Jokurr

Having your docking port not on the same axis as your C of M is a total pain. I once tried using the inline docking port on a ship as my original design did not have room for one. It was way off from where the C of M was, and that was probably the most frustrating experience I’ve ever had in the game. Never am I doing that again, I’m always sure to make room for a docking port that on the same axis as the C of M, and that RCS thrusters are symmetrical about that point.

cur - ball.

I saw my first eclipse a few days ago, I was gonna put a picture in the cool KSP pictures thread but then I noticed almost every second picture on that page had an eclipse in it.

So I’ve decided to start setting up some permanent bases/colonies, first on the Mun and outward from there. As stuff like life support isn’t modeled in the game I don’t really “need†anything other than a hitchhiker capsule to make it a base but of course I’d like my base to consist of more than just that, for flavour if not anything else. So what do you guys include in any permanent bases you build? I’m thinking of a few hitchhiker cans along with some solar panels, a rover for the residents to go exploring in, and a mobile refueling platform. Other than that, I’m not sure what to bring, even if it doesn’t serve any actual purpose.

When I first started playing I didn’t realize this function was there, so when a mission went bad, that was it. My first two attempts to land on the Mun had to be restarted from the beginning since I crashed the lander into the surface. No reloading before I make the final approach, time to head back to the launchpad at KSC. Since then I’ve discovered the quicksave function, but now I think I rely on it too much. I used it a few times with my first manned landing on Duna for example. On one hand it’s nice that I don’t have to restart that long voyage from scratch, but I also feel that reloading is almost “cheating†and the feeling of accomplishment when I finally do land isn’t as strong. I feel I would be more proud of my achievements if I didn’t quicksave in order to get there, but at the same time I don’t want to go all the way to a far away planet only to have a lander bounce a little too hard on the final landing approach and flip over, rendering it unusable . How often do others rely on quicksave?

20 m/s is more like 45 mph.

Cool, I was thinking about searching for a mod that would do this, I didn't want to leave some of my kerbals stranded at sea

At low altitudes it most definitely is. However, I noticed with the turbojet engine once you get above 9km altitude or so, your speed really starts to increase the higher you go, with little change in fuel consumption rate. If you want to fly close to the surface than the basic engine seems to be the way to go. I did not realize that wingspan had a large effect on efficiency, I’ll have to try introducing a larger wings and see what the results are. Thanks!

So just for fun, I’ve decided to create a plane that is tasked with picking up Kerbals from wherever their capsule landed (though if they land in the water they’re kinda pooched), and returning them to the KSC. As the Kerbals might land just about anywhere, the plane needs to have enough fuel to do a full trip around Kerbal. The question then becomes, what is the most fuel efficient atmospheric engine one can build? What altitude should I be flying at? I noticed that the basic jet engine is listed as having a higher Isp than the turbojet engine, but after running a few tests, I’m thinking this data must be based off of an altitude where the turbojet engine hasn’t reached its optimal Isp. Right now I’m leaning towards using a turbojet engine plane and flying it around 15,000m, would this be close to as efficient as I could get? I’m also thinking there would be no need for more than one engine, is that correct? What should I be using for air intake to optimize efficiency?

How the heck does one go about getting a Kerbal off of Eve? The rocket would be absolutely massive, how do you even get it over there? Assemble it in space? Anyway for me it would be Mun or minmus, I don't really find one harder than the other, they both have their own challenges. I've currently got some Kerbals on Duna who will hopefully be returned to Kerbin sometime soon.

Well this is not one song but a full album, Carbon Based Lifeforms - World of Sleepers

What part of the rules does a thread like this go against?

I managed to get it out by editing the save to above ground level and then using the debug menu (alt + F12) to turn off crash damage.

Thanks for the video, that helped me find the file I need but the video only deals with orbits which doesn't help me. I've figured out how to adjust my altitude to just above the surface but upon loading my craft instantly explodes, don't know why. Upon lifting my ship up, I've also noticed it is upside down for some reason (I couldn't rotate my camera when I was 8km under so I didn't notice before). I'm not sure what parameters I need to change in order to get this to work. Does anyone know how to rotate the ship? Or why my ship instantly explodes?

Got a link to it? I can't seem to find it.

What exactly would I be editing in the save file?

So I recently completed my first manned landing on Duna, where I brought a lander which will also return my Kerbals to orbit, and a separate rover for them to explore the surface in. Not long after landing, my Kerbals got into their rover and went off on an excursion. Little to my knowledge, it appears my lander landed in quicksand, and is now ~8.4 km underneath the surface of Duna. So how can I get out of this predicament? Not sure if this bug is all that rare, has anyone dealt with this problem before?. I’m guessing I’ll need to enable console commands to disable clipping and infinite fuel? What would those commands be? EDIT: I should also mention that this lander doesn't have any sort of ability to be piloted without a Kerbal inside, is there another command to allow me to control it without anyone inside?

I'm amazed at how many people "accidently" arrived at a planet, I have a hard enough time lining up my trajectory on purpose. Space is a big place, I imagine if I accidently overshot the Mun or Minmus I'd just shoot myself into space, nowhere near anything.

At first I completely winged it (“hmm, this rocket looks just about big enough to get me where I’m goingâ€Â) though now I put some planning into most of my missions. At the very least I use mechjeb to ensure my spacecraft actually has enough delta V to reach it’s destination (and back, if that is part of the mission). I’ll have a general idea of what I want to do on various missions, but that is more or less the extent of the planning I’ll do. Most of my rockets are based off of previous iterations but I sometimes will launch missions with untried rocket configurations.

Duna, though it took me 3 tries to bring a probe back from there. Eve is the only other planet I've been to (and have yet to return from there).

The thing I adore about this game is how we use realistic physics and existing technology to get around the solar system, when more hypothetical engines and technologies are introduced, even if they can’t be used inside the solar system, some of that flavour is lost. For that reason I prefer to have a binary system rather than true interstellar travel to another star lightyears away. And besides, there is still LOTS to add within the Kerbol system before we think too much about going beyond. More gas giants with unique moons please!

That seemed to work, thank you! I guess the auto stage likes to do it's thing even when the autopilot isn't enabled.

So I built this probe that is designed to land on Duna, but first it docks with a space station in LKO, where a booster which has the fuel it needs to reach duna is already docked. The way my design worked out is it has a surplus of fuel by the time it reaches the space station, so I transfer what fuel the ship has onto the station. This stage is then discarded. However, whenever I fire off this stage, all other stages seem to go off as well. It turns on any engines, and also activates my parachutes. Not sure why this happens. I press spacebar once, and it's like it becomes stuck and it fires off all remaining stages. This only seems to happen after I dock with another ship/station. Is this a bug or am I just doing something wrong here? Is there a way to get around it? I have a mechjeb module on the ship if that has anything to do with it, though I'm doing the docking manually and don't have mechjeb activated when it starts firing stages.

Whenever I equip a ship with a mechjeb module, my sound starts to cut out for a fraction of a second, approximately every 5 seconds or so. If I remove the module the problem seems to go away. Is this a known issue, and if so is there a fix for it?

A bit less than a week. No mods, only video I watched was one on how to dock (which I guess wasn't necessary, but I wanted to mimic the actual Apollo missions with a landing module and a command module above in orbit around the mun). Hardest part was definitely building a rocket big enough to get there. At the time I did not fully realize what struts did so my fuel tanks had the tendency to collide into each other during ascent. My rocket would take off at ~15% throttle and even then making it into orbit was not a guarantee.