Kerba Fett

Escape systems are a crutch for the careless like seat belts and crash helmets. If your only options are to get it right or perish, you try harder to get it right.

The only thing that might work would be to put a capsule on the inside of the ring (or probably 2 for balance) then spin the ring up to speed before you EVA the kerbal. This way you've already got all the centrifical force you're going to get before the kerbal spawns. If that doesn't work I doubt if anything will.

If you've got the kethane mod have a look at the config files for the storage tanks. I'm pretty sure you can't fill them in the VAB.

I was thinking that rather than trying to land a bunch of base modules I'd build them on site. The idea was to land an EL launchpad. This would produce a kethane miner with the various items needed to produce rocket parts for building storage tanks then finally the base. Is this practical? What part would I need to make machinery that the MKS modules need to operate? While I've got kethane and EL I don't have Karbonite and would have to remove something else to make room if I wanted to use it.

For someone new to 3d I'd say try Wings 3D first. Blender has a lot more modeling tools. And rendering tools, and animation tools. But if you're just trying to make a simple little test object all that stuff justs gets in the way and gives you more clutter to sort through trying to find basic features. Wings just does modeling and UV unwraps. When you start trying to learn Unity at the same time you'll appreciate a bit more simplicity in your modeling software.

I really like the idea of your mod. Would it be possible to get a few alternate models for it though? I was thinking of a small stack mounted version about half the thickness of a battery. It would be fairly unnoticable and allow you to use it in any design like the IXS warpship or any of the Star Trek ships available. If there were 1.25, 2.5 and 3.75 meter versions it would cover being able to integrate it into pretty much any design. Any chance of this?

If you do ANYTHING in the VAB after setting your crew the game will reset it. You can set your crew in the VAB, but make sure it's the last thing you do before hitting the launch button.

Is this the 64 bit version of the game? I'm currently running the 32 bit version, but last time I tried 64 bit version, right clicking in general was very flakey.

Make sure to do a quicksave first if you're going to try the fuel pipes. I tried that same thing last weekends and as soon as I connected the fuel pipe it introduced some sort of phantom forces and both ships started to wobble like crazy till one of them came apart. Both were moving so much I couldn't even right click on the pipe end to disconnect it.

It won't help you this time, but if you get Universal storage you can remove storage wedges by grabbing them.(if you also have KAS) You'll also want to get Dmagic Orbital Science which has Universal Storage science instruments including the goo canister and material bay.

While you said you're not interested in the Mun or Minmus, from a logic standpoint one of those would be the obvious choice. Your first offworld base should be a stepping stone. A proof of concept. You'd want that close to home in case of unexpected problems. In my opinion, minmus would be a great choice for resource mining. Reaching LKO with supplies or fuel takes at least 4500 m/s of dV from the surface. Reaching LKO from the surface of minmus takes about 500 to 750 m/s. Returning to the surface of minmus for your next shipment takes about 1500 m/s so a round trip still uses about half the dV that coming from the surface of kerbin takes. That's a lot of extra stuff on every trip and you still get to use Kerbins oberth effect for interplanetary trips Another option to consider is an OKS station. When you're on the ground half your time will be spent in the dark. An MKS command module consumes a decent amount of electricity when active. So does resource mining. With an orbital station your nights are a lot shorter and solar arrays are more practical. An orbital station also give you easier access to more of the surface. A round trip to the far side of the planet from a surface base is a long trip that will consume a lot of fuel. From an orbital station it's just another landing spot. This lets you visit all the biomes for science with less fuel. You'll still need to put an outpost on the surface to do resource mining, but it can be a lot smaller and simpler since it would get it's supplies from the orbiting station. Also, if you weren't already planning on Universal Storage, you should have a look at it. It's a tidy way to store things on your station and if you use KAS you can swap storage wedges as needed. Finally keep in mind that a surface base is going to require precision landing skills to use. I usually use a small lander to scout the area for flat ground and place 3 flags in a large triangle containing the base site. Then I land all base modules inside the triangle and I've got fairly flat ground to work with. While landing in an atmosphere is easy thanks to parachutes, precision landing is much harder since the upper atmosphere can have a huge effect on your final landing site.

