow flying, but it was basically a large firework when I turned it off. Later versions of the Minnow corrected lift-off issues and it now flies, albeit difficultly.)

Well, I\'m not saying it\'s impossible to do under all circumstances, but just that sometimes crap happens and stages aren\'t decoupled at the most opportune of times. Not everyone who plays KSP (or other rocket sims) is an engineer or even necessarily someone who wants to do math to figure out exactly how much fuel they need to bring what they have where they want it. I landed what was essentially 10 tons of dead weight on the Mun without leaving any debris, but it involved launching at the correct time in order to ensure the right trajectory so I didn\'t leave stages in orbit; the stage before my descent ended up crashing into the Mun and I still had to dump my second stage after ascent early so I didn\'t leave it in orbit. People might not have the mods with the necessary fuel tanks to carry what they need, and then they\'re dumping half tanks of fuel, which is just carrying dead weight they may not feel like calculating for. Sometimes it happens and not everyone wants to do the math or repeated trial and error to figure it out is all I\'m saying.

While I\'m pretty sure pretty much everyone who plays this game sees the KSC continent as Africa when they first look at the map, I\'ll agree that some of the other continents and landmasses reminded me of Earthly shapes. However, it\'s not really a problem, regardless of how the Terrain was generated. It actually put a little idea in my mind for the history of the planet about how perhaps it\'s just a very old or very young Earth when things were a bit different (disregarding tectonic plate shift and our predictions about the future and assumptions/knowledge about the past). Maybe these little Kerbonauts are future humans, or our ancestors? We don\'t know much about them or their history, and it really has no bearing on the game, but I think they\'re more or less funny coincidences than anything else.

The only problem with this is that, depending on what you\'re trying to lift, not all rockets are capable of leaving zero debris in orbit. You could get around it by leaving fuel in tanks you dump to keep them away from orbit, but then you\'re carrying dead weight and using more power than necessary to lift your payload. You can trim down the power to compensate, but then you\'re going to be fighting to bring the same payload to the same altitude with less power/fuel and it all becomes cyclical at that point. Sometimes you need as much fuel as you can if you\'re doing a landing/return trip and can\'t just throw stuff away when it\'s convenient. I\'m sure lots of kerbonauts out there have had to ditch stages after the fuel only gets them 3/4 of the way to their destination, and then the debris is just sitting there in a huge eliptical orbit around Kerbin.

If what Fortunate says is true then I might have a possible solution for your ASAS needs. In the Kosmos pack there is an ASAS module (and one with mechjeb capabilities with an identical mesh) that weighs .01 and attaches to the front of pretty much anything, is hardly noticeable, and if that is just a nosecone on the tips of your children satellites, then you should be able to attach them by just removing them, placing the ASAS modules, and then replacing the cones. There\'s also a few RCS tanks of varying sizes in the Kosmos pack and at least one of them should fit your smaller pods; they are also pretty nice looking and have a smaller vertical profile than many of the other RCS tanks I\'ve seen. Add on to that that there\'s a lot of fun stuff to mess around with in the Kosmos pack and I recommend you grab it. You could use the different modules and adapters for the different craft to give each satellite a different look and 'purpose' You shouldn\'t have to worry about the weight much, as I managed to land about 10 tons of 'dead' weight on the Mun as a habitation/research vessle that was composed mostly of Kosmos parts and used mostly its rockets with some help from NovaPunch adapters and boosters.

Hmmm, I\'m wondering if it might be a collision issue or something then. It\'s pretty much 100% reproducible and I can avoid it from happening by pulling back on the throttle by something as little as about 5% while crossing those particular thresholds in the particular variations I made. I\'m wondering if it\'s even possible to land this thing on the north pole - it\'s just too damned heavy to slow down in time and if I put more descent engines on, I need more fuel, and that means more weight, which means more engines... I just don\'t know if I can do it.

