Superfluous J

With the stock way to aim at the maneuver node and the Better Burn Time mod, I'd be happy with an automated Kerbal Alarm Clock entry for "5 seconds before the end of your burn." It could even recalculate it over time if I happen to stage midway through or something.

Most every career I've ever put any amount of time into has ended because they just kept getting harder and harder to play. I don't think I've ever had an unplayable save (like, unloadable) but it always got to the point where I was spending more time fixing problems than flying space ships. I've restarted career dozens of times. For me, that's just part of the game.

Yeah all the ships are just files in \<ksp>\saves\<savename>\ships\vab. Once I even soft linked the directories between a career and sandbox game, though that was more of a pain than it was worth.

I apologize if I added to any confusion, but I assumed that entering Duna and Eve orbit was okay. I just didn't want to I wanted the extra challenge of pinpointing Gilly from Sun orbit for a flyby. In my 2nd test I came in backwards and flew past Gilly at 3.5km/s. It was awesome. I'm about ready to launch for reals, if I can find the time.

This isn't my entry, but I was trying my hand at a flyby of Gilly without entering Eve orbit (not easy!) and when I finally nailed it, I took a screenshot 6km over "sea level" which KER tells me was only 2.6km over the surface, heading 2km/s. Had I been going straight down here, I'd have hit that ground in 1.3 seconds!

And where's your entry? I assume by "Mechjeb or any mod of that sort" you mean control mods, and not information mods or mods that help the player by making controls more precise? In particular, I won't leave Kerbin's SOI without KAC, KER, or PreciseNode. Are those okay?

@Snark saves me so much time and typing by writing far better explanations of game mechanics than I ever could, before I've even read the entire question.

The only one I hate is Kerbol, and for that one I only hate the name. But it's not a planet or moon, so I'll abscond.

It is very simple, once you get it. I personally got it by just playing with maneuver nodes until I got a connection. Use radial and prograde, and do it right after your AN/DN alignment burn. When you understand the concepts involved, you can be a baws and incorporate it into your AN/DN burn. Just get the maneuver node projected orbit to touch Tylo's orbit on the right side of Jool (looking down on North so the moons are going counter clockwise) and keep raising one maneuver node gizmo (-grade or radial) while lowering the other to keep your trajectory passing by Tylo. Eventually you'll get an encounter. And as is pretty much everything in the game, this is MUCH MUCH easier with PreciseNode installed.

Does every ship you build have clipped parts and extra struts? Or do 10-part rockets with no clipping dance like zombieland 2 as well? I ask because I have also had problems with too many struts causing ships to shake. I've yet to have one vanish on EVA though I've heard of it. Also, I note you are at exactly 100km in a very circular orbit, 2 minutes past zero-time, and have Hyperedit installed. Did you place the ship in orbit using Hyperedit? 100km is a special height, right where they physics changes over from relative to the ground and relative to... uh... not ground. I don't know the terminology, but hanging out right there causes problems. Try hyperediting your craft to 110km instead. And finally, have you tried recreating the problem without any mods installed? It is possible that one of your mods or an interaction between mods is causing the problem.

When I'm not using my HMV logo (which is essentially never, unless I forgot to put it in GameData and don't want to restart) I use this one:

Haha I imagine an immense drilling rig right next to the launch pad, and using the tanks filling as a sort of stand-in for Kerbal Construction Time.

One other thing, if you can lower yourself to use Hyperedit (I can) and you've done a single run with your fuel ferry to prove it's possible for both the ship and your abilities, and the only thing keeping you from using the process for real is that you'll spend all of your KSP time being a fuel trucker, then I personally think it's totally fine to just fill up the tank in the orbiting Minmus station every month or so. However long it would take to produce the fuel on the ground. Really that's just using Hyperedit as a stand-in for rudimentary automation that I think should be in the game anyway.

