KevinW42

After taking this thing to Laythe I decided to do an (assisted) grand tour. I forgot to take screenshots for a lot of it, but here's what I got: Because I didn't really plan ahead I ended up taking kind of a weird route. It went Kerbin-Mun-Laythe-Vall-Pol-Bop-Pol-Tylo-Pol-Duna-Ike-Dres-Eeloo-Ike-Minmus-Eve-Gilly-Moho-Gilly-Kerbin.

I also just remembered that weird bug where heat transfer between the mainsail and the orange tank didn't work right so if you attached them directly together the mainsail would always overheat and explode unless you throttled it down or put another part in between.

I think 2.5m parts may have been introduced already, but they weren't available in the 0.18 demo version. (those screenshots are actually from the 0.19 full version, but I imported the craft file from my demo save.)

This is why I like making LF only spaceplanes. Probably not the most practical solution most of the time, but it just feels "cleaner" to me.

Before I knew about terminal velocity ascents I definitely took the the more boosters approach and just powered through the atmosphere instead. This is what my first Mun rocket looked like: This was before joint reinforcement too so it wobbled like a piece of spaghetti. The canards were actually necessary to stop it from folding in half.

Always make sure your center of lift is behind the center of mass. Since you say it's during reentry, a common problem with planes is that your COM often moves as you burn off fuel. So when you check to make sure your COL is behind the COM in the VAB/SPH, make sure that's the case both with fuel full and with fuel empty.

I remember playing before they added flags, so I would always design Apollo-style landers that left a descent stage behind on the surface so I could leave my mark. I also found it endlessly amusing that nosecones actually increased drag in the old souposphere. Even knowing that I still used them anyways just for the aesthetics.

According to my account I bought the game on March 31, 2013, but I played the 0.18 demo for a few weeks before that. I remember deciding that before I spent money on the extra features from the full version I wanted to make sure I was good enough to actually use them. So after achieving my first Mun landing I gave myself the goals of performing a rendezvous and dock (using landing legs to create a makeshift claw since there were no docking ports in the demo) in both Kerbin and Mun orbit, and then doing a full orbit around the Sun and returning to Kerbin to simulate an interplanetary flight (and also crashing into the Sun just because).

Same here. I recently decided it was about time for me to actually do a surface base contract with a modular base on Minmus, but the core segment had landing leg issues and kept bouncing around every time it loaded in. So when i made the connector sections I made my own landing legs with the robotics parts and something krakeney happened and somehow the hinges got flipped completely backwards into an impossible configuration that made the legs non-functional and I just gave up at that point.

There was no landing gear when I did the tests in the screenshots, but once I found a solution it worked with or without landing gear.

Autostrut wasn't the issue. Setting the servo autostrut to heaviest part did lock both of them up, but even with autostrut turned completely off on all parts I still had the problem where only one servo would move. After using my workaround with the KAL-1000 everything worked just fine, even with the servo autostrut set to root part.

I considered that, but I figured Mun would make setting up the Jool transfer simpler. Maybe I'll try Minmus next time.

Decided to give interplanetary SSTOs a try. I had exactly enough fuel to stick the landing on the first refueling stop on the Mun.

I think I ended up doing something like that in the process of trying to troubleshoot, but it didn't work for me. Though I actually did end up finding a solution, which I've edited into my previous post.

Ah, I'm still on 1.8. I guess that explains it. I think I figured out a workaround by allowing full rotation and using the KAL-1000 to set the angle instead but I'll have to test that later. (Edit) Yup, that worked. If I allow full rotation and remove the angle limits the KAL-1000 seems to control both servos just fine.

I'm trying to make a VTOL spaceplane with tilting engines, but one of the servos isn't behaving properly. In the editor everything works as you'd expect: But in flight only one of the engines moves: I've tried turning off rigid attachment and autostrut, but it made no difference. I also tried removing the servos from symmetry, but that didn't work either. All the settings for both of them are identical. Weirdly, both servos consume power when I change the target angle, but the stationary one consumes less. Any Idea how to fix this?

If you’re using the counterweight method, Kerbal Engineer is really helpful for that. Once you’ve added fuel and an engine it will show a value for thrust torque. Then fine-tune the positions of things until thrust torque is 0.

And if you’re already in a low orbit, it may be cheaper in some circumstances to go into a highly elliptical orbit, do your plane change at the apoapsis, then re-circularize.