If your mouse pointer is in the stage area it will lock the staging and the light goes pink. Presumably this is so you don't accidently trigger it while tweaking your staging setup. If you're not paying attention it can seem like it locks for no reason.

The same fellow who does the Landing Height plugin mentioned above also has a Vertical Velocity Control plugin. It shows radar altitude and can control your vertical speed. Makes landing and hovering MUCH easier.

Thanks for all the replys. I've only been using KERBIN for a while and most of its features seem pretty easy to understand except for the RND page. I've got no idea what a phase angle or intercept angle is. If the Rendezvous page isn't for planetary transfers, what is it for? I've done loads of orbital rendezvous and docking and never needed any of the functions that KER is showing.

I've been using Kerbal Engineer for a while and I've got no idea how to use it to transfer to other planets. Is there a tutorial? The few times I've been to Duna or EVE I just leave kerbins SOI then change orbit like when I do an orbital rendezvous. While that works, it's probably not the best way.

I got a similar look and function a while back by using a radial engine from the bobcat HOME pack and putting it on an IR rotatron. I just used 2 way symmetry in the SPH and they all rotated together in the correct directions. I'm on my iPad and can't give you a link, but if you want to see what my setup looked like go to the Mission Reports forum and look for a thread called "Fun withVTOL's". It's on the 2nd from last page.

Your setup is quite similar to how I harvest the Mun and Minmus. The main thing I do differently is to not land the lab. I use a small courier to come and pick up the data when I have enough to make the trip worthwhile. Once I'm done with Minmus I refuel the mothership and move the entire operation to the Mun or Duna. I normally make multiple trips with the courier so being limited to one copy of each data per trip wasn't a problem. (I don't have the patience to wait till I've got it all) I've also tried a lander that had the lab built in and a pair of goo canisters and material bays. I'd land, take 2 samples of each data then use the lab to transmit one and keep the other for return.

It's true that the Universal Storage wedges are a lot smaller and look better, but you don't get the science instruments in the basic mod. For those you want to get Dmagic Orbital Science. Considering you can put 8 of the material bay wedges in the same space as 1 stock material bay, it's almost like a cheat.

When I'm editing configs I usually try to find examples in other config files. For an example of a part that produces a resource look at the RTG config. For an example of a part that consumes the resource look at any probe core config. Editing config files for something like this will take a bit of trial and error so a stripped down install of KSP will be a big help. Make a copy of your KSP directory and delete most of the parts except for the few you're working with. Your load times will be much faster. You can also reload the part database without quitting the game by going to the debug menu (ALT f12 I think) and selecting reload all in the parts tab. This will apply any config changes to the parts in the game.

Bobcat's old HOME pack had landing legs like that, but they were 3.75m. I was able to resize them to 2.5m and they still worked. I think I saw a mention on the mod release forum that they'd updated the old pack to work with .25. You might want to start there.

I think there is a mod for a Pegasus jet engine like a harrier uses. I never bothered to try it since the spacing between the nozzles is fixed and if it's got the same spool up delay as a regular jet engine it would be hard to use as a VTOL. I did play around with vectored thrust VTOL's quite a while ago. I used radial mounted engines from the Bobcat HOME pack mounted on Infernal Robotics rotatrons. I learned that you want to have a lot of pitch torque available, but roll and yaw don't really matter much. You also want to make sure your COM doesn't change as you burn fuel. I found that if you swivel all of your lift engines it's very unstable. I ended up using 4 fixed lift engines and 4 vectored engines. It made the transition from hover to forward flight much easier. I'm on my iPad so I can't easily include a link, but if you want to check out my designs look in the Missiion Reports forum for a thread called "fun with VTOL's" While I used rocket engines with the ISP adjusted, a better way to implement what you're looking for would be to have a compressor that consumes fuel and intake air and produces a new resource called pressure. You then have a set of engines that use pressure as their fuel. this should allow it to act as a jet engine without the throttle lag. If you add too many engines and they're consuming pressure faster than the compressor produces it then you'd get engine failures. It would work just like the relationship between solar panels and ion engines.

