Nibb31

Congratulations! I actually went for a similar approach for my first manned Duna landing. For realism's sake, I didn't want to send kerbals on a one-way trip, and I refused to send a single kerbal in a 1-man capsule and without a hab module. That was just too unrealistic. The mass requirement with available launchers required a two-launch architecture. The more efficient mission would be a KOR (Kerbin Orbit Rendezvous) architecture, where the two ships dock in Kerbin orbit. This would save mass (only one NERVA engine and hab module would be required), but interplanetary transfers of docked ships is problematic with the current level of docking mods. With our limited docking and refueling capabilities, the best mission architecture I could come up with was DOR (Duna Orbit Rendezvous). - 3 kerbals with sufficient supplies and life support, meaning a hab module had to be available for each trip. - Landing 2 kerbals on the ground. - Use one of the hab modules to serve as a permanent Duna surface outpost for future missions. - one lander ship and one return ship (although both spacecraft were identical for redundancy and safety). - two rendez-vous activities at Duna, one on arrival for refueling the return ship with remaining fuel from the lander ship, and the other to transfer crew after returning from the surface. One of the two identical ships, Dragon-Duna RV. Actually, due to a mistake, the sister ship Dragon-Duna LV didn't get solar panels... You can see the NERVA engine, the hab module, which is designed to be detached and left on the surface of Duna, and the Dragon lander and service module. On the front, there is an Erkle docking ring for the two Duna rendez-vous sequences. The lander ship was flown by Jeb Kerman and Bob Kerman who would land on Duna. The return ship was flown by Bill Kerman, who was to remain in Duna orbit unless a contingency mission forced him to go down and rescue the others. The dirst Duna rendez-vous went well, but it would have been easier if we hadn't forgot to add an ORDA computer for attitude control. A lot of RCS fuel was spent to rendez-vous because the ships were both quite heavy. However, the essential objective of transferring all the remaining fuel from the Lander ship to the Return ship was achieved, which bought us our ticket home. After jettisonning the NERVA engine and the (now empty) tank from the lander ship, we deorbited and started our descent. This was a bit hairy. Parachutes turned out to be useless as they only partially opened near the ground, so we had to dump the hab module to maintain our thrust/weight ratio. Too bad for the Duna outpost, but the mission was saved. Kerbals in awe as they contemplate for the first time a beautiful sunset on another world. Without the outpost hab module, they were a bit cramped inside the lander for the duration of the surface mission. EVA activities included the (unsuccessful) search for a mysterious artifact and the inspection of an old rover abandoned there several years earlier. After the visit to the Prometheus rover, Jeb ran out of RCS fuel and had to leg it back to the lander. Back to orbit, we rendez-vous and docked with the return ship and the crew transferred back to the Return ship. Farewell lander. You served us well. Goodbye Duna, we'll be back one day! Back into Kerbin orbit with enough fuel remaining to circularize. Which allowed us a pinpoint landing at KSC, just in time for the press conference and the heroes welcome for Bill, Bob, and Jeb. After pulling off a mission like this, I must admit that I am extremely proud

I landed a rover on Bop, not far from the Kraken, but when I try to drive it there, I sink into the ground and explode. I'm just leaving it where it is until 17.1 comes out and fixes the collision mesh.

Trust me, the cave is not just an arch. You can go inside it, but it's closed and the structure is mostly underground.

Try it and let us know.

Grand tour.

These days, the A400M prototypes are often doing test flight campaigns above my house. Noisy bugger too! There's no point in covering it with radar-reflective paint if you can hear the engines from miles away! Also, not military, but still fun to watch several times a day:

Too big and too heavy. You are using way too much fuel just to lift fuel that you need to lift more fuel. You really shouldn't need more that 4 stages to get to the Mun. Design your rocket top-down: A return stage, a lander stage, a LOI and deorbit stage, and 2 or 3 stages to launch that into Kerbin orbit. Also, it is usually more efficient to design your rocket with radial stages, especially if you use fuel lines so that the outer tanks fuel the central core as well as their own engines. Any engine that isn't firing is dead weight.

Except when the caves are artifacts.

Actually, I have found at least one cave with a mapsat.

Please don't post coords.

It is pretty much impossible to stumble upon them by chance. You can only see them from 1 or 2 km as a shimmering pixel and the surface area of the Mun is 500000km². The chance of finding one without using a mapsat are infinitesimal.

I don't think it is. It still takes some work and time to do the scanning, and is more realistic. Posting pictures of cool stuff that you found is one thing, especially when you are the first to find it. It is possible to do so without revealing too much. Reverse engineering by disassembling game level files and hacking them with a hex editor is considered cheating in most games, especially when you go and boast about it by posting locations in forums. I'm pretty sure that's not how Nova intended us to find the artifacts. I find it disrespectful to the developers and spoiling the fun for the community.

Because people actually found those without cheating.

Cheater There really is no glory in posting pics and locations that you only found through a hex editor and hacking plugin. Now, you've spoiled the fun for everyone.

Why not give it a try and let us know?

My interpretation of the image is that it shows a time and location to find something (the magic boulder?) Date: The top left diagram shows a central body (probably Kerbol). The lines around it show an alignment of planets, probably the 3 first planets (Moho, Eve, Kerbin), forming a triangle. The point of drawing lines instead of just the triangle is to make the angles measurable. Location: The orange planet in the bottom right corner has ice caps, clearly making it a representation of Duna. The "L" shape links the pyramid to the south pole of the Duna, showing that we are looking at the pyramid where the recording was found. The red line points to the Zenith of the pyramid, and the 6 white dots represent the graduations of an altitude of 8 units above the pyramid. We don't know what the units are, but they shouldn't be meters or kilometers. Unexplained: The 4 humanoid figures and the 3 circles on the right. My guess about the 3 circles is that they represent the 3 planets from the alignment diagram, but the colors or details making them distinguishable were lost in the SSTV modulation.

May I suggest making the tanks a bit shorter? Excessively long tanks cause center of mass issues as they empty, making the rocket top heavy and unstable. It's better to use short/wide tanks than thin/tall ones.

You should have some working rockets in the game if you have the latest version.

I posted this on page 16 of this thread:

I didn't detect any on Eve or Gilly. But Eve is worth visiting just for the sheer beauty of it.

The tricky part of doing a rendez-vous is the "getting within a certain distance". Short range rendez-vous and docking is comparatively easy (just RCS your way there). It looks like what you want is the Orbital Construction. Why don't you try to learn how to use it ?

You can use Erkle's docking mod, and learn how to rendez-vous and dock.

MechJeb (it isn't cheaty. If anything, it makes things more realistic and allows you to concentrate on stuff that matters.) Tosh's cart plugin. Erkle's docking mod (the other one seems to have been an unsupported hit and run). Novapunch. CbbP's Dragon (my all-time favorite space craft after some minor tweaking) And I can't wait for the upcoming Angara set from CbbP...

That's pretty much all it does.