capi3101

Yeah, that happens. It does take practice to get it right; IIRC it took me eight or nine tries before I successfully stuck a Mun landing (not counting the ones where I arrived safely but tipped over on landing). Learning the IVA trick helped me out a lot in the early going (before I started using KER) and I still do it that way on those occasions where I go back and play the v0.18 demo.

No........

General cheekiness aside (the forum won't let you call him a smart-[KILLER RABBIT OF CAERBANNOG]), Simes has a point. What kind of engine do you have on that lander? General rules are 7200 delta-V total for a Mun landing mission and about 6800 for Minmus. Those are minimal values and they both include the ~4500 or so you need to get into Kerbin orbit. A lander with at least 2700 m/s of delta-V should be able to make it to either destination, land and return. Your craft description is inadequate for me to make a 100% accurate assessment. I'm assuming "some batteries and panels" is two Z-100s and 2 OX-STATS. I'll also assume a quad of LT-1 Lander Legs is part of the design. I figure if you're using a 48-7S engine you should have 3332 m/s of delta-V; with an LV-909 you've got 4321 m/s. Munar surface TWR with the 48-7S should be around 5.7, and with the LV-909 it should be 8.47. So you should be okay either way, though I would certainly consider adding a chute and a decoupler in there somewhere for when the whole thing has to come back home...neither of which will affect the capabilities of the craft all that much (3090 m/s of delta-V with the 48-7S). So, I'm assuming the "landing failed" because of how the craft was piloted. If you're a beginner, a Mun landing is one of the early milestones and it takes practice practice practice. Folks here have given you good tutorials to follow, but basically you want to make sure you're going slow enough that when you hit the deck you're not exceeding the impact tolerance of the parts you're using (roughly 12 m/s, and ideally you don't want to be going much more than 5 m/s on impact if you don't want to risk parts breaking off). My advice - quicksave before you make the attempt (that way you can quickload and try again if need be), and make use of IVA; one of the gauges there is a radar altimeter, which will give you your true altitude above ground level. When it starts twitching, you'll have a rough estimate of the ground elevation (i.e. what your altimeter will say when you've reached the deck) and can use that to figure out when you need to be going slow. If you need more detailed instructions, holler. If you use FennexFox's link to pull up an actual delta-V map, go with the second of the "images" on the top; to my knowledge it's the one that's most up to date.

Thanks for your advice, y'all; I can report that I was successful in my efforts to put the rock into a stable orbit around Kerbin. An ugly orbit, but an orbit nonetheless. Wound up catching it slightly past its periapsis. Fortunately, it turned out to be relatively light for a light class E, a mere 1600 tonnes, and it caught Kerbin at such an angle that it really needed only a verrrrry slight nudge to put it into orbit (as the pictures show, it was in an orbit within Kerbin's SOI with only about 5 m/s of delta-V). In short, I was lucky conditions set up the way they were. I do appreciate y'all's advice; next time I see an E coming my way, I'll try to catch it a little more ahead of time. I'll definitely be doing that with the C coming my way. Will change this thread to "awesome".......er, "answered". Thanks again.

Caught a rock.

I'm not trying to be sarcastic here - so your problem is.....what exactly? Seriously. The mass of a Mk 1 Command Pod and two Goo containers is 1.14 tonnes; you can bring that down with a small chute and survive at ground elevations up to 5,000 meters on Kerbin according to the Parachute Calculator; with four containers you'll survive up to about 3,500 meters. And side chutes are a measly 15 Science points after Goo; they can bring down heavier loads no sweat. Four goo containers = don't have to go back to wherever you went for Goo experiments again; you wind up milking the biome for every drop of science that it could possibly ever be worth. Long and the short of it: there's no real reason not to haul up more than one goo container at a time, unless you really really want to just take one. Your call.

Kashua's probably given you the best solution for your specific problem. You could do the bottom of your craft as well but that's generally where you want to put, you know, the rest of your rocket... Geshosskopf would tell you to take four to your destination - if you pop them all open at the same time, you collect all the data possible for the Goo cannister for that biome and never have to visit it ever again...

Took a break from my career to do an SRB spaceplane challenge. Haven't looked to see if I disqualified myself or not just yet. I'll probably get back to picking up rocks tonight.

Alright - it's been a while since Xeldrak's done a challenge; it's been a while since I entered in one of Xeldrak's challenges. Behold the Flaming Sack of Crap 7!! Alright, so I'm claiming a maximum Apoapsis of 52,250 meters. I claim a multiplier of 1.5 - Jeb came home safe and I didn't tweak any thrusters. So, doing the math, I claim a score of 78,375 points, second place as of this post. Pretty sure I followed the rules/spirit of the challenge, but if not y'all let me know.