Alright, pardon the resolution and quality of the image, but I am on my laptop right now and it\'s not really built to play games, so I have to dial the settings down for KSP. Anyway, the yellow circles are the joints/links in question: http://i.imgur.com/lSxgP.png I\'m using a variety of parts packs, but the structures in question are from the Truss Pack: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=9026.0 Originally, I had the white modules stacked on top of each other and they were separating during my gravity escape just about as soon as I crossed the 600 m/s mark at full throttle (accelerating at appx. 20-30 m/s when I cross the barrier). I fixed it by dialing down the throttle, but as I\'m trying to land this little module at Kerbin\'s North Pole to start a little base there, I needed to keep my acceleration high. I also had the fuel tank from the pack stacked above the white module for variety, but ended up scrapping it since it was just too heavy and I was never going to slow it down with all that fuel with the descent engines. The structure in the Truss Pack link\'s second photo is the fuel tank in question (blue/yellow balloons/capsules with the frame in the photo). It was still separating (not breaking from sway, but almost as if the force from underneath it is too much - first the command pod 'detaches' and I lose control of everything, after the fuel burns out, all of those pieces slowly separate away from each other since the engines were keeping them 'together' by its thrust) after tossing the structural pieces and dropping the fuel tank, but this time it was occurring just as I was leaving the atmosphere and getting to orbital height at appx. 1100 m/s, accelerating at about 30 m/s. I added the strut ties and it seemed to help a little bit, but only gets me to about 1200 m/s before everything detaches. If I dial back my throttle, I can survive getting to orbital height, but as I\'m trying to land a fairly heavy object from high altitude via rocket, I want to conserve as much momentum as possible so I can bring as little fuel as possible. I still have to add some tanks to the descent engines, and might have to add another stage with more powerful boosters for the initial slowing down after reentering. Basically what\'s happening is that all three structural pieces seen in the photo seem to just come apart while I\'m traveling in a damn near straight line vertically. Are there structural tolerance values in the game, as to how much force things can take? If so, I find it odd that things placed vertically are snapping off (even the command pod mounted on a larger surface below it) and not the free-floating radial struts holding a ton of fuel and the engines which use it. Also, as far as landing 'buildings' on different parts of Kerbin are concerned, any suggestions for this? The way I\'m going about it now is to basically achieve orbital altitude and speed, swinging myself North and then slowing down over the pole to need as little attitude adjustment as possible and to avoid coming in at a steep angle. I figure it\'d cheaper in fuel to only have to slow down from one axis rather than two, and that it more than makes up for the additional fuel needed to get to orbital height and change my trajectory.

Nevermind about what I asked here. Anyway, good stuff. I like the control tower look of the pods and will be using them to help build my polar bases on Kerbin!

Cool stuff you have here, but I have a few questions., but the first is mostly an assumption. For the FROGGER craft, I\'m assuming you just built the module on top of the command pod and when you detached, the command pod became its front? And for the Zebra Station, which part mods are you using? Are those rockets just retextured rockets from the Suyez pack? I also like the command module you used for both; I\'m looking for something a bit more 'egg-shaped'. Thanks in advance, and cool stuff.

Well, I don\'t mind if it helps others, but if anything was going to go into the wiki I would prefer to clean it up with some editing, as I just kind of hammered it out quickly when I initially wrote it. Some images or illustrations to go along with it would be a good thing and pretty easy to do, I think. I\'m sure there\'s better ways to orbit and with less fuel, but the way I described is pretty efficient and just about any ship you build can at least get into orbit around the Mun using that so long as it can escape the atmosphere with about a whole liquid fuel tank left. I tried to be as simple as I could, but it\'s still a bit convoluted. Do what you want with it, but if people want me to clean it up or add some images I could throw something together, I guess.

