capi3101

Welcome to the forums. I'll have to get back to you on that. I put that list together last night right before heading on to bed and didn't actually build the craft itself. I'm at work right now; best I could do at the moment is some crummy MS Paint job. It'll be a few hours before I can get to where I can play the game again (about 02Z) but I'll put it together then and post an image or two when I have some ready to go. Worried about that design, actually - things before General Construction of Tier 3 (where you get struts and launch clamps) are always dicey. I'll make sure and give it a test flight too.

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Biomes Poles are the same biome regardless of if it's north or south. Sorry.

KER will do the TWR and delta-V display job. It looks like it's been updated so that you don't have to crack open the .cfg files (this from October 21, 2013 off the mod's comment page). If not, add the "start" parameter Motokid600 indicated. You will have to activate the parts in R&D; just click on them and select "YES". They should be under Starting Tech. www.kerbalmaps.com has added biome data for Kerbin and Mün; it's pretty much what Motokid600 indicated. Everything else has been covered; your understanding of how Science works is accurate. EDIT: Found the specific parameters you need in case it doesn't work. It's: TechRequired = start entryCost = 0 Add those to the part .cfg files if they aren't there. Then go into R&D, select Starting Tech and click on the parts to activate them. Actually, MechJeb uses parts, doesn't it? No reason why you couldn't just do the same thing there...

Alright - so you're in career; from the sound of it, you've unlocked Survivability and General Rocketry on Tier 2, but not necessarily Stability. I'm assuming you've gotten no farther than that. First off - forget asparagus. You need fuel lines for that, and those won't become available until Fuel Systems on Tier 4. It's serial or nothing. Let's talk design first: CSM/LANDER Mk1 Command Pod x1 Mk2-R Radial Parachute x2 (set these port and starboard on the command pod) Mystery Goo Containment Unit x2 (around the bast of the command pod) TR-18A Stack Decoupler x1 FL-T400 Fuel Tank x1 LV-909 Liquid Fuel Engine x1 Modular Girder Segment x4 (set these radially as close to the bottom of your craft as you can get them) LT-1 Landing Struts x4 (set these on the ends of the girders - we're trying to widen the base of the ship when you go to land). This is what I crudely call a "Phallus 7" design; it's about as basic of a direct ascent lander as you can get. 5.1 tonnes, 1904.68 m/s of delta-V - which is just enough to get down, up and back to Kerbin. A transfer stage to go from Kerbin to the Mün needs 1070 m/s give or take. So that piece looks like this: TR-18A x1 FL-T400 Fuel Tank x1 LV-909 x1 That'll actually give you 1116.82 m/s of delta-V. It just remains then to get that into orbit. Try this: TR-18A x1 9 stacks of: =FL-T400x6 =FL-T200x1 (Set one centerline, eight radially - use Modular Girder Segments to attach). LV-T45 x1 (center stack) LV-T30 x8 (outboard stacks) That'll get you 4577.49 m/s of delta-V and a 1.32 launch TWR. You might have to turn on parts clipping (ALT-F12) to get it to work. This single stage rocket is the least efficient means of getting your payload up, but at least it will be relatively simple to build. Okay. So launch - straight up to 10k, then 090 at 45 degrees elevation until you're at T-35 seconds to apoapsis. Then follow your prograde vector. If you fall below T-30 to apoapsis at any time, return to 45 degrees elevation. Above T-60 to apoapsis, begin burning along the horizon. Burn until your apoapsis is up around 110,000 meters or so. All the while, watch your gee meter - you want to throttle back occasionally such that the needle stays right at the top of the green section of the gauge (not above it). Once you're out of atmosphere, set up your maneuver node and burn for orbit when you're ready. You'll probably want to do that at about 1/3 thrust. Dump the booster once you're in orbit. Next, align your map view so that you're looking at it top down, and target the Mün. Set it up so that if the top of the screen is 12:00, the Mün is somewhere around 3:30 or so (about 100 degrees from the top going clockwise). Set up a node at the 6:00 position and pull prograde until you get an encounter. Use the data from the maneuver node to time it - you want roughly half your burn to occur both before and after the node. You might want to light your transfer stage engine and fire it up for a few seconds before you get there; it won't throw things off too far and it'll give you a better time estimate. Burn when the time comes and adjust as necessary. When you get to the Mün's SOI, burn retrograde at periapsis to establish orbit. You want to get it relatively close - 14k is good. Pick a landing site, burn to deorbit, and dump the transfer stage. Here's the tricky bit - quicksave (F5) before you begin (and F9 to quickload after a foul-up). Go IVA and find your radar altimeter - the gauge that looks like this: Keep an eye on it until the needle starts twitching. Then burn retrograde. Make sure your speedometer is set to "Surface" mode (click on the word portion of the speedometer if it isn't. Lower your lander legs if you haven't already. You want to burn off most of your velocity at this point. When it gets to 50 m/s, back off the throttle to 2/3, then 1/3 at 20 m/s. The retrograde marker should approach the center of the blue portion of the nav ball. Kill your burn at that point and go back to your radar altimeter. Watch it until you're 500 meters over the deck, then burn hard again - use the radar altimeter to get an estimate on where the ground is. Get your speed below 10 m/s and keep it there once you're within 100 meters. Throttle down when you hit the surface. Watch your fuel during this process - if you go below 80 liquid fuel units at any time, abort the landing and head back to Kerbin; you should have just enough fuel to make it back. Hopefully one of these suggestions covers your needs; let us know how it turns out.

