troyn123

I think it might be a wind resistance thing, tearing stuff loose. 250+ m/s at only 5 km is pretty quick. Terminal velocity at 5km is ~169 m/s. Throttle back, keep your speed lower until you clear more of the atmosphere. Take a look at this chart: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Kerbin#Atmosphere I think if you just slow your roll a little, it'll work.

Click the "Edit post" link on your original post... Cheers. :-)

You've got to kill all lateral velocity. When you get closer to the surface, if you click the little meters-per-second display at the top of the navball, it should change modes (target/orbit/surface). When you get closer to the ground, burning (gently and carefully!) toward the retrograde marker in "surface" mode should kill your lateral velocity, basically, the retrograde marker and the single dot at the middle of the navball should line up (no lateral movement).

Add another vote/suggestion for modular bases with wheels, and testing it on Kerbin BEFORE you launch! I've got a habitat module, a power module, a "science" module/rover, a vehicle that can transfer battery packs between vehicles/modules, a "junction" module, and tested it a bunch on Kerbin to make sure the ports all line up before I launched. Woo!

What stupid_chris said... Or, if you want it to flow automatically, you can switch from stack separators to docking clamps. Docking clamps will allow fuel to automatically flow through an active ship, unless you right click and "Disable Crossfeed" manually. The stack separators don't flow unless you move fuel manually. Another method would be to stretch a fuel line down there...

I've had really good experiences with my latest rover design... I was using the TR-2L Ruggedized Vehicular Wheel (WhiteWeasel's picture), since they have a lot of torque and really good traction (they start and stop really well)... BUT that also means no drift at all when turning at higher speeds, so easier to flip. The RoveMax Model 1 on a low and wide vehicle seems to work really well. I added some RCS to mine so I can flip it back over if necessary, put the tanks really low, the power comes from two PB-NUKs on top of a battery that's also low and center, and a small docking port so I can easily stick it to a lander for delivery. And it carries two Kerbals or drives remotely! I lock the steering on the rear wheels when driving fast, and unlock when I need precision steering (bind "toggle steering" to an action group). When on a planet(oid) with low gravity, I remove the front wheels from the "Brake" action group, so less likely to do a front-flip when hitting the parking brake at speed too. All in all, it works really well, and driven in docking mode, even better. *edit: The navball is 90 degrees off in the picture as it was built in the VAB. If you right click and "control from here" on either of the command chairs, that fixes it.

Repeat as often as needed, no need to find parts. Sometimes it will only look fixed for a moment as it bounces up, and then breaks again... But if you click repair a second time, real fast while it's still on the bounce-up, it'll repair properly.

Hmm... a decent orbital-tug design is to just have a couple fairly efficient engines pointed in opposing directions with an action group to swap which ones are active (move forward or back without turning), and a bunch of RCS for fine alignment: I wouldn't want to try landing something on the Mün with it though. For my Mün base, I went with the smaller, docked-component approach many on this forum suggest. Each piece came down vertically on it's own lander component (X200 fuel tank, Poodle engine, bigger landing struts, and a big docking clamp on top that the base components attach to). It flies the component down, lands, decouples the component, a bit of RCS pushes it over onto it's wheels, and then it drives off to dock with the rest of the base. The lander can return to my Low Kerbal Orbit station for reuse, but I've been lazy lately and just ending it's flight.

I've become a fan of the small rover delivery system... Land, decouple, and use the on-board RCS to land on the wheels. :-) I need to switch to wheels with less grip though. This rover design flips over in a heartbeat if you're moving over 10 m/s or so.

I know, right? But until the parts cost money in a career mode, that's one of the fun parts for me, designing ridiculous solutions to fairly simple problems.

I just finished my current KSP project (a Mun base), so I thought I'd give this a try... I started with your design, but added some power generation: I like to work backwards from goal to ground, so next I added the stage to finalize and tune the orbit. When I got to a 100km orbit, this section had a bunch of fuel left, could have just used 1 tank, or shot for a way higher orbit: Next up was a bunch of fuel and Mainsails, bind the "Toggle gimbal" on the Mainsails to action group "1". This was fairly heavy and slow at launch, so it spent a lot of time in atmo... I 100% guarantee there's better ways of handling it, but I've been playing with jet engines lately, so I put a bunch of turbo-jets on there to take advantage of the time in atmo with their ridiculously high ISP, get a bunch of boost for relatively little fuel, just because it's fun. While adding them, I also bound them to action group "5" so I could toggle them on and off at will. Also notice the Septatron on the big outside tanks... I've started using them to avoid random collisions when staging: * Bind action group "2" to "decouple node" on the 4 central docking clamps AND "activate engine" on the Septatrons. * Lock gimbals and spool up the jets first, THEN activate the stage that starts the Mainsails and disengages the clamps. * Click on the "Resources" thing in the top right so it stays open. Keep an eye on the "Intake air". When it starts getting close to around 0.2 or so, press "5" to disable the turbo-jets. If you have an asymmetric flame-out, you're going to have a bad time. * When the outer tanks run out, press "2" to decouple and fire up the separation engines, fire up your central stage. * You might have to right click on that bottom docking clamp and "Disable crossfeed", depending on how your rocket is set up, to keep the main tank 100% full. * I got it to a 100km orbit with a ton of fuel left: When you're in your orbit, just decouple that last engine and you're good. Side note... If you are OK with ditching the nose cone on the bottom, it seemed to be a lot easier just to stick it on a fairly simple heavy booster:

LOL! That video is ridiculous. Thanks folks!

