Alexander_Kerbing

It's not realistic, but I open my chutes <1km. I can't think of a ship I've ever had that wasn't going about 100m/s at 1km in Kerbin's atmosphere. Even ships coming from interplanetary space are going really slow at that altitude if you set their periapsis to about 20-30km.

I had this neat idea to send a ship to Jool with four landers and a probe (for Tylo). I figured I would send the core module, titled Pandu, up into Kerbin orbit first, and send the landers and probe later (cookie if you can guess what I'll call those five items). I had initially planned to attach the landers to the core radially, like this: Seemed simple enough until I realized that it is likely that my landers will have varying weights and will throw off the CoM causing my ship to spin out of control when I make my burn for Jool. So then I had the idea to make it so I could attach the landers in line with the CoM like this: Now that seems all well and good until I realized what kind of structural limitations that places on my landers as they need to have an accessible docking port on the top AND the bottom. Also, ideally, they would have Clampotron Sr docking ports so that they might interface with the ones on core ship. I realize my core ship doesn't absolutely need to have Sr. docking ports, but I've been on a kick of using appropriately sized parts and adapters lately. So how might I attach four landers to this ship? I've also considered stacking them on the front end, but then my beloved Kerbals would have an obstructed view from the cockpit. What's the point in going to Jool if you can't even look at it thru the window?

That moment when you realize you forgot fuel lines... I've been trying to make a ferry for a Mun base so that I can send crew to my base without having to launch a lander from Kerbin. The first iteration, I used inefficient engines and didn't pack enough fuel. The second time, I thought I got it right. Get in orbit around the mun, rendezvous with the old ferry, release the new ferry from my ship, and dock the new ferry to the old ferry. Realized then that I forgot to transfer fuel into the tanks of my new ferry. So I went back to dock with the transport ship, and I realized half-way there that the engines weren't drawing fuel from the main fuel tank. My old ferry was out of fuel and still needed to be de-orbited so then I had to go back and re-dock with the old ferry which proved to be more of a pain in the ass than the first time. I think I'm about to just scrap the whole Mun base plans and bring all my Kerbals home

Yep, my first Mun landing broke the legs and engines off my lander. Unfortunately, I placed fuel tanks in such a way to block the Kerbals from escaping so I just left them there. This was in the 0.13 demo. I completed my first successful Mun rescue yesterday. I mean successful in that not only did I rescue the Kerbals, but I brought their lander back to Kerbin as well. This mission also doubled as a mission to start a Mun base. The hitchiker module is the new "habitation module" of my Mun Base. I landed, decoupled it, and took my lander off the top of it. I was about 250m from Jeb, Bob, and Bill who "walked" their capsule over using the reaction wheel as it was out of fuel. I used the miniscule amount of fuel left to hop up and make a connection at the docking port. My rescue vehicle was dangerously low on fuel so to make it home, I had to just barely leave the Mun's SOI and intercept it again which caused me to slingshot around the Mun at an altitude of 90km and fly out past the orbit of Minmus. From there, I just thrust retrograde at Apoapsis and that brought me home.

So after getting my rescue ship in orbit, I came within 650m of my stranded crew. I had one of the stranded crew ready to go on EVA and rendezvous with the rescue ship, but it never got any closer than 600m. I didn't think I'd be able to actually make it, so I put the Kerbal in back in the cockpit. While trying to get closer, I made the rescue ship's plane shift a bit from the target so I gave up as it took me quite a while just to get as close as I did. I went back and looked at my Mun rocket to see what was wrong, and I think I discovered it. Some of the parts were clipping into each other so I think they collided when I dropped the stage. Fixed that and launched again. This time I was much more successful! I discovered another problem while on my flight to the Mun; a fuel tank on my lander was blocking the door. That meant no EVA, my Kerbals were sad . I decided to land anyway just to get a taste of that. My lander lacked any RCS system so I think it was a little more difficult to land than it should have been. I just had two of the smaller thrusters that can vector on my lander. Lacking finesse, I managed to set my lander down while only destroying some of the fuel tanks and both thrusters. Also, I ended up sideways instead of on the landing gears. Oops. Anyway, with the fuel tanks destroyed my Kerbals are enjoying low-gravity strolls on the Mun until rescue arrives(if it ever does...)!

I know my Kerbals will be fine, I just wanted to make an interesting post to read. I don't know what happened. It wasn't boosters I was ejecting. It was two of the tall fat tanks and the bigass thruster that fits on the bottom (sorry, I don't know the names). They were connected to thruster on the stage above with one of the powerful decoupler devices. I've never used that before, so I was just seeing what it did. That may have caused the damage... Thanks for the links to the mods! I used the one Ted posted because I had found the one Sal posted, but I didn't know if it would work in 0.17. My Kerbals should be home soon!

Hi everyone! I downloaded v0.13 the other day and played it for about a week before I bought the full version. I would have bought the full version earlier, but I figured the Kerbals wouldn't want me to control their space program until I had at least orbited Mun. Well, I accomplished that and promptly bought the game. I've been having a blast using all the new rocket pieces, but I've not made it back to Mun yet. In fact, my mission to Mun is partly why I'm making this post. After much trial and error and the lives of a few Kerbals were lost, I finally got my Mun rocket into orbit. When I decoupled my atmospheric stage, something went terribly wrong and it did some serious damage to the rest of the rocket. A few fuel tanks were destroyed, but that's not the issue. Along with the fuel tanks went all of the thrusters! I've got three Kerbals orbiting Kerbin with no way home now. For this reason, I decided to put the mission to Mun on hold and go about rescuing those brave souls. I figured I would construct a rocket (actually, just a modified version of my first orbiter) to go up and rendezvous with the remains of Mun II, have the Kerbals space walk over to the rescue vessel, then land safely back on Kerbin. I soon found that that would be much more difficult than I had thought. At first I thought I would just be able to add another crew capsule to my rocket, but that can't be done. So my next plan was to just have two of the Kerbals jump out on the landing pad, but that presented more problems. The first was the issue where my Kerbal left the rocket and went splat on the launch pad. Second, even if I figured out how to get the Kerbals safely on the ground, I don't know how to regain control of the rocket while one of my crew is on EVA. So can anyone provide me with tips on how to rescue the Kerbals before they go insane or starve? I feel terrible that I managed to cause such a problem so soon after joining the Space Program, but I intend to do all that is within my power to fix the situation! EDIT: Accidentally posted this thread twice. Sorry mods.