Pardon the long post, but I try to do a bit of explaining and go into a few details you didn\'t ask for, but which I think will be quite helpful. There\'s pretty much 4 places you need to burn your rockets when you get into orbit in order to give yourself -whatever- orbit you want. I\'ve been spending more time just floating around and working with the gyroscope/artificial horizon and have come across some pretty effective/efficient ways to manipulate my path. These might not be the best ways, but they work. I\'m no pro at the game, but I can reliably get ships to do what I want them to and have just picked the game back up yesterday afternoon after putting it down for a week or so to come back with a fresh mind, so I\'ll explain how I\'d want it explained to me. The first thing you need to know are some things about the gyroscope and what all the directions mean. The spinning blue and orange ball represents where the nose of your ship is pointed in relation to the body whose gravity you are currently affected by/which body you\'re orbiting. If you\'ve ever been affected by ('encountered') the Mun and watched the ship as soon as it hits the encounter point, you will see the gyroscope snap to the new body of gravity as you get caught by the Mun. ---------- Blue is sky/space - 'Out' - pointing away from the planet; this is why you are pointed directly 'up' at the middle of the blue on the launchpad Orange is ground - 'In' - pointing directly at the bottom of the navball has your nose aimed at the ground of the body\'s gravity Any easy way to test out the directions listed below is to take a nice and light rocket, something easy, get it about 50k up and just muck about with the ball until you\'re comfortable reading it and do not have to refer to the 'normal' screen (not the orbital map) to be sure you are oriented correctly. ---------- 0 Degrees - 'North' 90 Degrees - 'East' 180 Degrees - 'South' 270 Degrees - 'West' This was the weirdest bit for me to understand when I tried to figure out the gyroscope. If you want to think of the plane being a circle, then 0/360 Degree is 'North', and I use quotes because it\'s difficult to really call any direction North in space. Arbitrarily, though, that\'s where 'Up' is, whereas pointing at the center of the blue half of the ball would be 'Out' and the center of orange would be 'In'. So with that out of the way, here\'s how you\'re going to orient your ship. ---------- When you launch, you\'re pointing Out. Your main goal is to shoot as straight out as possible without veering, and you accomplish this with ASAS, SAS, control/stabilization fins, symmetry, struts, and other sorts of stability-increasing parts. I\'m going to assume you can get your ship to launch straight. We\'re going to ignore trying to optimize fuel with when you begin your turn and just concentrate on the kinds of turns you can make. Generally, when trying to either achieve orbit around Kerbin or another body, people point their ships East (90) or West (270), both directions have their pros and cons, but that doesn\'t matter for this. You want to generally continue flying 'Out' until you are happy with your Kerbin Apoapsis on the orbital map. If your orbital pattern is skewed at this point (achieving distance), it doesn\'t matter much since we\'re going to flatten our orbit a bit later. Once you get about halfway to the Kerbin Apoapsis (it should still be a sharp ellipse that will bring you back to Kerbin at this point), you need to figure out if you\'re going to be pointing North or South to flatten out your orbit. If your plath has you coming back in the northern hemisphere, then you need to adjust it southward; if it\'s bringing you south, then northward. You simply point in the opposite direction. Now, you\'re not going to be able to get it perfectly 'flat' here, but your goal is to get as flat as possible without wasting fuel. Once you\'re relatively flat, continue on to the apoapsis as you normally would before making your orbital burn. If you want to orbit WITH the direction of Kerbin\'s rotation (counter-clockwise looking at Kerbin\'s north pole), you are going to burn East, or at 90 degrees; if you want to orbit against it (clockwise looking at the north pole), burn West at 270 degrees. Perform your orbital burn until your desired orbital distances are achieved. Now, your orbit can be off 'flatness' by even 45 degrees and you\'re still in decent shape, and here\'s where the fine-tuning will come into play and understanding the gyroscope. What you want to do is look at the orbital map and zoom out so you can see all of the Mun\'s orbit at once and line up both sides so they form a flat line. On the orbital map screen, this is the easiest/best/only way you can create an artificial flat plane, and is what you are going to be using to know when you make your adjustments. Your goal with the first 'North/South' adjustment is to get as close to flat as possible to make this easiest and less costly in fuel. When you have the Mun\'s orbit lined up as a single line, you are looking for the point where your path crosses the artificial flat plane you created, even if you\'re not going out that far - it\'s simply a guide. The point where these two lines cross is where you\'re going to be adjusting your orbit\'s 'flatness', and the further from Kerbin you are, the less gravity there is, so less fuel will be consumed while adjusting. Why are you using this point? Well, when you cross that intersection you are 'on' the flat orbital plane, so it\'s a pretty good time to adjust. Regardless of the direction you\'re traveling, the mechanics are the same. If your orbit is skewed and bringing you 'North' for this trip between your apoapsis/periapsis, then you want to aim your ship 'South' when you cross the horizon and burn. You will see the plane begin to flatten out if you\'re doing this on your orbital map (hence why it\'s important to be able to read the gyroscope and know what you\'re looking at). The point of intersection with the flat plane will slightly change, but you can bring it about 75% of the way to flat without wasting much fuel. Fast-forward time again and cross the plane, then continue to re-flatten. It might seem as though it\'s costing more fuel to flatten out, and at that point it might be better to wait until you\'re on the opposite side of the body you\'re orbiting to flatten the rest out. You\'ll have to play with and learn for yourself the optimal points to flatten out, as this is just a general point and guide of what to do that works for me concerning both mechanics and fuel efficiency. When your orbital path has you skewed going 'North', you just do the opposite and burn 'South'/180 degrees). When it comes to controlling orbital height, you\'re mostly relying on East/West directions. You want to burn with the direction you intend on traveling (we\'ll say East/90 for this) at the apoapsis to increase the orbital height/position of the periapsis, and you want to burn 'against' (270 in this example) it to decrease the periapsis. The easiest way to get a circular orbit is to burn from launch to the desired height and cut your engines until you get there unless you\'re fixing your 'flatness'. Once you get to the apoapsis, burn with your direction of travel until the periapsis matches (or is close to) the apoapsis\'s altitude. Same concept applies to increasing the apoapsis: burn with your direction while at the periapsis to increase it, burn against your direction to decrease it. After half an orbit around Kerbin, you should be pretty 'flat', have a circular orbit (or an elliptical one if you\'re slingshotting), and be on target to your first encounter. If it takes you more than one periapsis encounter to gain the orbit you desire, then keep practicing and hammer down reading the gyroscope and how to adjust your orbit. Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to explain things fully. Hope it helps!

