capi3101

Ah, the Axis of Awesome...you know they actually did "Birdplane" as a seperate song, right? (And it just happened to wind up in "Four Chords" because "Superman", the song of which "Birdplane" is a direct spoof, for obvious reasons). Awesome plane, BTW. Er...bird-plane. A mutha-effin' birdplane.

Continued construction of Space Station Mere in orbit of the Mun. Sent another spoke module up and sent up the first habitation module with a crew of six white-suits to join the other two already up there. I knew that my first spoke module was turned exactly ninety degrees out of alignment, so I decided to go ahead and attempt a realignment (which turned out to be hairier than I'd though it would be, though I still managed to get the job done. Six of the station's planned seventeen modules are now in place, including three out of four spokes and two ring segments. I plan on putting up a fueling module next, after which the station should be fully capable of supporting extended expeditions to the Munar surface.

Yeah, Moho is a very tricky target. I've only managed to put a probe around it myself. If your target is Moho, I suggest you go maccollo. Game hasn't changed that much in the past nine months...

You have to be in contact with the water to meet this condition. Most folks put the part they need to test on a simple chute-pod-small fuel tank-engine assembly, making sure the part to be tested is Stage 0 (i.e. the VERY last thing to be activated). Launch and immediately turn to head out to sea (090 heading) and keeping your ascent rate low; you're not heading into space on these trips. Once you're flying over the water, you kill the engine, pop the chutes, and float down to the water's surface. Then once your craft is in the water, stage to activate the part to fulfill your contract, then recover the craft. If your contract is to test an engine in a splashed down state, I highly recommend setting the thrust limiter to zero. On a similar vein, you don't actually have to provide any fuel for a contract test; all that you MUST do in order to fulfill the contract is to use the staging controls to activate the part - whether you make it actually DO anything at that point is your own business.

The short answer: when your craft stops accelerating on the jets, it's time to switch over. It's generally best to use nukes only if you plan on taking your craft interplanetary (or for that matter, Mun and Minmus); if you're just going for a Kerbin orbit, go for something light and efficient (folks have given you some good suggestions already).

Yeah, if you're asking what I think you're asking (say, a circular orbit that stays constantly around 80 degrees latitude), that's physically impossible - though an escape trajectory that coincides with that latitude is possible. I'll point you to this section of a wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit#Understanding_orbits. Pay attention to the discussion of "Newton's Cannonball". As for a polar orbit, those are possible, though if you want to launch straight into one you might want to aim a few degrees west of the direction you're going to compensate for the planet's rotation. You can correct any minor error later with a normal/anti-normal burn as usual if you've got the delta-v for it.

If you only killed one Kerbal, you did exceptionally well (or you didn't try hard enough, depending on your perspective). Well, after failing miserably to catch a tater (class C plowed into Kerbin's atmosphere with my poor little intercept craft plunging in just before it), I decided to try my hand at building a Tex_NL-style hub and spoke circular space station. Around MÂÂÂÂÂÂun. I've got the hub, two of the spokes and one ring segment in place so far; the station isn't done yet but I'll probably do some screenies of it when it's all said and done. I'll just say that docking those spokes has been a first class pain in my backside so far (first one ran out of monoprop prior to docking; fortunately I had put RCS capabilities on the hub for that very contingency. The spokes really don't like to steer...needs moar reaction wheels, methinks. The first ring segment was also fun; realized once I was in orbit that I hadn't put any solar panels on the craft anywhere. Fortunately I had loaded the thing with batteries so I had something like 5000 electricity - docked with 800 some-odd remaining... Had the notion this morning to try to do a sphere station once I'm done with this one. I don't know how well that'll work out just yet, nor how to test it, but it'd look pretty freakin' cool if I could pull it off...

Long and the short of it, you didn't launch into the exact position you needed to be in in order to leave at the exact moment the AlexMoon tool tells you. The good news is that very, very, very little in KSP is about being 100% precise all the time. I use the same tools you do (PreciseNode and KAC), and from experience I can tell you that everybody else that has posted to this thread has given you the answer already; the angle of the ejection is the crucial factor at play, and if you don't hit it at the exact moment it'll cost you a trivial amount of delta-V at the worst. You just go as close to that departure time as you can manage and you'll turn out fine.

NavyFish, been using your mod almost from the beginning; I had taken a break from KSP over the last six months and missed the last mod update, and I didn't have a chance to try out the new version until this past weekend. I love the changes you've made to the UI; the instruments are showing up nice and clear now on my Byzantine, low-end graphics box. Thanks again for all of the hard work you've put into this mod; I know I myself and many of the rest of us really depend on it.

El Wanderer and Red Iron Crown have got the delta-V down for you; not much I can add, except that you'll need to make sure and leave plenty time for your burn. The old-style RCS blocks have half the thrust of an ion engine and you'll have to do that burn manually (no physics warp); I pity you if that's all you've got available. Just make sure to do your burns as far out as you can; last thing you're going to want is a 700 m/s burn right there at Kerbin's SOI...your finger will get sore if nothing else. If you've got O-10s, no sweat.

It had been a few months since the last time I'd built a proper spaceplane, so I figured I'd try one. Fired up the Sandbox and built a contraption that promptly wheelbarrowed and killed Jeb. The abort stage didn't work because the Sepratrons I used to kick the cockpit clear of the fuselage were buried into the initial design's intakes (damn parts clipping), so instead of cutting Jeb up and free he stayed glued to the rest of the craft as it careened into the ground at 50 m/s. SPH was buggy when I tried to correct the problem (it wouldn't let me re-attach the Sepratrons in a new spot nor would it let me attach a brand new set of Sepratrons to that same spot) and ultimately I just threw up my hands. Don't know if I'll try yet again or not. Discovered that my Duna window is, contrary to my original assessment, still a good ways off. Still plenty of time to grind out the rest of the tech tree before I even leave Kerbin's SOI. I guess I'm still not used to the whole six-hour day as yet.

