Nibb31

The spacecraft isn\'t actually 'turning around'. In fact, the ASAS is keeping a stable absolute attitude (relative to the universe) while it rotates around Kerbin, which gives the illusion that the spacecraft is rotating along its orbit. What you want is to keep a relative attitude (relative to Kerbin), which means that the spacecraft would actually be rotating in sync with the orbit in the same way that the Moon rotates on itself around the Earth in sync with its orbit, so as to always present the same side. If you use KSP 0.14, you can use the MechJeb plugin, which acts as a vastly improved ASAS and is capable of holding attitudes at relative attitudes.

Intuitively, I\'d say that you would probably want to burn twice, once prograde half-way between Ap and Pe going outwards and then retrograde between Pe and Ap on the way back down. Stuff like this is rarely intuitive though, and that probably won\'t help you much if you plan on stopping off at the Pe for a moon orbit/landing.

No, the docking ring parts are not functional yet. They are just for show. It is feasible to build a docking system based on landing legs. I succeeded in two rendez-vous and grappling attempts with such a device: - First was a Gemini 4 type mission, where I was able to separate from my upper stage, turn around, and dock with it again. This was pretty successful, with a hard dock, but the assembly started a wild spin. I had to detach the upper stage before my kerbals blacked out. - Second was a Gemini 6-7 type mission, where I was able to rendez-vous, approach, and grapple the other craft (unfortunately at an angle) with the landing legs. Unfortunately, because ASAS doesn\'t work on the target spacecraft, I was unable to connect the two docking pods face to face, so I only got a 30° angle when the landing legs closed. Once grappled, again, everything started spinning wildly. I was unable to take any pictures because it was really unstable and after a few seconds the spacecraft were thrown apart in opposite directions. So basically, I don\'t think docking is possible yet, beven if someone comes up with a docking adapter plugin, because: 1) There is no attitude control on the passive spacecraft. Its orbit is on rails, but it just tumbles, as if the ASAS (or MechJeb, I tried both) wasn\'t active, although they were. This makes it very hard (or near impossible) to align and achieve a nice point to point dock. 2) When you have grappled an ship, something puts the whole thing into a uncontrolled spin or tumble, which makes it unstable. This might be because of the ASAS or MechJeb trying to recover control and miscalculating the mass or shape of the docked spacecraft.

I gave it a try or two, but it\'s way to hard to locate a small object precisely, let alone mastering a pinpoint landing. Or maybe the package that I dropped was not being persisted after an orbit...

One of the Gemini capsules was flown unmanned with a hatch in the heatshield to test the concept for the MOL program. The heatshield melted on reentry, sealing the hatch shut, as designed. http://www.astronautix.com/craft/gemnibrm.htm Incidentally, it was the refurbed Gemini 2 capsule, making it the only capsule to ever have flown twice, and the only Gemini capsule to have flown with USAF markings instead of NASA. The heatshield wasn\'t 'plastic'. It was a fiberglass honeycomb structure with the alveoles filled with a special ablative material ('Dow-Corning DC-325').

If your Kerbin orbit is at a nice 90°, then you must be screwing up your injection burn (Apollo called it the TLI burn = Trans Lunar Injection = the burn that shoots you to the Mun/Moon). This burn must be perfectly centered on the 90° line on your nav ball. A slight 1° error at this stage will make you arrive several kilometers above or below the Mun\'s equatorial orbital plane. So for the this burn, aim your rocket above or below the prograde marker (the yellow marker with 4 branches) to move the marker respectively up or down on the nav ball so that it hits the 90° line. After the burn, switch to the orbit view and you should be able to pan and rotate to make sure that your green trajectory intersects as close as possible with the grey orbit line of the moon. If it doesn\'t, then correct the inclination before you leave Kerbin\'s SOI. Once you get into the Mun\'s SOI, you should do an insertion burn (what Apollo called a LOI burn = Lunar Orbit Insertion = the burn that slows you down and gets you into a nice stable lunar orbit). This is the occasion to correct the inclination by aiming slightly above or below the yellow marker to bring it back onto the 90 or 270° mark (depending on which direction you are going to orbit the Mun). For this burn, you want to slow down, so aim your rocket above or below the retrograde marker (the yellow marker with 3 branches) to move it respectively down or up on the nav ball. Once it hits the 90° or 270° degree line, you should be on a pretty decent equatorial orbit.

