Xivios

If you strap an ASAS to one of the lower stages (though mine actually has an ASAS in the lander module) and use the moving fins, the fins themselves and ASAS will largely deal with the aerodynamic instability they cause, and if you ditch the ASAS on a lower stage, you won\'t be lugging the weight of it all the way to the Mün.

Struts, gimballing engines, symmetry, SAS, ASAS - with devices that can use it (moving fins, RCS, gimballing engines), and a tapered drag form - by which I mean, the bottom of the rocket suffers from more drag than the top - will all contribute to safe, stable flight. Well, as safe and stable as can be expected from trash cans filled with boom and Jeb at the helm.

You\'ll never find a really flat spot on the Mün, just sort of wing-it and hope for the best. As long as it\'s not too steep, you\'ll be OK. I\'ve landed on some pretty nasty terrain - on Kerbin, no less! The lower gravity of the Mün makes it even less likely to break things apart, as you as you touch down gently. If things still look a bit nasty to you, well, there\'s a reason I like bigger landers. More fuel, gain some altitude, boot it over a few hundred meters, perhaps into the valley of hill you don\'t want to land on, and try again.

I take it your trying to insert yourself into Mün orbit. Apparently, and I\'ve tried this and it works, well enough for me to have done a direct descent from to the moon from Kerbin orbit, in a single burn out of Kerbal orbit until slowing for landing, is to time your TLI until the mün is just rising over the horizon while in an orbit of about 100,000 to 150,000 meters. You could eyeball in the map when the mün will be opposite your craft fairly well, but the mün won\'t be there by the time you get there. Your hugely elliptical insertion orbit does not have nearly the same period as the müns circular one, so it won\'t be around when you get there. For some reason, the horizon method means your ship will usually arrive in the prescribed location a bit before the moon will, but travelling far slower than the mün and close enough to enter the müns SOI and be pulled towards it, usually on either a collision course, or one that will swing just outside the far side of the mün and sling you back towards Kerbin. Either one can be made into a succesful orbit, if it\'s a collision course, I usually push the orbit a bit out until it turns into the 'sling to kerbin' orbit, wait for periapsis on the far side, and then burn retrograde to pull into a nice, low altitude orbit around Mün.

After some trial and error (mostly error) I\'ve finally constructed a moonshot rocket, entirely from vanilla parts, than can deliver, land, and return a crew from the mun with a relatively high success rate - indeed, it has plenty more fuel than it really needs. Here is what I\'ve found. You\'ll need a sturdy vessel. As far as I can tell, the best 'lander legs' in the vanilla game are the movable fins - they dip far down at their trailing edge wingtip , well below where they attach. The fixed fins don\'t, being a trapizodal shape, so though you might not want your legs to wiggle about, you may have to live with it unless you mod or Harv and the boys add some standard legs. Don\'t worry, their collision mesh does not move, so the movement does not affect their use as legs. They are very low mass, and also have the highest collision rating of any part, so do not seriously affect the rocket. They do make it much more difficult to get out of the atmosphere, due to their drag, and their location on top of the rocket, when used in this role, is not conducive to stability. Combine them with an Advanced SAS though, and they manage to pull double-duty though on the stability end of things though. I don\'t touch anything but T, Shift and Space until 30,000 meters on me rocket. You can struss them up with struts too, they must always be the second item attached though. I like 3 struts each, one left, one right, one above. I use 6 fins total, 6x symmetry. Plenty of strength results, the thing can slide (and has) down hills on Kerbal and not loose a fin (well, it lost one). It\'s also fairly big - my lander is comprised of: 1 gimballing LFE engine, 7 fuel tanks, 2 RCS fuel tanks, 12 RCS motors, 1 Advanced SAS, 6 fuel transfer lines, 6 moving fins, 24 struts, 1 stack decoupler, the command module and parachute. I think this size helps it a lot - the high inertia acts to damp the control inputs and makes it all smoother. This is actually too heavy to lift off the ground with full tanks on Kerbal, but it plenty potent on the Mun. So, usual approach then is pretty close to E. F. Kranz\'s method. Fly by instruments, beyone checking that the ground is reasonably level and using shadows (if not eclipsed by Kerbal, it\'s happened to me) to gauge final descent distance. Actual approuch and landing is as follows. After entering moon SoI enter moon orbit between 10,000 and 5,000 meters. On approach to desire landing site convert velocity readout to Surface relative (not orbit), point ship retrograde and fire main engines. Holding ship with the retrograde marker (?) centered in the navball, much as E. F. Kranz\'s method suggests, and keep it there until the ship approaches 0m/s. The retrograde marker will rapidly move just before this occurs. When it rapidly moves out of the way, press X to kill the engines. You have probably now managed to reduce your forward and lateral motion to around 3m/s or less - indeed, with some finess you could probably attain a velocity of about 0.3m/s before killing the engines - this is far more accurate than Red Irons map method, and will place you into a nearly-perfect vertical descent. Once the ship begins to freefall vertically, re-orient the ship vertically and place the retrograde market back into the center of the navball. Try not to burn too much fuel doing so but manage your descent speed to what you feel is safe. On approach below 500m indicated altitude, reduce speed to about 5m/s and hold it around there with careful throttle control. Try not to go too slow - doing so will exagaggerate the lateral retrograde markers movement - remember, at 5m/s, a lateral velocity of 0.1m/s won\'t perturb the marker too far from center. At 0.1m/s however, with the same lateral motion (ie, all of it now) the retrograde marker will be completely on the side, and you will probably overcorrect for it - and that\'s where the shit hits the fan - but continue to follow the marker gently, keeping speeds lower and lower until touchdown, figure around 3m/s at touchdown. Then x to kill it. The total velocity at touchdown is more important than your lateral velocity, and if you follow the retrograde marker smoothly and accurately, it\'s entirely possible - and sometimes easier (because it\'s more conventional controls) to do so without RCS - but RCS can help so don\'t shy from it if you want to use it. Edit: Oh, yeah, if things start to go sideways, figurately or literally, always remember: Burning directly retrograde, with the marker center to the navball, and doing so as perfectly as you can until speed is as close to 0m/s as you can manage and then killing engines will always put you back into a perfect vertical freefall. Don\'t be afraid to do so if you need to straighten things out. Just remember that the marker will go wonky-like when you approach 0.

