CatastrophicFailure

Moar boosters clamps?

Funny you should mention that... I was having the exact same issue trying to leaving Duna the other day. Couldn't figure out why the ship was in a brazilian pieces on the ground when I came back from dinner...

I actually did get to space today. That much in and of its self is worth of a profanity-laced tirade, but the real hair-pulling didn't begin until AFTER I got there. So I've been working on this "simple":confused: station for the past week or so. I'm finally down to my last component, the second of a pair of huge solar arrays with bits from RemoteTech & KOSMOS, and as I'm approaching I see this. Umm something's not right here... Apparently that pair of arrays on the right decided to part company with their cohorts & wander off on their own when I was no where near the freakin' thing no less! OK, it'll be asymmetrical but I can tolerate that I guess. Continue approaching to dock, and spend the next half hour whizzing past the station this way & that cuz the array package is bloody HUGE and some of my RCS ports decide to randomly stop working, giving it all the agility of a glacier. Finally get it lined up, proceed with docking, and on top of everything THIS happens: Apparently those KOSMOS panels are attached with bubble gum & velcro since the SLIGHTEST LITTLE BUMP sent them scattering like cockroaches when the light comes on. F9'd at least a dozen different times, tried retracting the panels first, tried editing the CFG file to strengthen, always the same. Speaking of cockroaches, this station must have an infestation of micro-kraken. So I decide to just cut my losses & home the existing panels will run the dozen or so comm dishes. I back the delivery truss off & de-orbit it, extending the panels just so I can watch them burn while cackling madly. And what snapped off with just a whisper before doesn't even START to come apart until I get THIS far into reentry: And then in a final insult KSP crashed about three seconds after so I have to go back & do it all over again I swear this station has been cursed from the get-go. This is what happens when you're trying to Kerbal & eat dinner at the same time. Programmed a maneuver into mechjeb from the map screen, switched back, and could only watch helplessly in slow motion while this happened: F9. Then I tried launching something with quantum struts engaged and the results were a little... springy.

See? He wasn't trying to do ANYTHING on Kerbin with all those seperatrons at all. He was trying to get OFF Kerbin.

Land Yacht.

I would raise my hand, but not with all the debris flying around this thread.

How's this for a double fail? Was having all sorts of trouble earlier with my first construct in .20, hit F12 a bunch thinking I'd at least have something amusing to post here, then remembered my .20 is direct from KSP so the STEAM screenshot command don't work!

Awesome beat me to it. Now go do the same on Moho or Eloo >

Think they came with NovaPunch. Nothing special, just light. The landing wasn't bad at all, I leaned a lot landing that mapsat before. I used mechjeb just to keep the lander level, and came down VERY slowly, only .1 or .2 mps just before touchdown, with zero lateral speed. I got it stable balanced on one leg, then killed mechjeb & went full reverse RCS to push it to the ground. Yes, the probe was still functional before Bob came along. It could easily take off again, as a matter of fact it did several times trying to land. I actually touched down at first at the TOP of that hill there. The probe core also has enough torque to flip the probe a dozen meters into the "air" there. Strap on one of those new seats from .20 and you could probably land a Kerbal with an ion engine!

Am I missing something or was this sub forum not here yesterday? Anyways, I hope I've got posting screenshots directly from Steam figured out here or I'm gonna end up looking very silly. Trying to post this all with an iPad. After continued delays with the development of the Explorer class reusable interplanetary craft, my Kerbals were getting antsy for a crewed flight beyond Minmus and so it was decreed that a quick & dirty mission to the easiest possible target be launched as soon as possible. That would be Gilly due to the minimal landing requirements. A new lander was cobbled together from whatever was lying around and dispatched at the next launch window. Most of the early mission footage was lost due to confusing "film canisters" with "roach motels" so we join our intrepid crew already en route: Bill and Bob were only too happy to volunteer for the two Kerbal crew that meant a couple of years in a cramped tin can when they realized it was a couple of years in a cramped tin can WITHOUT Jeb (who's expertise was still required in the launch abort testing division). After an uneventful cruise the craft successfully aerobrakes at Eve, and a minor course tweak sets up the Gilly encounter. Burning into orbit around Gilly and targeting a nice flat looking spot not far from the Gilly Mapper that successfully soft landed several years ago. The painstakingly slow decent & landing on RCS alone (so as not to dirty up the place they'll be walking around with unpleasant radioactive exhaust dust), then pushing down with the RCS to avoid those annoying slow drifting Gilly bounces. After a couple of hours (cuz I was watching Star Trek) of system checks the Kermans take their first, um, "steps" onto an alien world. With Kerbol already low on the horizon, Bob gets the go ahead to schlep the 4.3 kilometers to visit the previous visitor (and permanent resident). His instructions are to document the condition of the probe after years in space. Here we see the Gilly mapper standing as it has for the last few years, a silent sentinel to abilities of Kerbal engineers. Those same engineers told Bob very specifically NOT to touch it! "And especially Bob, whatever you do, and this is very important, do NOT use your jetpack to joust with the probe!" Bob realizes the sage wisdom of these warnings after a third of a kilometer sliding on his face. Yes, the Mapper stands as... Um... lies... well it's there. Dejected and sore, Bob races the setting Kerbol back to the ship. The Ketbal engineers neglected to include LIGHTS on the lander, so nighttime EVAs are somewhat restricted. ...and so the sun sets on the first day of Bill & Bob's excellent adventure as they shut down for the short Gilly night. Only 136 more to go before the return. "Bill?" "Yes Bob?" "There's a lovely Eve out tonight Bill" "Stop it Bob."