...figuring out the delta-V required to change Gilly's orbit? Completely random question, I know... But I accidentally crashed into it while trying to land on it, and the idea "hit" me. What would it take to move Gilly? :-D

I think one thing some people overlook when trying to improve their efficiency is the atmospheric drag on Kerbin ascent itself. Take a look at the chart in the atmosphere section of the wiki for Kerbin: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Kerbin#Atmosphere If you throttle back a bit during ascent and try to keep your ship's velocity under the terminal velocity as you rise, you'll save a little fuel, as you won't be pushing harder against the air than you need to.

Thanks folks. Strut city it is for now!

I was trying to use the I-beams and the "Not-Rockomax Micronodes" (for their multiple connection points) to build a larger structure. While in the fab, it looks like all the points are connected well: However, as soon as the physics engine kicks in, it just falls apart, missed connections all over the place: Is there a problem with the multiple-attachment point parts? Or is it just that initial "jolt" when the physics enable that's breaking pieces? Any suggestions for building larger frames without a boat-load of struts?

What could possibly go wrong??

Last roll-over was probably around 8 m/s. Faster than I can run, but not terribly fast. It seems to not really have any suspension give. First tiny bump and it would chatter around, and if it got partly sideways at all, boom, flip. First roll-over was at almost 25 m/s, that one was definitely understandable. ;-)

Done partially just for symmetrical looks, and partly hoping the light rendering improves in the engine down the road. But yes, definitely... I'll give the SAS a try, doesn't currently have any. The RCS was originally added so the rover could be flipped back right side up if it didn't explode when it inevitably rolled over. :-) If the SAS works, I'll ditch that stuff.

But if you really want an "experience", you can also operate the throttle from IVA mode. :-P

Hold the shift key and play around with the WASDQE keys... Sometimes, just depending on the part, it won't ever automatically snap into the direction you want without some finagling of the angles. Those six keys will let you rotate it on any axis, and the shift key just lets you do it in smaller increments. 2x symmetry done twice has given me my best 4-wheel results.

Another tip: When caps-lock is on, the controls are in "fine" mode, and will do smaller inputs. Can make it a lot easier to stay on your retrograde marker once you're close to it.

I'd second what the other folks have said... Start smaller, break it up into small, balanced components that you can assemble via docking once it's on the moon. Now, if you don't want to listen to sound advice and like building big for fun... Start with a really freakin' heavy booster stage that can push that thing most of the way to the Mün. Add a landing stage to your base with either engines with a really far vectoring range, or with a decent amount of attitude RCS (no real need to translation though). I've got a ludicrously inefficient heavy booster stage that has still served me well. My base was really heavy, so I had to bring my fuel tug from my Kerbin/Mün halfway station to top it off a bit to get it landed successfully, but it still got to high orbit just fine. I think the key points were: * Have fuel lines from the outside tanks replenishing the middle tank, so you use up the heavy outer boosters down low in Kerbin's gravity when you need it most, and then ditch them, but continue on a completely full central tank. * Some separation motors aren't necessary, but helped. I don't lose tail fins or knock engines loose anymore, ever since I added those. * Small tanks in between the big orange Rockmax tank and the Mainsail, for better heat dissipation. * Struts between the tanks. * And the most recent change that worked amazingly: Bind the outer boosters to an action group that toggles the engine gimballing. Keep the outer boosters' gimbals locked unless you really need it, and you'll wobble a lot less. I can send you the craft file if that appeals at all. There's probably tons of better/more efficient booster stages to be found around these forums though!

I'm thinking it might have been the control module torque, as I didn't change any keys, and I was just driving in normal staging mode with WASD. Thank's folks, I'll give that a try! For laughs, my other idea was to just stick an ion engine on top, to fake some extra mass while it's pushing down! :-D

I've also found that throwing some mini struts that go passed the docking clamp can really help keeping it from breaking during the ascent stage out of Kerbin's gravity, but will still pop off when you decouple the node later. Once it's out of a heavy gravity well, the extra support shouldn't be all that necessary, unless your craft's center of mass is off the main axis or you're really pushing hard on the throttle. This shot shows what I mean, used it when lifting the components of my space station. Picture here are the struts on either side of the jumbo docking clamp: