Tobmaster

Mission Report 4: Tobmaster Still on Duty: With the threat neutralized and under study by the research base, THe teams had their eyes set on Minmus. A space station was set out to achieve orbit and await the landing crew. The landing crew launched from Kebin just hours later, making a direct trip to Minmus orbit. Once upon the surface, the landing team (well, one kerbal) realized just how low the gravity was and was glad the engineers designed the rover pod to self right Although once the rover was launched, Mergel Kerman forgot about science and went for a low gravity drive Feeling the need for more planetary landings, KSC decided to make modifications to their single launch space station for travel even further from Kerbin: After the failure, Jeb decided that he should have sprung for the higher quality duct tape. Once that was corrected, further launches were a success. Now they were set to start a trip to Eve

Report 3: Engineer on Duty: Tobmaster: WIth all the successes, KSC decided to expand its influence by launching increasingly large space stations for use in the system: Once again there was an issue with the communication network, but now with more devices in orbit, KSC was able to determine that a strange radio source was coming from Mun and interfering with their systems. A team of engineers then set out to design a rover craft capable of spending months on the surface without communications, searching for the source. After leaving Kerbin, the team at KSC just had to wait. Weeks passed until a screeching unintelligible communication was heard over the comms. The scientists worked around the clock to analyze the transmission and found one lone picture uploaded in the stream. The strange object they saw was presumed to be the source of the interference and a plan was devised to nullify the transmission. With the transmission sealed off, KSC was able to receive more images from Mun and continue with their Space Program. The team's favorite was of Bob jumping like an idiot on an anomalous structure:

Mission Report 2: Engineer on duty: Shand Night started off with a bang... and a boom... With that out of the way, the start of space station modules were sent up A work of art Once the first module was stationed in orbit, a few more segments were added to increase the fuel in hopes of being able to start interplanetary missions. The last launch of the night had Bill grabbing for the abort button because of a faulty fuel line. Much to his surprise the abort button wasn't even connected to the console forcing him to wrestle the machine into a successful orbit.

Trying to recreate after the apocalypse In April... Mission report 1: Star date… Er Wednesday: Engineer on duty 1001sd Our first launch to begin the much needed space station was a complete success. The Rocket was clean and elegant, but had a flaw. Although the rocket launched perfectly the station core failed to make orbit and made a spectacular reentry… Man you should have seen it. A sister launch of the one previous performed better than the first and set our first orbital body. Strange though, the moment it achieved orbit, our communication network went down completely. Not a problem, the next launching shall proceed even without communication. With communication down, the mission was pushed forward blind. Luckily we reestablished contact right as the munar approach was taking place. Touch down! The rover has landed!

Collaboration Chronicles On March 26, 2013 a joint mission to investigate each celestial body in the Kerbol System began. Launch Engineers Involved: Project Lead: 1001sd Mission Reports: Tobmaster Flight Coordinator: Shand President of ‘Things that Sparkle’: Australianfries Chief Button Presser: Schweehog Head Disembodiment Surveyor Budgie Lead of Creative Differences: Asmayus KSC Coroner #1854: DarthVader Mission Plan: We each get 36 earth hours to add to a save game before the save gets handed off to the next person in line, starting with the Project Lead and downwards. All players have the option to send their save earlier than the planned 36 hour window, if they desire or find it necessary to not hold up the continuity of the project. This mission is being done with only the KW Rocketry mod to liven things up and no others. The following updates will contain the mission reports as KSC receives them at random intervals as interplanetary communication allows. Our goal, as stated above, is to visit and land on every celestial body in the Kerbol System, categorized with a death probability less than 100%. The very same ‘death probability algorithm’ has been seen to give out a probability of 75% for one destination. After various troubleshooting passes by the brightest of engineers, they have ensured that percentage was, indeed, “not too lowâ€Â. – Sounds like progress… We have had a few vacancies, if you would like to participate, drop us a line...

I use quick save because of the times when my craft explodes and it isn't my fault. Check the map in mid burn and switch back to a fiery explosion. Reload and I'm back cruising to Laythe without a problem. If there comes a time when all spontaneous explosions stop, then I would probably use it much less. Also on my old computer I got used to using it because KSP would crash every 20 minutes.