Would y'all consider it to be excessive cheating if I were to launch a pathfinder, dock it, get the mass readout...and then revert? 3000 tonnes. Wow...that's a bit of a load now, ain't it? Okay...if I'm doing the math right, with the periapsis around 2,300,000 meters the gravitational influence of Kerbin should be around 0.41 m/s^2...so with 3000 tonnes of mass, if I want a TWR of 1.0, I'd need 1,259 kN of thrust. That sound right? Sounds like I want to haul a Mainsail up to do the pushing. It'd be way lighter than a cluster of 21 NERVAs... Also sounds like steering the sucker is going to be the tricky bit. That's something to start working with anyway. Thanks for y'all's advice so far.

In general, I find that you can run your engines full blast until you've got roughly 0.05-0.07 units of intake air per engine safely. You can go past that mark, but you do risk a flame out/flat spin, and in general the higher your throttle setting is at that point, the less time you'll have to respond before a flame out occurs. Here's what you can do - pull down to about 2/3 throttle and keep going. If your plane starts yawing to one side without you giving any input, kick it down another notch or two and put yourself back on your original heading. Rinse and repeat. I've been able to use Turbojets with as little as 0.01 units of air per engine before keeping this method going. Key thing is to keep on accelerating; if you throttle back and you start losing speed, it's time to light your rockets.

Howdy, y'all. I'm sure this one's been answered loads of times before now, but y'all know how whacked out the forum search function has been for...well, forever. It's been a while since I had a question I needed to ask anyways... Okay, so here's the sitrep: I've got a Class E asteroid headed to a 2.3 million meter Apoapsis in about six days. It's already in Kerbin's SOI. I'd like to try to capture the thing. This would be the first time I try to capture a rock (let alone one of that size class), so I'm thinking I just want to do something simple and try to put it into a stable orbit. I've got about 2,000,000 funds. Heaviest engine I've got unlocked is the Mainsail, I've got the Claw and NERVAs. My main question - how much delta-V should I plan for, and roughly how much thrust should I plan for the payload? What kind of mass should I expect a Class E to have anyways? For that matter, is there anything that lists out the range of masses of each type of asteroid (i.e. Class A is X tonnes to Y tonnes, Class B is W tonnes to Z tonnes, etc.). I ask mainly because I have a Class C on a collision course in a little over a month, and I'd like to try to avoid it landing on somebody's rear bumper if at all possible... I have done the first tutorial (and I went ahead and docked with the rock), I've got loads of experience with rendezvous and docking and I understand the mechanics involved with all the piloting, so I'm mainly asking for design help here, but any help y'all can offer would be greatly appreciated.

The fundamentals of rendezvous and docking haven't changed since 0.18. There are a few more parts to choose from, but the basics are still the same - launch to an orbit that's roughly the same altitude as your target, zero your planes, go with the apoapsis higher than the target if you're ahead it or put the periapsis lower than the target if you're behind it (with the other apsis at the same altitude as the target), wait until you get a pretty close pass indicated, then burn prograde/retrograde at the next apsis (whichever reduces the distance) - and then do the same thing at the next apsis. Repeat apses burns until you're not doing anything productive, then try a few between the apses. Eventually you'll get an encounter closer than 2.2 kilometers, which is when you can switch over to final docking. Final docking is where you want fine control maneuvers (hence RCS, which until 0.24 was the only real option available unless you had a really light ship, a 48-7S, and good piloting skills). Switch your speedometer to Target mode and when you get to your closest approach burn retrograde until you've zeroed out your relative velocity. Turn to face the target (pink meatball) and burn slow ahead. At 100 meters distance, zero out, re-aim and thrust slow ahead. Rinse and repeat at 50 meters. Then 20. Zero out your velocity, switch to the other ship, target the first ship and aim at it. Set SAS and switch back. Reaim, set SAS and thrust ahead slow. Relative velocity at that point shouldn't be much more than 1 m/s. Just go slow and you've got it. Something I find helps if I'm launching a craft to rendezvous with another craft in orbit is to wait until the target is about 500,000 meters uprange of KSC before launching, give or take. And by uprange, I mean the distance to KSC is decreasing. Get to that point, look at the target's altitude, and try for a launch apoapsis at that same altitude.

Just don't expose it to light, get it wet or feed it after midnight and I'm sure everything will be just fine... If you want to be totally protected, just backup your save directory after you clock out of the game. If the Kraken strikes, copy over your new save game with the previous one; you'll lose any progress you've made that day but you'll at least not have to start from scratch. Hell Kraken used to get me all the time and this method helped.