Thanks... The same method will be useful for performing rendez-vous when we have persistence.

Inclination changes are the most costly manoeuvres in terms of Delta-V (and therefore fuel), which is why you want to get it right from the launch. In RL, it isn\'t uncommon to raise the orbit, perform the correction burn, and then lower the orbit to save fuel. The easiest way to achieve a perfectly equatorial Munar orbit is to start with a perfectly equatorial Kerbin orbit. The key is to keep the yellow marker right on the 90° mark. Then you do the same during your trans-munar injection burn and your munar orbit insertion burn. If any corrections are needed to get the yellow marker on the 90° line, do them as early as possible. Once you get the hang of it, you can practice pinpoint landings. I love landing on the north pole of the Mun.

The real Gemini didn\'t have engines on it. Only RCS and 4 deorbit solid rockets on the part that you use as the decoupler. The service module was actually in two parts. Basically, your service module should have RCS tanks and RCS thrusters on the part with the gold foil, a first decoupler, then the deorbit motors, then the second decoupler. There were also plans for a lunar Gemini:

That\'s not Delta V, that\'s velocity. Delta V is the total velocity potential of a rocket or a stage, as in :'The Saturn V third stage had a Delta V of x' or 'You need x Delta V to transfer from LEO to GEO'.

You could make it as a deployable side-mounted parachute... But yeah, to be perfect, it would also need deployable skids...

Gemini is my favorite spacecraft... it had a real cockpit with ejection seats. It ultimately would have landed on skids with the parasail wing, like a mini-space-plane. http://youtu.be/jub8y6WSI8M Well, you see what you can do next

My Polar Mun Base, on the Mun\'s North Pole.

Yes, try to land as close as possible to the North Pole of the Mün. The closer you get, the better. You can pinpoint the exact location by zooming out, you can see the stretched textures. Brownie points for landing a moon base (a big tank) on the location, and getting home. Here is my attempt at establishing a polar base, note the elongated shadows and Kerbin super low on the horizon: The exact location of the pole, is at the top of a small peak, which is a bit hard to land on. I was really close, but after this attempt, I tried to take off and land on top of the hill, but miserably failed when I ran out of RCS.

I gave this mod a try... It works ok as a standalone, but the masses are fundamentally flawed. Everything is much lighter that in other packs, so the mod doesn\'t balance well with them. The whole rocket is only a few tons, so yes, it\'s easy to put the whole Soyuz rocket into orbit with a Nova first stage. Also, no RCS on the lander, and nowhere to put it. That makes it hard to land !

Do you folks really find the Silisko Edition hard to play ? I landed on the Moon on my second try with it. I actually find it has a much better balance. It\'s not hard, just different.

It would be great if the fairing base plates had fuel crossflow enabled. I have to edit the cfg manually. Also, the fairing panels don\'t have enough ejection force at 0.025. They tend to detach but still hang around and collide with the rocket. I edit them to 0.5 so that they separate properly.

I made a copy of the core module and edited the cfg to make it a 0 ejection force decoupler. Works perfectly as a payload core or a droppable experiment module. It would be nice if it was part of the package though.

Can you add fuel crossflow to the fairing baseplates for 0.8 pleeeeeeeeeeeze ?

I did that a while back (and returned home), but didn\'t take pictures. I\'ll try to dig out my Kerbollo 10 ship and do it again...

Nova, can we also have a shorter 2m tank with something like 200 or 400 fuel ?

+1 It would work best as a 0 ejection force decoupler so that you can safely detach it. I actually modified the old Probodobdyne probe from the old pack to serve that purpose.

I\'ve actually designed a lander to (softly) deliver modules onto the münar surface: Now, all I need is a rocket big enough to send it to the moon... It makes the launcher a bit top-heavy, so the wobble in the latest version tends to rip the rocket apart.

This is really a cool package. Suggestion: Can you add fuel flow-through to the fairing baseplates ? I need to add them manually to make this kind of lander:

Not to be picky, but I think the kit needs a small zero force decoupler.