Scarecrow

Upload your images to somewhere like imgur or flickr and then link to them in KerbalX.

On that SSTO there is a drag chute attached normally just below the tail fin. On my Apollo style capsules, I tend to attach 3 radial chutes to a small girder or beam, which itself is attached to the top of the capsule. I then use the offset tool to lower the girder so that it is out of sight, and allowing me to attach the escape tower to the top of the capsule.

What @qzgy said.

This was designed for transferring exchange crew to and from my stations in LKO. It has a capacity of 8 Kerbals and can be used for servicing stations up to a 250km orbit. Action group keys are : 1 - Toggle engine mode 3 - Toggle airbrakes 5 - Toggle the docking port and cargo bay doors Download craft file from KerbalX

If you find that you are doing long burns to make rendezvous then I would suggest that you are doing something wrong. Even if you find yourself on the opposite side of the planet to your target it only requires patience and a few orbits before they are much closer. No need to do any burning.

Damn. I came here expecting to find a Knickerbocker Glory eating contest and all I found was a race across some desert.

It's been a while since I've done missions to Minmus so thought I would give this one a go. My station ended up in a 60k x 58k orbit. It includes the required Mystery Goo canister (2) as well as fuel and monoprop capacity. 3 docking ports are available; one is used for the lander, one is for refuelling purposes and the final one is dedicated to visiting ships and transfer shuttles for crew exchanges. The station was built with 4 launches; station core, comms and solar module, fuel module, and science lab module. Two further launches were made, one to deliver the lander, and the second to bring up the crew. Crew changes in future will be made using a shuttle from a station in LKO, and crew being transferred from that station to and from the surface of Kerbin using a SSTO.

There have been quite a few global circumnavigation challenges in the past. You could always do a search for 'circumnavigation' in the challenges thread to see what designs people have used, and take inspiration from those. Most of the challenges have insisted that participants stay within the atmosphere or below a specified height, so the entries have been aircraft. If your own aircraft are running out of fuel then it's just a question of tweaking the design, as it's definitely possible to fly half way round Kerbin and back again.

Suggestion for a challenge. Put a probe satellite in to a polar orbit around Mun. The satellite should include a surface scanner, so orbital parameters will depend on scanner chosen to meet the optimal requirements of the scanner. This could then lead on to another challenge to land a manned mission within 2km of any of the scanned anomalies, or even to build a small base close to one of the anomalies for scientific study.

It's also not quite so straight forward as thinking that if your craft has 5000 m/s of dV, it can increase the velocity of your craft by that much. If you are burning in atmosphere or fighting gravity, then both of those will have a negative effect on the final increase that you get out of the resources you have available. So whilst burning all your fuel may impart 5000 m/s of dV to your craft, gravity and atmospheric drag may account for 1000 m/s (just as an example) so your craft actually ends up going 4000 m/s faster.

Going for the more conventional looking option. Payload is 30.098 tons, consisting of mostly liquid fuel, some ore, and a very small amount of rocket fuel. Problems encountered were due to physics glitches when separating the payload from the transporter at the island. The glitching caused the payload to jump on detaching, which popped all the tyres. Fortunately Bill was on hand to put his engineering skills to use to repair them, and we were able to successfully offload the cargo. Starting shot, showing an empty cargo hold and the payload off to the side of the runway. Payload safely stowed And we're off Safe arrival at the island Payload delivered

Thank you. I made it to try and help the guy who was struggling to grasp the basic concepts of playing the game, but thought it might also prove useful to others.

There are already a lot of tutorials explaining how to get to orbit around Kerbin, both written and in video form alongside the in-game tutorial, so strictly speaking it probably isn't necessary that I should add another one. However, I have done so anyway as there is another thread running on this forum demonstrating that someone is still having problems despite all the help that is already out there. What I have tried to add to this tutorial is an explanation of what some of the most commonly used terms in KSP actually mean, to aid in the understanding of the process required to achieve orbit. After all, it can be relatively easy to follow a tutorial to achieve your goal, but if you actually understand the process it becomes a lot easier to apply that understanding to getting your own creations to achieve your goals.

@Jeine092 I've made a tutorial showing how to get to orbit. It uses a fairly simple rocket, the building of which is shown in the VAB, and also explains the terms Apoapsis, Periapsis, Prograde and Retrograde, as understanding these is pretty much key to understanding both the game and other tutorials that use the terms. It also mentions some of the default keys that KSP uses which will help you understand how to control your rockets. If you are still unable to get to orbit around Kerbin (as opposed to going too fast, escaping the gravity field of Kerbin, also known as the sphere of influence or SOI, and ending up in orbit around the star) then please come back to this thread with specific details of where or how you are failing rather than a generic 'I just crash.' The more specific you can be about where it is not working for you, the easier it will be for us to make suggestions to overcome your problems.

Dude, you've been a member of this forum for 5 months and have made over 1000 posts. That's 3 times as many as I've made in 5 years of membership, so yeah it definitely feels like you're everywhere.

You could be right. The horse metaphor is very apt. There has been a lot of very good advice on here which the OP has completely ignored, continuing to press on with his desire to get to the moon just by launching straight up. Lots of people have now told him that's not how you do it, but he persists.

I have to admit that after seeing some of the replies, I too am beginning to smell a troll.

Even as an absolute beginner, I never used the method you describe. There are plenty of tutorials on Youtube that show how to get to orbit around Kerbin, and you only need to watch a couple of those to grasp the basic concept of what is required. If someone does it the way you describe, they may feel happy enough to always do it that way, which may hamper them later in the game when they try to move on to bigger and better things. I've always believed that if something is worth doing, it's worth doing right, and wouldn't advocate teaching someone bad habits from the get go.

I would suggest that you forget trying to land on the moon for the moment until you have a much better understanding of the game. At the moment you are trying to run before you can even walk. I would suggest the first step you should try and master is getting to orbit. There are a lot of tutorials on Youtube that will show you how to do that, which involves more than just pointing straight up and igniting the engines. In simple terms, you need to be going sideways fast enough that the highest and lowest point of your flight path are both above the atmosphere which, for Kerbin, is 70,000m. If you fail at getting to orbit once you have an understanding of what you should be doing to succeed, you should be in a position to come back to the forums with an ability to explain more clearly what part of the process you are struggling with, and which will allow the more experienced members here to give you more detailed help.

I had forgotten that I did this a while ago, when I was testing a number of different landers on Minmus to see what I liked working with the most. A mix of simple designs, all single crew I think. Most are single stage and I think there is at least one 2-stage lander in there, as well as some that are designed to return to Kerbin, whilst others only need to return to Minmus orbit to rendezvous and dock with a command ship.

I'm all for helping new players to learn the basics of the game, but the method of getting to orbit as posted by the OP is awful. Tyko gives a much better method that is way less wasteful of fuel.

I would say your PC is the problem, not KSP. I load KSP which has 50 mod folders in the Gamedata folder (though some of those contain dependency files for mods, so the actual number of mods should be a bit less than 50), and applies 3775 patches during the load process, in 1 1/2 minutes. I haven't timed a vanilla install, but it's obviously quicker than that.

My two stage Apollo style lander.

I'm not aware of a mod to balance fuel, though that's not to say that there isn't one. Whenever I have built a VTOL I try and make it so that the CoM is the same empty as it is full which means the issue of an unbalanced craft doesn't arise, but I understand that this isn't always possible.

Continuing with the astronomy theme.