annallia

Honestly I had been mostly through the career before I bothered with duna. I did science on mun/minmus and kerbin itself until I had the parts I wanted. Then I would launch a big vessel. It would go to eve and drop two probes (one intentionally in the ocean another on land) and then head off to the sun. With that done I pretty much finish career mode. The tech tree anyway.

I thought so as well... I guess its time to make a top heavy rocket to test this. Edit- I don't use steam either, though it should work the same way it would from photobucket. At least it works in the previews...

Next thing on my list would be improvements on the career mode. Taking the cost of parts into consideration and giving a budget, perhaps a way to determine just how much of a budget you get depending on the success/failures of your career mode. Maybe add in a new planet, one with rings! Edit- Also had a bit of a whacky idea of adding in a machine shop or something allowing us to fine tune certain parts in game (rather than modding them in). Nothing major mind you, but the ability to create radial drogue chutes or fine tune an engine to get a bit more thrust out of it, or a slightly higher ISP. Things like that.

I dock myself mostly mechjeb just plots courses for me. I did just run a test on its docking abilities and while I could do it it felt a bit like trying to thread a needle with a very slow moving thread. Also I do have a SAS on board. As to the lights my station is well lit specially around the docking ports so no worries there. The little white and black thing on top of the nerva yes those are the RCS thrusters (top ones anyway). If you meant the huge bar type things sitting directly on top those are solar arrays. That said with my test I landed on the mun, my drift problem seems to be limited to kerbin as I had no trouble taking off or landing on the mun. Though now I am going back to the drawing board slightly to put in a converter unit so I can partially fill my fuel tanks from the kethane I drill rather than refueling from the station as when I did make it back I was running on fumes. Edit- It seems to be working well enough, I think the RCS could use a little help but I don't know how myself. Since it works as is however I am calling this answered.

Yes and in the center where the drill is they are also three of them placed symmetrically. Edit- Only parts not placed symmetrically is the Mechjeb unit and the space built identifier (which disappears after moving it to orbit).

Never around Jool... I have had Kraken attacks elsewhere though. I once had it attack the VAB made my simple test rocket turn into a giant pocupine looking thing (was fun watching it explode when I hit launch at least). Also fairly recently had it attack while returning to Kerbin, before I even got into the atmo my capsule just went boom, not sure how or why.

Ok so I built this lander to go to the Mun and Minmus to drill for kethane and return it to my station where it it will be processed into whatever it is I need currently. #1 I seem to have a balance issue. I left it on the launch pad and burned the engines until I was over 1.0 TWR at which point it started to list off to the right but I cannot figure out where this imbalance is coming from. #2 I am unsure of my RCS placement. I have nosels at the top and bottom of each of the three side tanks. Is there a better way to do this? Or should this work for docking? (Wanting to solve #1 before I waste parts on a test) #3 Any suggestions on how to improve the design are welcome, though nothing that would require mods other than the ones used. (Kethane, NovaPunch, Near Future Propulsion (just he batteries/panels). Namely looking at things towards efficiency, right now I am estimating that about 40% of the kethane it drills will be used to replace the fuel it uses making the trip there and back. Few additions not sure if important or not... This will be space built as I am using orbital construction mod, its only role is to use gather kethane to store on my station where I can convert it to whatever I need for future space built craft. It is only intended to go to the Mun and Minmus though I do plan on re-designing a similar craft for Duna down the road.

Certain payloads would have to be redesigned completely to make them more stable as well. Wouldn't do you any good to slap a heat shield on the bottom of a payload that has trouble keeping the correct vector.

How wonderful for you. However in the end this is a game, as such you will have people of varying levels of skill. Not everyone will be an out of the box kerbalnaut, not everyone will want to spend hours watching other people have fun on youtube instead of figuring it out for themselves. Also unless I am mistaken, though I don't think I am what Sirrobert said is true in respect to career mode, as it currently stands that is.

I went back to duna to scout for possible base sites. I love the timing on this one, got to see the solar panels from the transfer stage break off And after dropping the breaking stage (because as it turns out 17 chutes is enough for a 2 ton vessel) I landed, popped the top and now time to explore.

The more I look at it the more I only see the one on the right is the only one singing opera, not quite sure what the one on the left is doing. That said which is which? I am pretty sure Jeb is the one lighting his own farts, but is it Bill or Bob singing?

