capi3101

You can generally set solar panels up to toggle via an action group; you can open all of them up in a single thwack that way. Granted, once you're in career you won't have access to custom action groups until the VAB is fully upgraded, but you can have basic ones at Level 2, and there's no harm in tying them into...say, RCS, Brakes or the Abort group. Ones you don't need for other purposes on a given craft. Once you're out of atmo, there's no drag to worry about, so open them up as soon as you're safely above 70,000 meters (in my experience, you're okay to fire them up as low as 45,000 meters, but then again I use the FAR mod and its aerodynamic model). You shouldn't have problems after that unless you get out past the orbit of Jool (and if you are doing that this early in the game, you may or may not be doing it wrong). You may still run out of power while you're in planetary shadow, but the panels will regenerate it as soon as you're out in the sun again, and a little probe like what you're building shouldn't run out of juice that easily. Definitely not if you're adding 1000-2000 units of ElectricCharge. The protected panels with casings aren't necessary if you don't intend for the probe to re-enter Kerbin's atmosphere; for that purpose, the unshielded ones will do just fine, though you'll need a fairing for the payload, and once deployed those panels stay deployed. Myself, I don't have much use for them.

Last night I launched the fully refueled Wildcat 7 with Theogel and Verise aboard to rendezvous with the Nahquadah 7 automated ore-hauler in Munar orbit. The rendezvous was a success and 450 units of ore were transferred to Nahquadah, which was then sent back to Kerbin. The plan is for Nahquadah to rendezvous with a Magpie 7 spaceplane in orbit of Kerbin to transfer its payload, then head on to a rendezvous with the Kerbinport space station to await its next delivery mission. The Magpie will haul the ore back down to Kerbin for contract. I'm concerned a bit about the plane - while she has had a successful orbit, I have yet to test what her flight characteristics will be like with a load of ore. For all I know, the bird won't fly... Meanwhile, Theogel and Verise took their Wildcat and rendezvoused with the Munport 1 station. Docking was successful and conversion of the ore into fuel began. A refinery module for the Minmusport station also arrived last night and successfully rendezvoused, beginning a similar conversion operation (the Wildcat craft assigned to Minmus having made its first ore delivery three days ago). What has become obvious from the conversion operations aboard both space stations is that neither one has sufficient electrical power generation to run the converter unit full bore. I'll be looking into adding a truss structure to the stations for additional power generation in the near future. I'm kinda disappointed about this (though not really surprised), as I was hoping the arrival of Minmusport's refinery module would've been the final piece of mining infrastructure that needed to be established for Kerbin's moons. Picked up a rescue contract for Kerbin. Since I've got an up-and-down tourist contract going on as well, I've thought about combining the two missions. I'm also still thinking about how I'm going to get Bob off the Mun; Theogel didn't have the KAS tools like I thought he would.

You can never go wrong with unlocking more science experiments - they help you get through the tech tree faster (do it right and you can have the tech tree maxed out in a hundred game days or less). Once you have OX-STAT strap-on solar panels and Fuel Ducts, I'd get all the 45-point tier techs unlocked and then move along the bottom of the tech tree to gain access to more experiments. The gravioli detector is a particularly nice one to gain access to at the earliest opportunity. You might also consider a few along the top - Heavy Rocketry for example. You can get a lot into orbit on Skipper engines.

Very basics then - do you have solar panels and are they deployed, or have you included a sufficient number of RTGs? Have you remembered to take your craft all the way out of time-warp? Sorry to ask what may sound like stupid questions, but it's good to get those checked off first.

Yeah - you need a wider axle track, or that thing's going to flip over with the first small bump you hit (or if you try to turn at any kind of decent speed at all). Putting some kind of protective shielding around the mission critical bits (i.e. the cockpit) wouldn't be a bad idea either; girder segments in this case, but in general anything with a high impact tolerance. Ordinarily I would suggest driving in docking mode; in staging mode, the main directional controls are going to want to pitch your craft rather than turn it. In this case though, with the engine providing the thrust, it's best to ignore that bit of advice. You might also consider adding a reaction stabilizer if you've got access to them. Might also want to consider using an engine with an alternator - that Terrier's not going to recharge your batts. Just saying. Again, I'd suggest girders. Put them about where you want them vertically, then roll them (Q and E keys) in that position until they're parallel to the ground. Then add additional girders to widen out your wheel base. It may look like dreck when it's all said and done, but it should help your stability issues.

