Dave Kerbin

As long as you don't turn it on it won't be used. Press R to toggle RCS on or off, you'll see the RCS indicator on the navball opposite SAS if it is turned on.

The difference is how the impact is distributed. Each part has an impact rating, like 7 m/s for most engines. So if you land without landing gear on your engine you will be fine if you had a velocity of 5 m/s, but if you are going 8 m/s the engine will be destroyed. The explosion of the engine will in turn provide an upward force to slow down the rest of the craft so depending on how heavy it is it might now be going slow enough for the next part (like a fuel tank) to survive impact with the ground. So basically when you hit the ground ('land') your ship will be destroyed from the bottom up until the speed is reduced to less then the impact rating of the next part. If you are playing smart you'll have something like landing gear at the bottom which have an impact rating of 12 m/s, so you just need to be going slower then that and nothing will be destroyed. Water works differently. On water even after the first part like the landing gear passes the impact test the ship will still continue to sink (only at a certain point does buoyancy helps push your ship up and stabilize it). That means that if you hit the water at 10 m/s your landing gear will survive, but then it will immediately sink into the water and your engine will hit the waters next at 10 m/s destroying it. Because of this you generally need to be going slower if you want your ship to survive a water landing in one piece.

I've taken a look at that online calculator, and it might just be my browser (Firefox) but it doesn't seem to be giving the right numbers at all. It's really obvious if you just change the ISP and ask it to solve the equation again - you get the same delta-v even though the ISP has changed. Doing it manually by looking at your screenshot and reading your description you have an absolute maximum of 4150 m/s of delta-v. That's excluding the mass of the decoupler and nose cones and assuming a vacuum for maximum ISP. It also assumes the center tank is being used. When I include all the parts, assume there are no fuel lines and use a more realistic average ISP for atmosphere I get 2600 m/s. Edit: Ok, you say there is a 5th engine in there. Using a good estimate of the average atmospheric ISP you have 3450 m/s. In a vacuum (best case) you have 3760 m/s. Edit2: Sorry, I forgot the chute. It eats up about 10-20 m/s of delta-v depending on which case.

I can't see them in the screenshot, do you have fuel lines installed to feed fuel from the center to the 4 outer tanks (you said you have 4 engines and it doesn't look there is a 5th engine in the center to use that fuel)?

LemgumOne - 9.962t - 318 science LemgumTwo - 9.962t - 574 science Sorry I haven't updated this in a while. My one way lander model Lemgun was sent on two missions to pickup Dres and Eeloo. I've been to both planets before so there where no real surprises. Getting LemgumOne to Dres seemed easiest using a mid course correction, once you are out from Kerbin's orbit it's a lot easier to adjust the burn to normal and the time to get an encounter then it is to get an encounter from a single ballistic burn in Kerbin orbit. Landing on Dres isn't more challenging then the Mun (I would say it is easier as Dres has fewer sharp cliffs and steep inclines). After capturing I adjust my orbit so that my landing zone will be farther toward the day side rather then landing right on the terminator as the sun is setting. I've got plenty of fuel so I can do a slow landing and touch down at under 2 m/s. With the low gravity my reaction wheel is enough to keep the probe standing up even on a hill side. After doing some science I did go looking for a flatter place to park the probe so that it wouldn't tip over when night came. Using fuel seemed wasteful so I just rolled over to the bottom of the hill. LemgumTwo had further to go but followed a similar strategy. Getting an intercept with Eeloo needed a bit more patience but was doable. On the way out from Kerbin Minmus wanted to say hi as LemgumTwo spent 9 minutes passing over. In Eeloo orbit power becomes an issue. Carrying minimal solar panels LemgumTwo can only charge a bit more then 550 em of excess power each orbit. About 150 em is needed to stay awake when it passes into Eeloo's shadow so there is only enough charge to transmit one block of data per orbit. I forgot to take a high orbit reading before getting near the capture point so I ended up with an orbit that would let me take higher readings on the dark side. That meant storing the data until the day side was reached since the batteries aren't big enough to transmit and survive the night on a single charge. On the surface, where the panels don't have optimal alignment, charging was even slower. After transmitting a few readings the batteries had to be fully charged in preparation for night since there where a few more readings to take and it didn't seem like there would be enough time before the sun set. LemgumTwo survived its night on Eeloo and completed the surface readings the next morning. I'm a bit short on time at the moment so I don't know when I'll get around to completing any other probe flights. If there is one in particular that would be interesting or you have questions about post a reply and I'll try that first. My current plans are to try the following: Moho, the only planet not yet visited, will get a flyby which might also try to use a gravity assist to get low sun readings too. Without a specialized probe there isn't enough delta-v in any of my 3 stock probes. Around Jool I'd probably try a landing on Bop first to improve from Jool capture. From there there are 3 more ambitious attempts to be made: A one way landing on Vall using a Lemgum, a landing on Laythe with a Dudvey and an attempt to land and return from Pol with a Lanfield. Tylo would get a flyby like Moho (if I could work it I would consider a Tylo flyby with the Pol mission as that would return the most science).

