sgt_flyer

here, your probe cage mounted on my angara modular rocket the two first stages are there to put the third stage and your probe cage in LKO, with room for error. the rocket's third stage has a powerful engine, which will make it ultra easy to go to mün and circularize around it (and it has still some fuel to spare for errors). the .craft file : http://www./download/an8y8amfk8h0c6l/Probe_Cage.craft you can still find my modular angara in my sig, if you wish to try out various configurations. (here, i used a A5 configuration, with a standard soyuz block I, and a KVTK as a transfer stage.) note : the probe cage in this configuration seem slightly unbalanced, the SAS system may not be able to compensate for imbalance (so you might have to keep the rocket under control, as the SAS in his current form don't really correct imbalances when firing the engines) ascent profile : after liftoff, you can hit '0' two times to disable some of the gimbals if the rocket wobble too much. start a smooth G-turn at 8000m, try to reach for 45° at 15000m, 30° at 20000m, and 20° at 30000m, then go to 0° at 40000m until you have a 100km apoapsis. (you will jettison the first stage during the g-turn) once near apoapsis, circularize with the second stage (and correct your angle relative to mün's orbit if you need), and jettison the second stage (you can even deorbit it if you wish, it's autonomous). use the third stage to make the transfer to mün, and circularize around it. have fun

yup, in this configuration, SAS will try to correct in the wrong direction, and as the rocket turns, the SAS want to compensate even more in the wrong direction... resulting in kerbal style flight for the rocket

My best time was a rendez-vous in around 11 minutes ingame time - it was not planned, but i ended my circularization after ascent less than 2 km from my target (i directly switched to burn retrograde to target upon seeing this to directly match velocities) Anyway, other than luck or mechjeb, it's hard to make such interceptions

Erm russians are masters in gudance systems - buran made a fully automatic ascent and landing (most russian manned spacecrafts are automated, to remove human error from equations )

Mmh, does the flip happen just after you deployed your landing legs ? If so, one of the legs is blocking the exhaust of one of your engines when deployed. Also, are your engines above or near the center of mass (com which would shift under the engines when fuel tanks drains) ? The game doesn't handle correctly the engines in puller configuration. (Ideally, the gimballing should be reversed when engines are above / before the center of mass, but they do not reverse their controls, resulting in asas making correction inputs in the wrong way, and then applies more and more corrections, still in the wrong way.)

when i need a circular orbit, i usually try to get under 1km difference between AP and PE - generally end up between 500m and 1km difference, but i don't bother to go further, it becomes too unstable the nearer you get from a 0m difference (except for geosync, i usually try to get even lower, just to try to minimize the satellite's drift. anyway, the various space agencies use margins of error when setting their satellites orbits. plus, some satellites do have ways to correct their own orbits, should the need arise. (it's costly enough to get them up there )

well, i still use those angaras in various configurations, depending on the payload - in the end, the various final stages is completely optionnal for those lifters, and are only useful as transfer stages. ex : the A7 with the upgraded block I without fairing can lift around 60 tons to LKO without much of a sweat and regarding the fairings, i now have even better ones but i'm still working on these new fairings.

You can 'link' to images hosted on a image sharing website (the basic is with the tag - with the image's address between the tags. Else, for the spaceport, it's confusing for the people if you use multiple tag categories, notably ones like Vehicle assembly building or the structural parts tag - because the spaceport is used to host mods too - for example, when people later want to search for modded structural parts in the spaceport, they will have your upload has an additional result, because it has a 'structural part' tag. It's because tag researchs work like this : you select a specific tag, and the search engine will show you all the entries which have that tag - regardless of what other tags they have, then people can limit the results by adding another tag, etc, which is why many people here dislike seeing spaceport entries with too much or irrelevant tags - it 'pollutes' the researchs Ideally, your spaceport entry should only use the craft tag, eventually a 'stock' tag, and the tags you created, which we can see between the commas. The other tags should be used by mod packages (given the number of mods for ksp )

Yup, for joolian moons, you just need to plan an aerobrake that would lower your apoapsis near your target´s orbit. (And that's free delta-v to aerobrake ) - if you aim to go to laythe, and it's in a good position, you can even skip the jool aerobraking and directly aerobrake into layhte's atmosphere - saving even more delta-v.

