Colonel_Panic

Thanks! (:

The lifter is heavy with a very large moment of inertia (it's very long and has a lot of mass rotating around the middle) which makes it very difficult to turn, especially since once decoupled from the main modules and delivery vehicles, it has only the spin torque from a single probe core to turn it. To have an easier time getting it turned around for the deorbit burn, I recommend beginning the turn with the payload still attached, and turning about 45 degrees before decoupling, so it has some momentum to keep turning into the retrograde position, while separating the payload away to avoid damage from the burn at the same time. Then, once at retrograde, you can fire up the mainsail engine, and use its thrust vectoring to stop the spin and deorbit it.

I transfer them to the station, of course. lol. The crew modules once docked hold 7 kerbals each and include chutes, or you can return them on another ship, or load them onto later ships you assemble in orbit. You can also remove the kerbals from the assembler ships before launch and end mission on them on the launchpad, or unload the capsule on the pad using crew manifest. The assemblers weren't actually intended to be manned, but for some reason the game currently loads kerbals automatically into non-root capsules, even when the root part is an unmanned probe. quicksave often, and orient the ship before attaching the power mast or crew modules. It's a torque and resonance thing, a positive feedback loop, a bug really... but until it's fixed, if the station starts to wobble violently like that, hit esc and return to the tracking station, then switch back to the station to re-load it without the wobble.

Well sorry if this sounds dumb but I have to check... is there a kerbal in the command seat, and do you have a probe core or other command piece for it? I do know that a command seat still requires some kind of other control unit to control a craft, as you can't make a ship using only a command seat. If you mount the command seat to an OKTO2 or something though it should work.

I'm not really sure what the issue is here? You just need to get close enough to the seat to right-click and board... though if you can't get close enough without climbing onto the platform, try adding a ladder?

Hmmm.... my guess, and is only a guess, but there's probably a bug wherein the config file stores wheel controls separately from rotational, but the in-game configuration menu fails to set them seperately if you change them. I would bring it up on the bug forums, and, in the meantime you may be able to work around it by manually editing the settings.cfg file to change the rover control key bindings that way.

Hmm, that is indeed very strange and seems to be a bug. I would try reinstalling KSP. Does it do this with other wheel types too?

how did you take it down? a kerbal can pick up and re-place a flag. They also get fresh flags if they enter a command pod or lander module.

What xiphos said. Control surfaces have mass, so having SAS on, which causes control surface thrashing, will rapidly shift around the mass of your ship, resulting in unintended alteration of your orbital projection. Disable SAS and release the controls to steady it.

Another thing to keep in mind, just in case... mounting the rear landing gear 'backwards' can also contribute to this problem. If you're at a loss, try flipping them around.

Asparagus staging is always ideal for ascent, as there's no wasted potential from carrying heavy engines that you're not currently using. Check out my tutorial in my signature, the one on rocket building and launching. It will cover pretty much everything you need to know.

pictures would help. preferably pictures of you trying to turn in each direction. If you have wheels at or near the center of the vehicle, be sure to disable steering on them, so you're only steering with the wheels at either end. You may need more wheels, or dualies, if the vehicle is heavy enough, to avoid issues where the wheels are forced away from the frame. try switching to docking mode, translation, to remove any capsule spin torque from the equation, and using 'control from here' on different command modules if there are multiple ones.

All parachutes are automatically cut when vertical velocity equals 0. This unfortunately means they cannot be used to stop a vehicle traveling level across the ground, and will also result in the loss of chutes during a powered landing if you begin accelerating upward.

You have to be pointing in the direction of your movement or air does not enter your intakes right, which can cause fluctuation while maneuvering. All intakes are just added up and distributed to all engines. available air depends on speed, thickness of atmosphere, number of intakes, type of intakes, and direction of travel with relation to the intakes.

Which is more than 3:1 and pretty close to 4:1, wouldn't you agree? I was just offering it as a baseline. Drag and lift also play a part.