I spent the weekend largely working on Bob's latest science farming mission to Mun and beginning mining operations on both of Kerbin's moons. Friday I installed the Action Group Manager mod to try and fix a few outstanding issues with Bob's Fireball 7c craft (namely to add a group that would allow me to fire off the gravioli detector without having to actually push the button on the part everytime - some of those Mun biomes are pretty small from 60k up). I landed Theogel and Verise in their Wildcat 7 craft on Mun and began drilling operations in earnest there, though for some reason their mission wouldn't continue when I went away to do things with Bob (you know, the drills are supposed to continue going in the background - theirs didn't work for some reason). Ultimately I had to stay with the craft while it filled up - I was ultimately able to fill up and refuel the Wildcat successfully, though that was the last thing I did on Sunday... Meanwhile, I was able to fill up the Wildcat 7 craft assigned to Minmus fully with fuel and ore, so it was sent up for a successful rendezvous with the Minmusport space station. On arrival, the craft was able to deliver sufficient fuel to Enola Gay - Cerxie's craft with a group of tourists that had been parked at the station for the past few days - so that the ship was able to finally head for home. The Minmus Wildcat is still awaiting the arrival of the station's Refinery module; when it arrives, she'll have a full load of ore ready and waiting. I'm really happy with the Minmus mining operation, but it's pretty clear that where it's really need right now is at Mun - and that's one's not doing so well. I'm thinking I'll need to send more drills sooner rather than later. At least I have the money for it. Bob's science mission was going fairly well - he had collected high space gravioli readings from all fifteen of Mun's biomes and successfully collected all surface and low-space experiment readings from the Polar Crater, Poles and Polar Lowlands. However, he decided to try for a fourth landing at the Northern Basin. The landing went well and he did get the low-space and surface readings for the biomes, but he only has 400 m/s of delta-V left in his craft, not enough to return to orbit - and I sure as hell ain't transmitting all that science back to Kerbin (I wouldn't even if Bob had an antenna, which he doesn't). The Fireball does not have refueling capabilities - at least not yet. There's a Project Peacock craft docked at Munport so somebody somewhere in the the Mun's SOI has KAS tools (I think Theogel's got them), and Bob's in a relatively flat area so a surface refuel/rescue mission is in the realm of possibilities. I'm still working out the details of that one. Might depend on which lander craft I can get refueled and how quickly I can make it all happen. I also successfully put Munport 2 into a lower Munar orbit before the weekend was out, and Bob took care of a Munar flag-planting mission for me, which put my funding over the √1M mark. Enola Gay arrives at Kerbin in three more days, and Minmusport's refinery module will arrive in the moon's SOI in another twenty minutes.

Yes, the lab will run with only a single scientist. And you can process data (i.e. add data to a lab's buffer) with any old Kerbal manning the lab - I've had Jeb do it before a couple of times. You need scientists to convert the data back into science, though. If you've landed Bob on both Mun and Minmus AND if he's planted a flag on both bodies, he should upgrade to Level 3 once you bring him back from Kerbolar orbit. That's true of any Kerbal.