They ever get it to where the carp wouldn't kill you outright? I'd play the game again myself but my wife can't stand the music for some reason...

Didn't have time for much last night. Realized the 'Tater Catcher I had up for my next rock catching expedition wasn't going to cut it - the AN was 104 degrees after launch, so I launched another 'Tater Catcher into a polar orbit. Still 44 degrees off, but I was able to correct that easily enough. Three days until the rock hits Kerbin's SOI; it's set for a collision course, so I imagine that means it'll be going pretty slow when it finally does enter the SOI and I have a fair shot at grabbing it while it's still out there towards Minmus. I realized that my first Duna window is coming up. Probably means I need to get my crap together if I'm going to go.

Got ready to do some more rock catching. I'd unlocked a fair chunk more of the tech tree since my first attempt, so I went ahead and updated my 'Tater Catcher 7 design. Got one in orbit ready to go when the time comes. Other than that it was more money making and science building - I'm 550 science away from Specialized Electrics at this point. Going to be nice to head towards Ike and Gilly with PB-NUKs, methinks.

Glad to have been of assistance.

Did a Minmus run for science and parts testing last night, followed up by another Kerbal rescue mission. Unlocked the large probe cores; can finally start using self-cleaning boosters (debating if I want to try to make them recoverable as well - my program is up to 4 million at the moment so it's not like I'm strapped for cash, but still). Another 850 science and I'll have my PB-NUKs, then it's on to mop-up. Debating as to whether or not I want to do a Duna mission at this point - I've definitely got the tech for it at this point. Class C rock enters Kerbin's SOI in 4 days, so it's about time for me to catch it and avoid an impact. You know, trying to save the bumpers on people's cars and all that.

The forums have been jacked up for quite some time now - the only way to post images is to use another site to host the image (if you don't have one of your own, an image-hosting site such as Imgur or Flickr works well; I use Imgur myself) and link to it with img tags ([ IMG ] put URL here [ / URL ], but take the spaces out of the brackets). Full Imgur albums have their own special tag ([ imgur ]) that you can just set the albums identifier between. Red Iron Crown's pretty well answered your other issues, so I thought I'd take the easy one.

The main objective of KSP is to garner a greater understanding of the physics and issues regarding travelling through space than most people working for NASA while avoiding having to muck about with all of that "going to college" nonsense, and to allow you to fulfill your childhood dream of becoming an astronaut without having to ride in a centerfuge, train in a space suit underwater to learn that you can't take your helmet off to scratch the back of your head, use a finger cot to deal with floating turds, or any other stressful/strenuous/physically challenging/probably disgusting activities. On the other hand, you don't get to experience the joys of dehydrated ice cream or floating about. Seriously, it's a sandbox; you do what you want. Like Dwarf Fortress, there are no victory conditions. Somewhat unlike Dwarf Fortress, there are also no defined conditions for losing the whole shebang other than what you put upon yourself.

There was an issue like this a few versions ago, when subassembly was still a mod and not a default feature of the game. Temstar had a fix for it then; you might see if something similar is happening in your case or not. If you don't want to do the work yourself, post a link to the subassembly file here and one of us can take a look at it for you (read: I'll take a look).

The forums have been jacked up for quite some time now - the only way to post images is to use another site to host the image (if you don't have one of your own, an image-hosting site such as Imgur or Flickr works well; I use Imgur myself) and link to it with img tags ([ IMG ] put URL here [ / URL ], but take the spaces out of the brackets). Full Imgur albums have their own special tag ([ imgur ]) that you can just set the albums identifier between.

Did more of the same last night; tested five different parts last night, three in flight, one in sub-orbit and one in orbit. Realized I'd missed a sixth; I'll get it on the next run. Nearly met with disaster when I thought the contraption was coming in to hot for the chutes and fired up the engines to compensate - chutes promptly disappeared and I had to land it manually...the engine was a KR-1x2 still set at full thrust. Made it (thank God).

I generally start seeing serious lag around 400 parts, though I find that if I pan the camera so that the ground is out of view I get slightly better performance; I can sometimes get up to 600 parts playing that way without too bad of lag, though the launch itself is slow. Most parts at once - somewhere around 800 for an extended Duna mission. And that was a pretty slow launch. Things improved as I started shedding parts off the booster. I find spaceplanes are laggy as hell in that zone between 20,000-35,000 meters. And I'm not talking about some monstrosity either; maybe a 100-200 part spaceplane. Tops.

Last night it was back to business as usual; making moola, testing parts, planting flags, transmitting worthless science, more parts testing, more parts testing, more parts testing...unlocked BZ-52s (my personal favorite). My current research path will take me out to Meta-Materials (and Sr. Docking Ports) before heading back for bigger probe cores and PB-NUKs, then spaceplanes, rovers, and ion propulsion last. It occurs to me that I've still only been out to Mun twice and Minmus once since starting this career save and that there's a lot of science still to be made. Funds are past 3 million at this point.

Same here; I haven't actually hired anybody since starting the new career save and I'm pretty much holding the guys I've rescued in reserve for permanent flag planting duties. If nobody's showing up in your Astronaut Complex, that does sound like a bug. I might have to visit the astronaut complex myself next chance I get to see if the same thing's happening to me or not.

Aw gee whiz, momma...I said I'd feed it.......