Roved 80 klicks over the Dunan southern polar ice cap. Have reallllllllly come to hate my Hellfury 7 Rover design (the one that hauls six and has a Mk2 Lander Can at its core)......

I don't know about you guys, but I tend to pronounce it "miserable piece of crap"...

Okay. Totally cool with that. Maybe say something in the text. Yep. It adds up to seventy. 7 available science points and 59 mission points. Istas, I guess I hadn't realized that you'd already completed everything... I'm awful close my own self. Got the pressurized rover over to the outpost after a long and harrowing drive, so my guys can head over to the KRV at their leisure at this point. Probably will do some EVA things, then start heading that way; I've been at this challenge for nearly two months so I'm kinda anxious to wrap it up...

Improbable. I'll need to see the OP's entry before I believe it can be done.

Show off. ............mind telling me how you did it?

Okay...so I could just haul it out there, get everybody aboard, then make sure they go into the cabin in pairs every ten klicks? (The rover's pressurized cabin only accommodates two at a time). Would I actually have to show that's what I did? That sounds a bit tedious...

So, my turn for a scoring question - I swear this will be the last one. Honest. Which is what I honestly recall is what I said the last time... Land at least four Kerbals on Duna within 10 km (100 km if by rover) of the above Duna lander. To earn these points, the un-Kerballed lander above must be landed and remain powered. Successful landing must take place before the landing crew has committed to Duna re-entry (+5) Duna Outpost: The Duna lander uses the Duna Outpost Variant which stays on the surface and includes a pressurized rover. (+3) So here's my sitrep - I piggybacked the cargo lander (which hauls the pressurized rover) with the KRV to Duna; you said this was okay in a previous post. I landed the rover first and then let the KRV come around one orbit before setting it down. Problem there - my craft are in a polar orbit, so while I was sending the KRV around one more time, the planet was turning. Wound up setting it down 40 klicks from the rover. So I didn't want to repeat the same mistake again with the crewed Duna lander. I got them transferred over from the Scorpio crew module quickly and performed a descent burn (having previously matched planes with the other two landers while they were all still in orbit). Unfortunately, this was not a planned descent burn and I wound up overshooting the KRV by 40 klicks. So - my crew is on the surface. They are 40 klicks from the KRV and 80 klicks from the rover. The crewed lander is the same outpost design I stuck on the Mün and the pressurized rover is on the surface (just 80 klicks away). The KRV and cargo lander both included rovers (I have three rovers in the area), but the outpost design doesn't include them (i.e. at the present time the closest rover to my crew is 40 klicks off; those are a pair of unpressurized Hellriders with the KRV). Were I to drive the pressurized rover from its present position to my crew's position, would I qualify for those eight points, or do I need to pack it in at this point?

Sandbox game - landed the KRV for the Constellation Challenge mission. Didn't account for the rotation of the planet, so it wound up 40 klicks west of the rover. Quickly transferred the crew into their lander and made their descent, with the hope of not having the same problem. Didn't. Just overshot the LZ by 40 klicks. So it looks like I've got another opportunity for yet another long-[AUTOMATED STEERING SYSTEM] haul on Duna... Don't mind as long as it doesn't DQ me from points; the whole thing had been going very well up to this point.

Which one do you mean, the TT-70 or the Hydraulic Manifold? I've had mixed results with both.

