The-MathMog

Thanks for the astounding amounts of info guys! I will test out a lot of it myself, and try to get a better grasp at what it exactly takes. So far after the initial post, I've managed to put a C-Class asteroid into orbit around Kerbin, using a vessel with around 10.000 delta-v, in the form of 2 Nuclear engines. I did forget about using the atmosphere as aerobreaking, and I've not put it in a highly inclined (polar) orbit, and I need to bring it down into an equatorial orbit, which will take a few more missions (my current spacecraft can put 500+ delta-v into the 130+ ton heavy rock). I am using stage-recovery mod too, so the missions are not thaaat expensive in the end, but I probably still loose a bit more cash than what I'll actually gain from it. Oh well, I am paid with a learning experience. Launching one bigger mission is probably a better way, than having to launch 4 medium sized ones. (Even had to do a salvage mission, to add parachutes to the first mission, and de-orbit it, to gain the value back of the nuclear engines. Ion engines is probably not something I'm gonna play around with, as my patience isn't thaaat big. Nuclear only just makes the cut

14.67% is the highest I've found too. Did a few orbital surveys of the moon, and just landed a rover on the "hottest" spot, which was the twin-crater for me.

Thanks, that's what I was looking for!

Hey guys, so I am looking for some tips on how to efficiently rendezvous with asteroids in interplanetary space, as I've heard that it would be more fuel efficient in the end, when dealing with bigger asteroids (starting of with C-Class and then going bigger). I want it to be fuel efficient too, as I am planning on mining them in my career mode. Rendezvous with them, when they are in Kerbin's sphere of influence, I've got pretty much nailed down, as all that need is some "basic" rendezvous. I did do a few quick searches, but they didn't help me out much, so sorry if there if there is a topic with it (link then maybe?) All tips help, as it is always good to refresh some old knowledge too (been playing it for almost 4 years I think)

Yup, the picture confirms my thought. The decoupler will always stick to the stage, that the arrow is pointing away from. If you want it to release both stages, then you need the Separators

Sounds like you need a Stack Seperator, not a Stack Decoupler. Decouplers will always stick to one of the stages, appointed by the arrow on it

I've noticed a bug. I sent a probe into a solar orbit, but had a stage that would still fall down to kerbin (it was still in kerbin orbit). I followed it and it was traveling around 3000 m/s when it hit the 25 km height, but it still burned up (yes I had heatshielding), and the report said that it was travelling at 8850 m/s when it hit the atmosphere.. I guess it took the relative velocity of my active vessel or something, but this was quite annoying, as it would've survived otherwise, not wasting 30k+ funds :/

Thanks for the idea. Will go try that right now! - - - Updated - - - Hahahaha, thanks a lot man! It actually fixed it rather smoothly! Glad I avoided the whole "editing the craft files"! Cheers!

Found out that quicksaving after the deployment was not possible. Hmm, so this is probably what I will try to do. I just had a look in the files, and there is nothing "very obvious" about what need to be changed, so it will probably take some time to find and fix.

Is your rocket propelled by leprechauns and space-farts in your fantasy?

Very nice visualization of it! It just needs a bit more "fast" runs, but that'll hopefully come! Or else I have to hop on the train again!

Ahh cool thx. Will take a look at that! And it actually is 3 wheels. One of them is just shy and hidden!

So, here is another entry actually! The first one was kinda a combination of a small aircraft while doing it as fast as possible. This time I focused more on efficiency. It is still a mere 3.1 ton, but have a few changes. Larger wings that are also angled a bit up, and another intake that I drained of fuel (to minimize the weight, but could be even less after seeing the amount I used. So I landed in about 13:16 (The 1 m/s speed is because I landed up a hill, and forgot to put on the brakes and it rolled backwards. I was confused and did it 10 seconds later. But more importantly the final fuel consumption ended up with 67,66. By strategy was: Slower accent to 22.000 +- meters, at around 1/3 thrust to minimize the huge amount of fuel needed for ascent. Flying at a pretty stable height of 21.500 - 23.000 meters, with a speed of around 1340 m/s +-. That combined kept the fuel efficiency at around 0.06 to 0.09 units per second! And at last I cut the thrust quite a bit before landing to save fuel descending through the atmosphere again! PS. What do you guys use to share the craft files? Anything easy?

