Kizarvexis

Depends on if I am flying or if Mechjeb is flying. If I'm flying, I start the turn (5-10 degrees) as soon as I clear the tower to generate separation from the KSC facilities as they can 'sploda. I started this before exploding buildings to get into the habit. Whenever I use Mechjeb, to save myself time, I set the ascent profile to start the turn as early as I can, which is usually 3 or so km. So far, I have not 'sploda a building yet.

What? No sliderules?

A mun shot with the vanilla Demo. I spent about 2 min swanning back and forth just meters over the Mun until I finally cancelled the sideways motion. Got back to Kerbin with no fuel. Yes, the fins were the landing legs.

Another old huge old rocket. As soon as I launched, the heat spiked. I shut off the engines, but the heat climbed until it exploded. A quick application of SPAS saved the crew. I took the rocket apart and found that Jeb was over enthusiastic with adding boosters. (A click that I thought did nothing, stuck a booster in the mainsail.)

Here is an old landing leg test to make sure the legs extended past the engines. I decided to try an engine test as well, but my flying skills are not that great. As I remember I clipped the tower and below is the result.

... and the circularization burn, ... and part of the landing burn, ... and you only stage because this part of the rocket was never meant to land. This is EVERY rocket I send to Minmus.

I flirted with an actually abort system once, but I use SPAS also. The SPacebar Abort System, where you frantically hit the spacebar until the capsule separates and the Kerbals gently descend amongst the the exploding parts.

When the music starts. (70km) I usually shoot for 80 km orbits and am happy with anything between 70-100km.

I second this

Hey, you're flying my space program!

Ah, shiny. I knew you could reset the Science Jr's with a lab module and did that with my Skylab craft. I then landed the lab module to recover all the science. I didn't know you could do that with Kerbalnauts too. Thanks

I thought it could. I'm right in that it is my poor piloting that wastes all that fuel. Also, did the struts break? I thought I had strutted the parachutes to the lower half of the lander. In the Mercury-V, there are more struts and a 3m reaction wheel in the center stack to make it more stable. Well, I was doubling up on science. I tried biome hopping on Minmus will modest success. I took this lander there and back multiple times. I just had bad luck on the Mun. I also would sometimes do science on Kerbin after returning from a single biome on Minmus and be able to do new science on Kerbin if I landed in a new biome there too. The Mercury-V only has two Science Jr's now, as I replaced the other two with fuel tanks. BTW, my Kerbalnauts are scared of the dark, so there is lots of redundancy on the power. I have the 48-7s as I have everything through the 160 level and some of the 300 level. Like I said, I'm not a very good pilot, so without a ladder, the Kerbalnauts flail around for a while before finally grabbing the capsule. I had the idea of using the probe to put the debris back on the ground by leaving some fuel, but then I started taking it to Minmus and using it for the first part of the descent and crashing it there. THAT is how I land. The video up thread has a neat way to doing a landing, so I'm going to hit the sandbox simulator to practice. Don't you want to return those for more science? I downloaded you craft file and will try it out in the sandbox simulator.

I had to find a file sharing program and FileSnack seems to fit the bill. Here are the files for both the Mercury IV and the upgraded Mercury V that is in the pics in the first post. It is vanilla with 2013-12-Engineer-Redux-v0.6.2.2 as the only mod. Mercury-V => http://snk.to/f-chp52kj1 This one has a reaction wheel in the center stack and seems more stable than the Mercury IV. Mercury-IV => http://snk.to/f-c7h90tcd Rolls sometimes for some reason I could never determine.

Only the Aerospike has a better ISP in Atmo and the 909, Poodle and Aerospike all have better in space. With the low thrust of the 909 and poodle, I went with the T30's and T45's. I don't have the Aerospike yet. Besides, 49 engines at liftoff is almost as good as MOAR BOOSTERS. I usually over-engineer rockets to bring extra fuel as I need it for landings.

The Mercury-IV, which had less lander fuel, made Minmus and back. I can land there, because the gravity is so low, but the Mun is another kettle of kish.

I usually do a few degree turn once I clear the launch clamps to angle away from the KSC for when I start dropping boosters. At around 20 km, I go over to 45 degrees or so until the AP is above 70km. Then I coast to near the AP to circularize. I usually have some of the second stage boosters left to start to circularize and end up with roughly 1/3 to 1/2 the fuel left in the center stack once I have a PE above 70km.

Ok, so as I understand the video, you get into a low orbit and thrust retrograde varying your pitch while staying roughly the same height above the surface. When you get slow, then you use pitch and throttle to slow your descent speed and finish off the drift to land, correct? If so, then I'll need to spend some time in sandbox mode the simulator practicing my control over the lander, before trying this in career mode.

