DMagic

Did you read the weekly development article, or C7's blog post? This is clearly not the only thing that will be changed. C7's update to the SAS logic and the implementation of a reaction wheel system sounds like a major change to me.

Try raising the landing legs on the main ship (save it first). Sometimes this works to force together two crafts, and sometimes it just breaks things, but you never know.

It's pretty much trial and error. Flexible connections like falofonos suggested work pretty well when you can use them, but sometimes that's not really an option. It is possible sometimes to dock together the two parts with subassembly loader. You can launch both parts already docked, lower the landing legs, then undock. If the ports are lined up correctly then their position shouldn't change much, but if they no longer line up then you need to move one of them. And you don't necessarily have to drive both components off the launch pad, like you show. I usually just drive one off, and then dock them right on the launch pad. This doesn't work with really big crafts or more than 2 or 3 parts though. You also have to keep in mind that your mass on the launch pad might be different from the final mass. If you have a bunch of full fuel tanks they will push down on the landing legs a little bit affecting the position of the docking ports.

There is almost always an in-game way to fix this, since it seems to only happen with multipart stations and bases, but I've run into one situation with no way to unstick the docking ports. I had two stuck ports on a 3-part vessel. What I'm wondering, though, is whether anyone has found a repeatable way to get this to happen with a stock, or at least mostly stock, save game. I've tried many times to replicate this using a bunch of different rover types on the launch pad (I've had stuck ports on rovers before), but I can never get the docking ports to stick together. And for anyone having issues with persistance file editing, make absolutely sure that you don't mess up any of the "{" or "}" entries; there are a ton of them, so it can be difficult to keep track. If you delete any of these it will totally screw up your vessel because it breaks how the game interprets the parts and how they connect to each other.

Within several km's of the target is fine for kethane, as long as you pick somewhere near the center of the deposit. Put a scanner on your miner just to make sure that you are still over a deposit if you aren't sure. And if Mechjeb is constantly crashing your lander that probably means you don't have a good design (it can still crash with a good design, but not all the time). I've found that really heavy landers without enough RCS or torque can give MJ problems, sometimes it will freak out in the final stages of landing when it tries to remove all horizontal velocity and crash. Crafts that have a really odd shape (really elongated in one dimension, or unstable and wobbly) can be difficult, too.

Ha, that's not functional. I just stuck a bunch of 2X2 structural panels together (I think the transmitter and receiver both have 33 of them) and called it a microwave transmitter. I mostly just wanted an excuse to put a station in solar orbit. And when I saw the icarus mod I knew that I had to find a use for it. I put the receiver on the base just to be a completionist. That would be neat though, if we had some use for a lot of power. Edit: I added a list of all the parts and plugin mods I used to the first post. Most of the uncommon, or newer, mods were also mentioned in the posts in which they were used. I think I got them all, but I might have a missed a few. And I don't use all the parts from most of those mods, I just delete the unused ones to keep memory usage down and the startup time reasonable.

The docking ports are probably just stuck on "state = acquire", you need to change that to "state = ready" in the persistance file. There are quite a few threads floating around here about docking ports not docking, that pretty much always seems to be the issue.

When launching into the correct inclination I first have to wait for Kerbin and Moho to be at a node (I think I use the descending node, because that lets you meet Moho near its periapsis). Just target Moho so that its orbit shows up in green, then try to look straight through Kerbin to the sun. You can use the Mun's orbit to do this, line everything up so that the Mun passes directly in front and directly behind Kerbin. Then just wait until you are about to cross Moho's orbit, the green circle representing its orbit will start to collapse to a single green line near a node. Then you have to launch at the right time. When the KSC is directly opposite from the sun (so it is midnight KSC time) is when I launch into a 20o orbit, but you could also launch into the opposite orbit at noon and have the same effect. This means that when I burn for Moho, on the side of Kerbin facing the sun, I'll be heading down on the map and should come out of Kerbin's SOI within 1o or so of Moho's orbit. The important part is timing your launch correctly and figuring out whether you need a positive or a negative inclination. Launching near midnight or noon should put you in the right orbit (actually a little before midnight or noon would probably be best). You just have to figure out which node you are at with respect to Moho. It's a little counter intuitive since you are burning retrograde with respect to Kerbin's orbit around the sun, but it makes sense if you think about it a bit. Edit: This might help a bit. Moho's orbit is in green. This is just before the ascending node, so the green circle is collapsing into a straight green line going up from left to right. The white line through the middle is the Mun's orbit, I'm using that to line up my view.

You also have to keep in mind that you will need a highly inclined orbit around Kerbin to match the inclination of another planet. I have done this many times going to Moho, and it requires about a 20o inclination around Kerbin to match the 7o inclination of Moho around the sun. So the only efficient way to do this is to launch into the right inclination, or change your inclination from a very high Kerbin orbit (further away than the Mun).

