capi3101

Finally got a reliable bullseye on the target landing area. My next task is going to be rebuilding the booster. Seriously also reconsidering a rover re-design after the issues I've been having lately. Occurs to me that I should check for rules updates.

Today I finally set up my next generation heavy rover - the Hellhound 7 - for Munar launch. I need to reload an update of Temstar's Zenith boosters for 0.21, it seems; the struts were messed up on the ones I imported from 0.20, so on the first launch I had a UVD about 2000 meters up. The hound hit the ground at 70 m/s and survived without a scratch. I kinda wish I hadn't reverted the flight now (it did shower the launchpad area with a hell of a lot debris when it all happened). Ultimately set up a primitive DSTO/transfer stage rocket and lifted it to the Mun. Off-balance, so steering was a bite right up until separation of the skycrane (I'd balanced that bit). Using my previously established "Tranquility Base" (the Cerberus 7 lander - the one that delivered three tiny rovers that couldn't handle the new Munar terrain) as a target, I was was able to land about five kilometers from the Neil Armstrong Memorial. The drive there broke two of the rover's six ruggedized wheels, but at this point it's shining its headlight on the memorial's plaque. Turned out that Tranquility Base was about 700 meters off the target. Renamed the Hellhound "Bullseye". Now I just need to redesign my Apollo Munar lander. The Hellhound flight was also my first circumlunar free return trajectory flight (thanks Johnno!!); prior to this flight, my trips to Mun had all be cislunar free returns.

"Horizontal marker"...I assume that's talking about the radial in/out set on a maneuver node (the blue ones). What about it, guys? Does it take more delta-V to get into a circumlunar trajectory as opposed to cislunar one? It strikes me like it wouldn't.

Greetings, Ever since I started going to Mun in the 0.18 Demo, I've pretty much wound up with the same orbital shape every time I've gone; I get a Mun encounter after reaching my apoapsis, it looks like a curly-Q as I go through the Mun encounter, then if I continue on without retroburning into Munar orbit, I get shot back out on a trajectory that takes me reasonably close to Kerbin. This is what I've gotten every time, and I've recently learned that it is a type of free-return trajectory (a "cislunar" trajectory). What I'd like to know is how to get one of those Apollo-style free turn trajectories - a circumlunar trajectory. What I have been doing is pretty much following the "100-degree" rule, burning prograde along a maneuver node at Kerbin's six-o'clock when the Mun is 100 degrees away from Kerbin's twelve-o'clock (Mun's at about 3:20). Where does the Mun need to be for a circumlunar trajectory (i.e. what is the phase angle)?

Last night I sent the updated Cerberus 7 rover delivery system to Mun in 0.21 to follow up on the same mission I did in 0.20, namely to locate the Armstrong Memorial. Finally spotted it...with the lander and all three rovers up what turned out to be a pretty damn steep hill. My crappy little practice rovers were no match for it...lost all three just trying to get down the hill. Ultimately I had to hop the lander itself into a position nearby; how close, I do not know. So I then promptly turned around to try and land my Castle Zulu mission there. Discovered that I'd angled the 24-77s of the descent stage to blow right into the lander's rovers. So they produced no thrust, and the ascent stage engine wasn't powerful enough to make the landing safely with all that equipment attached. Had to abort; will hopefully have time tonight to make a redesign and try again. Thought about picking up work on Atanar's KSP Card Game myself; doesn't look like much has happened with it since May. I say that; it's possible Atanar lost track of the thread in the Great Coffee Spill.

It's actually somewhat to the northwest of the Apollo 11 landing coordinates. If you approach it from the southeast, there's going to be one hell of a downhill along the way...lost three turd rovers that way just last night. I feel your pain...I spent the better part of a week looking for the stupid thing in 0.21. Anomalies ain't as bright and shiny as they were in 0.20. I did write down the coordinates and I can PM them to you, but I'm not at home right now. If no one answers the question directly in the meantime, I'll send the coordinates your way. Alternatively, use kerbalmaps.com. The one you want is on the south side of that crater in the middle of the map.

Can we see an image of your rescue ship? I might suggest that you send your first rescue ship home so you can gauge how much fuel you're going to need for the return trip with your design; that'll give your fuel reserve margin for maneuvers. I'd also suggest you send the second ship with RCS, and to attempt to perform the rescue on RCS thrust alone; that should give you a sizable capability for making maneuvers, plus if RCS runs out, you can always switch over to your main thrusters again. Only difficulty there is that you'd be carrying around a bit more weight, so you'd need a little more main thrust fuel for the return. The tradeoff is worth it, though.

Of the planetary bodies in KSP, Kerbin's got the third highest surface gravity behind Kerbol and Eve. Long and the short of it: if your ship can take off from Kerbin successfully, it should be more than capable of taking off from almost anywhere else in the system.

If you've got an exact replica of the craft in that video, chances are there's issues with your piloting. Here's what you do: make sure your navball's centered straight up (the little dot on the blue side of the navball) until you get to about 10,000m altitude. Next, aim for heading 090 at 45 degrees elevation - you should see 90 on the nav ball and a line halfway between the straight up dot and the line where the navball turns brown; the intersection of those two is where you need to aim. Hold that heading until you're at about 30,000 or so, then check the nav map for your time to apoapsis. If it's anywhere between 30-45 seconds, go ahead and change your elevation to 10-20 degrees and continue your burn watching the nav ball - shorter period stay at 45, longer go immediately horizontal. Cut your burn once your Ap is at about 105k; you should still be in the atmosphere at that point so you'll lose a little to your apoapsis while you're coasting upwards. At apopasis, burn as necessary to circularize. Try that and see if it helps.

