mellojoe

Here's my craziest, but it pales in comparisson to some of yours: . . . Inspired by Virgin Galatic's White Knight, it carries 3 kerbal pilots. The drop ship in the middle is carried to about 20km and 1500m/s before dropping free and continuing to burn to orbit. Both it and the mothership can fly completely normally, and return to land safely. The mothership drops the orbital craft then immediatly returns home. The orbital craft can make orbit, but needs to refuel to do anything out of the ordinary. I've taken it to the Mun and Minmus and back safely to KSP. Flies like a dream...

Mining Kethane everywhere. I've done the Mun, Minmus, Duna, and now Eve .... which was a huge pain and I don't recommend it ever. Next trip is going to be Eeloo. I was originally going to try Moho, but I just can't get inspired for a ship design at this time. I've done a huge Jool base before, and I'll probably upgrade it to include Kethane mining at some point, but I just don't see it as a priority yet. I really want to hit the extremes: Eeloo. In designing stages now. Instead of sending multiple crafts through the same encounter window, and doing all the juggling, I will instead design one of these enorumous juggernaut type ships and send the whole thing at once. I've got an idea and I'll try to run with it this week. Hopefully by the weekend, we'll have it at least in space.

the little prince Love it. :)

A modest home on Minmus: With a Kethane refinery and a shuttle parked out back. This was part of my mission to learn Kethane, and set up a refuelling station above Minmus. This project was hugely successful. So much so, that I decided to turn Minmus into a permanent outpost. We built them a house, but the Kerbals turned it into a home.

A modest home on Minmus: With a Kethane refinery and a shuttle parked out back.

My most recent mission I nearly stranded Jebediah on Eve. About a week of failed missions, and my wife (who doesn't care one wit for video games) would constantly ask me if I had finished my mission. When I explained that everything kept breaking she shouted at me, litterally shouted at me, "NO! You save my little buddy!" I don't know if I have a favorite, but my wife's favorite is clearly Jebediah. (I'm happy to report, he did indeed make it home safely. When I reported this to my wife, she smiled.)

I thought I was going to have to strand Jebediah on Eve and my wife shouted at me, "NO! You save my little buddy!" Yes, ma'am.

I did "control from here" on the pod. And i tried it by "control from here" on the top docking port, too. The broken booster was in the middle of the ship, with a ring of drop tanks on the outside. I would be travelling at nearly 100m/s at about 10km when it would all go wrong. Trying to manually detatch them by first cutting throttle caused me to start to fall backwards ... which killed any chance of actually making orbit from Eve. It was a true mystery.

SUCCESS! All the tips you guys mentioned were great, but nothing worked. Even hack-gravity, cut thrust, manually stage, re-engage thrust, unhack gravity didn't quite work. It sort-of did, but caused other problems including the ship losing all gimbal control somehow. Was pissing me off. So, I launched an exact copy from Kerbin, set it on the launch pad, copy-pasta the save file coordinates, and put a brand new duplicate on Eve in exactly the same state. Parachutes popped, one landing gear broken, fully fueled, just waiting on the pilot. I boarded Jebediah, and the thing worked perfectly. Got me into orbit on Eve with 17 units of fuel left. First time ever. WHEEEEEE! Now, I'm docked up with my return shuttle (just a fuel tank and a nuke engine) and hopefully I can get back to Kerbin. But, the hard part is over. I have successfully rescued Jeb. And I have a blueprint for finally being able to land on Eve and return home. I'll have a full mission log up eventually

I'll try tonight to fly it as is: cutting thrust, staging manually, then firing it back up. We'll see if I can get Jeb off Eve. If not, my backup plan is to leave that stage attached, then drop it and the next stage together and see if that helps. Finally, we'll try some save file copy-pasta with a new ship.

The main problem with redoing this mission is the complexity: This ship was designed to land at Eve using its own fuel, make a precision landing next to a Kethane refinery, refuel, and then lift off from Eve. It has taken so much time to get here that if I have to re-do it, it would end up being faster to scrap this whole plan and start with a different one entirely going the traditional route of landing a fully fuelled ship that just lifts off again immediately. I'll probably have to decouple that stage manually, but the loss of delta-V while I cut the engines, slow, and then re-fire them could mean the difference between making orbit and not... ... and that makes me a sad panda.

Bump. I'm thinking of trying to launch a new ship from Kerbin and then maybe copy the craft file and paste it over the one on Eve. Will this work? Will it make things worse?

