Wallace

Mechjeb did propose some very dodgy manoeuvres when I went to Moho, which would have intercepted at a horrible angle and used far too much Dv for braking to get into orbit, and I had to redo it all myself, so I'm fairly suspicious of anything it tells me.

Seems I counted the DV required for orbital insertion when I was looking at the DV map, and forgot I don't need that if I do aero breaking, looks like I will have plenty enough DV already, I guess I'll be able to go round and visiting moons with the spare.

Soo, I have my ship all packed up ready to go for the <dramatic movie trailer voice> Big Jool Mission </>, but i've just got a couple of things bugging me before I start. Problem one is, I have a disagreement between Mechjeb and Kerbal Alarm Clock on the launch window. KAC says it is 13 days away, mechjeb says 19, but with a funny twist, I've actually got a few smaller probes going with the big ship and some of them it tried to give a departure over a year away on the first try, and then when I tried again later gave them 19 days. Also, all the paths mechjeb has given to the ships go through the mun's SOI but at such high speed (exit burn is ~1800m/s) their course isn't altered it's just totally straight. So i'm not sure what to trust, should I go with the mechjeb manoeuvre or make my own at the time KAC tells me? Second issues, well, it's not really a problem, just fishing for a bit of advice. According to the DV map i've been looking at I should need 9045 m/s to go from Kerbin orbit to Jool orbit, and I currently have enough fuel tanks in tow to give me about 9100 m/s. However, I've found on previous interplanetary missions I almost always needed more DV due to ending up on a non-optimum route, soo, how much spare Dv would be sensible to add to the ship?

What bugs me more is that Mono propellant is in propulsion and the RCS schnozzles are in control, surely they should be in the same place? The fact that control is really empty and propulsion is overcrowded makes it worse, so I moved the mono prop to control. What also annoys me is how mixed up the items are in their categories. Are all 3 sizes of decoupler next to each other, with the 3 stack separators next to them? Of course they aren't!

*90s reference alert! 90s kids only!* I get this guy to do it for me.

step 1: find correct sized asteroid step 2: take to ike step 3: cry about it still not being the same step 4: install old version of ksp.

I want to put a huge orbital colony station around Jool with ships capable of reaching and landing on all it's moons.

I've still not got space planes figured out, the best i've done is LKO without refueling. I sent a 1 kerbal space plane to Mun orbit after refueling in LKO, and i have got an 8 kerbal plane into orbit.

Standards? Lol, that's a good one.

There have been several times I've had to do the ol' RCS to finish getting into orbit trick. Most recently with a remote Mun lander which was a bit close to the DV requirements anyway and then was flown on a very poor decent profile leaving it only 540m/s left on touchdown. It had only one spherical can of monoprop, and 90% was used up to get it to orbit, and now it has to rendezvous with my science lab station with just it's remaining few drops of monoprop for propulsion. Whether it makes it or not still remains to be seen as it will be taking a while for the transfer window to come around as there's not enough DV to establish a decent phasing orbit.

I think the liquid booster and the giant SRB should be shoved into the final rocketry node along with the other SLS parts, it's weird to get the booster the same time as the mainsail, it's supposed to be a booster but it's bigger than your best main engine? That's a bad fit. One way it could be stopped from killing the mainsail would be to give it absolutely no gimbaling, that shouldn't really affect it's use as a booster but would make it rubbish as a main engine.

everything except scroll lock.

My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next. And this is my midget brother Minimus.

Not quite correct, there was still landing gear that started lowered before tweakables. The plane wheels started lowered, so before they changed it, if you had a spaceplane carrying a payload with lander lends, you'd end up with the legs coming down when the wheels came up.

Well, you don't need planets for that, I've found an asteroid in an eccentric (approximately) polar orbit of Kerbin, it will be a challenge to get to and a bigger challenge to bring it into a low equatorial orbit.

That's already possible, but you'd now be able to land somewhere where you were in the dark for about a quarter of the kerbal year. EDIT: actually it's not more than 1 day in the dark at the moment, I misunderestimated the speed of a Mun orbit.

Well, for the Mun, it wouldn't be much of a difference as it's orbit would be fixed and kerbal water has no tides, it would just be a bit harder to get to. You'd have time your launch and launch into a polar orbit at the right time to match the plane of the mun's orbit. For our moon I'm not sure, it would mean our tides would be very weird, when the moon was near the equator then the tides would be pretty much like now, but when it was directly above the pole, tides would effectively stop, at high tides near the poles and low tides at the equator until the mun became low enough again. The point on the surface with the highest tides would corkscrew around the planet, So each month you'd have tides going from changing like they are now to pretty much stopping, then back. Another thing to consider is sometimes the polar orbit would be perpendicular with the direction of the sun, and sometimes aligned. When it was aligned you'd be getting spring tides every day, and when it was perpendicular, you'd get neap tides every day. As for the spin of the earth and moon, I'm not sure what would happen there. The moon has a stabilising effect of the Earth's spin, stopping it getting too eccentric, I don't know what difference a polar orbit would have but I expect it wouldn't have the same stabilising effect.

I'll let Kennedy explain why we do it... <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/EeGw32e5Em4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Just now, I was landing in a Mun canyon, and I came in a bit wrong, ended up coming in fast on the very steep side, 2 legs slammed down on the up hill side and the whole lander flipped over, but the slope was so steep that it it didn't land down on it's side, it was falling at the angle as the slope and it flipped right over twice and I was able to fire the engines to slow it just as it hit the bottom. 2 broken legs to fix in Eva but other than that it was totally fine.

There's actually a good reason for that, if you have a ship with landing gear in both positions, first press raises gear that is down.

I stretch the launch clamps all the way up to the roof of the VAB to save a teeny bit of DV.

Rocket assisted landing is more interesting to me. I've always found the lack of reverse thrust or air brakes very annoying for landings, parachutes have always been awkward, maybe a couple of sepratrons would help slow down my planes better.

We need the giant gold armadillo suit from Sunshine! It would be nice to pick between adding things like parachutes or RCS, tho I think there probably wouldn't be that many combinations of gear possible. On the downside there would be the potential for many 'oopps forgot to change the suit for this new mission' moments where we watch Jeb float helplessly away with no rcs, or he ends up flailing about like an inverted turtle in his over-heavy hard suit on Eve, etc.

I usually have it so if the kerbals are there long term, they a hitchhiker module to themselves, so they've got extra space for their stuff. Or you could give them an extra lab module and say this one is them to hang out in instead. There's LOADS of station part mods but none with a fun IVA as far as I know.

you can bounce about Minmus with a pathetically small lander hovering up science far more easily than EVAing down and doing the blind rendezvous. Sure they could make EVAs use up mono propellant, but slap a couple of cylinder tanks on your ship and you'd have mono-prop coming out the wazzo, easily enough to EVA to every biome. I've done the EVA nav-ball-less rendezvous a few times in emergencies and honestly if you can be bothered with doing it, then you've earned that surface sample fair and square.