Step 1: Replace "Mining" with anything else in the game. Step 2: Have an existential crisis. Step 3: Realize everything in the game is worth it. To me that makes it worth it But really, I don't think - after doing it several times in several saves - that a landed, dedicated Minmus mining base is worth it, even with KAS/KIS to make hooking things together easier. I personally think though that a ship orbiting Minmus, full of fuel, that can go down, land, fill its tanks, and then lift off back into orbit is a great thing and makes all interplanetary travel easier by making ships half this size on the launchpad or better.

One important question, do they all want to do the same thing? Sometimes they want a flyby. Sometimes they want to orbit. Sometimes they want to land. Were it me, I'd do one big launch that can hold all 10, no pilot. Have 3 probe cores on it, one for each of the 3 section. Each section can get home from where I expect to drop it (flyby, orbit, landed) Then I'd launch and get the ship into a free-return trajectory. Once at Mun, I'd disconnect the ones who just want the flyby so they'll end up going back home. I'd do any little burns with them to make sure they hit atmo on the way down, and set up a maneuver node near the 100km mark of their orbit so KAC will tell me when they're getting close. Once at periapsis, I'd slow down to get into orbit. The moment I was, I'd disconnect the ones that want to just get into orbit, and leave them there. Then I'd slow down and land with the ones paying for that privilege. Then, assuming I'd not done it already, I'd take care of the free-returners making sure they landed safely on Kerbin. I'd then return the orbiters and the landers. And all of this would have been planned in the VAB while building the ship.

We'll need @RoverDude to confirm this but I'm pretty sure you will NOT need to make similar networks, or at the very least not as EXTENSIVE of networks. I do know for a fact that you won't need to make that default Kerbin network that everybody makes in RemoteTech, because you're not going to be limited to needing to talk directly to KSC.

Hear, hear. Who cares if it's wrong? At the end when you see that it's wrong, what have you lost? Time? You were going to lose that time anyway and this way you learned something instead of just getting to Mun again or whatever else you were going to do in the game instead. The big secret about KSP is that it has nothing to do with getting to these places or doing science or career mode or anything like that. It has to do with learning things and developing skills. You can only go so far following others' orders. Eventually you just gotta try stuff for yourself.

Go into the options (O button at the top) and turn on everything that doesn't open a new window. Among the many many buttons you'll unlock will be buttons to jump forward and backward an orbit. They're a LITTLE redundant now that you can do it in the stock game, but one thing they will do that the stock game won't do is jump back to the current orbit when the game refuses to do so, in cases like this.

F5/F9 usually fixes that. And to fix the "stuck on the purple orbit" I use PreciseNode's -orbit button.

Were this thread in the Q/A section of the forum, I'd upvote this answer. EDIT: Yay it got moved and I was able to upvote