@dispatcher - it´s a train ship he can add the rear parts after the cabin has been put into orbit. Plus, the SPH mirror symmetry is too useful for building this kind of ship

interesting design mmh - would it be possible to align the 3-man capsule door with the lander can's one by starting to build it from the lander can, then rotating the 3-man capsule (assuming starting from the lander can will actually make the 'control from here' on the lander can itself, and not on the capsule ) ?

short answer : you can't block crossfeed of monopropellant / battery power. long answer : monopropellant, xenon gas, electricity and air intakes are shared through the whole craft - they will be used up all at the same time unless you clic on the fuel tank and clic on the little green arrow to prevent the use of the resource.

well my old stock skylab still works in 0.21 (just tested it ) (warning, 1005 parts for the whole saturn V and skylab )) it's even easier to dock the ATM with the new SAS system (link to the old thread in my sig ) - almost no modifications on my saturn V first and second stage for the skylab version - and i replaced the S-IVB by something which had the same shape (as skylab is, basically a modified S-IVB ) the Saturn 1-b in the same post is still able to send an Apollo CSM to LKO to service it

okay i'm posting a building technique for stock NTR pods, at Gusturbo's demand (because i find that the NTR engines are ugly, so i prefer to hide them ^^) so here's a breakout of the techniques i used on a transfer stage i made : podded nuclear engine : Step 1 : the nuclear 'pod' is easy to make, and make the nuclear engine to be radially attached. (you can stop at this stage if you simply wish to hide the nuclear engine's body) - if you attach it radially to a fuel tank or something connected to one, you don't need additional fuel lines - it will pump fuel from whatever it's attached on to automatically. (basically, the fuel will go from the fuel tank, to the structural fuselage, then to the engine) first, we have the middle engine we can see on the images. second, we 'hide' the bottom of the structural part - you can use either the new FL-A10 adapter(left pod on the image) or an aerodynamic nose cone (right pod on the image), you simply need to attach one or the other directly to the structural fuselage. Step 2 : this step starts by centering a cubic strut on top of the structural fuselage, then attaching a NCS adapter and NCS nosecone to the cubic strut. next, in 'lock' placement mode, i put the engine in the center of the fuel tank, and rotate it 90° sideways. - you can then modify the NTR engine and NCS adapter rotation to have a better look . once you are done, 'copy' with alt+clic your first engine pod, place the new one at the same place than the first one, and rotate it 180°, and adjust it so it's at the same height than the other, then correct the NTR engine and the NCS adapter rotation on the new one, to get something which looks like the one i have on the picture. Step 3 : the rover bodies are just here for the looks - i radially attached a cubic strut to the main fuel tank, between the two structural fuselage (on the last picture, you can see that there's a slight gap between the two), i then attached a rover body onto the cubic strut. after that, it's just a matter of moving the cubic strut with the rover body at the good spot, then copying the cubic strut and the body to place a second one. Step 4: in this, i add a cubic strut turned 90 ° between the NCS adapters, it's used as a support for another cubic strut + rover body, you just need to tilt the cubic strut + rover body a bit to have a nice angle at the top of the nuclear pod. step 5 (optionnal): here, i simply put a strut between the main tank and the top of the structural fuselage (done for each side) - i place it at the opposite of the radial attachment point of the structural fuselage, for additional structural integrity, and eliminate any risk of wobbliness when the transfer stage move under it's own power. Step 6 : of course, you can do all the previous steps in the symmetry mode you want - (here, with a x2 symmetry) in the end, here's an example .craft file for those who want to see how it's done http://www./download/e5wopisth6ibwhj/Nuclear_pods.craft in the hopes that it can be useful to you for improving the looks of your stock spacecrafts

yes, they are the ones in that corner

the markers on the pitch / yaw / roll / x/y/z gauges are blue instead of orange when you are in fine control mode

ok, i finalized my lander the test mission had it going to duna, aerobrake into a 60x60 orbit around duna, separate from the transfer stage, land, get back into orbit, rendez-vous with the transfer stage, and gone back to kerbin for aerobrake, separate from the transfer stage and then landed back on kerbin lander on duna (parachutes repacked by the kerbal ) : duna ascent : the lander docked with the transfer stage, after the transfer burn back to kerbin: here's the .craft file, for the lander, transfer stage and it's launch vehicle (the launch vehicle is my modular angara rocket i always go back to it, because it can be adapted to such a wide range of payloads ) (the lander + the transfer stage weight 52 tons, the lander alone 19.5 tons) http://www./download/ydhch38d6al40dj/Duna_lander.craft you can use what you want from the .craft file, it's the one i used for the test mission, so there's the launch rocket and the transfer stage in addition to the lander. if you use the launch vehicle provided, here's the ascent profile : kerbin ascent (two stage to orbit): hit 0 to disable gimbal on some of the skippers, to reduce the payload's wobbliness before liftoff. liftoff at full throttle, start your G-turn at 8000m with a nice smooth curve to reach a 45° angle of attack at 15000m, 30° at 20000m, 20° at 30000m, and 0° at 50000m (your apoapsis will be near 80km at this point). the first stage will be dry around 30000m. cut the engines when you reached your apoapsis, coast, and circularize as usual. separate from the second stage, and deorbit it. (it has probe control and a few rcs for that) ---------- transfer stage : the transfer stage can pump fuel directly from the main tank of the lander (the two other small tank will remain untouched) so you may wish to disable crossfeed on the docking port - although it's useful when making your transfer back from duna, no need to transfer fuel from the lander to the transfer stage (and the lander will still have a bit of fuel, to assist in kerbin landing at the end of the mission, with the two small tanks) duna landing : deploy all the parachutes at the same time, the drogues will do their job - you'll need to use a bit of fuel to cushion the landing though. duna ascent : i'm not really an expert on duna ascent, i just started my g turn not long after takeoff, turning fast to a 45° angle of attack, and then slowly to 0° and burned until i hit my desired apoapsis, and then circularized after reaching apo. docking back to the transfer stage should be pretty straightforward - you can use either docking port of the lander for that. kerbin landing : kerbin landing works the same as duna landing, you need to cushion a bit the landing with the engines (it's able to do a parachute landing on kerbin with almost all it's fuel still in the tanks, in case of an unplanned rapid disassembly of the rocket) so, here's my lander, use it and name it as you see fit