I know, it was meant in jest, since we twice posted at just about the same time in different threads.

Yeah, this tug thing seems to come up a lot recently. It seems to have to do with docking parts that don't have any probe core or command pod, to each other. Even though the station as a whole has the cupolas, if the segment that you are docking doesn't have any control points it can cause this issue. The game seems to maintain some understanding of how multipart crafts like this are put together. So that segment without a probe core is still, on some level, considered separately from the vessel as a whole (the parts are all listed together under the same vessel in the persistence file, but there are still some traces of it being separate). Most of the time your solution of undocking one part, then the other works (you can sometimes push the part into place with the tug without actually docking). When it doesn't, or if you just want to learn how to fix it, there is a way. This thread describes a few scenarios for how things look in the persistence file and how to fix them. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35777-Can-t-Undock-Bug It is fixable, but it's not exactly straightforward, and it requires some knowledge of how to edit the persistence file (you can also edit the quicksave file). Just make backups before you try anything. Edit: It seems Kipard and I are trolling the How-To threads at the same time. The method linked above does work, at least for me and the thread starter, but yeah, it's usually easiest to try working around the issue.

That's not really a beginner's thread for kethane. It's meant more for specifically how to design kethane miners, and the issues that trip up a lot of people. I don't even know that much about the scanners really, but the official kethane thread has a ton of posts about that if you want to know more. And I think there is some way to find out your current coordinates above a planet's surface without using any other mods. F3 maybe, or alt-F12; if you know the location of a deposit, then you just have to look straight down on the planet when you are directly over that location and land there on the next orbit. It's easiest though, to just put a scanner on your lander, even if you don't use it for scanning, you can at least see the deposits and your current location.

You can use the search function for the forum, but it usually works better to just use google. It sends you to the spaceport if there's a file there, or the forum if it's here, or more likely, to both within the top 4 or 5 hits. But if you just want to look for mods go the addon release, or the addon development sub-forum. The information there is almost always more up to date than the spaceport. And you can find a lot more details about the mods there, too.

Those 'low orbit' figures seem a little off. You can get down to 15 or 20km and stay safe around Moho. And for Bop you need to stay at least 18-20km above the surface to stay safe, there are some really high mountains on that moon.

With the last payloads ready to go the tug blasts off from orbit around Minmus before firing near Kerbin for ejection to Moho. The components arrive at Moho and dock with Moho Orbital. First to land is the microwave receiver array. Because of how this part is setup I decided to make a lander design specifically for it. The initial approach went well enough, but the final landing was a little rough, breaking off a few engines and RCS blocks. The main component suffered no damage though, so the construction rover docked and drove it into place. The main base is now complete, with all five sections docked together. Next up is the last segment to be landed. Here Jeb, Bill and Bob EVA to the rover's chairs. If you look closely at the docking mechanism for the rover and the skycrane you can see a weakness. The two are only really connected by a single cubic octagonal strut, making for a very wobbly connection. Because of this Mechjeb is of no use for landing this setup. It is a little too heavy handed with overcorrections and RCS use, so I have to land this one manually. Coming in for a landing I only overshot the base by about 1.5 km, which isn't too bad considering how difficult this thing is to control. I picked up a little bit more horizontal velocity than I wanted, but this is a rover, so I managed a safe landing and eventually came to a stop not too far away from the base. After driving over to the base I docked at the small port on the garage module (the kethane refinery left a little earlier). The skycrane was then refueled and blasted off back into orbit. As it lifts off, the skycrane lights up the base nicely. Back at Kerbin we have the bittersweet, final liftoff of the mission. This is the crew ferry, which will carry the remaining members of the station and base crew. After liftoff the ferry makes a quick stopoff at Minmus Orbital to refuel and transfer crew from the station to the ferry, which holds a total of 11 Kerbals. The ferry ignites its engines over Kerbin for the transfer to Moho. With Minmus orbital drained of all its fuel, and the rest of the crew departed to Moho, Seeing Kerman goes a bit insane. Left with nothing better to do, he uses the station's vast reserve of RCS fuel to bring the craft crashing down to the surface. He seemed to be attempting to crash into the ground base on Minmus, but overshot by a few km's. Little was left of the station after impacting on the surface. After arriving near Moho, the main engine is dropped to impact on the surface. The ferry then burns for orbital insertion when it gets a little closer to Moho. Polar orbit around Moho is getting a little crowded. The ferry comes in for a docking at Moho Orbital. With the rest of the crew arriving at Moho Orbital, a few trips are made to the surface and back using the lander ferry. After each landing the Moho base crew grows a little bit bigger. With the crew on the surface, Jeb and Bob take the front seats on Big Boy and set off to explore the area. Bill gets the jumpseat in the back. They drive off to the hills just north of the base, overlooking the crater. For a real challenge they attempt to drive up the mountain ridge running along the side of the crater. With a lot of help from the rocket engines on the back they manage to make it to the top of the ridge, they even avoided high centering on the sharp edge of the top. Spotting a good location to place a monument, Jeb climbs off the rover and sets off on foot. Being something of a daredevil, Jeb ignores the warnings from Bob and carelessly runs out towards the overlook location. He immediately, of course, loses his footing and tumbles off the side of the ridge. Jeb manages some impressive acrobatics while falling 800 meters or so to the bottom of the ridge. But he's tough, so he'll just wait for rescue from the rover. Bob makes a more careful approach to the overlook site where he plants the flag, memorializing the location of the first Kerbal outpost on Moho. He also took advantage of the situation to rename the site "Bob Crater". From here you can see the base down below in the crater. The two construction rovers were driven out of physics range and can be seen a bit further away. Way off on the other side you can see the original probe lander. And poor, dumb Jeb can be seen on the bottom left, sitting around waiting for a rescue. With Bob and Bill at the controls, the rover slowly creeps down the side of the ridge to rescue Jeb. The front mounted braking engine helps to keep the rover's speed under control during the descent. Jeb uses his jetpack to get back onto the rover, relegated now to the backseat. From the floor of the crater you can see the overlook site. They drive back to the base, and after a few trips back up to Moho Orbital, set off for the return to Kerbin. After the transit back to Kerbin (actually my first manned return flight) the ferry dips into the atmosphere for orbital capture. After getting back into a stable equatorial orbit the ferry makes one last burn for a landing at the KSC. And on the right you can see the final approach. The ferry gently descends to the surface, coming down fairly close to the launchpad. Back on the surface now, the crew come down from the lander, home at last after a 15 year mission to Moho. And that's that. I believe the final tally is 16 trips down to Moho, most from Minmus orbit, and 10 return trips to Kerbin. I built two orbital stations, one ground base, and made numerous other support crafts and rovers. Except for a few specialized landers and one tug, everything was reused many times. Fun times. And now I think I'll take a break and wait for 0.23 or 0.24 to come out and hopefully start out a new save in career mode.

