Nibb31

For those having trouble landing at target, after MechJeb says Safe to warp, just switch to the Land button instead of Land at Target.

The Mun and Kerbin are on the same orbital plane, so you get an eclipse every day. They occur actually quite too often, which causes problems with solar panels on the Mun. If you time your launch at the wrong time, you can spend several days with Kerbol being blocked out by Kerbin.

You can't take off with an empty crewable pod. If you remove all the crew before launch, you get the message that your ship needs at least one crewmember. The only way to do an unmanned launch is to use an unmanned pod that has a CrewCapacity of 0. But if you add a crewtank or an empty pod to the ship, you will get the same message. My understanding is that KSP counts the total CrewCapacity of the ship by adding the CrewCapacity of all pods and crewtanks. If total CrewCapacity > 0 and no crew members are on board, you can't control the ship. The only way to launch an unmanned ship is if the total CrewCapacity = 0. This is true even if you have a MechJeb or a RemoteTech module. What you need to do, is launch one craft with 1 crewmember on board, and the other crewmembers on the other craft. No other way around it, I'm afraid. Other than that, the easiest way to remove crewmembers on the launchpad is to click EVA > End Mission > Tracking Station and return to your rocket. This doesn't kill the crewmembers and leaves them available for the next flight.

Use your navball. When you are way above the ground, make sure that your retrograde marker is as close to the center as possible. This means that you are going straight down with no lateral motion.

I know about the N-1, it's pretty well documented, but it didn't use SRBs. The first stage used 30 liquid engines. Energia didn't use SRBs either. The LRBs were Zenit boosters and were reused later as the core of the modern Zenit launcher. In general, the Russian space program hasn't ever used large solid boosters. I don't think they ever had the manufacturing capacity to produce them. Even Soviet ICBMs were liquid rockets.

Well, you have 1800m/s of delta-V to shed and only 60x3 thrust and no atmosphere to help you. Somebody could probably come up with some figures, but I'm guessing that the thrust will not be enough to counter the gravity.

You need an ISAmap mod to find the locations of anomalies. It's much more satisfying to find them that way than to get them from a forum. That is one hell of a big lander, and I don't thing you have enough thrust to make a soft landing with all that mass with that much gravity.

There is a protractor mod in the mod section that gives you all the angles without needing to use a real protractor.

Atmospheric modeling is just a placeholder for now (which is why I don't get the point of people trying to build aircraft). I don't think it's on top priority.

In orbit around the Mun, set yourself above the prograde line of the Mun's orbit (so that the Apoapsis of your burn will put itself on the trailing side of the Mun), and burn to 850 or 950m/s. This should put you on a return trajectory to Kerbin and takes advantage of the Mun's orbital velocity to give you a bonus (you will be moving backwards while the Mun will be moving forwards).

In orbit around the Mun, set yourself above the prograde line of the Mun's orbit (so that the Apoapsis of your burn will put itself on the trailing side of the Mun), and burn to 850 or 950m/s. This should put you on a return trajectory to Kerbin and takes advantage of the Mun's orbital velocity to give you a bonus.

In orbit around the Mun, set yourself above the prograde line of the Mun's orbit, and burn to 850 or 950m/s. This should put you on a return trajectory to Kerbin.

SRBs on a Russian rocket ?? No need for a plugin. To make an unmanned craft, just set CrewCapacity to 0.

You can edit any pod to make it a MechJeb pod.

Docking is the space station feature. There are mods for that. I would rather see Squad concentrate on features and game mechanisms that cannot be easily implemented with plugins than extra content that can be added by mods.

I disagree with this. I really don't see the point of implementing IVA. You can transfer crew just like you would transfer fuel through a pretty simple UI window. This I do agree with. Staging needs a huge overhaul IMO, to deal with docked spacecraft but also alternate sequences (like firing an escape tower for example). All you need really is to be able to reconfigure your stages on docked ships. You can already rearrange stages during flight, but it's cumbersome to say the least. We also need multiple controllable pods (for Apollo-like missions, or separating landing probes from a main satellite) Pretty easy considering there are already mods that do it quite well.

Wrong. Soyuz is both the name of a spacecraft and the name of the launcher. Russian launchers are usually named after the first primary payload that they are used for. Sputnik, Vostok, and Soyuz launchers are both derived from the old R7 ICBM. The Soyuz has a larger 3rd stage than the Vostok. The Soyuz launcher is currently used for many other missions than launching Soyuz spacecraft, including ESA commercial launches from Kourou in French Guyana. http://www.starsem.com/soyuz/introduction.htm

I love the Angara pack so much that I'm currently flying my own rescaled and rebalanced kit. I can't wait to get my hands on the real deal.

These don't seem to work for artifacts on the new planets. Any chance of an update ?

You don't need one. That's what NORM+ and NORM- are for in the Smart ASS.

There are several mods with unmanned probe parts. Look in the mods section.

Which should be reported as a bug. Eccentric orbits cannot be circular.

Normal/antinormal is pointing perpendicular to prograde/retrograde, ie: "up/north" or "down/south" (in quotes, because those directions don't really mean anything in space). radial and antiradial are outward and inward from the barycenter of your orbit. Of course, as you burn, normal or antinormal, you change your inclination, therefore the normal heading will rotate, which is why you really need to use the MechJeb SmartASS to maintain your heading normal as your orbit rotates. Also note that it is more economical to perform an inclination change burn when you are at a higher altitude. So basically, the best time to do it is the moment you enter the Mun's SOI, before you circularize the orbit.

The engines should be reduced to something 4x30 instead of 4x50, and the fuel consumption should be doubled. The internal fuel should really only be enough to deorbit and land. Anything else should require a service module for the extra RCS fuel.

This is how I do it without calculation: 1) Get both ships into the same circular orbit. Use RCS to make the target's orbit as circular as possible. 2) Match your active craft's inclination with the target by burning normal or antinormal. 3) Lower or raise the orbit of your active craft to reach the target: - To catch up with the target, decelerate to lower your orbit. - To slow down, accelerate to raise your orbit.* 4) Use warp and do several orbits if necessary. This is where you need patience. 5) When you get under 10km from the target, circularize your orbit again, and use RCS to translate to the target. Yes, step 3 is counter-intuitive. But remember that when you lower your orbit, you are travelling a shorter distance, therefore you will get to a specific point faster. I usually limit myself to lowering or raising only one side of the orbit, and only by 10km maximum and then using warp. With a bit of practice, you can eyeball it pretty well. The secret is to be patient. Do not overdo any burns because you will only have to compensate later. The same goes for the final approach on RCS.