It might be fun the first time or 2 you did it, but after that you'd just have an exercise in tedium. Just because somebody needs to pick up the capsule doesn't mean I need to control that character. I'm sure somewhere in the Kerbal Space Center is a janitor mopping floors and scrubbing toilets, but I don't need to supervise what he's doing either.

It's been a while since I used IR but I've been thinking of trying it out again. Is the phantom force thing a common thing with the current version of IR? I did have a station with a rotating solar array a while back and docked dozens of ships there with no problems. One thing you might do is attach your truss with docking ports. If you were to sandwich an IR rotatron between a pair of docking ports then put that between the station and the solar array truss you could try the rotatron for a while. If you have trouble with it and want to get rid of the rotatron at a later time you dock with the truss with a station tug. Undock the truss and rotatron from the station. Then undock the rotatron from the truss and use a kerbal on EVA to push it away from the station. Then just redock the truss to the station. While this suggestion would use 4 extra docking ports, you could also just use 2 and make the rotatron part of the truss and just change the whole thing in orbit if there's a problem. I usually try to put modded parts on a station on removable assemblies like that in case a game update or conflict with another mod breaks them. I design the station so I can take it apart fairly easily, remove offending mods and put it back together.

That's a really tall lander. I don't recognize those tanks on the upper half. do you need them for the landing? I assume you're using monopropellant as your main fuel source. Even so that seems like a lot. Could you get by with only one tank? I don't see any reaction wheels so I guess you're limited to what torque the pod supplies. Try moving your thrusters to the top of the ship so you're hanging from your center of lift. You could also mount your landing gear on the large radial decouplers to widen your footprint a bit. They're lighter than girders and you can mount stuff inside them.

Here's a lander design I use that's similar to what you describe. If you place your landing legs on decouplers you can reduce the number of goo canisters to 2 and still have a balanced ship. These decouplers allow you to mount equipment inside of them to mix the 3 way symmetry of the legs with 2 way symmetry of everything else. They also widen the stance of the landing gear to make the ship less tippy. Unlike SRV Ron, I don't eject them for the trip back. While you need to carry the weight of the landing gear back to kerbin they help keep the ship intact for maximum cash recovery. You might also want to consider if you really want to take that science jr. Getting rid of it will gain you more delta V and make you less top heavy. Without a mobile lab to reset it the science jr can only be used once per mission and it's worth less science points than a surface sample. This is the entire ship on liftoff. The lowest stage is 4 jet engines. If you rotate them 45' you can put 2 of them on a bicoupler. You can then mount 2 of these assemblies to a bicoupler. (a quad our tricoupler doesn't work. I've tried it) Mount as many intakes as you can on a liquid fuel tank and you've got a very fuel efficient lifter up to 20 km. It's also got a structural fuselage to mount the control fins and for the launch clamps to hold while the engines spool up. Above that is the orbit/transfer stage. This uses the LV-T45 with an FL-T800 fuel tank. It's got 4 drop tanks of FL-T400's. 2 are just tanks while 2 have LV-909's and they're asparagus staged to drop the tanks without engines first. The fuel lines in this image are actually wrong. They should run from the tanks with no engine to the tanks with the engines and from there to the main tank. And above that is the lander in the upper image. It uses the LV-909 engine and FL-T400 and a mk1 pod with parachute. With a good ascent this setup will get you into orbit around Minmus or the Mun before you need to decouple the transfer stage. This leaves plenty of fuel for landing and return to Kerbin. On Minmus you can do landings at multiple sites. For the Mun you probably want to just do 1 landing before return. When you return to kerbin make your PE about 35km and you can areobrake to a landing without needing fuel to enter kerbin orbit.