This is a from the KSC rocket. I'll have to watch that video later. Thank you.

Hi, I know I am a bad pilot when it comes to landings. I wanted to post some screen shots of my spacecraft to make sure that it's not my spacecraft and my bad skills that make landings hard. In another thread, I_Killed_Jeb, asked if it was my rockets that might be the problem. I know I over-engineer them to bring lots of fuel to the party, so I don't think it is that. I figured, I would post some pics of my latest design to see what the expert pilots think. I'm in career mode and have reached the 300 science level of parts. I have the Skipper LFE, but the 7 LV-T30's on the outside asparagus tanks work fine. I have 7 LV-T45's on the inner tank. The lander has 4 LV-909's and I swapped out two Science Jr's for more fuel (FL-T200's). I also put a FL-T400 under the capsule to supplement the outside FL-T400's. I haven't used this lander to try land on the Mun yet. Usually, I get into orbit around the Mun and then burn retrograde to make the orbit path straight up and down. I then burn to slow down and land with very little drift as I am falling straight down. When I tried to burn retrograde and then zero out the drift as I landed, I ended up swanning all over the place before landing. So, what do you think? My guess is the experts would take this overpowered rocket all over the Kerbolar System without refueling. VAB pic with Kerbal Engineer data (craft files below pic) I tried to stick the pic in a spoiler tag, but it would not work. Here are the files for both the Mercury IV and the upgraded Mercury V that is in the pic above to make them easier to find. It is vanilla with 2013-12-Engineer-Redux-v0.6.2.2 as the only mod. Mercury-V => http://snk.to/f-chp52kj1 This one has a reaction wheel in the center stack and seems more stable than the Mercury IV. Mercury-IV => http://snk.to/f-c7h90tcd Rolls sometimes for some reason I could never determine.

Kerbal Engineer. I would use MechJeb, but it doesn't like my asparagus designs. I use KE to see what my TWR is and that is about the most I do for math. If I could figure out MechJeb for more than ascents, I might use that again. I just haven't had the time or inclination to sit down and play with it extensively. I really liked MapSat, but haven't used it recently as it doesn't seem to work correctly. I enjoyed putting up MapSats in polar orbits just to get the maps. And I figured if I could ever take the time to figure out MechJeb's landing feature, I could actually land at some of the anomalies. I'm a poor pilot when it comes to landing. I've tried KW Rocketry and Nova Punch's rockets and the mod that I think is called Stock-X parts. Once I started into mods with lots of parts, my game seemed to be unstable. I know I don't have the best computer for playing Kerbal, so I just play with stock parts now. And there are enough stock parts to satisfy me, so I don't really need the extra choices. What I would really like is a mod with a stackable parachute for the 1m and 3m parts. Then you could stick drogue chutes above them.

I think the science tree is fine as I'm not a good pilot. I have a hard enough time landing on Minmus and the Mun. I'm up to the 300 level of science stuff, mostly from random landings on Minmus and Kerbin. I have been upgrading my rockets, but I'm sure if one of the experts took my craft file, they would take it to another planet. I still have yet to hit another SOI outside of Kerbin, Mun, Minmus and Kerbol. The maneuver nodes have helped greatly, but I tend to use a LOT of fuel as I'm not a very good pilot. I restart missions with each new version. I can orbit fine. Get to Minmus and the Mun, no problem. Landing is hit or miss. And I run out of fuel on Mun landings alot. I haven't been using probes much yet on .23, but I have plans to replace a manned lander with one to try for other planets again. Currently I only use the Kerbal Engineer mod and I'm looking for a good stackable parachute mod so I can start using drogues and parachutes.

What happens if you put a probe core on the science bomb? Will it still be deleted if you are not focusing on it?

Heh, thats a pretty mindblowing fact. Coooooool... If you want REALLY mind blowing, then try this some nice afternoon. THE THOUSAND-YARD MODEL or, The Earth as a Peppercorn Standing at Mars and looking back at the Earth where you left it, gives you a great perspective on how hard it is to get a space craft from one to the other.

You know you can do this in real life by making your own scale model of the solar system and walking it out to see just how far apart everything is and how small all the planets are in comparison. http://www.noao.edu/education/peppercorn/pcmain.html http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/ I'm sure you could also do the calculations for the Kerbal planets as well for a similar scale model.

The three Kerbal shift is messed up. Jeb should be the one on the left and Bill in the middle. Seeing Jeb screaming when the others aren't freaking out worse, is wrong. Just wrong. They fix it and I buy it.