You need to move the science from the lander to the command pod. Once you are on EVA but still near the lander right click on it to open a menu and take the data. Then go over and board the command pod and you'll see a list of messages on the side showing all the experiments that have been loaded into the command pod. You can also do this with experiments - instead of returning something like a goo container for the science, you can go on EVA (after you do the goo experiment) and use your kerbal to take the data out of the goo container and bring it back to your pod. For example here in one of my kerbals collecting data from my equipment on Duna. After I take off I'll jettison the experiment modules to lighten the load, keeping the results in my pod.

Are there any mods that make it possible to see inside the stock capsules from the external view. I assume it would require editing the models to make everything visible all the time (I think the interior/exterior is based on some kind of layer system, so the model designates which surfaces are only visible from exterior or IVA?)

Ram won't be a problem and doesn't sound like it is. Replacing a CPU is possible in almost all desktops and in some laptops, and though it is possible by someone with no experience I wouldn't recommend it, especially on a laptop where it requires taking apart a fair bit of the machine and must be reassembled to within very small tolerarances. However in your case I don't think there is any point in trying. Inside your laptop I think you probably have a motherboard with an FS1 socket which the CPU is plugged into. Only AMD's low powered CPUs fit into this socket and the A4-3300M is one of the fastest in this category. You could possibly gain about 5% more performance but at a huge amount of difficultly and the faster CPU has a TDP of 45 watts compared to 35 for the A4-3300M. In a laptop this difference could either overload or melt something if it wasn't designed to also handle the higher output part. If you knew the name and model number of your computer it might be possible to give you a more exact answer.

No, going to Hawaii will take time away from KSP. Sell the tickets, use the money to upgrade your computer/monitor and play for 2 solid weeks.

While the GPU and RAM is just fine, your CPU is barely making the minimum requirements for KSP, and KSP is much more CPU dependent then GPU dependent. The yellow MET means that that there is not enough CPU power to complete the physics calculations on time, slowing down the game. The A4-3300M is designed to compete with Intel's Atom line (which are now rebranded as Pentiums) and as such is very far back in terms of CPU performance despite being a new processor. It's designed for low cost and low power usage, with a decent integrated GPU to help with things like 1080p video playback. For reference on CPU performance, the dual core A4-3300M is roughly the same as my old AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core 4200+ which I bought in 2006 and replaced 2 years ago after the power supply blew up. Of course there is a big price difference (the 4200+ was top of the line for AMD when it was new) and the A4 uses just a third of the wattage to deliver the same performance plus a GPU. A super budget laptop just isn't going to play KSP as well as even a mid range system. You can do a few things to improve performance. Turning off the anti-virus can help if it is something like Norton or McAfee, though others like Microsoft Security Essentials are normally only using CPU when it is actually needed. Turning off the internet is probably not going to help unless there is some other piece of software we don't know about. In the Kerbal settings you can adjust the maximum physics frame delta to 0.1 to improve performance. This will make the physics a little less stable if you are creating massive 400-500 part launchers, but with your CPU you can't really do those well anyway.

