cannedcreamcorn

Most solar panels on real-world spacecraft don't retract. Many use a spring-loaded deployment method, with the panel under tension with a simple mechanical release. Skylab (where it failed badly) and Soyuz both can't be retracted, as well as most LEO satellites. Once a craft is in orbit, why retract it? Soyuz throws away the service module with the panels before re-entry. I thought the distinction between retracting and non-retracting panels was a nice nod to realism. I still almost always the cheaper ones anyway in Career mode. They can just burn off during re-entry

Just to follow up, I redid the mission with a rebuilt craft that is exactly the same. Now it works! So maybe I attached it with clipping that somehow offset it? I still have no idea. The chute would be destroyed at about 15000m, well after I separated the capsule. I'm just going to call it a quirk and go on. Thanks to everyone for their help. This is why the Kerbal community is the best around!

I am not deploying the chute at all. It falls off around 15000m as I'm reentering. It is set up to stage correctly as well. The one thing I haven't tried is rebuilding the capsule to make sure that part isn't clipping. I will also look at the atmospheric pressure setting (which I haven't played with before). I really try not to revert my game but this is so unfair to me that I've been replaying it to a quicksave just before I reenter. I may have to leave Valentina in a wide orbit, rebuild the ship, and rescue her later. I just want all that science!

That is kind of difficult from a Mun mission. I managed to get my speed down to approx. 2300 m/s, but still no dice. It is definitely not that. I get a message saying "parachute destroyed due to heat and drag". The part is still there, but now as if it was deployed. I'm at work but will do so later.

So I'm not new to KSP but just started playing 1.0 and am having a really hard time landing a capsule after a Mun mission in Career. The rest of the mission goes off without a hitch. When I get back back to Kerbin and reenter, the parachute always gets destroyed due to "drag and heat" Nothing else on my capsule gets damaged. This is with a MK1 command pod and heat shield. I've tried different reentry paths, different angles, slowing down my reentry speed by retro-firing. Is this heat or drag that is causing this? Do i just need moar struts? If it's heat then how can this be prevented? It's pretty frustrating as I have like 500 science that I can't get to the ground!

As I went through Career mode, I named each new design (as I got new parts) after the rocket families that NASA actually used....except a little different. Fredstone Fatlas Trytan Splaturn And my first space station was Slylab I still haven't come up with anything good for an SLS-style rocket. (Senate Launch System? Slowly Launching Stuff?)

I got to the last tier but it took something like 15 missions before I started to get the hang of collecting big science. My overbuilt Duna probe had enough delta-v to orbit and land on both Duna and Ike, then go sailing out to a Kerbol orbit. Something like 2300 science on that one mission. I was returning my first Duna manned landing and sending a multipart Jool probe that should have unlocked the rest of the tree when the Kraken struck, and some how the Duna lander was in it's escape orbit with the transfer stage reattached and no stored science. The Jool probe and the Duna probe disappeared entirely. With no backups of my save files, I started again. Now that I know the science system better I broke the into 4th tier in 4 missions (with the 1st one being EVA science on the pad )

That's how I've designed my landers lately. For Duna, the braking stage (a t-200 and a LV-909) gets me to around 100 m/s, deploy chutes, and then drop it at the last minute. I use very little fuel on the return stage so I have a nearly full load on touchdown. I plan a Gilly mission that uses the same design (minus chutes of course) so that would be closer to the mission profile that the Soviets would have used. It's cool to see that I came up with a design solution that someone planned to do in real life

With some of my more complex asparagus-staged monstrosities that were build in 21.1 I found that launching was more difficult. Once I put nose cones on all the blunt fuel tanks it did make the rocket more stable to fly. I tried this with both manual launches and Mechjeb, but MJ might be different as it needed a new DLL file. I'd run more tests but I've been having too much fun with career mode!

Tried that. The rovers brakes are off once I switch views or if I'm landing with another craft and the rovers come into view. I just park them up against the base modules so they don't roll away, but it now looks like my rovers are humping my base until I hit the brakes

Hi! First post here. I've been playing for a couple weeks now and am having way too much fun. I just got a couple rovers to the Mun with a base but have noticed a problem. If I switch ships away from the local view with the rovers (to, say, an orbiting ship) the rover's brakes are off when I get back and start to roll away. It doesn't matter if the rovers are crewed, if I use the right-click menu or hit B, they always have the brakes off when I come back to the base view. Is there something I'm missing to keep the rovers i one place when I go do other missions? I'm in 0.21.1 and using the BobCatInd parts and cart.dll plugin.