Last night began by putting Fireball 7c (with Bob) in orbit of Mun to do what will hopefully be the last science run out there. He's currently running high-altitude gravioli readings; he got about six before the close of business. Meanwhile, my Midas 7 refinery lander finally arrived at Minmus and I began the process of putting it down at the Wildcat 7 drilling site. The precision landing went well - a little too well, actually. I wound up landing one one of the Mosquito 7 drilling rig's large solar panels and tipping it over halfway. I had to wriggle the Mosquito free but was able to do so and then upright it on pod torque. Hooked the three craft - Wildcat, Midasand Mosquito- up to one another with KAS winch cables, and I'm happy to report that at long last drilling operations on Minmus have begun in earnest. That's Mosquito on the left, Midas in the center and the Wildcat on the right. The Midas is converting ore into fuel as it's being drilled from the ground. I think the system could easily handle another Mosquito driller and I am seeing a net loss of ore in the conversion, so I'm considering sending another one to the site. For now though, Wildcat is being refueled and as soon as I can refuel her ore tanks, a delivery will be made to Minmusport. I have already successfully refilled the craft's monoprop tanks. I also put a second space station in orbit of Mun successfully. I decided to go ahead and keep it for two reasons - first, the original Munport station is in a 150,000 m orbit, too high for practical purposes. Second, she's run out of berths - Project Peacock towards the top, a Fuel Module and Carrier Pigeon on the left, the Mun Buggy on the right, and a Refinery module with Theogel and Verise's Wildcat 7 towards the bottom. I still haven't got them down on the surface yet and they need to get down there so Munar drilling ops can begin. The Naquadah 7 ore-hauling craft has succesfully made Munar orbit at this point. My original intention was to dock it at the newly dubbed (and originally named) Munport 2 and await an ore delivery, but at this point I'm scratching my head thinking "why can't I just dock the first ore load directly to the craft"? Might have to check to see if it is going to need more gas to get back to Kerbin. The replacement contract offered for putting Munport 2 up was a rescue contract around Kerbol paying √250k. I passed on that one... Since I remembered the screenies today, I have a couple more recent ones I'll share with y'all before I go. First is Kerbinport - That's a Raven 7 plane top, a hab module on the left, a fuel module bottom with the same Carrier Pigeon 7 craft that's now at Munport, and a Stratofortress 7a craft - Bockscar I think - on the left. This would've been before Theogel came back along with the group of tourists aboard that Raven, the same flight that netted me nearly √500k when it landed. And finally, I caught this solar eclipse a couple of weeks ago. That's the second Sojourner probe I sent to Mun, the one I sent for money. Not the best shot of the probe but it's still the only time I've actually seen an eclipse in all the time I've been playing KSP.

What's your critical mach and wave drag area? Really, that's all the yellow squiggly line is telling you - where the wave drag is being generated and how much. In this case, your surface area ramps up near the tail, hence the huge spikes in that graph. It's not the end-all be-all of FAR flight, though; in my experience, stability is far more important, and you can get a craft up into orbit even with ungodly amounts of wave drag (it just might not have as much delta-V available to it once it's up there). I'd still run the dynamic stability simulation for 5,000m/Mach 1 and 20,000m/Mach 4 just to be on the safe side. Checking the w and ß parameters should be sufficient - just type in a value of 1 and mash go, and watch what the graphs do. As I've said before, you can be green across the static stability board and still have dynamic stability issues.

Last night I decided to give another crack at the booster for the Russet 7 tater-catcher, designed to handle high-end Cs and low-end Ds. I did build a successful booster, which launched the 200 tonne craft into orbit with no issues whatsoever. It's been a long time since I've built a CPU-melting monstrosity like that, and it cost me almost every penny I had to launch it, too. I'd forgotten how much fun that can be sometimes... Reverted the flight. Yeah, I know...but I was sixty degrees off the plane of the rock, and I'm still not convinced I can actually catch it before it plummets into Kerbin. √700k for a rocket is not chump change - especially if all it does is hurtle to its destruction. I do need to catch a C for contract, but at this point I think I'll go after the one that's still a ways off. It'll give me time to generate more cash if nothing else. And since Bob's almost to Mun (like half-an-hour out), I might also get the huge rockets and fuel tanks unlocked and reduce the part count a bit before I try again.

You'd probably have better luck on the Official FAR design craft thread, but since you asked... What you're looking at there are area ruling graphs. The green curve shows you the amount of cross-sectional area over the length of your craft; for proper area ruling, you want no abrupt changes in the smoothness of the graph. The yellow line measures changes in cross-section ; you'd like to have this line as flat as you can possibly make it. Finally, the blue line measures pressure over the length of your craft; where the graph crests, your craft is creating the greatest amount of drag.All three lines help to identify where your craft will create drag and gve you an idea of where to make adjustments in the design. Now, as far as your stability concerns go - you can check those in the dynamic stability simulation tab. Drain your plane of fuel and hit the simulator around the time all hell brakes loose in terms of altitude and speed. I believe the parameters you want to check are Nß, Lß, and Mw. Put a value of 1 in the beta and w parameters (not at the same time, necessarily) and then mash go - if you see a graph that oscillates but the oscillation damps down or stays the same, you're good. If you see anything else, your craft is a no-go, and will need to be redesigned to maintain stability under the listed conditions. Your static stability parameters can tell you this as well - any red numbers are pretty much an automatic wash on your design, especially if you then run the simulation and get the aforementioned "bad" graph shape (if you get a red number but then test it in the simulator and get a "good" shape, then it's something that's probably livable; I myself have never seen this particular happy state of affairs). Suggestions - add dihedral to the wing, make the tail bigger and/or move the center of mass forward. That's if you want the thing to fly. If you're looking for aesthetics...well, there's not too much advice I can give there; it looks pretty nice as is.