...you can always re-purpose the designs you scrap later. Make them better, stronger, faster. Why, just last night I took my first crappy Duna rocket and tweaked it into a successful Munar rover delivery system.

I'm confused about this requirement - The "hangar" is supposed to serve as a base of some sort, not a "shell" How would you qualify the hangar serving as a base? With what does it need to be equipped in order to qualify as a base, I suppose that's what I'm asking. This one's also vague: Not too big rovers. What qualifies as "not too big"? I would think the less than 100 parts/22 tonnes requirement would cover that... Definitely interested in trying this one out; I have some pretty small rovers but have never thought to deliver them in some kind of encasement.

It is a lot easier to find anomalies in 0.20...just yesterday I used it to find the Armstrong Memorial. Sat a rover next to it, did some other things, switched back to my rover, suffered a Kraken attack...........

The information you seek is on the wiki - specifically at http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Parts. When you're looking for max engine power, look at the Thrust column - that's how much thrust the engine will output at full throttle. You're going to want that to be greater than the total mass of your rocket * 9.81 (Kerbin's gravity), or your ship is going nowhere. Minimum engine power is, of course, zero in all cases. Amoun has already covered what Isp is - specific impulse. It's basically a fuel effiicency value; the higher this value, the further you can travel with that engine. How far? You'll can calculate that with the Tsiokolvsky rocket equation - natural logarithm (total mass / dry mass) * 9.81 * specific impulse = delta-v, in units of meters per second. "Dry mass" = the mass of your rocket once all the fuel's been spent. I believe that the flow measurements for fuel are in units of tonnes per second, unless I'm mistaken. You can largely ignore that data in practice, though.

I have GOT to start looking using those jet engines......

Enigma179's method works; I did that very thing for the Kerbal Rocket Artillery challenge (the idea being, of course, that something on a ballistic trajectory travels the furthest when aimed at 45 degrees elevation). I could see where that would be useful for a challenge like that, or perhaps as a means of searching for anomalies on Kerbin's surface. If you're trying to get something into space, though, you want to cut through that first ten kilometers of troposphere before you do any turning and burning - fastest, most fuel efficient way to do that is straight up to 10k, then turn.

Fired up 0.20 last night to continue my search for the NAM. After not one but two Hellrider lander failures (one exploded, one went without the self-righting mechanism and needed it), I got fed up, redesigned my Muad'keeb 6 (my first failed Duna shot rocket) for a one-way trip and delivered three of my crappy little no-name practice rovers. Put on a KER flight computer and found the damn thing (finally) with the first one. Was sure to write down the coordinates. Found out my original two Hellriders got so close it was painful - one was two kilometers away, the other was only 1.5 kilometers off... That's twice now that my practice rovers have succeeded in their mission when the Hellriders didn't. Switched to the other rovers I'd brought and tried to use them to upright the Hellriders. Blew both of them up. Switched back to my first rover and suffered a Kraken attack. Spotaneous UVD. At least I have the coordinates now, and a working crappy rover delivery rocket...renamed it the Cerberus 7, and copied the craft file over to 0.21. Tonight I'll send one to the vicinity of the NAM, now that I know where to look. The hope is to set up a bullseye for my Apollo-style mission.

Explode. Explode again. Explode yet again. Explode some more. Continue exploding until the explosions get boring. Then change something. Watch that explode as well..... KSP in a nutshell.

Supernovy and dlmarti are right; that decoupler is most certainly on upside down. Easiest way to tell aside from the arrows? The fact that it's not attached to that last booster stage when you do decouple it.

Uh......point retrograde and burn at periapsis? I'm not quite understanding the problem here; are you simply trying to get into orbit? If so, that's what you need to do.

Depends on what you want to get out of it, I suppose. You want to go mucking about on other planets, the science helps. You want to blow up crap, the science is for dweebs......

No. That's the very reason I keep the "Port-a-John 7" - a Mk-I Lander Can - in my ship inventory. "Launch" your rover, get it off the pad, then go to the space center. Call up the port-a-john, EVA the Kerbal inside, then switch over to the rover, drive up the ramp and pick him up. If you need more Kerbals, use a different command pod for your port-a-john.

By default, the controls for staging mode (i.e. normal view) affect a craft's attitude. That is to say, the W/S keys control pitch, A/D controls yaw, and Q/E controls roll. You don't want a rover attempting to pitch if you can at all help it. By switching over to docking mode, the controls by default affect translation instead of attitude. W/S keys become translational controls (forward and backward) and the A/D keys translate left and right. The benefit is that the game isn't interpreting your commands as an attempt to change the attitude of the rover (i.e. it won't think you're making a deliberate attempt to roll over the rover). IJKL are the default translation keys in staging mode; I don't know if they work without RCS thrust engaged though. I've never tried that.

Hmm...I've occasionally run into issues with my payload disassembling on me or telescoping into the stack. Usually it happens when I've got a very high TWR high up in the atmosphere. How many gees are you pulling when the failure occurs? If you're much above two gees at that point, I'd suggest throttling back. Pics or a .craft file would help others diagnose the problem better.

Alright, here's my entry. Done without Mechjeb. I claim 2604 points.

Built an entry for the April Fool's Day Challenge. Actually got the orange tank up there but wound up with a bit too much crap lying around. May try again before the night's said and done. Still searching for the NAM. Now I'm too far to the west.