Jean Deaux

Canyon diving from space? That takes some balls...

Close orbit around the sun is all I lack. I just need to find a way go get enough DeltaV to get that done and back again.

As I've read the contract system to be programmed; contracts are dynamic, which means they are randomly generated. As they are randomly generated, they may not always appear in the sequential order you might expect them to be. Some missions may have weights to them to make them appear more frequently, or only after a certain condition is met, but such is the "fun" of random. Don't stress too much over this, life works funny like that.

I think the 50% is an attempt to make "everyone" happy, which will most likely make nobody happy and from a dev point of view this is good because now they're not showing favoritism. Typically at launch, you either want 0% or you want 100%. It makes sense that 50% was intended to be the happy medium. I can promise you this, no matter what the default is, someone isn't going to like it.

Yah, this is pretty old, but the basic gripe I had about using them was having to sit behind the keyboard for so long to use those engines. To provide some closure to this topic, I soon after discovered MechJeb to serve as an autopilot so that I wasn't tied to the computer for such lengthy burns.

If you're still new to the game and are learning the tricks to flying, you might want to take advantage of the quick save and quick load features. Performing a quick save will allow you to go back and try again in the event an oopsie was made. Of course, you can play along with no saves if you like, but while you're learning it can be a little aggravating sometimes to put so much effort into a failed attempt. F5 to save, and hold F9 for a few seconds to load that save. My condolences for the loss of Bill & Jeb.

Split the time equally, assuming you won't be staging during the burn. Granted while you're burning you're losing fuel and thus mass is being reduced, but when staging you're also losing physical mass properties which will affect your burn times and will either increase or decrease your burn times depending on whether a different type of engine or number of engines are now firing. For such complicated combinations, MechJeb handles these calculations on the fly pretty well at the cost of messing up the display of the required burn time. And there are also probably a few spreadsheets out there that can do the calculation for you if you feel like taking the time to fill out all the required data to figure that out (the true rocket scientist?). But sure, as a general rule of thumb, split the burn evenly.

For all those worried about Bill, you'll be happy to know he and his rickety rocket successfully completed their trip to Gilly and back. If you've yet to see aerobraking, I captured the moment so you can see the benefits of doing so.

I've set-up the outer quad LVN's for the "to" trip and the inner quad LVN's are the "return" trip with the outer's discarded. I could add a fuel line from the outer to the inner to fire all the engines at once then discard the outers once dry, and is one of the design aspects I'm currently testing, to not have "dead" engines during a burn. By not having this fuel linkage, it gives me plenty of time to get to the coupling to disable crossfeed so that I'm not depleating the fuel from the "drag-along" lander during transit.

+1 on this option

This is my fallback option, I'm familiar with and have used Quantum struts in the past but I'm also trying to use as few mods as possible simply to avoid bug issues within the game that seem to pop up when running mods. I'll only add a mod for a necessary feature the core game lacks, and it's quickly looking like this may be one of those instances. I am hoping there are other options before I go the mod route that I can try.

Yep, tried that too, with no improvement.

Yes, MJ was in control during the video as I tend to let MJ manage the long burns while I do other things, which is why the SAS wasn't lit up. I agree MJ exaggerates this issue, but even flying manually it still wobbles a good bit.

I've been playing more with coupling ships for travel now that I've gotten space plane designs now and I'm finding the easiest solution to deliver my planes to distant worlds is to use another vehicle for towing to deliver and then return the space plane. In previous rocket designs I've done, I've avoided joining ships together because of the wobbling I get with ships coupled together, but now that I'm finding a need to have such designs, I'm hoping one of you may have a tip on how to minimize, if not eliminate, this wobble. I've tried turning on and off the reaction wheels in various stages, but that doesn't seem to have any affect on controlling the wobble. Check out the captured video of a ship I'm testing, see if you can spot any designs or features that may help out. Location is in solar orbit and out of the SOI of any planet or body.

First... last... you deserve a cookie for actually doing this! You sir, were truly bored with current state of affairs.

I recall the signal being another egg than the egg you describe.

This is how I played before career mode. Simply gain all the science and then go play sandbox style. Yah, not starting off with full gear stinks, but isn't too hard to get past. I do agree though, I'd much prefer starting off in sandbox "with" science reports available. I suspect it's not in play due to the mechanics of tracking the science missions. But since science points don't matter, perhaps they can just disable the check for previous completion and provide the "result" of the mission without flagging completion or accumulate any science points.

Thus is the nature of dynamic self-generating procedural missions, sadly.

When you get the staging right the first time.

How can you navigate with coordinates without an add-on? I've only ever seen coordinates when I was actually landed and then only from the map view, only helpful there for bug reporting errors in biome locations. I've used MapSat to map planets to locate anomalies and aid in land navigation and has worked very well. It's not a pin-point accurate tool but it puts you in the vicinity for your rover searches so you don't spend years wandering around hoping to stumble across one.

Well, the dev's are gonna scream MODS!!! MODS!!! That's going to be the problem. And they're probably going to be right in this case. I haven't lost and landed assets since I've started playing KSP a very long time ago, I typically only lose objects while in orbit or in route. I run "mostly" stock, only have MechJeb for critical instrumentation and readouts (and those 15 minute burns) and Tac Fuel Balancer (cause space planes don't balance fuel very well). Whenever I do load up on the mods, things get weird like you're experiencing and that just ruins the whole experience, like you stated.

Oh really? Hmmm, might have to give that a go after all.

I do believe he covered that in his original post.

Interesting challenge, but I'm currently on the "stock" kick. The only add-ons I typically run are for basic instrumentation/information that I find lacking in the core program. Perhaps one day when I feel like expanding further into mods because clearly from your posts, you're not going to accomplish your challenge without mods. And BTW, greetings from a fellow Louisianian!

I have found remapping the RCS to my number keypad a lot less confusing. If you're having trouble, you may wish to consider that.