Thanks, glad it counted haha! I fiddled a bit around with "disabling" steering on the wheels to find out what worked best, but couldn't figure out how to make only the back-wheels brake. Also, just did a run with a different plane today. Used around 84 fuel units, but will try a few more times to improve it

I didn't wanna quicksave right after, as I wouldn't be able to go back before. But I can of course just try making a custom quick save. Will try that. And the last thing yeah, that is what I thought too, and I have no idea either, what exactly to do :/ Hmm, a shame really :/

So, I decided to try this challenge! First off I tried with a normal capsule, but then got the idea to use a probecore (Which I am not sure is against the rules? It is a challenge, so it is about being innovative right? Nonetheless, just disqualify it, if it is a felony ) But with small control surfaces I got the weight down to 3.1 T (Could have gotten it even further down, if I optimized the amount of fuel in it, but didn't bother). The final picture I took, with the correct information's was 12:24, and the amount of fuel used was 98,72 units, so I guess that is what counts, even though it was "landed" a few seconds before that. I flew at a pretty constant speed of 1.230 Meters per second at an altitude of around 22.000. And the only last thing that might make this not count, is that my plane tipped over after the final landing. The small design meant that the landing gear ended up not being placed optimally. And I literally tried landing it like 20 times, as I didn't wanna have to fly all the way out there again... Soo, that's the best I could do! Cheers! The kid needed a rest after being heated to over 1000 degrees for 10 minutes ^^

After deploying the fairing I can't timewarp, as I get the message "Can't timewarp while moving over terrain" or something along that lines. As mentioned, I tried sending a probe away from it too, to make the physics unload, but it just put the main-craft in a weird state of "Landed?" while still in orbit, and having a velocity of "0". I also can't go to the space center, because it thinks the spacecraft is in motion. It would then put me back to my last save, which was before the deployment. Might try to see if I can save straight after and load, or go to the space center right after. This is also the first fairing that has caused me this great an issue :/ After I deploy the fairing, and go EVA, the game immediately crashed when I activate RCS jetpack :/ I might try that!

Aww, just now realized, after building a probe with a ton of heat resistance, that it was about circularizing a low orbit.. I missed the point, and thought it was a sun-grazing challenge. Won't be participating then, as I can't stand the tedious waiting time for ion engines to do their work...

I was surprised by this too at the start. But it is easy to fix. Make sure that your rockets are AERODYNAMIC!! This is sooo important now. So put a fairing over your hardware that you are launching into orbit, while also putting a significant amount of control surfaces/tail fins, on your rocket to keep it stable. And lastly, don't turn too drastically while inside the atmosphere. If your rocket is not "very" stable, then don't deviate more than 5 degrees from your prograde vector! And stability modules can help quite a bit too. In the beginning I had a lot of issues too in 1.0. But following these steps, it has become quite easy again. Also note, that with the new aerodynamic model, you will have to make your gravity turn earlier, and now you only need aroun 3500-3600 D-V to get into a stable low kerbin orbit!

I have tried that a few times without luck. I can try again, but I don't think it will change much. It is pretty well stuck in there

Hey guys, I really hope you can help me. I just send a manned craft out to Jool, (Lathe to be specific). I put a fairing on it, that would shield away the experiments during aerobreaking. But I've now run into an issue where, when I try to deploy the fairing, half of it gets stuck onto the rest of the spacecraft. The craft then proceeds to shake violently. If I try to EVA the game crashes, and I can't timewarp. Another thing I tried was to send out the probe that I brought with me, fly it far away, and then jump back the the mother-craft with map-mode. But that just put it in a weird "I am in space, but my status says that I am landed?!?" state, where I can't do anything. Accelerate. Timewarp. And my speed is "0". It might be a bug/issue with the "Close fairing" around another object. So I was wondering if anyone had an idea to how I can fix this? One thought I had, was to go into the vehicle file, and edit it to make it deployed in that way? But I have no idea how to do that. So any help would be very much appreciated, as this is a long run spaceprogram without any cheats, but this I find acceptable to do something about! Here's a few images to clarify.