I have this as well. Here's the finished contract from my save file (I completed it in the alt-f12 menu because I'm a dirty cheater). The waypoint is at 0,0 which is likely at least part of the problem. Another oddity is it was named "Scientist's Sanity". Maybe the fact that the waypoint had a generic KSP waypoint name is part of the problem? CONTRACT_FINISHED { guid = f221e313-3add-40ab-b469-5f690366df1a type = ConfiguredContract prestige = 0 seed = 347531341 state = Completed agent = Anomaly Surveyor Group deadlineType = None expiryType = Floating ignoresWeight = True values = 95700,0,0,0,0,40,20,0,1798147.27032175,1702470.75032177,0,1703239.72321799 subtype = AS_Kerbin_Monolith_Additional title = Investigate on Kerbin description = After visiting the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly (now known as TMA-0), it started to send signals out in several directions. We could tell the signals were going through the planet, and have been able to calculate where on the surface the signals lead to. These spots have been marked as TMA-1 through TMA-4. We need to see where the signals lead. synopsis = Investigate . completedMessage = The monolith seems to be sending out a signal out into space... we need to triangulate as many monolith signals as possible. hash = 2106102846 UNIQUE_DATA { anomalyIndex = Int32:4 } BEHAVIOUR { type = ContractConfigurator.Behaviour.WaypointGenerator WAYPOINT { type = WAYPOINT names = celestialName = Kerbin name = Scientist's Sanity icon = ContractPacks/AnomalySurveyor/Icons/monolith latitude = 0 longitude = 0 altitude = 0 index = 0 hidden = False clustered = False randomAltitude = False underwater = False } } BEHAVIOUR { type = ContractConfigurator.Behaviour.DialogBox DIALOG_BOX { condition = PARAMETER_COMPLETED position = LEFT width = 0.8 height = 0 title = TMA-1 parameter = WP1 titleColor = #FFFFFFFF InstructorSection { showName = True textColor = #FFB9DA54 name = Instructor_Gene animation = false_disagreeA } TextSection { text = This is the spot... but no monolith. Maybe someone buried it? Hopefully we'll have more luck at the other locations. textColor = #FFCCCCCC fontSize = 20 } } DIALOG_BOX { condition = PARAMETER_COMPLETED position = LEFT width = 0.8 height = 0 title = TMA-2 parameter = WP2 titleColor = #FFFFFFFF InstructorSection { showName = True textColor = #FFB9DA54 name = Instructor_Gene animation = idle_lookAround } TextSection { text = Looks like an abandonded launch facility. Were there other Kerbals that made it into space before us? textColor = #FFCCCCCC fontSize = 20 } } DIALOG_BOX { condition = PARAMETER_COMPLETED position = LEFT width = 0.8 height = 0 title = TMA-3 parameter = WP3 titleColor = #FFFFFFFF KerbalSection { showName = True textColor = #FFB9DA54 crewIndex = 0 gender = Male } TextSection { text = It's really cold up here, even in the EVA suit. Can I go home now? textColor = #FFCCCCCC fontSize = 20 } } DIALOG_BOX { condition = PARAMETER_COMPLETED position = LEFT width = 0.8 height = 0 title = TMA-4 parameter = WP4 titleColor = #FFFFFFFF KerbalSection { showName = True textColor = #FFB9DA54 crewIndex = 0 gender = Male } TextSection { text = This looks like a great place to hide a super secret base! textColor = #FFCCCCCC fontSize = 20 } } } }

There are several ways to judge distance from the ground: Lights. Have 2-4 lights around your craft, aiming down. The beams don't go super far so when you see the ground start lighting up you're pretty close, but it's better than nothing. Go IVA. Do this in orbit, and make sure you know where the altimeter is in the pod you're using. Then as you're coming down jump in and check the altitude, then jump back out and note the difference between that and your sea-level altitude. That plus the lights suggestion should be enough in most cases. Drop something. Build your ship so you empty (or nearly empty) a tank right before you land, and drop that tank on the way down. As it falls it'll tell you how far away it is, and when it blows up subtract that from your sea-level altitude. As above, this plus lights should be enough. Use a mod. Several mods, including the popular Kerbal Engineer Redux and MechJeb do this, but my current favorite is Better Burn Time, which tells you the info you need to know right where the game normally tells you your maneuver node burn time.

My question is - and I'm sure it's one that can't be answered - how many of these people who Pokemon Go thoughtlessly murdered would have killed themselves by texting while driving, playing Ingress while walking into a street, or stepping onto a subway line while browsing the Internet on their phones? People die doing dumb things all the time. I suspect that the number of total deaths stays relatively static and the new stuff just attracts more than its fair share until it becomes not the new thing anymore. Removing that new thing won't save any lives, just hide the deaths from view.

And it's also a GREAT reason to have that T&C. If every fun thing in the world could be stopped because idiots hurt themselves doing it we'd not be allowed to leave our houses.

Every T&C strips users of legal rights. It's what T&Cs are written to do. That's like saying "This novel tells a story" or "Caution: may contain nuts" on a bag of peanuts. If you're worried about privacy, don't worry about Pokemon Go on your phone. WORRY THAT YOU'RE CARRYING THE PHONE.