Kevin W.

OK, I'll do that tomorrow after I get home from work. I'd do it now but I have to get to bed for an early wake-up tomorrow. Curse you opening shifts! Also, is there a specific time when I should switch the indicator on the navball from surface velocity to orbital velocity?

Well, I guess it all boils down to one thing now: the fine control. I understand the mechanics of how to get to orbit. I know what to do. I know the procedure. Now I just need to practice the turning. This part is going to take a while. Practice makes perfect, though. One thing I'm noticing is that when I do the 10KM gravity turn and then let SAS re-activate by letting go of F, the SAS tends to snap me back westwards a little bit. I know it's supposed to be on 45 degrees. How far should I turn so the snap-back goes to 45 instead of even further back?

Here's my three step process. 1. Try to build and launch something. 2. Fail. 3. Proceed to step one. You will fail. There is no avoiding that. It will take a while to succeed. I should know considering I still have yet to successfully achieve orbit. Regardless of that, just keep trying until you succeed. Do not give up, no matter how hard it is.

Well, that last flight went poorly. I added a second fuel tank to the second stage and upon separation, the second stage flipped over. Back to the drawing board...

No harm no foul. I appreciate all the help.

Sorry for the slip-up. I've fixed it and I'm trying again.

Come on, comments like that are unnecessary. I'm trying here. I'm frustrated but I'm still trying. I'm not trolling anyone.

OK, that answers my next question. I knew I had to throttle back at some point but I wasn't sure when. Anyway, here's the rocket I'm using. As you can see, it's 100% stock and is as simple as a two-stage rocket can be.

Alright, I've solved the wobbling and the control issues. Now, going off of what he said to do in the video: I'm running out of fuel before I can finish my orbital burn. Ugh. What's the recommended apoapsis height to cut my engines at?

OK, I'll do that.

1. The only thing above the crew pod is the parachute. As I said, I built it exactly like he did in the video. 2. I didn't have an SAS module on the rocket and I didn't turn it on. 3. No MechJeb. This rocket is entirely stock.

No. Stock parts. I built the rocket exactly like he built it in the video.

I'm launching straight up but it inevitably ends up moving off the center of the navball and when I try to correct it, things go to hell. The one time I managed to get up to 10KM without much trouble, I tried to do the gravity turn and it wouldn't work properly. I can't get it to stop at the proper point and trying to correct it again just makes things worse. I swear, this is with as basic a rocket as possible. I'm not trying anything complicated.

Once again, I am at a loss. I went back to basics. I watched Scott Manley's first KSP 101 video to make sure I was doing everything right. I built my orbital rocket EXACTLY the way he did. One-man command pod, parachute, fuel tank with engine, decoupler, 3x fuel tank with winglets and engine. Sure enough, just like every other launch, it started to wobble and I can't make course corrections without the rocket immediately swinging back the other way and wiping out the correction I just tried or over-correcting and missing the direction I'm aiming for. I really don't want to give up on this game but I am really starting to get upset.

And thus I have a reason to be glad that I'm still in the basic stages of this game and haven't built anything of consequence. My save being wiped out won't change a thing.

I tried and failed to achieve orbit. Then I accepted that I rushed through the basics of the game and decided that I need to go back to the very beginning and take it slower. I also started the drawing board, so to speak, of my first big planned project which will not see the light of day until I understand orbiting and docking.

This is my plan for my eventual space station. The green is the core block. That will be launched first, followed by the t-shaped gray, which will be a truss system. To that, I will attach a bunch of solar panels, which is the blue. Once those are up and functioning, the red bits, which will be the habitation and science blocks, will be launched and docked. They will be followed by another truss, which is the smaller gray part. That will serve as the dock for the fuel tanks, which are the orange. As this was a rough sketch in MSPaint, only the X and Y axes of the image are viewable, but the cross portions will also extend along the Z axis. Thus, there will be space for five different fuel tanks and there will be five solar arrays. However, it's also possible that the Z axis of the fuel spar will be used for smaller fuel setups since I clearly won't need three Jumbo tanks to get to every planet. The darker blue is an interplanetary vehicle docked to a fuel tank. It will launch in an Apollo-type formation and the CSM will dock with the LM with the LM's engine facing towards the CSM, at which point two of the Kerbonauts will EVA and enter the LM. Then, the LM/CSM will dock with the fuel tank using a docking port atop the LM. The combined fuel tank/LM/CSM will then undock from the station. Once a sufficient distance away, the CSM will undock from the LM and move to the opposite side of the fuel tank and dock directly with it using the docking port by which it was docked to the station. Thus, the CSM and LM will be indirectly attached in the proper Apollo orientation, with their respective engines facing opposite directions. Unlike the Apollo missions, though, the CSM and LM will have a massive fuel tank between them. This, combined with engines that will probably be attached to the fuel tank, will enable interplanetary travel. Once said planetary travel is over with, the LM will re-dock directly with the CSM using a docking port on the side of the CSM. Once docked, the two Kerbonauts will EVA back to the CSM. The LM will then be undocked to float to its oblivion and the ship can return home. Judging by Scott Manley's Eeloo video, a three-Jumbo tank design with some additions should be sufficient to accomplish a journey to any of the planets and back. Whether that holds true once I actually get to the point where I can implement my grand design, we shall see. All I'd have to do is just occasionally launch a new fuel tank and dock it to the station to replenish it and voila! Fueling station. Obviously I have an EXTREMELY LONG WAY to go before I can do this, but hey, every man who was involved in the moon landings dreamed big before learning the nitty gritty of rocket science.

Oh, it only shows up with the controller attached. That I did not know.

Doesn't MechJeb have a feature that shows the stats of a vehicle as it's being built in the VAB? I thought someone said that was a feature. Anyway, I haven't started using MechJeb in earnest yet. I won't for quite some time.

By the way, I added MechJeb. I'm still not using it yet for obvious reasons but how do I get the statistical readouts to come up in the VAB?

Yep, I'm aware, and I'm going to need plenty of practice considering a significant portion of the station will require constant docking and un-docking and replacement docking. I'm going to build a fueling depot as part of the station and dock a bunch of tanks to the station (probably mostly using the dual oranges from UbioZur) which vehicles will dock to then take from the station to use as fuel for interplanetary voyages. That way, I can leave a really heavy portion of the vehicle off the launch pad and save some weight getting the actual vehicle into space. Then I'll simply launch a new tank assembly, dock it to the station and repeat the whole process when necessary. Overly-ambitious? Possibly. Do-able? Definitely. It'll happen in time.

See, I'm going to go in the opposite direction. While I will land on the Mun eventually, I want my first big project to be putting a space station in orbit.

Maybe Johnno's right. I probably rushed through the really basic stuff. Maybe I need to go back to the start.

I've already done the basic basics. That's what putzing around when I first bought the game was for.

On an unrelated subject, are the devs planning to fix the problem with radial attachments being so difficult to add? Why can't there just be a hardpoint on the separators and several on the sides of the tanks/rockets?