You haven\'t shown us any of these videos, but I\'m going to assume your\'re still launching West. The red line, at launch, with the nav-ball seen from the top-down, indicates North. It does this by facing south, as seen from the top of the nav ball. Remember, you are looking at the exterior of the nav-ball, not the interior. Every direction on it is reversed. For you to see the line indicating a northerly direction of travel, it must be painted on the southern part of the ball. For you to see a line indicating a westerly direction of flight, that line must be painted on the eastern side of the ball. From launch, at KSC, without touching the camera, east to the right, out over the ocean.

This works for me, it\'s quick and dirty and I damn near hit the tower afterwards. Enter a roughly circular orbit 100 to 200 thousand meters up, with the space center somewhere under the predicted path (should be unless you\'ve done a plane change) When you are on the other side of the planet (use the [m]ap or nav ball to judge when), turn retrograde and then 'up' about 45 degress, and fire the boosters. This raise your orbit about 90 degrees out while de-orbiting the ship 180 degress out - giving you a steeper approach - where the space center is. Use the map to fine-tune where you actually enter. Give yourself some breathing room, it\'s easier to slow down than speed up and the atmo will plenty of that for you, so your predicted end point should be somewhere over the ocean, not the KSC itself - assuming you orbit east like I do.

In an ideal world: one in which your engine can instantly accelerate you to your desired velocity, you do so at the very top of the transfer (or bottom, depending on which way you're going.) Otherwise, erm, since it all varies depending on ship, altitude, starting altitude, I would say...wing it best you can?

A 9 hour flight out to 5000+Km into a fractional orbit returning to land here.

Seen you from the other topic. I haven't DL'd the experimental version, but I wouldn't be surprised if that is indeed the cause of the problem. I'm fairly certain Harvester's math is two orders of magnitude off. A 60m radial increase is small, but Kearth is a small planet. 60 meters on 600,000 doesn't seem like much, but it's 0.01% bigger, not 0.0001%. And a 0.01% difference can make a big difference in orbit.

No, it's changed from 1200Km to 1200.12Km diameter, a fairly small change - 60 meters added to the previous radius of 600,000m.

Terms like horizontal start to loose meaning in anything but a roughly circular orbit, for straight speed I'd probably suspect a straight-out approach would work best.

Back on topic, there is a decent alternative to complex maths and calculations available to those who wish to land upon the pad. Fuel! As said before, powered landings are possible, but it doesn't take much fuel to de-orbit a ship at KSC's opposite end and hope your close enough to muscle your way to KSC when you enter the atmo a rough half-orbit later. But with a gross excess of fuel, (and who doesn't like gross excess in this game?), you can pretty much stop the vessel directly over KSC and bomb in near-vertically. It requires a HUGE investment in ?v, and then use whatever is left to tweak your descent. It works, and it's fun, but you wouldn't be likely to see it ever happen in the real world.