Haha yeah, though this is primarily an unmanned mission, and that I don't need to bring the rover back, that is a whole other cow to tackle! I am doing this in career mode, so it will be quite a while until I attempt something like that, even though I could probably manage it with the 4.000.000 funds I have atm! But thanks!

Hey guys. Just wanted to share, my last creation. That is capable of getting a decent sized rover safely to Eve. This is mainly to give some inspiration of how it can be done, if someone is not sure where to start from. I pretty much started out with just how I wanted the rover to look like. The standard, 2x2 and 1x1 structural panels, wheels, solar panels, experiments behind them, and a probecore in the middle. Even added a ladder and a commander seat, if I ever get to bring a few Kerbals to Eve too! On top of it, I then added a parachute structure, that would aerodynamically bring the rover in position for a suitable landing, after all the other parts of the rocket, had been discarded. Just a simple decoupler and a "capital I" of cubic octagonal struts. And the parachute top, can just be thrown off after landing. From the backside I then added a structural pylon, that I could base the rest of the rocket out of. I then turned the rover around (Shift + Click to grab the whole rocket, then A,S,D,W,Q,E to rotate). Added a Large Reaction Wheel Module, to help keeping it straight during decent, then a fairing just for the rover, to help protect it even more. Below the fairing I then added another cubic octagonal structure, to support not only 1 heat shield, but 5. I found out that the rover was too big, to only need 1 big heat shield. So the cubics, are going out in 4 times symmetry, that then each supports a medium sized heat shield, extending the area protected by the shielding! Then from there it is just basically a normal rocket. A decoupler, with another fairing under it (To shield off the heat shields too, it adds on quite a bit more mass, but I find it suitable.) A big fuel-tank, with 2 nuclear engines. 1 on each side. Then under that, two big Kerbodyne tanks, with a mammoth as main-thrust. And then 4 orange fuel tanks + mainsail engines on the side. I added "I-beams", to separate the tanks and engines a bit more from the inner stage, as I could run into trouble at launch, as they could collide with the main engine when decoupled. And I then added in some separators between the decouplers and the beam, and again between the beam and fuel tank, to make sure, it all fell apart when decoupling (Just for even more safety measures). And as a final pinch? Moar solid rocket boosters!! Here is just as an end-note. The only mod that I use that might affect this, is "Joint-reenforcement", but that can just be accounted for with extra struts, between the upper reaction wheel module and the rover. Between the structure that holds the heatshields and the fairing. And then just some extra here and there, but nothing too overwhelming. Also, I found out that this almost had TOO MUCH fuel (somewhat at least). I had a lot more fuel for the nuclear engines than I expected, but that actually turned out better. First I didn't plan for going into a stable orbit around eve first, but rather just going straight in. But with the extra fuel, I could actually do that, and plan my landing spot even better, avoiding the oceans. Only issue with that, is that the nuclear likes to overheat a lot, so it took a few orbits, to actually bring it down close to Eve. But the heat shields definitely have enough ablator to go directly in, as I only used a bit less than a half, of the main shield. I hope this post isn't completely useless, and does inspire some people on how to bring down a rover at eve, even accounting for the deadly heating

Ahh yeah I see. That is a good idea. I will try that. Would be nice if they added a simple glow around the part, when you hove above the slot. Would make it a lot easier, visually to determine where to put them Thanks!

Hey guys. I am been playing Kerbal Space Program for a very long time, and see myself almost as a veteran, with landings and returns from most bodies. But even still, I just encountered a problem. It might be something that I have overlooked, but nonetheless I have a hard time figuring it out. When I attach kerbals to specific parts, it is usually not a problem. But the problem here is, that I have 3 of the same landing capsules, and I need tourists in 2 of them, and 1 empty. I am making this a multipurpose rocket, for sending tourists into space, while also recovering a vessel + kerbal. But I can't seem to figure out, which one is which, as it doesn't highlight them as I hover over the slot. One could assume that the lowest slot, is also the lowest capsule in the rocket, but with more complicated rockets/capsules, I just don't think that would be sufficient. I could of course do some testing to figure out, which capsule they are in, but I really can't bother to go through that. Here is a picture to help clarify my issue. The reason I wan't them in the lower two capsules, is because I wan't to send them straight back to Kerbin as I reach orbit, while being able to proceed with be rescuing mission! Thanks!