Here\'s an image of the issue: http://i.imgur.com/KAEZA.png Basically what happens, is that the cones are meant to detach after the fuel in the tanks below them are depleted, which they do, which frees up the next stage setup within them. However, the cones are capable of cross-feed fueling and end up causing their engines to drain the higher tanks meant for the interior stage before feeding from the ones below the cones. I know I could set it up differently so there is no cross-feeding going on with those decouplers, but I wanted to try using them. I have the staging set up so that the above fuel tanks are grouped with their intended engine (and I know they will still feed from them even if they\'re staged separately if there is a cross-feed), but that\'s mostly just for ease of knowing when the tanks intended to be used are empty if there is cross-feeding going on. Any ideas on what I could do to rectify this while keeping the same parts and setup?

I am by no means an expert and I leave my suggestion as only that. If I was sitting on the Mun and wanted to get to Minmus, I\'d do one of a few things, which all boil down to the same basic concept. You want to only go in one direction with this shot, in my mind. You don\'t want to be using orbits (unless you can time the 'single shot' using one to reduce fuel consumption) for this. Find a route across the system that is as close to a straight line as possible. It doesn\'t necessarily mean sitting on the Mun for a week so the closest path comes to you (if you\'re trying to be at least semi-realistic about it), but if it\'s only 30 degrees off from you and there\'s no orbital interference going on, burn at it and adjust when you\'re halfway there and don\'t have any interference. When you start to toy with orbital paths, things can get a bit complicated because you have to mentally adjust for the curvature given to you at the time of 'zero acceleration', you know, your escape is pinpointed in one place, and the direction you assume you\'re coming from is completely different because the orbital map doesn\'t show what happens while you will be caught in orbit of another planet while in the orbit of a different one - you onl see the exit point and have to imagine what happens in between. Regardless, you want to see how fast Minmus is moving in correlation with the Mun at your current location on its surface. From there you want to try and plan a shot at a tangent point between the Mun and Minmus. You say fuel\'s not a problem, but depending on when you make the initial burn, you could push yourself way off course and may need to spend more fuel than you initially intended. This is going to be all about making sure the first burn is correct. Better to be safe than sorry... I hope with all that extra fuel you have you filled some cargo space with food stuffs, as you might want to wait a day or two to get the optimal and easiest exit, and hungry Kerbals are stupid(er) Kerbals.

I\'m going to answer 2 first here: 2. I\'m not really sure what you mean. How did I figure out where to place them? I just kind of did it trial and error. I wasn\'t entirely sure at first, so I placed them at the bottom of the fairing groups and when I was ready to jettison them the first time, I tossed them and they rotated inwards. I wanted them to rotate/float outwards, so I moved the charges up to about halfway up the entire casing and they work almost how I want. The fairings themselves don\'t seem to have any actual physics or collision properties, so they can and will float around and clip through the rest of the rocket. I think having two charges for each side (2 groups of half-circumference casings with one set of charges near the bulkhead/fairing mount and one just below where you attach the cone or whatever else) will work, as the charges blow whatever they are attached to outward, but there\'s some weird physics stuff going on with them - ultimately it doesn\'t matter since they don\'t collide with anything, but for aesthetic purposes I\'m trying to perfect the charges. 1. I\'ve seen how the struts disappear, but I\'ll show you a picture where I first started using radial decouplers with struts attached: http://imgur.com/NpIxv You can see how the yellow circled bits have the struts attached to decouplers. If you look in the lower-left corner, you can see there are struts fixed directly to the tanks. I was trying to build a radial monstrosity, and this thing did eventually get into orbit around the Mun, but I digress. My initial problem with the craft was jettisoning the outside stage and have it fall away safely from the rest of the craft. This didn\'t happen with solid struts, even if I staged them separately from everything else. The entire outer ring of engines would continue to float upwards, even after playing with floating and acceleration of both rings. I solved it by first jettisoning the green decouplers attached to the yellow struts (in the image) and that setup was applied to half of the outer ring. Then, the blue decouplers would go and that would free the green circled engines to freely float away from the rest of the ship along the red line. The process was repeated until the final interior ring was reached. I had to attach the struts to decouplers for this to happen though, I want to know if there\'s a simpler way to setup struts to decouple on their own, if there\'s a parts pack out there that does it, a plugin.. anything, to remove a bit of complexity in the design of my ships, since one of my favorite things (and I\'m sure many others) is to have somewhat complex staging and watch it all come together and work as intended. Pardon the monologue, but cheers.

