Claes

The modded hinge (works as intended, as far as I could see) and invisible piston (displays incorrectly on my installation, but functions as a regular piston, which does the job anyway) are found in this link: the parts: http://www.sendspace.com/file/3pa0pa Safe landings /Claes

Ok, done. I made a stable lander. It will MechJeb-autoland and MechJeb-autohover. The trick seems to be that the entire stack´s center of gravity must be *above* the center of thrust for MechJeb to work properly. When I attached the boosters too high, or made the stack parts above the hinge lighter than the parts below the hinge, the stack just somersaulted off the launchpad. The solution was to have a lander that was (a lot) heavier than the rover, and had the center of gravity above the center of thrust, and had thrst-vectoring engines. I also concur on the above observation that having the MechJeb below the hinge, and thus being pendulumed (?) around, confuses MechJeb, and the cartwheeling starts again. I believe (this is a guess) that MechJeb assumes the entire stack is pointing in the same direction as MechJeb. Now, if MechJeb were to get thrust vectors from the actual engine pods, that would maybe remedy this issue. My stack is attached as a .zip below. Operate as follows: Set MechJeb ascent autopilot as described in image 1 (orbit alt 5 km, turn end at 18 km, ascent profile slider 75% to the right, inclination 140 deg.) Start enginges Release "launch clamp" When stack reaches ~4500 meters, disengage ascent autopilot Release drogue chute (press space) When stack has almost stopped pendulum-ing (seriously, what's the proper term?) engage MechJeb autoland Release drogue chute (press space) At [your desired altitude, I suggest ~100m] disengage MechJeb autoland Engage Rotatron Keep Vert, set to 0, and Kill Horiz. Stack will now hover, stable. Move sideways with wasd. To release rover: (this is manual & tricky, would it be possible to make a Autom8 LUA-script for this? "When Altitude < 5m Coupler.X.Disengage and Booster.Y.SetPower(100%)") (i can't code LUA, but something like that?) Lower rover wheels (press g) Select MechJeb autoland (0.1 m/s touchdown speed) When at < 5m, deselect MechJeb autoland, set full throttle, release rover ½ second later (press space) Congratulations to all others who made it. Thanks to Barie for the challenge and to KSP dev for exercising my brain. Now, off to do it again, with Lionhead parts and some aesthetics. Safe landings! /Claes

What Excalibur said. This will enable the use of one large "tanker" and a smaller "orbital shuttle" to explore planets. Awesome!

Here it is, on top of its launch vehicle in the VAB. Thanks to the enormously wide stance, even wider with the pistons extended, it can land on a sloping surface. And here it is, landed on the Minimus mountain.

Thanks Kev. Well, thay let me stay as I do the work for free. The manual return involved both a little planning and a lot of luck. I got into a very good equatorial orbit on return from Mun, that was pure luck. I made just a small plane-change to align to Kerbin equator. I then retro-braked late to a very steep reentry. I figured that the steeper the reentry, the less lateral offset would be added from atmospheric drag later on, thus making it less impossible to judge where the trajectory would go. This is not really an option in real life because of the enormous G-forces such a steep reentry would induce. The poor Kerbal suffered from at least 10-15 G. The reentry path would still overshoot the KSC, but not by much, so to land *at* KSC required me to manually pop the chutes when I was just-short-of on top of it. I believe I was at or just below 20 000 meters altitude. That it got so good was also sheer luck. I tried to do it again tonight, but did not manage to get it so perfect again. I landed with KSC in view, but not on top of it.

That did it, thank you!

Awesome crewtank, thank you. However, I can not align the ladder on the command pod with the ladder on the crewtank. I have tried rotating both the crewtank and the command pod with wasd-qe when building, to no avail. I could not find any way to do it through the part.cfg either. How did you do it in your attached picture? /Claes

Hi everyone. I recently stumbled upon KSP, after "playing" Martin Schweiger's "Orbiter" for quite a while. The images below highlights some of this weeks (my first) activities at KSC. Please enjoy, I did. The first Munar landing, a pretty hair-raising affair of hand-sticking and wild eyeballing. But, hey, we made it! Small step for a Kerbal, one giant leap for me! This forum was quite helpful with hints on how to time the transfer burn to Mun, without any add-on tools. After some more hand-sticking and pure luck, our heroic Kerbal made it back not only to Kerbin, but literally to the front porch of KSC. The time had come for the program to move on. Hand-flying was considered obsolete. And dangerous. And we can't have dangerous, nossiree. So, MechJeb was installed, and a most ambitious goal was set: a double landing on Mun! Inside a crater of great geological significance! With MechJeb automation! The first of the two-ship flight landed ok. A few minuter later, ship 2 landed hard on a sloping surface and the command pod broke off from the return stage! Oh noes! Fortunately, the brave engineers behind their desks and computers, came up with a rescue ship on very short notice. The still-functional Lander 1 was left on the Mun. Perhaps it can be used as a lifeboat for further expeditions. All kerbals made it back and are accounted for. New goals were set! Ambitions were even higher! We'll land on a mountaintop on Minimus! *insert party-tweeter here* A few days and several thousand kilometers later, on a mountaintop, on Minimus; Oh MAN, not again! The lander touched down at default vertical speed, 0,5 m/s, slid sideways, bounced, and the rest is still a bit blurry... Some say an engineer somewhere was embarrassed. Embarrassed maybe, but not without answer to nature's challenges. There will be a rescue landing on the same mountain! No Kerbals gets left behind. Or on a frozen rock in outer space. DamnedRobotics was consulted, and NovaPunch parts were added. A 1-2-command pod was edited to function as a crewable strut and the whole shebang was remote-controlled to a bouncy, wide-stanced mountaintop landing. Now THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is a bona-fide mountain-top-rescue lander, made possible by community support! (And a nice pic as well, with Mun and Kerbin rising over the Minimus horizon.) The rescue craft even made it back with the rescued Kerbals to KSC (-ish) through aerobraking and shoddy timing of parachutes. (Does anybody have a boat-part, plz, they've been floating around out there for days now.) A great many thanks to the KSP dev team and all you people who makes such great addons. And thanks to Dr. Schweiger who got me started prograde on the quest for space. Now, is there a tool or tip to remotely determine the slope angle at a specific coordinate? /Claes