Superfluous J

Very cool addition to this great mod! I've got KER telling me that info but it's not so nicely placed near the navball without looking weird (to me), so I'll gladly remove those lines from it.

Thanks for the reply! Always good to get the info first-hand One more question, if I launch a 5000-piece ship (not that I would but exaggerating for the example) and all that lands on Kerbin is a mk1 lander can (with a parachute of course, and probably at least one docking port) that landed on every planet and moon, will that mk1 lander can count as the "ship" that did all those landings? I think so, but would like to be sure before designing the ship.

I use it for most every "put a satellite into this orbit" missions, when I also want to leave the satellite there to do science for the "do science around this body" missions. When I do, it's a bring-along probe with no fuel of its own, and I just get the main ship in orbit, decouple the stayputnik with some solar panels and the science doodad of choice, and then go off and do the mission with the ship. But I've not played career for quite a while and so no, I've not really used the Stayputnik a lot lately. Oh, and it works for automatic payloads to orbit, when you're going to fetch them with something else. Just make sure at least your top stage has gimbal on the rockets.

I can't pick just one. Minmus for it's practicality from a dV standpoint. It's my #1 destination when I want an off-world fuel depot. Mun for the nostalgia. I can be a US-onaut landing my own hand-built Eagle-1 next to the Armstrong Monument. Gilly because it's fun to have to thrust downward to land in any decent amount of time. Laythe is just so beautiful, and gives a reason to haul jet engines all the way to Jool. Tylo is a great challenge. Just getting a basic lander down and back can be rough. Ike, Vall, Pol, and Bop aren't that memorable to me. The larger 2 are too similar to Mun (Though Vall is pretty) and the smaller 2 are too similar to Gilly.

I pretty much agree with regex, but think the very first rocket should be unmanned. That way the player has an immediate goal of "earning" the right to launch a person next time. And 2 launches is not a grind

Your space station has a maneuver node set for it When you set a ship (which to the game everything is a ship) as a target, you see their maneuver nodes. Switch to the station and delete the maneuver node. I got no clue on MechJeb. I've never used it for anything other than testing some mods that required it.

I know. It's not like he was just hired a couple days ago. ...oh wait.

Well deserved on both parts. Can't wait to see what each will bring into the fold. Stock offworld construction?

I suppose it's not that hard. Just plan your Mun encounter and note where it has to be to eject at roughly the proper angle. Then wait until the Mun is there at the closest time to your window, and eject then. You could probably even tweak at Mun periapsis so long as you're really close after the eject burn. Now I want to try it

It is worth noting that using Mun to "save dV" on tossing you out of Kerbin's SOI is not ideal. It's cheaper than burning up to escape Kerbin's SOI and then - later in Sun's SOI - burning to your target, but it's more expensive than doing a proper Hohmann transfer directly from LKO. Of course, if you can nail a Mun assist on a Hohmann transfer you can stack the Hohmann dV savings along with the Mun gravity assist savings, but I'm not smart enough to do that one.

Note one easy way to nail a nice equatorial orbit around Minmus is to accept a "put a satellite in an equatorial orbit around Minmus" contract, and then set up your station to be perfectly aligned with that orbit (you don't have to match the orbit itself, just the inclination). Then of course complete that contract because hey, money.

Also there's KJR, or the Kake Joint Reinforcement mod, to fix that right up.

Thanks for the summary! These both make me happy, for what the first adds and what the second assures won't be added.

I've never given this any thought (and I've had more than my fair share of scotch tonight) but it seems to me that with a bi-elliptic transfer you don't need to worry about transfer windows so much, because you are in total control of your transfer time by means of your apoapsis. A very small change in your apoapsis will greatly affect your next periapsis, so you can pretty much eject any time you want.

I wonder sometimes if the in-flight arrows were what they meant all along, and at some point we just inferred that we'd get overlays in the SPH. ...not enough to do any searching for it. I just wonder.

Sadly it appears that there's no way to make it appear by simple config file editing. The best I can think to do is make all other contracts super rare, and make all the "grand tour" contracts super likely and allow you to have like 30 of them at a time

Oh I wasn't doubting you, I was just curious. I'm interested in a way to make the game serve up the contract.

I saw the original post. Is there some tell in the picture that shows it's a stock contract? I mean, it follows the patterns of stock contracts but so do many modded contracts. I suppose we could set up a save with all contracts but that one disabled, and maxxed out rep/money/science so it's essentially Sandbox plus that contract.

Is this a stock contract? Is there a way to make it appear? You could test it pretty easily (once you get it offered) by hyperediting a cheesy ship from Kerbin to Eve orbit, then detatch part and Hyperedit that down to landing, then toss parts of it away and Hyperedit it back into orbit and dock it, then Hyperedit the whole thing to Moho and then land the same pod with a different lander (via Hyperedit again) and see if the "one ship" checkbox stays checked. I though am pretty sure the game isn't going to care how much of the ship landed and returned from the surfaces so long as a single - and the same - command pod did.

The obvious way to do this is to have a lander can with a docking port on the bottom (and probably one on the top) that you can mix-and-match between several lifters. I'd actually start with Eve if I was doing this, and have an ISRU unit that could successfully lift off of Moho (the largest body that has no other - smaller - bodies in the same orbit) with fuel. Eve is the only world I'm not sure I could do, and Moho's a close second. So, I'd start there and then hit the others as I went. Dang it. Now I'm getting ideas.

Yeah I envision this as sort of a "You can get X units of ore up and down in Y time, so we'll just load the station with X ore each Y hours. And maybe for flavor when you're in the station or base's SOI sometimes the tug will be docked and sometimes it won't."

I personally like the idea that you manually prove the viability of something, and then the Kerbals gain the ability to do it over and over. For example, you set up a mining operation on Minmus, send all the stuff out there, and get a transport vessel to leave a space station, go down, fill up, go back up, and fill the station with ore or fuel, and then the Kerbals will do it themselves from then on. Same with setting up a fuel delivery from that station to LKO, or one on Mun, or whatnot. Then you can build and fly your own unique missions, while allowing the game to take care of the boring mundane ones.

I remember fondly Mun getting procedural craters, and the promise that - eventually - all worlds would get similar treatment. Still waiting on that one :/

This challenge is for stock only, as indicated in the title.

I hate to do this, but I'm officially going to bow out from doing these. I just don't have the time to watch them anymore with other things taking up my "gaming" time and less gaming time overall. I hope someone else can take the reins and I'll happily read and rep "like" any summaries that come along!