Galane

Easy enough to do manually. Get into visual range with rendezvous in maneuver planner. Set control from here on both ships to the docking ports you'll be connecting, then set those ports as each other ship's targets by right clicking on the port of the other ship in normal space view. Then activate Smart A.S.S., click the TGT then TGT+ buttons for each ship. Now the ports are locked onto each other. To fly over and dock is simple. RCS control H = forward N = reverse, Q and E rotate. Keep an eye on how fast the distance number is dropping on the target pip. Too fast and you're crashing, not docking.

Latest version on the spaceport or latest dev build linked on the first post?

You're trying to connect three pairs of nodes together. That would make two loops. KSP doesn't allow doughnut topology in its vehicles. They must be like a tree with one root part that all other parts radiate from, except for struts, those are special. If you used three pairs of docking ports, one would connect in VAB and the others *should* connect during physics load at launch.

Action grouped Quantum struts or strut guns. They're very stiff and strong. Aim them so when your station unfolds and the struts are turned on, they brace the parts. Have to be careful with placement or they can pry pieces of a ship apart on the launchpad, even with the KJR mod. I've used quantum struts to brace a folded DROMOMAN arm with a docking port on the end so it could be used like a normally mounted port for in orbit docking.

What I found out the hard way is that when lifting Kethane up to refine it in orbit, bigger is better. I hadn't intended to visit Ike but fortunately I overbuilt the ship, one of the Kethane satellites had more than enough fuel to get from Duna orbit to Ike and the mining landers I built for Duna were more than capable of the same trip. What happened was the landers had an X200-8 tank on top, which they'd take down empty to save on landing weight, but would need to be filled in addition to the rest of the tanks for the ascent. Net result was each trip I'd get less than half an X200-8 tank of fuel to go into the return ship's tanks. Even with two landers it would have taken forever, so I decamped the entire mission except for one scanning satellite to Ike. Eve would be far worse. I shudder to think of what a fully reusable lander, able to make multiple trips, would be like for Eve. Trying to do it all together with drills, Kethane tanks and converter on the lander would be... difficult. Might be doable with mining and refining on the surface and a lander able to lift significant amounts of excess fuel to orbit, then land with just the bare minimum in the tanks to not crash. So there's a challenge, an "all up" Kethane mining and refining, reusable lander for Eve, with the tanks being filled on a ship in orbit.

Try it docking to a ship without power so it's rotation can't be held. Would have to come in carefully and get it right the first time or a bump could send it spinning.

Some design inspiration, the Edgley EA7 Optica. Only 21 flying examples were completed before a fire burned the factory. Only 5 or 6 are still flying or considered airworthy. Some have been destroyed in crashes. http://www.optica.co.uk/Aircraft%20Histories.html lists 8 as destroyed in fire. There was a grounding due to wing spar cracks, could be those 8 were at the factory for repairs? One of the planes has a starring role in Slipstream.

More fuel, more powerful thrusters, controllable with MechJeb. Perhaps a grapple to hold onto things that aren't ladders.

Have you tried it with Kerbal Joint Reinforcement and further reducing the number of parts? I might use this for my Eve mission rather than spending time docking sidesaddle boosters in orbit. I haven't figured out how to get more than 8 symmetry or change the angle from 15 with editor extensions.

Great, now you have me thinking of . Can't find a clip of the earlier scene where he does that on the station.

Can I build a jetpack and attach it to a Kerbal instead of using a command chair?

That's just the Kerbal way of how the crew does an eyeball inspection of the engines.

I've tried a few times to use hyperedit to pop a lander in low over Eve so I can quickly do landing gear tests and return to orbit tests but it's always exploded. Works just fine on Mun. What's the minimum safe ship lander altitude and safe coordinates to land on Eve? Eve testing takes a bloody long time, even with warping through most of the middle of the atmopsphere until entry heating quits. I'd love a hack to reduce the minimum no-warp altitude at Gilly. Going to take days of game time for a refueling operation there.

Quantum Struts work fine in .23, just have to remember to not aim them at or mount them on the little octagonal struts or cubic octagonal struts. I've used them to brace arms built of IR and dromoman parts, with a docking port on the end of the arm. Put the quantum struts in an action group so you can shut them off before moving your robotic stuff.

Kethane does, if the KAS cable connection is in docked mode. I built a rover with two heavy Kethane drills and another rover with a Kethane converter and tank. Space droppable refueling system for manned landers, can land on Eve without parachutes so should be able to land anywhere that has a surface to land on. Somewhere on this forum I posted a link to download the rovers, but I can't find it due to the way the forum search doesn't pull out individual posts as results. "Everything is air-droppable at least once." Maxim 11 - The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries

Update MechJeb to the latest dev version. http://jenkins.mumech.com/job/MechJeb2/ The release version on spaceport has some issues which have been fixed, also new features have been added, including goodies like resonant orbits for dropping off evenly spaced Kerbostationary satellites.

Well, the last official release is... less than optimal in many ways. The dev versions released since have fixed many things and added features, including working with the career mode tech tree.

I said earlier, look up the thread a ways. There's a subassembly posted with all 9 sizes of those pistons stacked. Stick it somewhere on your ship, remove the smaller pieces you don't want and dump them back in the bin. Remove the stack of sizes you do want, then grab the larger ones and toss back in the bin.

"Too many people these days ride on the shoulders of classics when writing what they call science fiction. They tell stories in which they have created nothing new, imagined no new possibilities; this is not science fiction, it is fantasy." Yeah, but David Drake tells some pretty good rehashes of classic literature.

I'm experimenting with using a winch to get a kerbal up and down from a lander. What would be a nice feature addition is a brake on the winches that works like a descender. Descenders have made airbags obsolete for jump stunts. They put a harness and cable on the actor or stuntperson then pay out the cable at a controlled speed, slowing to a stop just before the end, then gently lowering down.

The ship lander function is rather iffy on Eve. Seems to pop it in with some orbital velocity instead of zero relative to the surface, and the sudden acceleration tends to make bits of the ship explode.

Thanks. Got it fixed.

Nice stuff with the invert and the limits! That would make 'one button' unfolding mechanisms much easier to do. I'd still prefer the collapse button on the windows instead of using the toolbar.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/9333-Caproni-Ca-60-Noviplano I'd love to see someone make that in KSP .23, taking advantage of the nifty mods like procedural wings. There were many even crazier designs from the first 20 or so years after 1903, but most of them couldn't actually fly. The Caproni Ca.60 Noviplano did fly, until it crashed, then caught fire and burned. Caproni also built some other really crazy aircraft. The man was a Kerbal in human form.

Two parts the game desperately needs are struts and fuel pipes with greater standoff height at the ends so they'll go over decouplers. The stock struts will do it some of the time but fuel pipes won't. I have to stick a small hardpoint to the decoupler and connect fuel pipes to and from that.