First off, download the KSP Orbital Calculator Then, haul ass into space and get into an orbit. Doesn't matter how it looks. Bring fuel. And liquid fueled engines. SRB's won't do you much good up here. Wait until apogee - the highest point of the orbit, and - quickly now before you descend too much (maybe even pause) plug your altitude into the circular orbit tab of the calculator. It will spit out an orbital velocity for that altitude. Point craft directly into TVV - the green circle thinger on the nav ball, and accelerate to the velocity given by the calculator. Congratulations! You've now intentionally circularized an orbit, more or less. Second step, open the Hohman Transfer Orbit tab. Enter your current orbit, and then your desired orbit. It'll spit out 6 different velocities, for now, focus on the final velocity of the Transfer Orbit Injection. You may wish to time this maneuver to perigee or apogee to create more stable numbers to input into the calc. In any case, accelerate to the new Final Velocity. Again, looking into the little green TVV Congratulations, you're now hurtling through space on an elliptical orbit. I suggest grabbing a snack, stretching, nap, piss, etc. Now you wait. Until new apogee. If all goes well it should be at the altitude of the desired new altitude. Pointed still at the TVV, accelerate to the Final Velocity for Target Orbit Injection. In fact, if your altitude is a bit off, but you wish to circularize here anyway, you might update your 'desired orbit' number to match reality and use the velocity provided by that altitude. Congratulations! You've changed orbit!

Wow, that's elitist... *hugs his rocket with the 33 SAS modules*

I'm not posting this because it's a good heavy lifter. I'm posting it because it's a bad heavy lifter It can put the capsule into orbit with more than 3 full liquid fuel tanks remaining, so it does have a fair payload capacity, if you sacrificed the excess fuel for payload. It also took 5 tries before it made it without exploding. It's a very unstable design. Takes some cohones to climb into it. Does make it quite fun though. Problem is, the first stage really isn't powerful enough, it does climb, but only slowly. SRB's 'fixed' the problem, but have a tendancy to shred the rocket. Heh. Reached a stable 2000Km orbit with enough fuel left to bring it to a complete stop, turn towards the planet, and reach another 1500m/s towards it for a quick re-entry though. So it's got some balls on it. If you do decide to take her for a spin, the SRB's separate differently from the liquid fueled engines. You don't have to worry about holding onto them once they burn out, space to drop them. There are two lower sets fired sequencially plus a kick stage to help get you into orbit after the two main liquid stages run dry.

Yes but those instruments are exactly that - instruments. They display info but aren't designed to actually impart any force. The flywheel in the SAS actively forces the vessel around, and only a heavy mass spun at high RPM can do that. That said, I like to think that it works within it's own personal vacuum chamber, on magnetic bearings and is spun up before flight. On and Off only lock and unlock the gymbals of the massive and very high RPM wheel. Of course, the gymbal is also hydraulically forced and computer controlled, which is why it's a fully active stability system.

Found a quick way to get around the sticky launch pad bug. On whatever your rocket sits on, strap on some decouplers. This will create a dummy stage plus the decoupler stage. Move the couplers to the 'true' lower stage and save/reload (as Skunkmonkey suggests) and bam, no more sticky pad - the rocket sits on the decouplers, and while THEY might be stuck to the pad, they get left behind upon ignition of the first stage. This can actually make a big difference, without a sticky pad, a rocket as simple as a chute > module > decoupler > liquid tank x4 inline > engine > decoupler makes for an SSTO, or at least pretty close to it. It's not a perfect fix, bigger rockets may cause the decouplers to explode, but the only issue that really seems to cause is some browned underpants from our intrepid trio. Or total structural failure. Reccomend liquid fueled engines over the decouplers, throttled down and then brought up for launch. They don't take well to the sudden shock of full-throttle engines. Edit: Too late I find that foamyesque actually beat me to the punch (with an identical ship design no less) in the simplest orbiter challenge. Kudo's to him.

Remember though, from the desktop, you can open the sound mixer and turn KSP way down or mute it. Window's got you covered. If you full-screen you'll need to alt-tab out though.

For that matter, don't use too many SAS modules. I've had scenario's where they would caused a sort of resonance and they would overcorrect so much that the ship got worse and worse every pass until eventually ripping itself apart. Also try to keep them near the centerline, they produce force at their location - on a rocket with 'legs', as many sort of do - they will bend and twist and this can compound the problem.