Never done docking, eh? Well, it's not that hard, and EVA rescues aren't that hard either. Biggest trick is making sure Jeb doesn't sneak into the rescue capsule while you're not looking... (Go to the pad straight from the VAB and make sure to use the controls before you hit "launch" that will let you pilot the craft unmanned - it's the blue one to the left of your craft name that looks like a Kerbal). So, since it's your first rodeo, you want a rescue craft with about 1000 m/s of delta-V give or take. Usual accoutrements - you'll want a probe core to handle the unmanned portion of the flight (Stayputniks work just fine), a batt or two to support it (A Z-200 or a few Z-100s will do just fine) and maybe an OX-STAT panel or four if I've got them, a Mk1 Capsule, a couple of radial chutes (two or three), and a decoupler on the bottom for chucking off your engines once you've done your de-orbit burn. You also want RCS - tanks for the fuel and thruster blocks. You're going to want 8-12 blocks for your first rodeo - that'll be a quad at the top of the payload, a quad at the bottom, and a quad as close to the center of mass as you can get them (this set helps with translation, and there's folks that will tell you that you don't need these - take them or don't as you will). Below your decoupler, an FL-T400 tank and a 48-7S engine should give you more delta-V than you'll need; if you don't have the 48-7S you can take an LV-909, or even an LV-T45 set to about 1/4 thrust. The idea there is that you have an engine for rendezvousing with enough delta-V to handle screwups. Build whatever booster you want for the whole contraption. Okay, so rendezvousing comes first. First thing - target the Kerbal and wait until he is about 500,000 meters uprange of KSP (give or take) before launch. I find that waiting until then minimizes the amount of orbits you need until you get a close pass. Look at the Kerbal's altitude at that time; that's your target launch apoapsis. Launch and circularize like normal. Next thing next - you want to find a little marker that says AN or DN, and if you hover over that it should indicate a number of degrees. This is the seperation between your orbital plane and the Kerbal's. Set up a maneuver node at one of these two points and pull on the little purple indicators (the normal/anti-normal controls). If the number of degrees gets bigger, pull on the OTHER purple indicator - you want this number to go DOWN. Preferably to 0.0 or NaN (NaN is so dead on the game's programming language barfs). Make the indicated burn and be as precise as you can. Once you're in the same plane, the next thing to do is find your "closest approach" chevrons - this will tell you how close you're going to come to the Kerbal on the next pass. You want to get this number down as low as you can - what you do then is set up a maneuver node at the next apsis and pull prograde. See what kind of effect that has on the distance - if it increases, pull retrograde (just make sure that when you do this your periapsis doesn't go below 70,000; you can't rescue the Kerbal if your ship dives back into the atmosphere first). If the distance decreases, keep pulling until it starts increasing, then stop. Make the indicated burn. Set up another node at the next apsis, wash and repeat. Keep this up until you can't reduce the distance any more. If you still haven't got a close pass (2.2 km or closer) and you're getting no effect at the apses, try setting up at the midpoint between the apses. Eventually, you'll either get it or you won't; if your rendezvous engine runs out of delta-V, go ahead and use RCS to de-orbit and try again. If you get the rendezvous, then you're on to the "docking phase". You want your speedometer in Target mode at that point, and you're going to want to zero out your velocity (just burn retrograde) about the time you make your closest approach to the Kerbal. At that point, you need to find a pink meatball on the nav ball. This shows you the direction to the Kerbal. Aim toward it and thrust slowly ahead. You can use RCS at this point or give a low puff with your main thrusters to close the distance further. You want to keep it slow; 5 m/s or so is generally plenty fast when you're a few hundred meters out, 1 m/s within the last 100 meters. Since you're wanting to do a rescue, you want to get generally no closer than about ten meters or so and keep it slow. Use RCS to maneuver primarily; WASD to rotate, H and N to translate forward and backward (i.e. speed up and slow down). Use caps locks to turn on fine control if you find you've got too much RCS thrust. Once you're within ten meters or so, slow down to zero relative velocity. Quicksave. Then hit one of the bracket keys. You should be in control of the Kerbal at this point. Hit L to turn on his headlamp, then R to activate his rocket pack. Controls are LEFT-SHIFT/LEFT-CTRL for up and down, W/S to go forward/backward, and A/D to burn left/right. You're looking for the command pod hatch. Just keep your puffs slow. When the Kerbal's close enough, use F to grab, then F again to board. From there, burn to de-orbit, dump off your rendezvous engine once you're definitely flying, and pop the chutes when you're ready. Good luck; let us know how it turns out.