Next time create an action group to undock... Sometimes you can get the torque of your craft to pry against the half undocked set. Click to undock two on one side and steer it a tad to keep those apart and quickly undock the other two.

KW Rocketry delivery system Stock Mega Rover delivery

And you don't "have to" start small... This was my first docking project:

OK, since you are able to get close enough for the switch from orbit to target, then you are already stepping in the right direction. Now when it switches to target, your speed switches as well to m/s relative to your target. The prograde and retrograde (green indicators) switch as well so you know which way to apply thrust. This quick and dirty Tutorial will not be easy on fuel, but once you've gotten it down, you can change the inefficient parts: Usually I come in at the switch (orbit to target) at about 150m/s relative to target and when I get within 10k, or nearing as close to the target as possible, I will burn on the yellow/green retrograde to bleed off the speed. Here is where it isn't efficient, but easy to do: Burn off all the speed until you are at as close to 0m/s as you can. Now turn to the pink prograde (you should be pointed roughly in the direction of your target but use the navball for alignment) and accelerate towards the target to about 20 to 30 m/s (or slower depending on how close your initial encounter was. Of course since you are in orbit, the course will change over time and you will just have to repeat the above action over again once the distance to target tapers off). Once you make it within 1-2k from the target, keep the m/s much lower. Ideally you would want to keep your green prograde circle aligned over the pink indicator which will bring you to your target. Once you figure out the rough mechanics of it it become much easier and you can throw out some of the unnecessary burns as you progress, but the above guarantees you will get close to your target, just won't guarantee how much fuel you have left or how much time it would take, but you will get there. One thing to help you out, if you have unbalanced RCS thrust where you try to translate and it started to rotate your ship, you can use the asas with the rcs and it will keep your attitude and rotation constant and you can still manually adjust the translation, but this will burn quite a bit of RCS propellant...

I burned like 20 hours before I figured out how to set up the liquid engines... I never looked to see if there was a throttle key... yeah, silly me. Many explosions later and I'm still blowing up kerbals. For me the most fun was the frustrating parts where you couldn't get anything to orbit but had just one more idea to try out. Before long I was wasting half a day flying a lagging mothership to Jool with 144 kerbals onboard. Failure is part of the plan here...

This could work...

What is the point of you dumping on someone's work?

I've been dabbling in spaceplane design here and there while launching larger and larger rockets to other planets. Of course I've had many troubles along the way. Most designs would get to 18,000m and either have pitch problems, spiral out of control, flameout or was just too darn heavy to get up to a good speed for orbital insertion. Well, after stepping away from playing ksp for a couple weeks, I sat down and, with a clear mind, realized the flaws in my designs and knocked out this spaceplane. I have to say that I really like this one. It could easily be made with stock parts, but I used 3 of the longer fuel tanks from the KW rocketry pack for cleanliness. Six Turbojets and seven intakes manhandle this plane to 1200m/s and 18,000m in about 4 minutes. The dead weight at the back is the trusty LV-N for long distance space travel. Unfortunately, since it is a LV-N it takes a long time to make the orbital insertion and will burn a good amount of fuel doing so. I realized that the extra altitude achieved by killing off pairs of the turbojets at a time to allow the others more air to breathe higher up was the key for transitioning from jets to rockets. A couple lights and solar panels keep things operational and visible for the second part of my design: Mirror docking. At the bottom of the craft are two docking ports and luckily they extend from the bottom as much as the retracted landing gear does, making this possible. Finally the twin docked spaceplanes fuel up for a mission to laythe to see how they perform there. Download here to give it a try.

Well, she pulls a bit to the left and it starts to nose down at around 6,000... Made it to 8600 before it leveled out and behaved badly, so I gave it a beating. It was a fun ride... thanks for the upload

hold alt while pressing the time acceleration button

As long as your ship isn't too wobbly, using physical warp during a burn makes it so you don't have to watch the burn for 30 minutes