DudveyTwo - 9.9905t - 629 science LanfieldTwo- 9.996t - 1084.2 science The next target is Eve and Gilly using the same strategy as Duna and Ike. I chose to travel here second because of the additional hazards - Eve has oceans which the sensor nose cone doesn't like, and the Seismic Accelerometer only works on a solid surface) and Gilly is a much smaller and more difficult target then Ike. So anyway it's off to Eve. After aerobraking it seems that most of the land mass on Eve is receding into the night side. My best choice for landing in daylight seems to be a large island before it's basically all ocean up to the terminator. I'm not sure how much drag will affect the landing so I'm just aiming for the far end of the island with the deorbit burn - I don't think drag will be so bad that I'll undershoot the entire island and the only obstacle I can see is a small bay at the bottom of a series of lakes in the middle. I end up landing a bit short of the bay, in an elevate plain between some mountains about 4km above sea level. The conditions on the surface are not very nice. The usual readings are taken while the probe still functions. LanfieldTwo follows a similar course and aerobrakes into a higher orbit. Initially LanfieldTwo's inclination and overall orbit is way off Gilly's, though hitting the same plane as Gilly is a challenge. A burn is used to line up the plane of the orbit, which has a side effect of stretching it out. Another burn is used to lower that orbit back down to meet Gilly and after an orbit to let Gilly advance a final burn is used to setup an encounter. After that it's a 3 day trip around Eve and meeting Gilly as we reach it's orbit, approaching from the dark side. To land on Gilly I'm reducing the engine to 10% thrust. Even at 10% it still requires only a touch on the throttle to deorbit and land. There is one thing about Gilly that is more unique then the gravity or shape. Every body has an area defined as low orbit, for example if you are below 60 km you are in low Mun orbit. On Gilly it is possible to touch down from high orbit without ever reaching low orbit. This is because low orbit starts at 6 km, but some of the terrain reaches 7 km. I was a little concerned as I observed ground scatter (rocks) while still in high orbit, if my landing site was too high I'd need to find another place to take low orbit readings. Fortunately the ground was at 4.5 km so I had enough time to take readings. Landing did pose some other unique challenges - setting down at 4 m/s the springs in the landing legs sent the light probe back into a several minute long suborbital flight. The second time I got my velocity to 0.2 m/s before touch down which resulted in only a tiny bounce before it settled. Return to orbit is easy on the thrusters but long on time. It takes so little velocity to get on a suborbital trajectory that it takes 11 minutes of 1x coasting to reach the AP point for a burn. After that it is back to Kerbin. I check my fuel state and decide I can make an immediate return instead of waiting for a better window. I reach Kerbin with 100 m/s left and use the automatic parachutes to land.

1 - The 'docking speed' display on the navball shows relative speed between the 2 ships but is there any way to distinguish between closing speed vs departing speed? Why doesn't the display go negative? If you look at the targeted object itself you'll see the distance overlaid on it. If the number is getting smaller you are closing, if it is getting bigger you are departing. Without mods there isn't much else to go on. 2 - I'm assuming that all docking ports are bisexual? Yes, though they only work with ports of the same size. The regular sized docking port can dock with the shielded and the enclosed radial port since they are physically the same size, but the Jr. sized port can only dock with another Jr. and the same for the Sr. 3 - What is a safe 'collision' speed? The heavier the spacecraft the slower you need to go in order for the kinetic energy to be overcome by the docking port magnets. Little capsules can come in at 5 m/s if you are experienced, while big loads should be less then 1 m/s. The velocity vector also counts - moving straight in you can go faster then if you are coming in from the side. With very light ships you can practically 'strafe' across the docking port from the side and the magnets will be able to hold you long enough for the docking clamps to engage. With heavier ships you need to get rid of as much side to side velocity a possible. Again it's all about the kinetic energy of the ship vs. the fixed magnetic force in the docking port trying to cancel it out. 4 - So far my spacecraft only have a single rear thruster - so for instance to slow down a bit I have to swing around 180 and hit the gas. Is it better or necessary to have smaller sub-thrusters mounted in order to line up 2 docking ports? It is entirely possible to dock with only a single thruster, but it is considered an advanced technique (refered to as 'rcs-less docking'). The normal way to dock until you get really good at it is to use RCS thrusters - at least 4 - so that you can thrust forwards, backwards and in all directions laterally without changing orientation. Usually they are placed with respect to the ships center of mass, so that you can fire them to translate (move side to side) without also inducing rotation.