Yeah, plus 6o, a little above 90 on the navball. But it's easy to see if you're going in the wrong direction, just check the nodes on the map.

I guess the take away should really be, don't correct your inclination when in LKO. This will take 200 or 300 m/s. You can either launch into the correct inclination, or worry about it later when you are much further away from Kerbin and the inclination change takes very little delta-v.

This could also be related to an issue that causes uncontrollable rotation when docking sometimes. It seems to be caused by parts clipping together, but it's not always easy to figure out where exactly the problem is. Whenever this happens to me I just go to the tracking center then back again. This always stops any weird rotation or wobble that happens after docking (or any other time).

Yeah, I do this whenever I launch to Minmus. You need to launch to an inclination of +/- 6o depending on whether you are at the ascending or descending node with Minmus. To figure this out, and to launch at the right time, select Minmus as your target when you're on the launch pad, its orbit should then be highlighted in green on the map screen. So just warp ahead until the KSC is directly opposite from where this green path intersects Kerbin (You can use either the Mun or a satellite in an equatorial orbit to make sure you are looking straight down at the KSC). If you are at a descending node (Minmus' orbit should go down on the right side of the map screen if you are looking directly down on the KSC) then you launch to -6o, the opposite if you are at the ascending node. To change your inclination just turn to a direction slightly above or below 90o during launch. You can watch the map screen and check one of the ascending or descending nodes to monitor your inclination relative to Minmus.

There is a mod for that actually. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24882-Actions-on-the-Fly-Edit-your-action-groups-in-flight-mode?highlight=actions

I see, so it's definitely a KAS issue then. Did you ever test fuel flow with an engine firing? It would be interesting to see if that worked, as there are some cases where an engine can pull fuel, but a kethane converter can't push it back the other way.

I mean replace the winches with docking ports. You would need some way to connect the 2 crafts together after this, like a bunch of trusses or structural elements stuck on the ends of those docking ports (and I assume that since at least one of the vessels is a rover you could just drive into place for docking). But if you could find a way to actually dock the vessels together instead of use the KAS connections you could eliminate that as a variable. Fuel flow is weird about radial, or otherwise complex connections. So this would help to figure out if you have a KAS problem or a fuel flow problem.

Have you tried replacing the KAS connections with docking ports? I know this would probably be tricky to put together as your craft looks fairly complex, but it would at least confirm if this is a stock fuel flow issue, or a KAS issue.

Nice flyby mission. I'm always excited to see people's Moho rockets.

How low is low? I have one about midway between Moho and Kerbol. Check my Moho thread for more about it.