PDCWolf

I've been playing KSP for long but never got the chance to actually go to Jool (or Moho, Dres, or Eeloo) because I tend to roleplay a lot as in emulating a progress timeline of, for example, achieving orbit, then sending people, then going to Mün, and do the same and on and on, and by the time I get to do big objectives a new version comes in and I feel the need to start again with the "new technologies" each one includes (the parts obviously). As this is my first mission to Jool, I decided I would document it as well. We started by launching a modified version of the Skynet system, the modifications include 6 liquid fuel asparagused long-reach boosters instead of the 4 solid fuel original boosters, and a bigger fuel tank for the LV-N stage that, according to our engineers, would be enough to reach jool, do any required orbital maneuver, separate the JRO (Jool Reconnaissance Orbiter) and deorbit itself into Jool atmosphere to register the temperatures and pressures of such a wonderful body. The nuclear stage completes the circularization LKO burn so that no debris are left on orbit. Then it's that same stage that does the ejection and correction burns. Approximately 200 days later we see Jool for the first time (at least when playing on 1280 x 720), it's 5 pixels big. Watch this one in fullscreen please, it's a gif. Just click it to enlarge. At this point we corrected our trajectory so that we got exactly a 126km periapsis at Jool. Now we had to wait for another 100 days. When we were close enough, Jool received us with this beautiful view of itself with Laythe and Vall at a side. Now, to save fuel, we aerobraked multiple times at Jool's atmosphere. This was the scariest part as not only the periapsis was on the dark side, but also our satellite had to retract its solar panels so that they wouldn't be ripped apart by the dynamic pressure and we only had 200 units of electrical power. Right after the dyn. press. decreased we extended our solar panels once more, turned into retrograde and did a burn to reach our desired orbit: A retrograde orbit between Laythe and Vall. After the circularization came the separation and deorbit of the nuclear stage, but something strange happened... The map view forgot to told me about an encounter with laythe, which added loads of speed to our deorbiting little nuclear rocket, and got it on a stable orbit again... at least till they encountered again, adding more velocity. This happened multiple times till the nuclear stage got into a really eccentric orbit around Kerbol. About our satellite... well, it's happily orbiting on a perfect equatorial retrograde orbit, getting 2 close ups to both Laythe and Vall on each orbital period. The next planned missions include atmospheric probes to drop on Jool, a Polar orbiting satellite, and after that, it will be time to investigate its moons.

Vessel, spacecraft, and some times "YOU DAMNED PIECE OF CR*P" As naming schemes goes, I call them according to what they perform, unless its a manned mission. For example, my GILLY/EVE LANDER was simply called GEL, but my Duna manned landing vehicle was called Conqueror-1 'cause when I was building it I was listening to "The Faceless" and a song that says "The immense conqueror hides the sun" came right in.

Eve, back in the time where phase angles needed to be calculated with a protractor and there were no unmanned missions. I bet those bill/jeb/bob clones are still somewhere in eve but in a parallel universe.

It's not gold, it's one of 3ds max default colors for objects, anyways, making it gold would take no time.

Like this?

So, I started working on some parts that would make my life easier on certain missions, main condition is to keep it stock-balanced. At the moment I'm working with a mini-nerva engine, and I want to know what do you think about it. Instead of renders I took the most horrible pictures so that you can criticize it. Keep in mind that it is a 1.25m part. That's pretty much it, as you can see I kept the poly as low as possible.

I've always gone under the "100% vanilla or die" flag, but now I use mods that fill the gaps the devs left open (yes, i know it's a game in development, no need to say that) like KSPX for it's micro/rockomax parts and KWRocketry for the fairings. I also use KER for more exact calculations of deltaV and other stuff like detailed orbit inclination and other information. Getting back to part only mods, I find the bigger version of tanks really usefull cause you can have twice the capacity (and also the weight obviously) in only one part instead of having to stack 2 or more, which is really helpful with the actual drag model.