Finished my station, even stocked it with escape pods. Of course it wasn't until after I had all 6 of them docked with the station and I was sending a few of the kerbals home (I didn't test them before hand) that things went wrong. The first one I accidentally decoupled the fuel tank from the command pod, and then the pod from the station. For some reason I will assume it was the decompression of the airlock the pod started to float away from the station. I started going EVA with my kerbals to another pod for a second try. When I finally got to the last kerbal however I was getting rather bored with making these little treks. I managed to make the third one interesting. I started spinning the pod and then hit EVA, got my timing down and let go. Almost perfect aim (he hit the station about 3m to the right of the pod). Got him inside and moved on home. So I took care to make sure I had the docking port and decoupled the pod (I realze now my problem is the pods from NP have built in decouplers) It wasn't until I took control of said pod that I realized the only reason the escape pods had RCS fuel when I was docking them was the tug I was using to move them in place... Fortunately using the torque from the pod and a short burst from the engines I can still get them away from the station. From there things just got worse. Part of the reason they had both engines and RCS was because my station is built in 900k orbit. You can get down using just RCS but it takes forever. Well I set my decent profile but I chose poorly and ended up using all of my fuel. I was however in atmosphere at about 55k however with the speed I was going that dip wasn't going to help much. Made three trips around kerbin before I finally got deep enough in the atmosphere to bleed off all of my speed. On the plus side the landing was remakabely well aimed for a complete disaster, landing just behind a hill to the west of the KSC.

Much like specialist I kinda obsessed over the game when I first got it. I then took a break, a few weeks really. Not all of it was because I didn't want to play I just had work to take care of, and then I didn't find my way back. However I saw there was a career mode update sooo had to come back around and give a try and I am back to being obsessed, though trying to manage it. Play an hour or two here and there and then call it good for the day.

Yes you can, assuming you didn't block the hatch with something (I do this now and then with radial chutes...) That said I now have a stranded kerbal. Jeb flew a transport up to my station to crew it now that I am dubbing it finished and is currently stranded... About 3km away from the KSC floating in his command pod. Decided to let him sit for a while.

As of right now 0. I have one kerbal that doesn't have a way home but he is on a space station with lots of snacks so he should be ok until I get around to putting in return vehicals (still need to finish designing/building the main docking part). Also I am using the orbital construction mod and the station is stocked with enough parts/fuel for him to build a return craft if he really needs to. I do get a kerbal stranded now and then but honestly, when things go wrong for me there is usually nothing to recover.

In addtion to what others have said above this another option would be the fuel balance mod (not sure if updated). You can use it to constantly transfer fuel to all of your tanks keeping them all about the same so it won't get out of balance.

SargeRho is right. Your amount of delta-v wont change based on gravity, only how much of it you need to escape said gravity.

I experimented with the near and future propulsion mod as well as finally trying out procedural fairings. Tried sending a kethane probe to Duna but since I hadn't played around with the mod much things kinda went sideways. Liftoff went smoothely. Forgot to add an sas and since the probe core had so little torque I just left it off... was perfectly fine up until I separated the boosters then I went a wee bit off course. Fairings worked perfectly fine, I rather like those. To its credit the near/future propulsion stuff worked perfectly fine as well though I did vastly underestimate just how fast that thing would burn the hydrogen, I also underestimated how fast it would deplete the batteries, and overestimated the effect of the two huge solar arrays + the reactors ability to keep it charged. Will need to do some tweaking but I think I can work it out.

I have a general use lifter that I use for almost anything (anything over 150t needs a new one though). However the true workhorse in my KSP is my orbital tugs. They are basically a flying fuel tank with a nerva engine but they do everything from station assembly to being the interplanetary stage for rovers to rescuing stranded kerbals.

Pretty sure it is 500 on any planet/moon that you use them on. I could be wrong but I think the game just looks at your altitude as to when to deploy, not your actual atmosphere. You can land chute only on Duna, but you have to really pack em in there to pull it off. I built a rover with the intent of doing just that, in total it had 16 radial chutes and 4 drogue chutes. Set down a little harder than I would have liked but it made it down in one piece all the same.

My largest vessel currently in use is my station orbiting Kerbin at 377 parts. As to single rocket? Maybe 250-260. Usually by the time I start hitting 200 parts I decide to make it modular and build it in orbit. I did have a ship in .20 that was intended to visit every planet/moon in one trip and drop probes off at all the planets that came in just under 800 parts, but again built in orbit.

I agree that the CM should be able to hold more than one report, but there does have to be a limit. You do have a finite amount of storage space after all so you can't exactly dig a huge hole in the mun taking surface samples and bring it all back.

I laughed entirely too hard at this...

Somewhat interesting idea. In respect to #3 though it would greatly help if you mentioned what mods you do have.

I've only had a problem with the legs in one instance, that was when I went over 30 tons on the lander. I fixed this by doubling up the legs, they worked just fine. That said I recently sent a second large mobile lab to eve (first one landed in the ocean) for whatever reason several of my chutes tore away when they deployed the second time around and left my probe falling at 15.5m/s The legs managed to absorb the shock enough that even though I think the wheels touched the ground (this normally would have broken them) they remained intact and functional.