LOL I just figured a handgun would actually be EASIER to acquire in Darfur or the like than any place "civilized" like the Philippians. My impression is that legally acquiring a handgun outside of the United States is only *slightly* more difficult than say actually getting into orbit.

They didn't. There were several unmanned suborbital test flights. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Unmanned_flight_tests Apollo 1 was specifically to be the first manned flight.

...? They let you have handguns in the Philippians? oh btw did that screenshot work at a reasonable size anyone?

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/576737662594720696/385F4E8313342B695BE9FDAF0BE8B9E8988CE750/ Plz ignore, screenshot test

I dig it. Setup has a simple elegance to it.

Technical question: does a lot of debris contribute to lag or any practical irritations? Trying to select what I actually wanted to select as a target became such a problem I had to put my station at a ridiculously high orbit just to target it for rendezvous. My two favorite parking orbits are getting pretty full. I usually use a few retro firing solids on my last stage to back it off & due orbit it, but these NovaPunch parts are so strong they're actually surviving and scattering debris on land.

No, in real life they forget to transcribe metric to imperial and thus fire an impromptu kinetic kill vehicle at Mars (guess which one won).

Hi. Thanx for your input. After taking a look at the EXTREMELY complex file structures, I think I'm just gonna play it safe & relaunch the relative bit rather than risk mucking up my persistence file. But I appreciate the assistance.

Staging testing for my "Abbot" probe. It and its counterpart "Costello" are going to Jool shortly. A video would convey this better, but still havn't figured out how to. After this stack separated, TWR just happened to be exactly 1, so with a slight nudge it began to gently drift towards the ground picking up lateral speed. Didn't quite loose mass fast enough tho, and slow-motion carnage ensued: And believe it or not, THIS was actually a complete success!

Trying to get this screenshot to work... somehow my docking port (CBM package) ended up below the surface of what it mounted on. Trying to dock with it the ship just pushes against it without merging. Which is really weird since that node UNdocked just fine after launch. Anyways, is there any way to fix this without scrapping it and launching a whole new module? Some way to tweak the persistence file perhaps?

The Mün hates me. I can put a fahrting base on Minmus but the MÜn has been kicking my arse since day one. I mean literally, in my first hour with KSP trying the landing scenario, just happened to land near an arch and thought I'd check it out. "Hey this Kerbal can fly!" "Hey this Kerbal can slide!" "Hey this Kerbal's.... not moving...?" Four attempts later (one crew plowed into the regolith at three digit mps, one just disappeared, one crew rescued from münar orbit) my rescue mission finally returns the crew of the fourth failed mission. Tried again and I still managed to hit the space bar & stage by mistake Immediately after landing. Fortunately the return stage didn't go anywhere so I was able to send Jeb up a hill for a quick photo before everyone got the heck off that cursed rock before anything else went wrong First Moho lander/orbiter didn't go so well either. The lander got some wonderful views before it whizzed past the planet with its engine uselessly burning, off into solar orbit. The orbiter got some nice hi res maps just before slamming into the surface at about 4 klicks per second. ROFL that is classic!

I'll second this & throw my own two noob cents in. Likewise, for me mechjeb is a wonderful learning tool. I'm a very visual person, that's what drew me to KSP in the first place from Orbiter. I need to see things to fully understand them. Mechjeb lets me see how things like efficient maneuver nodes should look, rather than me pulling random tags until I just happen to get it right. The delta v estimates are great tools too, sure it's funny as hell when you get ALMOST there then run out of fuel, but now I've just wasted how many hours on a rocket that don't work, and time is a precious commodity for me (I don't have nearly enough, Lord help me if they ever port KSP to the iPad!). Likewise with docking, I CAN dock freehand, done it enough times, but for me it's something that's tedious and not very entertaining. Mechjeb saves me time there that I'd rather spend enjoying something else in the game. But I've already found I prefer to do rendezvous by hand since mechjeb tends to be horribly inefficient there. Unfortunately it's really no surprise to find people hating over something so silly. It's human nature. Just watch Survivor, put any group of people together and the very first thing they do is create an "us" and a "them."

Jool, unintentionally. My first ion powered/BKO probe swung around Kerbol and just happened to encounter Jool. Hadn't been aiming for anything in particular, just wanted to get beyond Kerbin. Wandered around the Jool system for a few orbits till I ran out of xenon and a close encounter with Tylo dumped the probe back into Jool. I don't consider that a landing lol. My Duma flyby had so much extra fuel it became my first Duma orbiter. The first flown-as-planned mission was a 3 part Eve mapper/PieProbe lander & Gilly mapper that I landed anyway ala NEAR Shoemaker. Went off without a hitch. And all that time I still couldn't get a bloody lander back from the Mün!

You can have it both ways too altho it requires just a bit of extra finesse during landing. Below *should* be some shots of the first module of my Minmus base, one in launch configuration & another two after I ungracefully tried to disassemble the rocket to get a better shot of it. Didn't work so much. Anyways, you can launch and maneuver vertically, then drop the booster & switch to horizontal for the actual landing. It fell off after the rocket collapsed, but there's a MechJeb tin on the "top" of the base module. Once you drop the booster that become the command module and "up" is the right direction. Make sense?

Perhaps being a n00b I'm missing something obvious here, but why not skip the whole tricky tippy business & set up the rig to land "sideways" in the first place?