DudveyOne - 9.9905t - 594 science LanfieldOne- 9.996t - 973.2 science The first wave to go out isn't exactly a swarm, but I have got a few up. I've launched 3 of each probe type into parking orbit. Unlike manned capsules probes don't get bored waiting in one place so I can just leave a bunch there and grab one when I want to start a mission. The other advantage is it let me tag them by how much fuel is left in the booster stage. It's not really a lot (best was 7L) but the extra fuel does give 25-100 m/s extra delta-v and so I can launch several of them and then save the best one (most fuel) for the hardest missions. So I've got the Dudvey with the most booster fuel (6L) marked for my attempt to reach Laythe. The first 2 out are a mission to Duna and it's moon Ike. DudveyOne will fly in first and land on Duna, while LanfieldOne will follow on taking more detailed gravity readings of Duna before landing on Ike and returning to Kerbin. DudveyOne's descent into the atmosphere includes transmission using it's large battery system. It provides enough power to transmit from the sensor nose cone while the solar panels are folded up. Redundent thermometer and barometer instruments store data about the upper and lower atmosphere and will wait until landing to transmit. Once on the ground DudveyOne spreads the solar panels out to recharge and begin uploading data about Duna to mission control. In addition to sending the saved atmospheric data it can send information about the surface. It takes about 45 minutes (time warping is used to speed up the charging) to complete surface operations. The second probe, LanfieldOne, uses the aerobraking to establish a long elliptical orbit stretching out to Ike's orbital path. At the AP I can expand that orbit (175 m/s) so that it begins to closely follow Ike, eventually catching up for a long encounter. Having a very similar orbit to Ike means most of the capture is already done when we enter the SOI. On Ike data is collected and stored for return to Kerbin. The return to Kerbin uses the automatic parachute deployment, landing with about 300 m/s of delta-v left in the tank. Hopefully experience from this mission will help with a similar but more challenging flight to Gilly.

Even with throttling the Engineer Redux screenshot is showing just over 6100 m/s total, and that's in a vacuum. Flown perfectly that rocket could make a safe touch down on the Mun with some fumes left in the tank, no return trip possible. I think some of the modifications have increased the landers weight and thrown everything else off.

The delta-v shown in the screenshot is definitely short. To go to the Mun I would put it roughly at 4500 + 1000 + 1600 + 200 (7300). Looking at your screenshot (I can't really see everything clearly, photobucket shrinks and compresses images terribly) I am wondering what it is you have between the lander's T400 fuel tank and the lander's LV909 engine. It's something dark with landing legs and solar panels attached to it. That extra weight on a late stage could be having a big effect.

The Mun and Minmus would get benefits from a swarm but I promised not to do that. Eventually the other planets will get biomes (Eve and I think Laythe have a seperate ocean biome but that's it) at which point I think probe swarms will make sense - landing and returning 10 times from Moho would be very difficult and expensive, but sending probes would be much cheaper. I even expect to see a combo - people carrying a set of probes with their manned mission (a descent only probe would be very light) to be released and land in other biomes while the primary manned expedition takes the most promising landing zone and returns. Sort of like how the later Apollo missions carried little miniature satellites that where released into Moon orbit from the command module by the CM pilot while the other 2 crew members where on the Moon. I'm not sure how closely timed I will do some of the probes. For Eve and Duna I'll be sending a pair each and I think I can handle sending them both at once. For Jool I think I'm going to need some navigation data to make the most out of my delta-v for some of the trickier landings. So I'll probably send one to do an easier landing and get experience, then send the harder ones.