Last night began with another check of what science I had done on Mun and Minmus and what I left to do. Found out I had four experiments on the surface of Minmus's Slopes that hadn't been done - not really enough to warrant the expense of another science run out there, methinks. I still have plenty left to do for Mun and Bob is scheduled to arrive in a few hours. I then began work on the Russet 7, a design to put a Class C in orbit of Minmus. I came to the determination that though I'm close, I don't quite have enough tech to get the design - a 200 tonne, 7 J-64/6 Skipper probe that can be refueled and has full RCS capabilities - into orbit. Mainly, I'm lacking the big engines needed to put that monster into orbit. Puts the kibosh on that tater-capturing mission I wanted to try to fire up. I suppose I could use the lost art of engine clustering, putting 3-4 Mainsails underneath the 3.5 meter tanks. I'll have to see if it's still possible to attempt a capture of that Class C rock in Kerbin's SOI or not. In other news, Theogel arrived in Mun's SOI aboard a Wildcat 7 ore-delivery and control craft and had a successful rendezvous and docking at the Munport space station, picking up Verise and transferring what fuel remained at Munport to the Wildcat for landing. Tonight the two of them will descend to the Mun Mosquito site and begin Munar drilling and refinery operations in earnest. A Midas converter lander also finally arrived in Minmus's SOI last night, after weeks of planning, preparation and scraping up enough cash to do it, my mining infrastructure for both moons is finally almost all in place. I did go ahead and pick up a contract to put a nine-Kerbal base on Minmus paying about √250k. Should be straight-forward enough to do, though the last time I tried to use my nine-person design I had to call Bill for a tow...

Didn't do anything last night in the game proper, though I did start planning for an asteroid capture mission - I have a contract to put a Class C in orbit of Minmus, paying close to √1M. I did notice a Class C before close of business on Sunday...already in Kerbin's SOI and headed for a collision. You know that's the one I want. Trick will be to rendezvous far enough out to get it into a stable orbit around Kerbin...if I can do that at least, I can refuel and try to get it the rest of the way to the payout. First thing's first, of course: I have to catch the thing.

^^^ NaN Kraken - haven't seen one of thems for a while. It's related to the Hell Kraken, except in that one the Altimeter reading goes to 666,666 (hence the name).

RL gave me a run for my money this past weekend, so not a whole lot done in KSP. Friday night saw a redesign of the Fireball 7 craft (now the Fireball 7c) for added delta-V and a transfer stage that'd get it to Mun with all that delta-V still intact. Shot that out towards Mun; Bob is currently en route, with the goal of getting enough sci in this mission to finish out the tech tree. Keeping my fingers crossed there. On Saturday night, I built a booster for my new Naquadah 7 ore hauling craft and shot it into orbit with the intent of sending it to Mun, but I forgot to add batteries; I had to revert that flight to correct that, and while I was adding the batts I decided to go ahead and fix up some structural issues that I noted in the first launch as well. I ended Saturday with a (finally) successful launch of my standard space station core after redesigning the booster so it wouldn't stall and slip so easily. Large ASAS modules work wonders sometimes. The core is now on its way to Mun as well, where its arrival will fulfill a relatively high-paying contract. Finally, last night saw a successful launch of the Naquadah 7 to Mun. It will rendezvous with the Munport space station awaiting the first delivery of materiel from the Munar Wildcat site, which may still be a while in coming - the Munar Wildcat won't arrive at Mun for another four hours, and then Theogel will still have to pick up Verise from Munport before the two of them can head down there... I really should put up some screenies at some point.

Ah - found it: Streetwind's post, transitioning into Geschosskopf's post on the same thread, is an awesome early game strategy. Note my own observations on Streetwind's part of the strategy, as well as Geschosskopf's reply - in fact, that whole thread is absolutely worth a read. It's a powerful combo - I used it to climb up most of the tech tree in under 100 game days. Nice find! I'ma gonna have to start using those my own self...

The wiki's got a pretty comprehensive list of what all you can do. - http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Science#Activities The list of biomes might also be helpful to you. - http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Biome Lots of folks have gotten early science by rolling around KSC in a contraption consisting of two Mk1 Capsules stuck end to end on each other. You just have to be careful not to get it going too fast... That, of course, is not the best early strategy for the career game I've come across - you can get up the tech tree pretty quickly on a shoestring budget. I have to motor or I'd take the time to go find where that strategy is posted on these forums. Maybe a future edit.