i'm working on a version which should be near your specifications. the lander has 84 parts for 2 kerbals, weights approximately 20 tons, and has a TWR of 1.72 on duna surface,with full fuel. it has 2500 m/s of delta-V at duna ground level, 2700 in vaccum. here's a picture of it : the other object you can see is a nuclear transfer stage i made for it, to test it on duna still in testing phase, i'm awaiting for the transfer window to open ^^ note : it will need to land under engine power, in addition of it's parachutes, duna atmo being waaayy too thin

Skylab was a dry workshop - they emptied and modified the saturn V S-IVB stage to transform it into the skylab (engine removed and replaced by a radiator, scientific stuff installed in it, etc) For the telescope mount, on lift-off it was inline with the rest of the skylab, mounted on an articulated system. once in orbit, the telescope mount rotated 90 degrees sideways, freeing the docking port. (I once made a stock one, were i replaced the articulated system with simply RCS inside the telescope mount, to move it to the deployed position)

Salut français de Nantes

@captain sierra - you mean like this ? build order : place your probe core, a rockomax x200-32 (or another tank, here it's just the right size for the tail cones) and a X200-8 under it. place radially a modular girder on the rockomax x200-32 (move the whole ship a bit (shift+clic)) so you can move your camera inside the x200-8 tank), activate smooth placement, and increase symmetry to x4 and place it under the x200-32. i use the x4 symmetry to be able to center the girder (when all 4 are indistinguishable from each other) then i lower the symmetry to x1 without moving the mouse. (x or shift+x) go back to snapped placement after you placed the modular girder. i then snap the mainsail onto the modular girder so it's clipped inside the X200-8, and add a flat rockomax adapter for the look then, place 1 tailcone on the side of the fuel tanks, and add a LVT-30 onto it. (you may need to rotate back and forth some parts, so they become green) - once you assembled your tailcone + engine, pick the tailcone (the engine will come with it) and do a x4 symmetry, then replace it on the fuel tank. you may need here to do a little back and forth rotation here for all 4 of them to become green, then stick it in place. in the end, symmetry x6 (even x8 i think) is possible with this.

@gusturbo it's possible to reduce to 4 adapters on each level, to limit part count - basically, the outer part of the other adapters just barely clip the small circle on the adapter with 4 adapters on each level

Regarding the cubic strut technique, it's fairly simple : attach the part you want to clip to a cubic strut, then attach the cubic strut to the part you wànt to clip into. You might need to play with x2 then x1 symmetry or rotate back and forth the part until it's green, the snap it in place

as it's always time to develop new building techniques, i developed a stock spherical fuel tank after the work i did on the vostok reentry capsule (i posted the vostok rocket in the okb1 thread, if you want to see it ) this fuel tank hold three rockomax x200-16 fuel tanks - which is approximately the right quantity of fuel for a sphere this size. you can add a fuel line starting from the bottom flat adapter to bring fuel to the rest of your ship. here's an open version of the sphere, to see what's going on inside : the three fuel tanks are linked by fuel lines, and the last tank in the fuel line chain has a last fuel line to connect it to the bottom plate. note : if you make a full fuel line loop between the three tank, you can put a fuel line on any of the flat adapters to fuel the rest of your equipments. the sphere pattern is the same as the one on the vostok spacecraft - basically, i used 14 flat adapters to create the sphere body - 4 angled 45° upwards, 4 angled 45° downwards just under the four first, 4 in the middle in the holes left by the previous adapters, and one at the top and one at the bottom. - the sphere has been built by starting from the bottom adapter, in order to have a connection point for assemblies. all those adapters are connected with a single cubic strut to the fuel tanks, in order to have a rounded surface for placing those adapters - the fuel tanks being placed in 2 crosses. (on the vostok, i put the small flat adapters around a stayputnik probe core to create the sphere)

the 'damaging' part of the engine is only in it's bell nozzle - and only if you activate it