Here's a quick rundown of the problem YouTube video here to demonstrate. Please excuse my poor narration skills and the darkness of the vid: Ship worked perfectly in testing on Kerbin. Now, though, when doing it live, we have a glitch. This is after we have ditched all of the side small fuel tanks, too. We've gone through about 4 stages to get to the point where we are here. We fire the stage and the focus SHIFTS to the dead booster. And it only kicks off ONE booster, not both. The main craft is now out of control with a dead booster still attached, and we are controlling a dead booster falling to the ground. By the time we shift focus back to the main craft, it is out of control. Is there a way to edit the save file or the persist file or something to fix this somehow? I've tried reloading previous saves. Am I dead in the water? please help! I'm desperate. I so wanted this to work. I've never done a return trip from Eve. This is my first time, and I've spent WEEKS getting to this point. Please give me any solution you can think of. I'm willing to try anything. Only mods installed are Kethane, KAS, and Crew Manifest. Flight Engineer is installed but not used on this craft. Thanks.

This is good to know! Thanks. I'll have a thread up soon of my endeavor. It has had some pitfalls along the way, but it seems like we are getting there. I think I'll look for a gravity turn around 25km or so.

Good luck with the mission. I, too, have a lander sitting on Eve ready to attempt to fly home. I wish you kerbspeed, my friend. Get home safely.

High crosswind landings are the worst spawn of satan. Hard on equipment, harder on pilots, and just flat out scary as hell. I never had the touch and never mastered it. My father could do so, but even he would sweat buckets on approach. You sort of get into a zen state during, but those moments leading up to it are insane. Small craft get tossed around more than heavy craft, but heavy craft are less forgiving as things go from bad to worse.

I have a ready-to-launch refueller that gets a single orange tank plus a large RCS tank straight into orbit. Its got a couple docking ports and several RCS thrusters. Its main mission was as part of creating an orbital space station, but it ended up becomming a fantastic mobile refuel depot.

From what I gather, 30,000m is the appropriate gravity turn altitude. 30,000m is approximately equivilant to 10,000m on Kerbin. I have yet to do this myself, but I'm just about to do it at this time. I have a craft on Eve ready to lift off, and I've been doing research. This is the profile I will attempt, in any event. Verticle until about 30,000 and then start turning over.

Finally put a craft on Eve that has the potential to return to orbit, and hopefully home to Kerbin. My other Eve ventures were all One-Way-Trips (OWTs). This is the first time I've planned a trip to actually come home. And I'm not doing it the traditional way, either. I first landed a Kethane refinery on Eve. Landed my return ship using all the fuel inside close to the refinery. Drove it over to the refinery. Refuelled my ship, and I'll be hitting launch to return home soon. Probably tonight. This was a massive venture that took multiple ships over multiple days. First the satellite to scan for Kethane. Then rovers to pick out a suitable landing site. Then the refinery itself. And lastly, the actual space ship rocket thing. I'm using two mods, Kethane and Kerbal Attachment System (KAS) as fuel lines.

Landed!!! Used nearly all the fuel in my return craft just to de-orbit and land on Eve. Then I had to drive it about 2.2km slowly across the surface of Eve to meet up with the Kethane mining rig.

Its not about bringing fuel from Eve to orbit. I've got mining stations in Minmus. Its really just about actually doing it. Landing on Eve, then returning. Never done it before. Landed some guys, stranded some guys, but never actually brought one home. This time I'm doing it. With an enclosed command pod, too. Not just a seat. I hope.

Thanks! Actually, I looked at my Delta-V from a fully fueled lander, and I have over 10,400 delta-V availible, which means I only need a small hill. As long as I am 2km or so above sea level I should be ok. SHOULD. Hopefully. Maybe.

I've currently got 4 rovers on Eve looking for a spot that has both Kethane for mining as well as a tall mountain in order to put a return vehicle. I'm spending hours driving all over this planet, but I'm not finding anything. Am I missing a site? I did not have mapsat, so I don't have a topography map handy. Anyone know of a site that has both kethane plus suitable elevation? Thanks!!

You can only transfer fuel between tanks on a single craft, or on crafts that are docked together. You right click on one of the tanks, and it will give you a list of the fuel in that tank. Then you Alt+Right Click on the 2nd tank. You will see the fuel in both tanks listed at this point as well as buttons that say OUT / IN. Start your transfer. Scott Manley has quite a few mods in his games, so sometimes you might see options that are not in stock KSP. There's a post around here that deals with all his mods, but many of them increase the complexity of KSP a considerable amount (life support, deadly reentry, etc). Don't worry too much about all those at this point. ONce you get really comfortable with stock KSP, then you can start adding mods. And only add one at a time and learn it before adding a second. You'll notice in some of Scott's videos he mentions mods conflicting with each other or breaking his saves or crafts. It happens less and less frequently, but it still can happen. You just want to ensure you know which mod does what and which one added a game-breaking conflict so it is easily removed. Good luck! Keep launching those kerbals

*applauds* Very well done! I have not yet landed and recovered a Kerbal from Eve. My landers on Eve have all been one-way-trips. In fact, I used Eve as my OWT One-Way-Trip permanent prison outpost for life sentenced criminals. I think building a suitable Eve lifter is marvelous work. Very good job all around!