Specialist290

Welcome to the forums! If you have any further questions, feel free to create a topic in the "How To" forum; there's tons of knowledgeable people who would be more than happy to share what they know. Don't forget to also take a peek at the Drawing Board (link in my sig) for a list of tutorials and other resources that could be quite useful. Happy landings!

The answer to the first question: Basically the same way you'd get close using any other method. New ships are loaded into the physics engine at a range of about 2km from your currently active one.

Yeah, I'm pretty much banking on the hope that Squad will add the functionality of those mods to the game, rather than the mods themselves (although they might end up surprising me). Still, I just listed the mods themselves for convenience.

Welcome to the forums! I know that one trick to finding your inclination (while in Kerbin orbit) is to set the Mun as your target. Since the Mun's orbit is coplanar with Kerbin's equator, the relative inclination at the ascending and descending nodes should also tell you your inclination to Kerbin. Also, you might want to check out the Drawing Board if you haven't already. It's got all sorts of useful information, including tutorials, graphs, charts, and all sorts of other things that might come in handy while you're designing and building your rockets. Happy landings!

Welcome to the forums! Be sure to take a look at the Drawing Board, the link to which is in my signature. I've been trying to collect tons of handy resources for players both new and old, so you might find some things in that thread that might be of use to you. Happy landings!

Temstar's screenshot looks a lot like my own most recent experience. Usually takes me about ~1900-2000 dv on the initial burn (usually because I try to plot for an intercept straight from the bat), maybe 300-500 dv of midcourse corrections, and then anywhere from 4000-4500 dv to capture. Most delta-v maps don't reflect this, as I think they assume a circular orbit in the same orbital plane.

I would be highly disappointed if they don't have at least something like Subassembly Loader, Improved Maneuver Nodes, and Kerbal Alarm Clock, as well as more in-flight data.

As strange as this might be to say, I think Minmus is the funnest place to crash ever. You're usually going so slow that you've got a good chance of saving the crew (if nothing else), and there's an odd sort of hilarity to seeing the wreck unfold in slow motion.

The sketch on the bottom far right is the one that intrigues me the most.

Seconding Nova. There might also be this notion called "imperialism" that y'all may have heard about before.

Unfortunately, as perfect as they might be for the job in an abstract sense, it also means they're far more vulnerable to the political crucifixions that seem to be the stock-in-trade of professional politicians.

Adding this to the Drawing Board My cunning plan is working!

Breaking down my own style of play: First, I sit right on the edge of the Builder-Pilot axis. I like piloting the ships myself -- as I've said elsewhere, I consider it a point of personal pride that I can do everything I do manually -- but I also like tweaking everything in the VAB to squeeze as much performance out of my craft as I can with the help of Kerbal Engineer Redux (and sometimes doing the math myself if I don't like what KER's telling me). I lean more towards the Purist side than the Modder side, but I do use a few mods such as KER, Improved Maneuver Nodes, Kerbal Alarm Clock, the kethane mod, and a few small parts mods like KSPX and HOME. I try to build most of my designs using stock engines and fuel tanks, but I don't feel like I have to absolutely constrain myself from anything else ever. I reject the sci-fi geek / space geek dichotomy entirely -- at least as elaborated on by OP -- because the only true difference between science fact and proper science fiction is the fact that the latter hasn't happened yet. Astrophysicist / Realist is another point where I probably fall into the middle. Sometimes I like to optimize my flights for the perfect mission, sometimes I just like to screw around and see what happens. Usually the latter results in explosions, but I count any sufficiently memorable experience as a partial success at least.

Personally, I think using manufactured means such as rockets and airfoils to propel you are cheating, and that real pilots claw their way through the skies with their bare hands and sheer force of personality. Of course, I'm well aware that a lot of people feel otherwise. Tongue is firmly in cheek on this one.

Nicely done!

Welcome to the forums! I can guarantee you that your English is better than either my Dutch or my Swedish, so don't feel bad about it. To my shame, it's even better composed than some people's messages for whom English is their native language... The others have already pointed you in the right direction with specific tutorials. If you still want to learn more about what you can do with the game, I also maintain the Drawing Board (link in my sig), which has tons of links to tutorials and other useful resources. Happy landings!

Bienvenido al foro! Perdon mi pobre espanol -- no es mi primera lengua, y solo recuerdo un poquito de escuela secondaria Si recuerda ayuda, regarde el foro "How To" y especialmente el "Drawing Board" (enlace / vinculo [No se que palabra es mejor -- lo siento!] en mi signatura) para obtener informacion util. Felices aterrizajes! (And now, what I hope I said, in English): Welcome to the forums! Please excuse my poor Spanish -- it's not my first language, and I only remember a little of it from high school. If you need any help, check out the "How To" forum, and especially the link in my signature to find useful information. Happy landings!