Dudvey X - 9.9905t - 60.6 science Lemgun X - 9.962t - 86.9 science Lanfield X- 9.996t - 511.3 science I finished the blueprints for my three probe types that I hope will be able to carry me through my interplanetary study. I did want to do a little testing before I sent them out on a half year journey, checking that the booster system worked as planned (all 3 use the same boosters) and for the the Dudvey atmospheric probe I wanted to test it's power system during the parachute descent (solar panels are retracted and I plan to transmit while descending so it needs enough battery power). That led to me also seeing the value in testing the one way Lemgun, to be sure it could land correctly it despite lacking legs. The canyons on the Mun (which I haven't visited yet) seemed like a good target to see if it could meet the challenge. With the other 2 recieving formal test runs I made it even by testing the Lanfield with a trip to Minmus and back just to see if there where any oversights in the design. The Lanfield X was the only one launched during the day. It also has a small launch advantage in that it doesn't need to rest on the rocket nozzles, it has landing legs (thanks to tweakables it spawns with them extended for launch). The launch system is simple, 2 pairs of boosters strapped to the sides of the probe. You can see (or rather you can't) why the probe is under 10 tons by the way it hides behind a single T400 tank. The 2 bigger boosters are dropped just as the gravity turn starts. The other two stay on into orbit with 3-8L of fuel left, which is good for up to 50 m/s of free delta-v. I was actually hoping for a bit to help push me along without going over my arbitrary weight limit. The Dudvey X carries a lot of power, mainly to help transmit data from that sensor nose cone. The nose cone also meant I needed to use a much heavier radial parachute system (seriously, the parachutes are more then half the dry mass). The one advantage is that those parachutes will help a lot for the thin atmosphere on Duna and for the somewhat thin atmosphere on Laythe (where if I can make it I won't have enough fuel to do any powered braking). During descent the upper atmosphere readings are transmitted to make room for lower atmosphere readings. The Lemgun X has lots of delta-v though that comes at the expense of removing all but the most essential hardware, making it a flying gas can. It uses the 3 panel system I experimented with before. The ladders might be a bit of a cheat. I wanted something to prevent a light rollover, it didn't have to stop much just a little pole or something sticking out so that the bottom of the lander wasn't so round. The ladder segments did that and helped give the Lemgun it's own unique look. The Lanfield X has more equipment using up the surface of the probe. It is designed to collect data not just for a single target but to also grab a few gravity readings from a parent body for return to Kerbin. Its first real mission will likely be a trip to Ike traveling with a Dudvey probe. The Dudvey will make a one way trip down to Duna's surface while the Lanfield will swing out and land on Ike and then return to Kerbin with the data. On Minmus Lanfield X gets a lot of data by taking a polar orbit that had been skipped over by TomvinOne.

It depends on the file. My most recent 2 careers I've just left debris, it's actually interesting to see where some of it goes. Alternatively I've played a career and pre-career file where I designed craft to not leave debris in LKO.

There is already a lot of good advice here so I won't repeat it. But I do want to suggest that if you are learning how to reach an inclined planet that you practice on Dres rather then Moho. If Eve is the most advanced planet to return to orbit from its surface, Moho is the most advanced to enter orbit from Kerbin. Dres will let you learn about inclined transfers without subjecting you to massive delta-v costs if you don't pull off a perfect approach.

You can press caps lock to turn on precision mode (this reduces the amount thrust per keypress) however a better tip is just not to panic. As soon as you think you are losing control stop - don't start thrusting hard with the EVA jets in the direction you wanted go or try to 'fix' your course, you'll just make it worse. Instead pick a 'fixed' point (usually whatever ship you are near) and start making small thrusts with the goal of zeroing out your relative velocity. Don't try to reach the ship yet, focus only on making your kerbal stop moving in relation to the ship. So if the ship seems to be flying off to the left, thrust a little left until the ship is no longer moving in that direction. In space relative velocity is everything (since you don't have easy friction to stop everything when you want to) so always try to make your EVA movements using the minimal amount of relative velocity you can. A good way to get used to it is to only move on one axis at a time. So if you want to move to a ship that is ahead and to the left, first thrust a little to the left and coast until you are lined up, then thrust a little to the right to come to a stop. Then thrust a little forward and coast to the ship, thrusting a little back as you approach so you can come to a smooth stop right at the hatch instead of bouncing off.

