SpaceK531

Thanks for the help everyone. I've been away long enough I didn't know about using SAS prograde for the gravity turn.

To be clear, the low CoM is the reason for the instability, and I want it to be as high on the rocket as possible? EDIT: without the payload, the CoM looks like this:

Hello everyone. I have been trying to get back into KSP after a hiatus. I am trying to design a moon fly-by vehicle with room for 4 tourists as a 4-stage rocket. Shown below are the top 3 stages: When the fourth stage is discarded and the third stage is ignited, the rocket encounters a violent instability and becomes completely uncontrollable. Eventually, the ship will find settle down if the SAS is set to Orbital Prograde, but by then the ship can't break out of the atmosphere. The 3rd stage uses 3x reliant and 1x swivel motors. Is there a smoking gun issue that this design has, or do I need to completely redesign the payload and 3 stages?

I have updated my mission thread. I spend many hours doing things.

It's been a few days, hasn't it. And what a few days it has been. 16 July 2016: Lets set up refueling spots. While piloting the Inastas and Screamin' Tortoises is invigorating fun, there comes a time in any watercraft's life where it needs more fuel. This album details the experimentation that went into making sure a viable fuel source for The Screamin' Tortoise 1.1 is available. 17 July 2016: moving the refuel spots into position Unlike my last circumnavigation attempt, which you can read about as a linked thread in the OP, Elcano frowns on hyperediting fuel spots into position. This means they have to be delivered. 18 July 2016: Housekeeping There's been quite a few things going on before The Screamin' Tortoise 1.1 made it to camp 1. The unwritten (until now) rules of this expedition are: I can't leave fuel left out in the wild, and any kerbal that's sent out has to be back at the KSC for the completion ceremony. This means that no kerbals may die. Here's me trying to take care of these things. 19 July 2016: Finally, Leg 2! Well, after running aground, I discovered that I had no useful quicksaves, but I did save before departing for General Refueling Aircraft in The Screamin' Tortoise. Lets try that again, and try to make some progress at the same time. 20 July 2016: Innortal's Time Loops: KSP Death Loops Quicksaving in flight on craft that have intersecting parts may not be the best idea. 21 July 2016: Maybe make some progress today! The best laid plans of mice and men... I did not save the game at all. While I did not want to refuel General Refueling Aircraft, I also did not want to go back and re-do all the housekeeping in a more efficient order. Maybe today I will get some circumnavigation under the belt. What a grand adventure I'm having!

Congrats on the sticky!

I had a thought for the grand master badge: Two wings with the number of feathers equaling the number of bodies, and the surface of each body pictured in the feather. Below the wings are the propeller and the wheel. The sun can be in the center. Here's a concept:

Toolbars are a place for mods to put buttons to open menus. The stock toolbar connects to the KSPedia button and will not have any extra buttons on it if you have no mods installed. Before the stock toolbar, though, there was (and is) the toolbar mod: It has a few different features than the stock toolbar like being able to create a grid and reposition.

Your art style is quite incredible in its power and simplicity. I love every piece!

Well, I tried it before and things worked out really well the first time (link in the OP). This time things are just not coming together. I'll show you: 14 July 2016: Second leg setout and The Screamin' Tortoise II, III, and 1.1 I realized there was a better way to refuel Inasta III than the side. Here's what happened: I present to you The Screamin' Tortoise, a craft I devised on a whim between Inasta III making landfall and the first refueling attempt. It can reach over 80 m/s over water when fuel is low, which is good because I'm kinda impatient (but you couldn't tell from all the missions I've attempted in this challenge). This pic shows me playing with the balancing of fuel to eek a few 0.1 m/s out of it. Now, some of you may be saying, "but wait, replacement craft should be the same or similar!" Whether or not what I am doing is in the Spirit Of Elcano is, of course, up to Claw as the proctor of the challenge. Here's my interpretation of the replacement craft rule: the rule is written so that you can't replace a plains rover with a mountain rover, or replace a land vehicle with an amphibious vehicle by delivering it to the current circumnavigation position. Dispatching a vehicle of a different design and having it progress under its own power is fine, because the new vehicle and potential same/similar replacements will have then clocked enough miles to count as having circumnavigated. Now, the folly of moving the goalposts: sometimes you can improve things and sometimes you can't. Here's an example of where trying to improve things just doesn't pan out. Alright, so The Screamin' Tortoise II did not fare so well. I thought that perhaps the issue was the tanks, so I reconfigured it to the original prizewinning shape, hoping that would be enough to get those nice speeds I had experienced earlier. I knew I had a winning design with The Screamin' Tortoise 1.1, so the next day I completed the first leg. 15 July 2016: leg 1 of The Screamin' Tortoise 1.1 This time I won't let The Screamin' Tortoise 1.1 crash. Definitely. Incidentally enough, there's a Squad developer proctoring this challenge. Next up: developing and deploying refueling spots, and Leg 2 (finally).

My interpretation of the rules is based on the journey of Lewis and Clark. On their journey of discovery, the Discovery Corp. brought with them a metal-framed boat that they would later cover with animal hide to use as a boat. The metal boat ended up being a failure, but the fact remains that they brought with them an extra vessel from the start of the journey. To me, the "no boats" rule seems to be more in the vein of a "no airlifting" rule: you can't get outside help to move the circumnavigating craft. If the boat module was a part of the vessel since the beginning of the circumnavigation, it should count as part of the vessel during the water crossing as part of rule 4. My interpretation is that using a boat module that you bring with you from the beginning is within the spirit of the rules. EDIT: I think the spirit that @Claw is going for is that the Elcano challenge is about solving problems on the road: if you bring it, it's fair game (with stipulations for mods), but if you deliver it, it's not fair game (support vehicles other than replacement craft and fuel). Of course, if I'm totally wrong about this, I will concede my point.

There is a forum, and two subforums, just for your problems: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/forum/36-add-on-development/

You can make a KSP mod with C#.

Hopefully I don't have too much fun, the challenge might become unbearable!

Sounds like your original idea is the most practical, a mod. Maybe time to learn C#?