Welcome to the forums! You sound like you're a lot like me, except I have a day job, so now I only have time for some freelance slacking on the weekends There's plenty of other "Easter eggs" scattered all over the Kerbol system, so keep your eyes peeled! If you have any questions or want to learn some new tricks for the game, be sure to check out the "How To" section. I've been maintaining a small link library for useful information there called the Drawing Board (link in my sig), and the people who hang out there are knowledgeable enough to be able to answer almost any question you may have. Feel free to check out the rest of the forums and jump into any conversation that catches your eye, too. Happy landings!

Welcome to the forums! Glad you've gotten a good impression of the community from what you see. I have to agree that this one is one of the more civil and welcoming ones, and I'm glad the mods try to keep it that way. If you need help with anything, check out the "How-To" forums, especially the Drawing Board (link in my sig). I've been trying to collect a lot of resources to help people out, and if you're still confused after checking them out, don't be afraid to ask a question on the forums. Happy landings!

Nice to see this is up and running again Hope to see some more manned missions soon!

Welcome to the forums, and happy landings!

So I decided to send a small rover with about 5 tanks of RCS to Minmus. The plan was that I could use the RCS to deorbit the rover and go driving, and also to provide a little bit of downforce while I'm roving because the I mapped my rover keys to the IJKL set instead of WASD. (Also, Jeb decided he wanted to channel Evel Knievel and try to ramp... well, Minmus itself if he could, but at the very least a plateau or two.) However, I overestimated just how much thrust RCS has, so I ended up coming down a bit harder than I expected. The first bump popped the tires and sent me flying again. I figured I could reorient the craft and give it a little more thrust. While I was trying to get my rover's bearings again (my other mistake was not including any form of ASAS), the second bump dropped the rover on its back and tore off a few solar panels, as well as putting it into a nasty spin. The third bump triggered a chaotic disassembly of the entire rover. Parts flew everywhere. The cockpit survived (and actually skidded quite a distance), but I clearly wasn't going to get any roving done with that craft that day. The best part of the whole story is: Through most of it, Jeb was still grinning like a madman, at least whenever I had time to catch his face.

For an airless body like the Mun, it should be easy as dropping your lander into a suborbital trajectory that intersects the ground within spitting distance of the landing site. Don't forget to account for the rotation of the body itself, and also for the fact that, as you burn laterally, you're basically pulling the final landing site towards the point your craft is hovering over. If you've got plenty of fuel and thrust, you can actually adjust your course a bit in midflight by tilting your lander back in the general direction of your landing site. It does use a lot of fuel, though. Another method is to try short suborbital hops until you're close enough for satisfaction. I'd hardly call it precision, but I've been able to get within a few kilometers of my target on my initial descent, often close enough that I still have fuel to correct my course once I'm sure I'm going to overshoot. It takes practice, and it's cost me a few landers (none manned, fortunately).

I'm sure my car would flip, too, if it hit a bump like the ones on the Mun's surface while it was going over 85 MPH Or 144 km/h, for y'all who have speed limits posted in metric.

PDCWolf has already given the basic answer, but if you want to go into the basics of why that's as important as it is, I'd highly advise reading this page. The long and short of it is: Your rocket's "range" (not the best word to use, as the basic assumptions for travel are different in space than they are here on the ground) is effectively determined by two factors: The efficiency of its engines, and the ratio of its fuel to the total mass of the vehicle. Because of the way the rocket equation works, in order to increase the amount of delta-v (potential change in velocity) from having more fuel by the same measure as you could from having a more efficient engine, you'd need to add tons of fuel... which translates into a heavier payload for your rocket to lift into orbit... which in turn means even more fuel in your ascent stage. Speaking of ascent stages, you really want to get rid of the vast majority of the fuel on your rocket (and the fuel tanks used to carry them) in that first climb up to Low Kerbin Orbit. There's another page on that website that goes into a bit more detail, but in general you want your first stage to be much, much heavier than the final payload. You might also want to look into things such as fuel crossfeeding (particularly a concept known as "asparagus staging") and interplanetary phase angles, although there are other people who can and have explained these things much better than I ever could. There's a wealth of information available on these subjects in the Drawing Board, which is stickied to the top of this particular forum (or you could just use the link in my signature). That said, Moho is an absolute bear of a target to get to. I'm actually in the middle of sending a tanker out to a pair of kerbalnauts I've got in orbit there, and it's even crazier trying to build a craft that can make orbit there and still have plenty of fuel to transfer to my first craft than it was to get them out there in the first place! Ah well, even us people who know what we're doing have our off days...