I have 3 designs on the drawing board that I'm fine tuning at the moment for different mission profiles. All of them are targeted to weigh 10 tons or less on the launchpad. I only have 3 other kerbals left from my 0.22 career to name probes after so they will all be used. The probes are: The Lemgun is a one way probe designed to land in a vacuum environment. The naming is appropriate because the probe has no landing gear (Lemgun's speciality was tricky landings). It has several design features intended to help it survive touchdown including a collapsing engine (it won't need to take off again), a second crumple zone to protect the electronics and roll guards. This ship has the highest delta-v (mostly gained by stripping non-essentials like landing gear) to help it reach the farthest planets. The Lanfield is a shorter range probe but it makes up for that by being the only model of the 3 designed to land on another body and return to Kerbin. It's instruments are designed around storage with extended battery and communication gear removed to free up space and weight. Finally the Dudvey is another one way probe, designed to explore bodies with an atmosphere. I still need to do some work on this one in the hopes that I can extend its range far enough to reach Laythe without breaking the weight limit. The Dudvey has it's own unique set of instruments and a much larger power system then the other two.

Tech tree wise I can unlock a bunch of useful parts for probes. Precision Engineering for all the tiny sized parts, Unmanned Tech for the better probe cores, Fuel Systems for fuel ducts and the Rockomax 48-7S, Landing for the micro landing gear and Advanced Exploration for the barometer. I wasn't sure about the last 344 and eventually went with Large Electrics for the Z-1k battery and XL solar panels. Alternatively I could have unlocked Ion Propulsion or went through two items to unlock Specialized Control and get the XL parachute.

TomvinOne - 13.45t - 1130 science Tomvin Kerman was my first career Kerbal to reach deep space, so this probe gets his name. This will also be a one way probe so it can be even lighter despite me not having any truly probe appropriate engines yet. The staging here is really simple - in fact the whole ship is only 18 parts. The first stage lifts it to 35 km, so the orbital stage only needs to burn for another 10 seconds before reaching the coasting point. After burning to circulize it should have another 300 m/s that will be used to raise the probe into a higher Kerbin orbit. The probe begins with a survey around Kerbin's equator. It will be repeated at a higher orbit for comparison. It carries a lot of battery power (810em) so that it can transmit up to 3 times in quick succession. The solar array is slightly larger then normal to support faster recharging (about 7.5 em/s in practical use). Each scan can be repeated a second time to collect about 5% more science if the probe is still over the same position. One area I was looking for was the badlands, I've never been able to pick it up. Despite a low and a high orbital pass I couldn't find it this time either. Since I was going around the equator I didn't take readings for the Tundra or Ice Cap biomes but I got all the common Kerbin ones: Grassland, Shores, Water, Highlands, Mountains, Desert. From high orbit the insertion stage has 1.45L of fuel left. That will give us just under 3 seconds of free thrust before it is dropped and the probe's main engine takes over for a push out to the Mun. As it coasts out from behind the dark side of Kerbin the final size of the probe can be seen. As the probe approaches the Mun high orbit readings are taken. The capture is done at low orbit but without bringing the AP down, so that the probe can swing around again complete its orbit at high altitude. In addition to the Midlands and the Highlands the probe measures gravity over 7 large crater formations. When the probe returns to the low altitude PE it circulizes into a low orbit for another pass. Comparisons are made for all the readings made in the high altitude pass, however there where issues when making a comparison scan of the Mun's East Farside Crater on the dark side of the Mun when the batteries ran out mid transmission. The probe was dead and without power for 12 minutes until it emerges into the sun and rebooted. From there the probe broke out of Mun orbit, timing the burn to provide a gravity boost outward (in contrast to BobOne which used gravity to help boost back toward Kerbin). From it was several days before an inclination change could be made to match Minmus, and then another orbit before a 70 m/s burn that would slowly spiral around the probe to Minmus in 2 weeks. This long path out to Minmus meant that capture would be easy because the probe was in an almost identical orbit - just 3 m/s needed to capture. The trip in to capture is again used to gather information on Minmus. It is rotating faster in comparison to our approach so we can survey the whole moon before reaching the capture point where the orbit is lowered for a low pass around to compare. Mid, low and highlands are found along with slopes and 3 flats regions. The low pass reveals one region too small to be found on the high orbital pass, a lesser flats. After a complete low altitude orbit the final stage in the mission is a gravity assist into deep space. The probe still has 11.8L of fuel left (600 m/s) after reaching deep space, that could have been spent also examining the poles around Minmus. Overall though there where 87 transmissions about 46 different sites, slightly greater then my own best case estimates.