I actually have a question regarding struts that I left out of my first post. How exactly does strut decoupling work? I know in the staging list they\'re denoted as a 'structural' piece. When you activate the stage that they are listed under, do they decouple then or are they a permanent fix type of thing, as in that in order to have them detach from the spacecraft, you have to have them primarily attached to a radial (or other style) decoupler, and activate the stage where the decoupler is in order to jettison them? Also, in regards to mods and struts: I can\'t remember if it was in the NP pack that there are stronger struts, but do they have a decoupling property? I also have used the small explosive charges that come with that pack to jettison my fairing walls, but haven\'t tried to affix a strut to that and use the charges as a strut tossing mechanism - would this work? Are there any part packs out there that have struts that can be jettisoned without needing to be attached to another part? I\'d like to use this approach for some of my more chaotic rocket designs, but it gets a bit overwhelming (even using symmetry) to set up the staging appropriately so my unneeded parts fall away safely rather than hovering alongside or hitching a ride on one engine and messing up the whole ordeal because one small operation (that then becomes a chore to first discover and then fix) going awry.

Hey guys, Firstly, I want to say how much I love KSP and have been enjoying it immensely for the past five or six days. My first spacecraft were relatively simple, and I went through the steps like we all do. Eventually I got into orbit around Kerbin, then shot myself to the moon (and promptly crash landed), then settled for an orbit, then put a satellite into geosynchronous orbit around Kerbin, and ultimately made a goal to put a satellite into orbit around the Mun with a manned flight and to bring those reluctant Kerbals home. After a few failures, I managed to succeed in putting a satellite into orbit around the Mun at 500km and bring my kerbonauts home. Here is the spacecraft that accomplished this goal: http://imgur.com/Pk090 I have a few questions now, though. As you can see, I\'ve started to use mods (though many of my initial ventures were with vanilla parts and my geosynchronous satellite was made with plane wings set on struts), and I\'m using NovaPunch, but opted out of the fairing system for this craft because I was having difficulty with a certain joint. http://imgur.com/2EeGj - The circle is centered around the joint in question. The engine inside the decouple (Mk 46 1m - 1.75m hollow decoupler from NP) is a 1m K2-X from NP. Below the hollow decoupler is flipped HH-78d 1.75-3m adapter from NP, which is attached to 3m fuel tanks for the main thrusters and has the first stage boosters attached. I feel like I am doing something wrong with the attachment of these parts, as the 2nd (top) stage of the rocket has way too much wobble. STS and wings help it fly straight until I exit the atmosphere, but I can\'t help but feel like it\'s still wobbling too much. Is there a better way to transition from a 1m engine with a hollow decoupler to a 3m base? At one point I did make use of the fairing system to enclose the final stage of the delivery system, but temporarily scrapped the idea while having issues with proper staging, weight, and balance. At some point I will redo the mission with the fairing enclosures. Lastly, I am just wondering if there is a good way to learn how to read the gyroscope/artificial horizon, and using it to gauge/alter my orbital paths better. I am learning how to read it and how to adjust my paths mid-flight, but I feel like I\'m just missing a small bit of information with working with it and 3d geometry in general. Any information or links to information regarding these topics is appreciated. One example is like on my last successful mission to put the satellite in orbit: I came around the 'front' of the Mun (as though I launched at 270) and ended up beginning my orbit on its backside. I did this successfully, sure, but I know I wasted far too much fuel making adjustments. Much of my problem stemmed from trying to read the orbital map and the adjustments it was making to my path. Having to rotate my exit route in my head and anticipate which direction I need to fire in to close the orbit proved troublesome because of the way the escape/encounter system works with showing your path. Anyway, pardon the lengthy initial message, but I\'m having great fun with this game. Next up... land on the Mun and return home!