The challenge is simple: Starting from a low Jool orbit, how deep into the atmosphere can you dive before making it back up to LJO? Rules: The challenge begins in LJO, how you get there is up to you. You can even use the cheats menu or Hyperedit if you wish, though obviously neither of these are allowed after this point. If you do launch from Kerbin, you're welcome to show off your launcher, though this won't your submission's placement. Your craft must carry at least one kerbal, and all kerbals must make it safely back to orbit. Kerbals must also be inside of a command pod, no command chairs allowed. Minor part clipping of things like wings and structural elements is allowed, but clipping things like engines, fuel tanks, or command pods into each other or using exploits like reversed nosecones will be considered cheating. Reentry heating must be set to 100% or higher You must include video or screenshot evidence of your attempt in your submission. This should include your craft before descent including your mass, your craft at lowest descent, and your craft after returning to orbit, again showing mass. Entries will be ranked based on lowest altitude achieved. Entries within 500m of each other will be considered tied. Ties will be broken based on a score consisting of (Ending mass/Starting mass)*Number of Kerbals*10,000 (removing score aspect because of potential for contradictions with 3 close entries) There will be separate leaderboards for those who use stock props vs those who don't. You may enter more than once, but only your best entry will be counted Mods: Making History is allowed Visual, informational, and autopilot mods are allowed (eg scatterer, KER, Mechjeb) Mods that add parts are not allowed (unless it's just a simple slap on part that enables the functionality of an allowed mod, like Mechjeb or PWB Fuel Balancer) Anything that alters physics, atmospheres, or planets is not allowed Leaderboards: Standard: @KevinW42 16,844 . . . . . . . . . Stock Props: . . . . . . . . . . Sample entry: Didn't get as low as I had hoped since my rocket broke in half during descent. Might try again later. https://imgur.com/a/cqJmhea Minimum altitude: 99,921m Start mass: 491,982 kg End mass: 6,458 kg Number of Kerbals: 3 Score: 394 It's later now and I tried again. Moving all the reaction wheels and batteries to a detachable pod on the back really helped with the bendiness issue as well as saved a bit of mass for the ascent portion.Still had to spend a lot of time fiddling with autostruts to get the whole thing stable though. I managed to get down to 16,844m where the pressure is approximately double what it is at Eve sea level and even Vectors and Mammoths barely get any thrust. https://imgur.com/a/zIUurkI (Someone please reply so I can put my entry in a separate post, lol)

In light of the recent announcement of the improvements being made to maneuver nodes, I thought I'd pitch a couple other ideas I'd been thinking about. First, the ability to rotate a node without changing its total dV. This could be useful if you're performing a maneuver using all the remaining dV of a stage, like if you're trying to reach a target periapsis for reentry while also reducing your velocity as much as possible. Could also be useful for SRB-only challenges. Second, the option to have the maneuver node handles orient to the post-burn orbit rather than your current orbit. This would allow easy planning of plane-change maneuvers that don't change your Ap or Pe using only the normal handles instead of having to fiddle with both normal and retrograde.

About a week-ish in the demo. I was definitely following the ‘moar boosters’ school of design so most of that time was just getting that darned behemoth into orbit without it just wobbling itself into pieces. Once I got to orbit though I landed on my first try, but tipped over when I got there. I did a successful return on my second try.

If you're not averse to using the cheats menu there's an option to show biomes in there. If you turn that on they'll all be highlighted when you're in map view.

You can view the drag produced by individual parts in flight by opening the alt+f12 menu and going to the physics -> aero section. There should be an option called something like "show aero data in action menus". If you turn that on then right clicking a part while you're flying will show you the exact amount of drag it's producing. And someone else may have a better answer for this part, but if I understand correctly the problem with Mk2 parts is that even though they seem to have good drag values on paper, the actual drag shoots through the roof as soon as they become angled even slightly relative to your direction of travel.

Speaking of altimeters, it bugs me that after all these years the IVA altimeter still uses the wrong hands for the 100, 1,000, and 10,000 meter indications.

I had already been playing the demo, so I took my existing (MASSIVELY over-engineered) Mun rocket and landed it on Minmus. After that I made an ion powered probe and launched it haphazardly into interplanetary space. While messing around with my orbit I happened to get a lucky Jool encounter, so I captured into Jool orbit and did flybys of Vall and Laythe.