Ok I've got a question for anyone following this experiment. I have one more probe to do which will explore the Kerbin system and poke out into deep space, and after that I'll be traveling to other planets. My question is do you want to see a probe roughly the same size and weight as the Geofmin probes I just flew (it would look very similar with an identical launcher, just a revamped set of science instruments and no landing legs) that would return to Kerbin and land, or do you want to finally see me transmit some data with a one way probe that will be about 40% of the weight, but since it transmits it will return about 40% of the science. My one other concern about the heavier probe is I think it will look ugly and be a bit of a pain to manage the instruments. The heavier probe would be safer on fuel though.

GeofminOne - 29.67t - 282 science GeofminTwo - 29.67t - 352.5 science Both of these probes are identical in design and are named after a famed kerbal designer and pilot who brought my first career file to the Mun with math. Their targets are the Mun and Minmus respectively. They are not entirely symmetrical because of some interesting center of mass issues. I determined I only needed one parachute for the return (even with the soft touchdown required by the Science Jr the probe was still much light then a capsule so only one was required) and balanced it with a Goo container. However the center of mass for the parachute seems to be in an odd position, so I changed the layout of the solar arrays to mostly offset it and put the center of mass over the center of lift. All 3 engines are used for the liftoff, though even with the T45s running at slightly reduced throttle they burn fuel much faster (400% faster). The center tank is half full when the radial boosters are released and the ship begins to coast toward AP. The orbital insertion phase does have some issues relating to insufficient torque which made getting a nice circular orbit harder. GeofminTwo had to ride out a little trip back through the upper atmosphere (62km altitude) in order to come around and correct its orbit. Without a crew capsule you make a pretty light lander even without a lot of the tech tree. What you see on the right is in stable low Kerbal orbit and will make the entire injection burn to the Mun on its own (and it's twin to Minmus). GeofminTwo runs into a slight tipping problem on Minmus but is able to take off safely. GeofminOne returns to Kerbin normally, reaching the surface less then 16 hours after it left (MET 15:47:51). This is much faster then BobOne's time and probably has to do with GeofminOne's course - BobOne set a course ensured it's Mun flyby would keep it low in Kerbin's gravity well, while GeofminOne's course was an almost perfect gravity assist to fling it out into deep space. This allowed it to reach the capture point from orbit in 6 hours and touchdown on the Mun just short of 7 and half hours after lift off. On return it was able to plot the best escape course from the Mun. GeofminTwo tries an experiment for its return. With more fuel left over then GeofminOne it sets up a straight down landing to stress test the automatic parachute design (this could be important to know later). The parachute release goes well despite the ship still traveling at 660 m/s when it reached 6 km. The touchdown isn't faster then GeofminOne but GeofminTwo seems to be jinxed for landings, 2 of the retracted solar arrays recieve bumps and are damaged. The science from the two missions is used to unlock Advanced Science Tech which almost completes my set of instruments and unlock the rest of the 45 tier with Advanced Rocketry and General Construction.