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#?

Having gone through the console release of a similar-ish game called Roblox, the routine was exactly the same: US-only first, and other continents later, and it was released on xbox, not PS4. Expecting a multi-platform release to work the same on all platforms in a rush job is not that realistic. At this point, the fact that the developers have not said anything about the release means nothing, except the possibility that they are too busy working on improving the game (as a show of good faith, one might say) than telling everyone that they are busy working on improving the game. Their response to the situation might not even be a presentation of various media but instead a patch to the game. I think the above will go in one ear and out the other, so I will just say this: It is unlikely that Squad is going to throw people under the bus for too long, and the best course of action right now is just to wait.

The water delivery system did not exist before STS-1 because STS-1 was the first mission to feature a payload on the side of the rocket instead of the top. It is pointless to use without a side-payload because the purpose of the system is to protect the payload, not the launch pad. The real launch pad was used in the Apollo days; it does not need any protecting.

I will be posting updates on a separate thread to avoid cluttering this thread up too much. .The thread can be found here

Elcano is the hip thing to do nowdays, it seems. Here's mine. 11 July 2016 : Initial Design Before the original Elcano challenge was posted in 2015, there was the no-rules circumnavigation challenge. Unlike Elcano, where the spirit is the most important part, the no-rules circumnavigation challenge was all about results. I decided that instead of circumnavigation using depressed trajectories and rockets, I decided I was going to do a water circumnavigation. I got about halfway around Kerbin before deciding to do other things, then KSP changed parts and all hope of completing that circumnavigation was lost. This circumnavigation attempt can be read about at its original post. Even though I stopped, and I can no longer complete the original circumnavigation that I set out to do, I still want to complete a water circumnavigation. Through last night and this morning, I worked hard on designing a ship that could work as well as my original ship even with the new water physics. Here are snapshots of that journey: 12 July 2016: The first leg What a wild first leg I had! The journey can be divided into three parts: High-Speed Watercraft long pontoon, Inasta and Inasta II, and Inasta III. The first leg was High-Speed watercraft long pontoon, the test boat. High-Speed Watercraft long pontoon made a good first leg but was not fit for a full circumnavigation because kerbals cannot re-enter the craft if they leave, which makes flag-planting impossible. Also, the proper opening ceremony had not been made. I officially start the circumnavigation with Inasta. Alright, so, actually Inasta II was the real start of the journey because it's the only one I haven't lost progress on, but I already need to send a recovery craft. Finally made it to the end of leg one. 13 July 2016: Refueling before the second leg I present to you General Refueling Aircraft, purpose-built to refuel Inasta III (yes, I know). Stage separates the klaw, 1 toggles klaw arming, and RCS toggles reverse thrust (R for Reverse Thrust of course). The design shown is actually the second iteration, as I have no pictures of its first iteration. The only difference is the addition of struts on the wings. Lets refuel Inasta III: Hopefully I complete this voyage before I die.

Maybe make that solar system trotter!

I didn't see an extendable ladder on High-Speed Watercraft long pontoon. The purpose of Inasta and the following ships was to have ladders, as well as be able to pick up the crew of High-Speed Watercraft long pontoon. I talk about this in some of the captions.

You cannot see any water coming from it because it is successful at being a water tank.

The launch pad has all the signs that it is present. You can see the water tower right next to the launch tower that stores all the water required for activating the water curtain, just like at the NASA launch facility.

What a wild first leg I had! The journey can be divided into three parts: High-Speed Watercraft long pontoon, Inasta and Inasta II, and Inasta III. The first leg was High-Speed watercraft long pontoon, the test boat. High-Speed Watercraft long pontoon made a good first leg but was not fit for a full circumnavigation because kerbals cannot re-enter the craft if they leave, which makes flag-planting impossible. Also, the proper opening ceremony had not been made. I officially start the circumnavigation with Inasta. Alright, so, actually Inasta II was the real start of the journey because it's the only one I haven't lost progress on. Finally made it to the end of leg one.

Before the original Elcano challenge was posted in 2015, there was the no-rules circumnavigation challenge. Unlike Elcano, where the spirit is the most important part, the no-rules circumnavigation challenge was all about results. I decided that instead of circumnavigation using depressed trajectories and rockets, I decided I was going to do a water circumnavigation. I got about halfway around Kerbin before deciding to do other things, then KSP changed parts and all hope of completing that circumnavigation was lost. This circumnavigation attempt can be read about at its original post. Even though I stopped, and I can no longer complete the original circumnavigation that I set out to do, I still want to complete a water circumnavigation. Through last night and this morning, I worked hard on designing a ship that could work as well as my original ship even with the new water physics. Here are snapshots of that journey: For some reason the description of the first image isn't appearing. For the first design, I decided I wanted all the bells and whistles: mining, lights, convertotrons, generators.