The engineer redux and kerbin system delta v map should give you effectively all the info you need to know. As far as launch heights and trajectories, burn time is a lot less important than TWR. Your thrust to weight radio will dictate what you can do with a given stage, and remember: your TWR will steadily rise as you burn fuel. Higher TWRs will always allow you to perform more efficient maneuvers, since you can time your burns more precisely, and do more burning at the optimal times for efficient transfers. However, higher TWR also implies you're carrying more engine weight, and unnecessarily high TWRs will come at the cost of lower delta-v. For a launch on kerbin, You need 4500-4700 delta v to achieve low orbit. The rest of the orbits around kerbin will cost up to a maximum of around 2000 delta v assuming an orbit near minmus WITHOUT using any gravity assists. Realistically though you shouldn't have to spend more than 1000, since if you're going higher than the mun (800 dv to apoapsis at munar intercept) you can use the mun as a gravity assist to push up your orbit and partially circularize. You also want a TWR to stay at around 2 during atmospheric ascent on kerbin, since above that will cause you to exceed terminal velocity, resulting in high losses to air drag, and below that you will spend too much time at low altitudes in thick air before accelerating to orbit, resulting in high losses to gravity. An ideal ascent will use radial staging and discard fuel tanks as soon as they become empty, while using fuel lines to keep the next stages full so all of your engines can burn constantly during ascent and not waste weight or thrust potential. You should aim for a beginning TWR of around 1.7 per stage, keeping in mind that it will increase as the stage burns, and that your first stage should have a higher TWR to accelerate your rocket up to terminal velocity as quickly as possible (solid boosters are good for this). For more info, see my complete rocket design and launching tutorial, in my signature. It goes over a lot of that stuff in depth.

Hi, is this using a mod, or the stock game? You generally want to attach payloads via docking clamps if you want to be able to retrieve them later. right-clicking the docking clamp will allow you to decouple or release the payload.

...what? No, there is nothing 'cheat-y' about using air intakes, and in fact he really should be using more of them. For an effective SSTO you want to have a minimum of 4 or so air intakes per jet engine, and preferably the ram variety where possible, or you won't get the necessary flight ceiling to break the atmosphere when transitioning to rockets. Where's your rocket engine? I don't see it in that picture. An aerospike works well for that, though if you need thrust vectoring, consider using LV-Ns or LV-45s, and if you need more thrust:weight consider an LV-30. You also want to be sure you have the right ratio of liquid fuel to oxidizer for your ascent, that you're not carrying extra liquid fuel into orbit that your rockets can't burn due to lack of oxidizer. You have a lot of jet fuel in that picture, so that could be unnecessary weight. EDIT: finally, check you have enough lift... if you have to angle up steeply to stay in level flight at higher altitudes, you need more wing surfaces.

That's a pretty tall rover with a high center of gravity. It will be prone to tipping. Consider mounting things like the batteries and generators underneath the base panel, and not using the in-line batteries and ASAS as they add height to the rover. braking will flip any rover. The brakes are just too strong for the physics engine. They should probably fix that.

You have to build the upper portion as one segment, via connection from only one docking port. Then, you can build the second docking port to connect to the base. Warning: unless the docking port is PERFECTLY aligned, it will not connect. Furthermore, it may not start out connected on the launchpad: it may be necessary to dock it in space.

low is a relative thing to the vehicle's wheelbase. Think of your rover as a pyramid, where the peak is the center of mass, and the wheels are the base. You want it to be wide and flat with shallow sides, so it doesn't tip over when pushed to the side. The more height your COM has, the wider you need the wheelbase to be to compensate. Your craft is narrow, with wheels near the COM, which means it can roll easily. To fix that, you need the wheels to be wide out to the sides, like spider legs, or find a way to push the COM lower, or compensate for rolling forces in other ways.

Oh those tanks and engines aren't really necessary. I just use them because I like them, and it improves the final stage thrust a bit. I included them in the OASIS lifters because it was a major project I wanted to share online, and I wanted it to look nice.

odd, I'm sure I've had it installed since .19.x at least, though if the plugin was updated since then you may need to update to support it. It doesn't really make any obvious changes, just increases the interior size of the vab, it's hard to even notice it's working except for you having more space to build bigger things.

Well, it will depend on where you plan to drive them. You'll probably want at least one radioisotope generator and a heavy battery so you have some night time power ability, and some solar cells for maximum daytime endurance. I use subassembly loader to save my rovers, and start building them as attachments to an existing ship so the root piece is the docking port, allowing me to just drop one on to any lifter or lander I have in mind. I recommend a low center of gravity and wide wheelbase, make it flat, light and stable... add an SAS unit to help keep it level when travelling at high speed, and several octo2 probe cores, to add additional spin torque to help keep it under control and to flip it back over if it takes a tumble. A single RCS tank and a couple thrusters can also help get you un-stuck or reach high places, return the rover to a ship, etc.. I usually use structural panels to give a flat square base to start building on, and struts or girder segments to give a solid frame to attach the wheels to and give it some extra strength and durability. Check out the Igaluk rover in my signature to see how I build them.

The answer is 1300m. It is the same regardless of the temperature resistance of your probe. Everything will spontaneously explode from overheating the instant it hits 1300m, including EVA'd kerbals. You can orbit quite happily at 1350m indefinitely. I routinely use a 1500m periapsis to slingshot my Oberth class deep space probes out of the system.