Actually, a good way to figure out the directions of radial in/out and normal in/out without mods like Mechjeb or Enhanced Nav Ball (i.e. stock game) is to use maneuver nodes. Just set one up, pull whichever one you need just a little bit and aim your ship that direction. Lock it in with SAS and get rid of the node. Easy peasy.

Played my career game this evening; brought Jeb back from Duna with over 1000 science points. Made getting ahold of PB-NUKs my priority. Mainsails were next on the list but I'm wondering if there are any other techs I really want more (there have been some awesome Mainsail workarounds posted on the forums lately). Next on the list is a probe arrival at Eeloo; not sure what I'm going to do in the career game next; thinking either a Gilly or Dres landing with a Kerbal.

You could also use Johnno's technique with parts clipping turned on (ALT-F12 to bring up the debug menu). Largely that's where the game thinks there are parts collisions - right up there at the top, where the tops of the engine units overlap one another. Parts clipping overcomes that annoying little problem. Same method happens to work with Modular Girder Segments, BTW. Just attach them radially, then turn them flush against the sides of the tank and add your engines. Girders allow fuel crossfeed so you don't need fuel lines or anything. They happen to have the advantage of lower mass than tail connectors and they're available from the get-go; 25 Science to get to the -T45 is all you need before you can be shooting off massive payloads like in you're still in Sandbox mode. Probably the only down side is that they look like crap. Four LV-T30s and a Skipper are another option; lower Isp, though. You can also get roughly the same thrust as a Mainsail with just six LV-T30s; Johnno's solution with eight provides moar thrust.

Oof. You've got your decoupler with the shroud over the LV-909 in the same stage as the engine; the shroud's still on so the game thinks that engine is covered, and won't apply any thrust (despite the fact that you can see the engine bell and see fire shooting out of it, the game thinks there's something blocking it). Right click on the decoupler and select "decouple" to get rid of it manually. If that doesn't work, you'll need to re-launch and be careful about how you set up your staging in the VAB next time.

Take it slowly. RCS thrust is more than sufficient for a Gilly landing; it remains the only body in the Kerbol system that I ever deliberately thrusted towards during the landing process. You do have to be more precise than usual about killing ALL your horizontal velocity before you touch down. el_coyoto is absolutely correct - treat it as a docking, and you should be just fine.

Haven't got time to type - Constipation XI-A and Constipation XII-A are now in orbit of Duna, their orbits are aligned and the cargo lander made a successful touchdown last night. A more formal report later.

Oof. Need moar panels on that rover...first time it flips, KABLOOIE!!!

I'm not a fan of spaceplanes my own self - that said, I've heard that the ascent profile for a spaceplane is to pitch up after you get off the runway and climb until you're just below flameout altitude (this is the part I'm not certain of; 35,000 I think), then level out and gain most of your orbital velocity (2,300 m/s or so) on jets. Only then do you kick on the rocket motor and pitch up again; a short burn should get you into space. Ordinarily when I do a single-stage rocket take off, I shoot for a launch TWR of 1.2 (the idea being that all that thrust I have at the beginning I shouldn't need once I'm up there) and hope to be fiddling with the throttle to keep it somewhere between 2.0 to 2.3 shortly after the gravity turn. The principles of space launch are similar regardless of whether you use rocket or spaceplane, so I imagine that's where you need to aim. You might try a decoupler on the back of the nuke with an RT-10 attached, or perhaps an FL-T100 and an Aerospike. I make no guarantees as to what that's going to do to your plane's flight characteristics; really all I can offer, though. Sorry.

Press = awesome.

Yeah, I've noticed that. I've stuck to using Protractor for transfer windows and it's given me good results so far (vis-a-vis my slowly expanding salad bar). KAC's main use so far has been to keep me from warping through nodes and the like. Note that there are two different methods KAC uses for calculating transfer windows - if one doesn't work, you might try the other. Both lie, but...

If you're going for a geosynchronous orbit around Kerbin, use a Hohmann transfer. Apoapsis or periapsis doesn't matter - just pick one. Right now I'm going for a heliosynchronous orbit as part of the Constellation Program Challenge and I'm using a bi-elliptic transfer. So far it's used maybe 2,500 m/s of delta-V (with the bulk of that needed to boost the probe's apoapsis up to Jool's orbit, the rest of it to lower the periapsis to the target zone). Haven't done the third burn yet, so I couldn't tell you if there will ultimately any delta-V savings or not. I'm like Kashua; not sure which target you're talking about here.

I was using Protractor for both flights. Same session even. It'll make the return trip interesting, I'm sure...