Superfluous J

But not with a gravity turn. You fought 1G (well a little less as you went up, but not significantly) of downward acceleration throughout your entire burn. If you'd done a gravity turn, you'd have gotten (possibly much) farther. Back in .90 with FAR we did some tests and even a high-TWR ship can see a 10% benefit (10% of the fuel's left when you get as far) by doing a gravity turn. Low-TWR craft could see anywhere from that to infinity (not really, but there is no bounds as TWR goes to 1.0) Also in picture 6 it doesn't look perfectly prograde. It looks like you're 10-30 degrees past sunrise.

Could you upload the .craft file somewhere? I'd love to try launching this with a gravity turn so as to eject Kerbin prograde and see how far it'd go

Rather than start a new thread for this, I figured I'd just tack it on here. I'm going on a vacation starting on Friday, and I will not be able to do the Squadcast Summary this Friday or the next. If someone could step in that'd be great. I can pick it back up after that.

Twitter's easy. I check it a couple times a day. Facebook would require an account that I've not made. Any other non-forum resource would require I frequent it which I frankly do not and won't. However, if I happen to check Twitter within a few minutes of something getting posted, I'll bring it here. I fully expect every other reasonable place to have someone like me who would do the same. That's fine. For me. The point here is that I really DON'T care, for myself, where this stuff gets posted originally. I'll see the pictures and videos and updates eventually, and have far more patience than is needed to go the 10 minutes before someone posts them here. I just think it's a bad idea and I have a hard time watching people implement bad ideas without saying something. Though maybe I'm wrong, thinking that the Forum is a positive part of the KSP community experience and that the goal should be directing new people to it. I've been wrong plenty of times in the past and show no sign of bettering my odds in the future.

I know there's a way to reset the camera but never remember it. Hitting M twice (to go in and out of map mode) resets it though.

Middle click also drags the camera. I find that easier and more intuitive than alt-rightclick.

It happens because if you're going really slowly compared to the target "prograde" will swing wildly around as your craft turns to aim at it, causing your craft to turn towards where it has moved. Which will of course cause it to swing wildly the other way, causing the craft to turn into the new direction. You can't avoid it because doing so would at best waste monoprop and electric charge, and at worst shake your ship to bits.

Thanks! YouTube seems to be feeding me the incorrect url when I copy the link. I found the correct link and updated my signature. Here, have some rep

We can't even find that horse to beat it anymore. Squad should post here first. They should then post on Twitter with a link here to draw new players. They won't. The pictures should be posted here within minutes of them showing up anywhere else, by a forum member who also uses said social networking site. They will.

Nose cone on top for sure. inline parachutes have been shown to have MORE drag than just leaving the node with no attachments. I agree on the fins. With no pilot you want stability over control. Disable the fuel tank at the top of your first stage, and have it right clicked and ready during ascent. As soon as that first engine turns off, enable LF and O2 in that top tank. This will keep your rocket top heavy. I'd be scared to decouple that 2nd stage, as you'll still be pretty low in the atmosphere and back heavy. I suggest maybe beefing up the bottom stage and taking it from the top. Though that's a rough compromise because it'll hurt your eventual dV. You can experiment with fins but they may cause problems with the earlier stages.

Do one better, design your launches to either drop stuff back on Kerbin, crash it into your target, or eject it from the system. I derive a massively disproportionate amount of joy from keeping my space lanes clear naturally.

Thanks! Your TWR is 3, or roughly 2x more than it should be. I'd lose half the engines or replace them with something less powerful. If you really want to leave it the same way, stay throttled down to half like stock likes to do. Your rocket is very bottom heavy, which makes it want to fly backwards. Removing engines as above will definitely help with that. Your payload is wider than the main rocket. This will cause it to have more drag than you want, also encouraging flipping. You have no fins. I'd add some. But they're just to help, they won't actually FIX the problem. - - - Updated - - - Also, I know nothing about MechJeb but is the target marker on the navball supposed to JAM ITSELF TO THE NORTH when you hit 100m/s? Because that looks to be where your problems really start.

Any suggestions we give you will be guesses. Any chance you could either (in my personal preferred order): Take a video of your launch. Take screen shots of your ship on the launch pad, in early launch, right at the time the problems start, and maybe one or two as it's spinning out of control. Give us the .craft file That last one is likely not super useful as you have so many mods installed that I do not, that it's likely I won't be able to load it. If you could make a "stock" ship that has the problem then I'll happily test fly it.

Ew, that does not sound pleasant. F5 does not save over your default save file, it creates a new one. I would suggest you do this: 1) Locate your persistent file. It will be named persistent.sfs in a folder off of your ksp folder named saves\<yoursavename>\ BACK THIS FILE UP. 2) Load the game, and at the space center hit ESC and select "load" 3) Select "quicksave" from that menu. This is the file you created when you hit F5. 4) If everything is fine, you're good. If not... Ew. Do you use Kerbal Alarm Clock? It makes tons of backups when you use the "jump to" feature. You could try loading those as well instead of the Quicksave you loaded in step 3.

I'm pretty sure Squad has a list of things they want in the game, and a list of stuff we want in the game. I have no Facebook account so I can't say that on the page.

Aha that's probably it. I don't usually use the copy/paste functions in Windows but did earlier today.

(you can't see it but it's an "enter." I have no idea why that's in my clipboard )

The beauty of getting to Jool is it takes a LONG time, and you go a LONG way. If you slow down or speed up or burn radially just a few DECIMETERS per second, you can change the time you close approach Jool by DAYS. So where Tylo and Laythe are when you get there is TOTALLY up to you. Just get your Jool Pe near their orbit and then tweak the prograde/retrograde/radial markers until you get an encounter. Then tweak them more until when you exit the moon's SOI, you're orbiting in a way that is satisfactory to you.

I can totally understand. This game has a very steep learning curve. Note: Easy mod is not any easier or harder than Hard mode when it comes to launching a single ship to orbit. Hard Mode just means you have to do more work to be able to afford and launch that ship. I would suggest if you're frustrated and want to leave, to come back when 1.1 launches (sadly no release date yet) because there are some strong hints that there will be a new in-game hints/tutorial system that could really help you out.

Don't aerocapture at Laythe, do a slingshot to slow yourself down. The reason Tylo and Laythe slingshots are better than aerocapture at Jool is twofold: 1) You don't have to aerocapture. Your ships will not explode, and you can be (fairly) sure the orbital paths predicted by patched conics will be true. You can - from KERBIN - nail a Pol or Bop encounter (though getting your resultant Jool orbit up near them is really the best you should try for). 2) When you leave Laythe or Tylo, your Jool periapsis will be a bit higher than it would have been after an aerocapture, so the eventual burn out at Pol or Bop will be all the lower for it. Not only is a Tylo slingshot easier, it's cheaper! Not too many of the easy ways are cheaper in KSP. Revel in this.

(5char)

I think they're just as neat as superscript and "soup or salad", both of which are pretty cool but nothing to get all excited about. I've seen at least half a dozen lunar eclipses (2 totals that I can think of), and each time is exciting to me. I consider tonight's cloud deck to be a big miss.

Ohm my god.

I saw the actual moon one time, but that was before the eclipse started. Later, I tricked myself into thinking the clouds where the moon was would have been brighter if it was not partially in shadow. Then it got REALLY cloudy and I gave up.

I thought it was a real term but astrology (and all people who don't actually know how things work) took it and ran with it. I expect "superscript" to be similarly taken out of context some time in my life. Google Trends is great for this. You're right. The first real search for it was in 2011. I've been outscienced!