Glad to hear you were able to pull things out, LABHOUSE; just wanted to throw that out there before an admin locked the thread.

I was wondering how this had turned out; glad to hear you were able to save your civilization as you knew it. My turn's coming up in about forty days, as it turns out.

First 0.24 career flights out to Minmus over the weekend for science and moola; my space program is now nuclear capable. Found a Class E in Kerbin's SOI with a 2 million meter periapsis that I'm thinking about taking a swing at; went ahead and unlocked Actuators even though it's not on my old tech preferences list (obviously). I've never done a for-reelz asteroid intercept (I've done pretty well in the tutorials, though), so I'm not sure whether or not an E is the best kind of rock to cut my teeth on. Got a lot of questions and about six days to periap. Then I get to consider the C on a collision course in about forty days... My current tech path is taking me out towards large probe cores and PB-NUKs before swinging back to pick up spaceplane and rover parts. Haven't got the very heavy engines yet but they're on the current path; I saw an online video where someone pulled off a capture of an E with NERVAs, so I'm confident they aren't necessary strictly speaking. I also hear that Ion Engines are about four times powerful than they used to be and use a hell of a lot less power. Obviously I need to re-think my tech preferences (they are two versions old now unless I'm mistaken).

Sent Jeb to his death, reverted and decided to send him to the Munar Highlands instead. Moar parts testing, another Kerbal rescue, and several science transmissions/flag plantings for money. I'm up to 1.1M kerbux at this point and I'm about 200 science points shy of unlocking the Gravioli Detector; then it'll be on to Minmus.

Folks here have given you good advice - parts testing at launch and parts testing at splashdown is easy money. There are a few others as well (such as the cheatsy methods some folks are suggesting - use those or not at your own discretion). Here's a question: what is your exact status in game (by which I mean how much money do you have to play with at the moment, and which techs have you unlocked? You said fourth tier techs...are you counting Starting Tech as Tier 1 or Tier 0?)

Flags do have their uses...they make reasonably good ground markers, though I find that they have an annoying tendency to disappear/explode on Kerbin in and around KSC. Otherwise I'd use them to build an ILS for the runway; I generally have to use probes reclassed as bases for that purpose. Probably their best use is, like Alshain said, to tell you where you've been so you don't try to collect science from the same spot again. And for making moola - can't forget that.

I'm like some of these other folks; I'll pick the type of staging I'll used based on the job to be done, and usually the mass of the payload factors heavily into it. If I can get away with it, I prefer to do things dual-stage (i.e. payload-booster, with the booster covering as much of the 4500 as possible). Really light stuff I might do single stage (as in no seperations whatsoever except for launch clamps - useful for things like Kerbin-orbiting temperature probes for moola; probably could do that for Mun and Minmus too with a bigger tank/engine combo). I still prefer to resort to asparagus for heavier things, though with the economics that's definitely less viable of an option than it has been in the past (and so far in my career game nothing that massive has been necessary as yet).

Landed Keldorf Kerman (who I rescued yesterday) on the Mün yesterday so he could begin his new career as a vexillologist; was able to put him to good use twice before the night was out. Tested a couple of new parts, discovered that when you commit to a part testing contract the part will temporarily unlock if you haven't researched it yet (presumably so it can be researched, unless that's a bug). Sent some temperature data back from an orbiting Mün probe as well. Started looking at rocks in the vicinity of Kerbin; one will pass close enough to be worth an intercept attempt methinks, so it's time to start researching how to do that (mainly just need to know the amount of delta-V I should expect to need). Still enjoying the new career; I have parts of the fifth tier unlocked at the moment and a little over 700,000 kerbux in available funding.

Occurred to me after I got of work today that my time to impact figure is off - it assumed the rock would be travelling at a constant speed, which it shouldn't be (it should accelerate as it approaches Kerbin). Based on the equations for a falling body given Kerbin's radius, gravitational parameter and the initial height of the rock, you don't have fifteen days...you have three. You can still grind out the tree in time to avoid an impact, but it'll be a close thing (with a Mun mission taking roughly one full day).

Pulled off my first Kerbal rescue mission, though I'm not impressed with the profit margin on that mission; if I do another one, I might put together a ship with fewer bells and whistles. On the other hand, I did get a descent amount of science from Kerbin's Highlands upon landing. Also sent a science probe to Mun for unlimited kerbucks, still need to put one in orbit of Kerbin (chose a sci jr. on my first attempt there - big mistake).