Not related to Eeloo but as an example to spanish references: Duna is the spanish for Dune, and that fits for a desertic planet like Duna. The only other body that inspires any name references would be Ike, as a reference to Ike Newton.

I thought it would be convenient to use this thread instead of starting a new one, so here's my problem: I cannot attach docking ports to any structural part (octagonal struts for example) because when something docks to ports attached to any structural part (anything that is not a tank, pod, or probe core) it bugs the entire ship and breaks it apart like the kraken would do, any ideas?

After expanding our horizons to new frontiers, it was time to give our satellite network a big update. This, my friends, is the Skynet launcher, transporting the Skynet 1 (out of 10) satellite, which will orbit at 250km and, with its 9 brothers, will provide the most complete satellite network our nation has seen. With our faith put in god and our hopes put in the work of all our personnel, we look up to the sky to see the skynet lifting off. With only 2 of its 4 boosters on, the skynet lifts off from the launchpad. Thanks to KWRocketry, it's a mix between a gorgeous looking rocket and a functional one. Some moments after the liftoff, the first set of boosters separates and the second set starts pushing. Speaking of nice looking things, both the LV-N and Payload fairings separate at the same time. The LV-N stage has the task of carrying the Skynet-1 satellite to the 250km orbit and to correct and stabilize it if needed. Once that task is done, the LV-N stage burns in the other way to return to kerbin. This maneuver has to be done really fast because the probe that controls the stage doesn't have any additional batteries, so it is a turn-burn-shutdown sequence. With the orbit cleaned of any debris, the Skynet-1 satellite floats happily. At the same time, the LV-N stage is creating a nuclear meltdown and throwing radiation somewhere.

Continuing with the "Pride" frenzy, here's Pride 5, a modified version of pride 4, suited for minmus. Liftoff Landing on minmus' biggest plain Alfrid (my star guy, with multiple months of piloting and like 100 EVA hours) doing his business on a extreme EVA Our rendezvous target coming in from the horizon Liftoff! Rendezvous maneuver complete Flying up to our target Getting closer Kissing time After some burning and waiting, we get into the atmosphere, then we deploy our chutes. AAAAAAAnd, we are back.

I would really stay away from comparing those 2. Minecraft would be the awesome game that lost its potential thanks to the fans and broken promises, and lately, by taking mods and converting them into "official content" without even giving credit and, from that point, it devolved into another "adventure game", with the exception that you can build your own house, or go full creative and do whatever you want with blocks, which gets boring after a while. On top of that, it even got dumbed down for the retarded "I'M SUCH A GAMURR" fan. KSP is still in the awesome game with loads of potential phase. To make it comparable with minecraft, then there should be a point in which devs get tired of making their own game and started accepting suggestion from everyone or converting mods into official content without even thinking about the rest of the game. And of course, the retarded fanbase.

I guess you already know the basics, so now you need to know how to: Rendezvous and dock - (By scott manley)once you know that, the only thing you need is keep docking modules till you build your station.

It isn't? well, guess I can feel better with myself now. Problem with ASAS is that it is always overcorrecting itself, wasting loads of resources, add wobbliness on top of the equation and there you go, self-mutilating rockets/stations

I think it's cheating, but when i need to rotate my station I do it with the force of the CMs alone and when it's on the desired position I use the timewarp to kill the rotation.

Continuing the Pride-4 odyssey. After some fun time (about a half moon day) in the mun, it's time to go back. Right after we press the separation and liftoff button, we need to work on that rendezvous. Some maneuvers later, the kissing time comes. Burning so that we set a periapsis inside kerbin's atmosphere (I used 36k height for this one) Hours later, we separate the lander from the command module and the capsule from the rest of the craft. Thanks to the mixed use of separators and decouplers, everything ends on different places. Three circumnavigations later, we start descending back home. When the heat goes down, it's time to open our chutes. Then, the final descent begins. Time for a big "We're back". (Yes, I missed the coast for 800 meters). Oh, you want to know what happens to the lander? then keep watching. Yep, those are kerbals' taxes exploding down there.

