Valentina Tereshkova

I have been unable to get a stock Nova to launch using MechJeb in 0.23.5. Has anyone else had this problem? Everything is fine until the vessel does its pitch over at about 7 km. Then everything goes unstable, and the control system doesn't seem to have enough control authority to recover and stabilize. The SAS indicator shows the circle of arrows that (I think) means that the control system doesn't have enough power. Do we need to modify these for 0.23.5? Or is this really a MechJeb problem? The Zenith/Nova series have become my go-to boosters, and I really don't want to have to move to something else.

I hadn't realized just how difficult it would be to make it to Gilly orbit. I didn't look up the extreme inclination and eccentricity first. Well, heck, it's harder if you don't know what to expect. The mission was to survey both Eve and Gilly in one mission. I had originally planned two separate sats, one for each, but it wound up being more fuel efficient to keep everything attached all the way to Gilly. Fortunately I brought a lot of fuel with me, and the payload wasn't that large. Anyone who thinks that it's trivial to rendezvous and land using MechJeb should try to orbit Gilly. Hint: MechJeb doesn't help all that much. Now if I can just map out the geography and kethane deposits on Gilly, I'll have a refueling point in the inner system. Eventually.

I just recently got my "Refueling Rover" to work. The catch is that it can't really move on the surface unless the tanks are all empty. The design goal is that you drive up to a lander that is sitting on a kethane deposit, put down landing legs to take the weight off the wheels, drill and convert, and pump the resulting resources over to the lander you are refueling. Then you drive the empty rover away and go to the next one. I've only used it a couple of times, but it works on the Mun and I think it will work on Minmus and Duna as well. I'll upload it when I get around to it.

After much pain and many vehicle explosions, kerbal deaths, and other gruesome issues, I finally landed an intact vehicle on the Mun. Then I went to EVA, and my first kerbonaut fell to his death. Then the second one. Then I realized that if the ladders are not *perfectly* lined up, there is no way for a kerbonaut on EVA to shift over a meter or so. There is no fix for this outside of the VAB, so my one remaining kerbonaut had no choice to come back to Kerbal without ever having a crew member set foot on the Mun. The return journey was a painful lesson in orbital mechanics, as I foolishly launched into a prograde instead of retrograde Munar orbit. However, I had overdesigned with plenty of fuel, and finally arranged an orbit back to Kerbal with a periapse of about 8 km. Perfect! All was well until both parachutes failed after the full chutes opened. (I deliberately used two, where either one would have brought the capsule safely to ground.) None of my kerbals went home that day.

Also, if you need to launch a payload a little heavier than Nova can handle, you have the option of using a small amount of the payload's own upper stage fuel. This is a double-win, because now none of the Nova stages actually reach orbit so you don't need to de-orbit them. This lets you use the fuel that you would otherwise save to de-orbit the uppermost stage of the Nova. And I second the notion of adding SRB's to the Nova. It adds a few hundred m/sec of additional delta-V, which means that for payloads that use the upper stage for final orbital insertion, you can save a bit of fuel. Just move the fins up slightly and put the small stock SRB underneath it, and arrange to stage all SRB's before the first asparagus stage goes.

These have been tremendously helpful as I get over the initial learning bumps. I now have a small space station in 150 km Kerbal orbit with quite a bit of fuel tankage thanks to the Nova. The only repeated issue I've had is that if I try to do a timed launch (to rendezvous) with one of these under my payload, it often breaks apart and explodes before even reaching launch ignition. I suspect this is due to some struts somewhere that got left out/deleted/lost in the course of switching from the standard booster to my custom payload. Anyone else seen this problem? Zenith IX launched my station core. Nova launches additional fuel tankers and my 3-man orbiter (which has enough delta-V to go to the Mun or Minmus, land, and return, and can also dock with the station). Thanks again for a great contribution.

I've got everything working. I have successfully launched a modified Orbiter 1A (with an extra upper stage underneath) on a Nova and landed on Minmus. Well, actually *crashed* on Minmus...I have a future rescue project there, as the crew did survive. I can see that these Zeniths and Nova will be terrific boosters for moving ahead to a full space program. Thank you all!

Thanks, Temstar -- that sounds like a great idea. I was able to manually paste the separation sequence back together, reconnect the fuel lines, and after realizing that I had overloaded the Zenith III by using a fuel tank instead of empty fuselage to connect it to the Orbiter 1A, I was able to make a flight out pretty close to the Mun and back. (I had intended to go around it, Zond/Apollo 8 style, but I didn't quite make the burns correctly.) I think everything is working now!

I'm making progress slowly. I have reconnected all the fuel lines, and now the boosters empty in the correct sequence. I had to make major edits to the destaging sequence to get it to work properly. (It was fine loaded from your Zenith file, but scrambled as it came in from Subassembly.) I can now fly a complete launch and staging sequence with the Zenith III and an Orbiter 1A on top. I am not successfully reaching orbit, so I'm still doing something wrong, but that's probably a mistake on my part either in flight profile or having somehow put too much mass as payload. (Essentially, once all the asparagus stages are gone, I start losing altitude and am unable to thrust posigrade enough to raise the perikerb to orbital altitude. Eventually I have to jettison all the still-burning stages and open the parachute to avoid killing my kerbonauts. :-) Thanks for your help putting this together!

Yes, I am using Subassembly Loader. The problem is that I don't understand how to connect/reconnect fuel lines, which I haven't used on the lifters that I've build myself (no cross-feeds yet). Can you point me at a forum post or tutorial that explains the fuel line connection thing?

Thank you for saving us a lot of trial and error -- though I am sure I will continue to experiment with lifters! However, I can't seem to do the asparagus staging correctly. When I launch the Zenith III as-is, without removing and reattaching the radial struts/separators, tanks, and engines, the pairs appear to run out one at a time (as I'd expect). After training myself to turn off the other engines before separation and then throttling up again, the first pair appeared to stage correctly, but when I tried to stage the next pair the entire lower assembling staged and left me with just the Orbiter. When I disconnect the engines, tanks, and separators and reconnect them, all the asparagus engines appear to run out of fuel at the time, so I am not getting a staging effect at all. Any help appreciated...I have barely begun to fiddle with the game, but I have successfully reached orbit once and landed safely using a lifter/capsule combo that I built from scratch. But to get to the Mun, I need to drastically scale up my lifting capacity.