3quin0x

Very nice.

This cannot end well. It did not.

Thanks, did not know that one.

Ive tried allot with the ion drive. It will get you where you want to go, but itll take multi hour burns (and you cant time warp while throttled up). That being said it looks amazing, kind of makes my think of a jellyfish. Well done.

Maybe as part of the career, as a mission. Or collect and sell moon rocks for money to buy other rocket stuff.

Hi all I present the Minmus Express, a light vessel designed to be a reliable and fast way to set foot on Minmus and return home safely. Obviousely it can reach the Mün, it can also reach other planets (and theyre satelites) however it wont have enough fuel to return. Ive taken it to gilly succesfully but ran out of fuel half way home. Its intended purpose is to reach Minmus. The following will be a step by step tutorial how to reach Minmus and return safely (for the newbs). I take it you have completed the tutorial and are aware of basic gameplay. First of download the file and place it in the ships/vab folder in ksp. Follow this link and press ctrl+s to save the .craft file. Start a new sandbox (as this tut will take place on day 0), goto the vab, load the Minmus Express and press launch. Now before we launch, first press T to activate the sas, then press 2 twice to lock the gimballs on the jets for a smoother ride. Now throttle up to 100% and press space to spool up the engines, this will take about 10 seconds after which press space to launch. Wait for the first solid stage to run out of fuel, when it has press space to release them and activate the second stage. Now wait for the second srb's (solid rocket boosters) to empty and press space to eject them. Its now time to start turning, to make it easyer active the rcs by pressing R Remember to deactivate the sas between manouvres. Press space to activate the 3rd and last srb's and in increasing steps turn it allong the 90° line on the navball (right). The jets will flame out soon and its time to eject them. You can either do it when you see sparks from the exhaust, or watch the intake air meter drop to 0.10. A bit too soon or to late wont make a difference so dont stress here. When the last srb's are empty press space to eject them and activate the next stage. Now have a look at the map (by pressing M), your apoapsis should be well over 80km. Wait till your about a minute from it, turn the full 90° and burn untill you reach orbit. Once you attained orbit you should still have 200ish units of LF in the stage, which you can use in your burn to minmus. If you dont have any fuel left dont worry, the main vessel has enough fuel to reach minmus and back. Now zoom out, click on Minmus and select it as target. It should be a little after the 3 o'clock (its moving counter clock wise) as seen from your position. Now use the flight computer, add a manouvre a minute or 2 in front of you and go prograde (the green one) untill it reaches minmus' orbit. You should get an encounter here, if not play a bit with the blue ones untill you get it (its really close) and execute the manouvre. Dont forget to remove the manouvre afterward. You will deplete the fuel in this stage during the burn, press space to deploy the main vessel and continue. This might be as good as time as any to deploy the accesoiries. Press 5 to deploy the solar panels, and 9 to deploy the antenna's. Now about half way towards Minmus add a manouvre to finetune the encounter. It takes allot less fuel to do this here rather then closer. If you find this part too hard just leave it and take the fuel loss later on (you will still make it there and back). Try to get the periapsis closer to Minmus, you will likely need to lower the approach a bit with the purple down angle. And move it a bit further allong Minmus' orbit by using the left hand blue one (as seen from your ship). Try for 200km, if you cant dont worry get as close to it as you can. Now timewarp on till you reach the encounter (turn it off in time). Add a manouvre on the periapsis mark and apply retroburns untill you get a nice round orbit. If you did not do the finetuning you will need more fuel here and end up with a bigger orbit, but the same applies. Now its time to find a place to land. Minmus has nice flat dry lakes, its easyest to land there. Add a manouvre well in front of it and apply retroburn to lower your orbit over your intended spot. Then add a second manouvre over that spot and apply more retroburn untill you get a nice steep descent. Note that this rock (like all others) is moving (counterclock wise) so you will need to adjust your manouvre when you get closer. You can drag your manouvre around to put it in the proper place, you may also need to alter some details to your taste. Now your on your way down aim the ship up (activate sas) and wait while you descent. At around 5km you'd prolly be falling at around 100m/s, here it time to eject the nerva (nuclear engine) to expose the engine for landing. To do so press space once to activate the engine underneath and apply thrust for about 10 seconds. This will overheat the nerva untill it explodes (i know rather cruel but it works) exposing the next engine. This will also slow your descent. Now while keeping your descent speed in check press 8 to lower the landing struts. If at 1km you have any significant horizontal speed you can wear it off by aiming the navball below the retro icon and applying some thrust untill it reaches the middle. This means your moving straight down and wont tip over when you hit the ground. When you get close to the surface slow down as much as you can. Try to hit the surface with as little speed as you can. The legs can take a beating, but you will bounce around when you come in too fast. At least aim for under 1m/s. The dry lakes are pretty close to 0m, you can activate the landing lights by pressing 6, these are usefull during your descent if you are unsure about terrain height. Using them is quite simple, as you look down you will see the flood of the lights, the bigger it is the higher you are. You know what they look like at touchdown, so they make it easyer to estimate your altitude. Here's what the floods look like at 74m. And here's what they look like at 0m. At this point congratulations are in order, you have succesfully landed on Minmus. Better take your Kerbal on a well deserved walk (lower the ladder first by pressing 7). Dont forget to turn off the sas before you leave your ship (to avoid it doing weird things when you get back in). Or go for a nice flight, Minmus requires very little thrust to move around, you can float at low altitudes. When its time to leave you can press escape and select end flight. But thats not how we do things, your Kerbal wants to go home the proper way. Home is allot easyer. First leave Minmus' SOI (sphere of influence), you can either go up and make orbit first, or burn straight up untill you leave it (8 pulls up landing struts). This will put you in a very high orbit around Kerbin, now add a manouvre in front of you and apply retroburn untill it reaches Kerbin. You may want to aim for a periapsis of 30ish km so you can aerobrake rather than slamming into the ground. This means you will use the athmosphere to create friction and slow you down. Its quite likely you can find an encounter with the Mün on your way to kerbin. You have enough fuel to make a stop there, but thats not what this tut is about. From here just sit back and watch the fireworks, Jeb is certainly doing so. Unless you retract the solar panels (with 5) they will be ripped off (not that it matters at this point). When your ready to say goodbye to your beautifull ship press space to eject the pod. Wait a sec to create some distance between you can the now useless pile of highly explosive junk thats tailing you before you open the chutes with another tap of space. I hope this tut was helpfull to you. From launch it takes about 30 mins to set foot on Minmus. Most of this applies to any spaceship, not just this one. You may just have learned something in the progress. Shortcuts: 1. - 2. Toggle Gimball on jets 3. Toggle floodlights 4. - 5. Toggle solar panels 6. Toggle spotlights (landing lights) 7. Toggle ladder 8. Toggle landing struts 9. Deploy antenna's PS. Feel free to drop this thread in the proper category, its kind of grown while writing it.

Hi all. Wanted to reshare this as it might be handy. Rather than a ship model its a save. Everything is the same as a fresh one, with the only difference being the giant refueling station in orbit. If you have need for large fuel stocks in orbit but dont want to build it yourself. The station holds 13386 liquid fuel,16715 oxidizer and 7315 monopropelant. There are 9 full sized docking ports aswell as 1 baby port for probes, also there is room to store 3 kerbals. There is no debris in orbit, or other junk around, everything was brought up and put together with deorbitable transports. Click here for the download, place it in a save folder. Heres the station with a docked T75.

Those moon rocks arent going to examin themselves.

Nothing a bit of duct tape cant fix. If only they brought some.