The Pride-4 Lander (previously 3 were successful too) and its operations on my yet to be finished munar base. Landing was a pain in the back door because for some reason the framerate drops a lot. Getting close to landing point Preparing the ladder Going down Just look at their faces, those are 2 happy kerbals Checking the station Taking a look at the Gemini-1 Scientific Platform Everything looks alright

Now it works.

You won't believe me if I tell you there was a time paradox. Just so that I don't post without an image, here's the completion of a most painful refueling tank haul-n-dock operation on my still unmanned mun base. Everything was awesome till I had to use both of my USV (unmanned service rovers) to move that thing. Getting it to dock with the rest of the station was plain horrible.

Care to explain why it took 2 years? btw: My Deep Impact cheap recreation, as a training for the real thing which will take place on Dres and Gilly.

I was actually going for the Energia Project boosters, which act in a similar way. Problem is we can't have nice things like those because of the drag system.

I was pretty bored and started playing with KWRocketry SRBs. This is the result:

I was doing a mun transference and the map view went crazy for a second, I checked and it showed a minmus perfect 10000m periapsis, so instead of putting my lander on the mun I slingshotted right into minmus and landed there.

I've seen this type of threads on other game related forums and, given KSP's nature, I'm sure there's a lot of material here. Thing is: you planned a mission and you knew how to handle it BUT something went wrong in the middle. Whether it ended in success or failure, come here and show us! I'll use image links just so that there's more space and better loadtimes. I made a rover I called AMSR (automated munar service rover) and launched it. Here you have it reaching space and separating the fairings. http://www.imgnook.com/2yaC2o.png Then, when getting close to the mun landing point, the final stage is used for braking, and then it separates, crashes, and the rover gets down on its own 4 little engines with loads of remaining fuel and RCS. Here you see the braking stage, as you can see the rover is attached by a docking port. http://www.imgnook.com/CqFZmo.png I accidentaly undocked the port AFTER throttling down the braking stage, thrust-locking it against the rover and starting an uncontrolled ascent, thanks to the rover having RCS tanks and engines, I barely managed to pull it off. The braking stage crashed really close to the landing area (where the Genesis-1 Power station and a storage module were waiting for the rover) and throwing debris and parts all over it. The rover, on the other hand, survived and I managed to land it at 400 meters from the landing area. Here you see the final maneuvering with the rover. You can even see some smoke from the exploding debris. http://www.imgnook.com/dRcZQo.png So, it was a close call, but a successful mission overall. Now it's your turn to show those close calls, planning/execution failures and anything else you didn't had in mind.

Have you ever felt the need of having a giant, useless, ugly big rover that just doesn't care about where you drive it and just keeps going on forever? Well, then this thing is just what you were looking for. That's the T-C4N based Evermoving Fortress, a solar/generator powered huge but lightweight rover. Keep scrolling for the interesting features. The cockpit has a really nice view, it's aligned so that you can dock in IVA mode with ease. Docking port's height is measured using a dropped storage module with no gear (which I use for my mun permanent base). Most RoboMax 2 based rovers share the same height settings making it suitable for both VtV (Vessel to Vessel) or VtS (Vessel to Structure) docking. Now, the interesting stuff: Did you just crashed at high speed against something? no problem, just repair the remaining wheels (will work even with 2) and keep moving. Forget about docking though, as it's the first thing that crashes on a frontal impact. Even with 3 wheels, it still moves at 20m/s You busted the under-chassis batteries... and a light... and some solar panels? You can still keep moving thanks to the 2 backup top-mounted batteries, and it still generates the same power, so you can keep moving on and on, even at night. You JUST drove into the water, well... now the warranty is void and you have to bring another evermoving fortress BUT, it still generates power so you can keep your guys warm and pressurized till the rescue arrives. Evermoving boat not included in package. Evermoving fortress files: .Craft: http://www./?59e4gmpfzzlv61b Plain text: http://pastebin.com/Cea4XWSv