My computer has a label on its side that says "Made in Byzantium"; I began using FAR a while back and I'll tell you that I have not noticed any change in overall performance of the game.

Last night my computer was downloading updates while KSP was running, so the game was acting pretty slowly - not a good thing when your window for gameplay is only about an hour long. I began by landing Cerxie (the pilot) and tourists Jenedith, Neillong, Eldorf and Arissa on the surface of Minmus for contracts. The landing itself was a contract - I had one to "put a new base on Minmus" and the Mun Buggy craft fulfilled all the necessary criteria. Earned about √225k all told for that effort, and since all the craft utilized were already up, it only cost me the price of fuel. So big profit there. I returned the Buggy to Minmusport after letting Cerxie plant a flag on the surface, and reloaded the crew into Enola Gay currently docked at Minmusport. Currently there isn't enough fuel at Minmusport station to refuel the craft completely for the journey home, so she's holding to until the station's Refinery Module arrives ten days from now. The Midas refinery lander headed to Minmus is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, so an earlier departure of the craft may be possible - I'll need to work out the logistics, though. I next determined that my standard space station core would fulfill the requirements of a "new station around Mun" contract, so I made three frustrating attempts to launch one before calling it a night; stalled and flipped each time. I don't know what was going on - this is the same core upon which the Kerbinport, Munport and Minmusport space stations are all based, so it's not like I haven't launched the damn thing plenty of times before. Of course, yesterday was frustrating in general, and not just in terms of KSP; I've been working on a VASSAL mod lately and spent most of the day trying to work out one of those "this should be working, why the crap is it not working" problems. Still not resolved as of this morning...

Yeah, I have to agree with cantab on this on - if you're wanting to apply what you've learned in school to KSP, install FAR. The stock aerodynamic model, while better than it used to be, is still somewhat kludgy.

They're pretty much the same thing - they both provide a little bit of fuel (not really enough for a run to space), a little bit of intake air (again, not enough for a run to space), and a radial mounting point for an engine assembly (the last of which is probably its probably their best use, IMHO). That's pretty much it. The pre-cooler is ostensibly harder to heat up; myself, I've seen little difference between the two parts in practical usage. I do fly FAR, in which the pre-cooler is ever so slightly better in terms of less added drag (in general).

Last night I had maybe 45 minutes to play. I spent a good chunk of it designing a craft to haul ore from Mun to Kerbin, a craft I dubbed the Naquadah 7 for wont of a better name. The craft should have sufficient delta-V to make it between Kerbin and the moons and return even with a full load of ore, and I've set it up with radial engines and and aft docking port so that its presence won't block a docking pier entirely. Only about 30 tonnes at launch. Tonight I'll design a booster for it and get the prototype headed towards Mun, time permitting. I also designed the Lawsuit 7 SSTO rocket, designed to haul four Kerbals to orbit and down again. Tourists Paly, Phodra and Lingie were loaded aboard and sent for a quick up and down flight, fulfilling two relatively low-paying tourist contracts. I think I made all of about √10k for the effort, but the replacement contracts were "Plant a Flag on Mun" and "Gather Science from the Mun surface"; since I plan to send Bob to Mun to farm science again, this was a rather serendipitous happenstance... The last thing I did last night was retrofit the Albatross 7 refueling plane with RAPIER engines and took it up for a test flight. The plane has excessive pitch stability - she lawn darted at 14k and ultimately exploded from excessive dynamic pressure. At the same time, her roll stability sucks - she constantly wants to roll to the right and I found myself fighting to keep the plane upright the entire time. I think a full review of the design is in order; I'm convinced it would just take a little bit of tweaking to get to the point where she'd make it to orbit and back without issue. I really need that plane working...

Fair enough, and more power to you for taking that route. Hmmm....have you consider attaching the docking port to the rest of the boom via a set of Cubic Octagonal Struts? In my experience, those things let you get away with stuff in the stock game that you might not expect (for example, I made a trebuchet once using them as a stock bearing). They should give your port a bit of additional flexibility when it comes time to dock up. It's worth a shot, anyway.

KAS/KIS may still be an option - how far along is your fleet already?

What's the maximum distance on that? I landed two craft with connector ports 130 meters apart the other day and tried to move one of them because I thought it was too far away; it tipped over on the second landing (still usable, it's just not going anywhere ever again).