Dave Kerbin

Can anyone give me some input on creating a lithobraking challenge? The challenge I’m thinking of is a flight and return and I’m a bit concerned that I’ve made it too hard. I’ll be working on some designs in sandbox mode tommorow to try and prove it is possible. The challenge is: Launch a rocket using stock parts from Kerbin. Mechjeb is allowed since navigation is not part of the challenge. It must contain a probe or pod you designate as the core (you can’t pack multiple little ships and hope one survives). You must fly to Minmus and setup any approach you wish. However once you enter Minmus SOI you cannot use any liquid fuel engines, solid fuel engines, RCS or kerbal jetpacks until you have finished landing. Decoupler spam or any other sneaky source of delta-v is also against the spirit of the challenge. You must ‘land’ via lithobraking. Once you have landed (navball reads 0m/s on the surface) you should demonstrate that your ship is still functional by taking off and returning the core safely to Kerbin under your own power (you do not need to lithobrake on Kerbin). That means you cannot dock with anything you did not bring into Minmus SOI (if you find it useful it is legal to use docking ports on objects you did bring with you into Minmus SOI, so a lander might carry multiple return service modules as a shield and an RCS powered core that can dock with one that survived) Entries are scored based on how much they weigh on the launchpad – the lighter the better. In the event of a tie then the weight of the vehicle returned to Kerbin is used, the heavier the better. Hard mode is doing it on the Mun instead of Minmus. It would be in the spirit of the challenge that results be reasonably reproducable - using quicksave to fly a ship into Minmus 100 times to get one lucky break is considered luck rather then skill. If it proves 'impossible' (or at least very improbable) to complete the challenge as designed I might try to change it by reducing the distance from the SOI down to some specific altitude where engines must be shutdown.

I recently posted some ideas about budget and goals which are completed to improve it. I saw this on Reddit and really liked the idea of 'themed' missions (or goals) that you came up with. I'm trying to figure out how I might mix it in with what I already put up - maybe each organization gives different kinds of rewards. So Von Kerman gives you bonus science points for completing his goals, another organization increases your per launch budget, another provides funding increases and another provides lump sum monetary rewards.

This is just an idea about budgets, and specifically how they could help structure the gameplay. Something I’ve noticed playing in career mode as it has been introduced is that you can get pretty far fast. I’m not talking about those 2000 science in your first mission stunts, I mean that you can run your first dozen missions and still not even be through the first week or even the first day of the in game clock. I honestly think that the game does need some ‘feel’ of the space program unfolding over a tangible period of time, instead of your entire Mercury program happening in a single afternoon of in game time. I think that budget could fill that in. The administrative building, which is currently unused, could be used to display your space program’s budget, its current monetary balance and funding, and finally completed and incomplete goals. The space program’s budget is a number representing the maximum amount you can spend on a single launch. The guys in the admin building aren’t going to let you risk it all on a single giant rocket that could explode on the pad. The monetary balance is the actual amount of money you have in the bank and ready to spend. While you can design a rocket within your program’s per-launch budget, you may not be able to actually assemble it and take it to the pad until enough money has been accumulated. The rate at which you accumulate money is your funding and later on it can help space out launchs and encourage cheaper ships. The per-launch budget and the funding rate are both determined by the goals your program has completed. Goals are basically one time achievements for completing certain science objectives that are already in the game. For example an early goal is ‘Recover a spacecraft that has flown in the space near Kerbin’. Each time a goal is completed your budget and funding is increased proportional to that goals difficulty, and multiple goals can be completed in the same mission. Completing goals also exposes new ones – getting to Kerbin orbit exposes goals for getting to the Mun and Minmus, while getting there exposes more specific goals for those bodies. That doesn’t mean you don’t get credit for achieving a goal that wasn't revealed yet (completing a future goal will immediately reveal it) it just keeps the number of goals visible to the player at one time to a manageable level. This provides a guide to new players on what they should be trying to do if they want to get science and push forward. They start out with a single goal – recover a spacecraft that has flown on Kerbin (you know, flight between 0-18km) which when completed reveals several other goals – recover a goo container that has flown on Kerbin, file a crew report from the space near Kerbin (orbit), recover a ship which been in the space near Kerbin. The limited budget per launch could help new players to get a grasp on what they should build. For example their first launch should really just be a pod, a parachute, a fuel tank or 2 and an engine, so the initial per-launch budget could be tailored to not allow much more then that (with a nice pile of money so they can quickly try out ideas early on). Later on the limited budget challenges players to do more with less, creating better rockets. The monetary amount and funding over time is there to help space out launches and also to help encourage players to go under budget – launching a cheaper rocket means less time waiting for more funding to come in for the next one. This way there is still some challenge and use for new parts in building small ships even after a budget increase – for example a basic crew transport would still be small to save money for the interplanetary ship they will be ferried up to.

I'm not great at names, the ships are all named by function. Some of the ships I've been flying recently: Eve Explorer 1 (one way probe to Eve) Duna Cargo Ship (nuclear cargo support ship to fly a few days ahead of non-nuclear manned Duna expedition) Gravity Survey Probe (Small probe for taking gravity readings around Kerbin and surrounding SOI) Mun Reuse (Mun mission rig to support 3 landings with the same lander, with interchangable science pods)

I've nearly completed my tech tree and the only mission beyond Kerbin's little neighborhood is a half completed mission to Eve. However I haven't been spamming science (apart from the Eve mission everything has been recover rather then repeated transmission and I've actually missed out on a lot of crew reports because I forget that the feature exists). My Duna mission is almost assembled in orbit awaiting it's launch window in a few days (that's why the last part of the Eve mission is on hold, I need to time the Duna launch correctly and Eve can wait in stable orbit) and will probably finish things off. Personally I would enjoy seeing some adjustments to how transmissions work. As most are aware you can keep re-running and then re-transmitting over and over again to get all the science. I don't want to break the idea that transmitting and then recovering on a later mission provides the same total science as recovering, but I would maybe just drop the diminishing returns and only allow transmission if you haven't already gotten science from it and recovering removes any future science from the exact same area - as biomes are added to the planets and moons this will become more essential. I would also raise the science costs of the later techs, so that there is some reason to go to other planets. Right now there is a ton of science available right in Kerbin's backyard, both Kerbin and the Mun have their biomes already filled out, which creates many unique locations to study compared to the single biome of most the other planets. I actually sent out a short range probe to try out the new gravmeter science thing along with a proving trial for nuclear engines (my program has some roleplay). I fitted 16 of the grav instruments on my ship (no antenna, I was bringing them all back for recovery) and bounced around Kerbin's orbit to find all the unique places to take a reading. As it turned out I could have easily mounted 24 and still run out thanks to all the unique locations I kept finding to take a reading and I wasn't even landing. Total haul was over 800 science just for flying a single type of instrument in an orbital ship with no duplicate readings.

I'll add that the nearby shoreline and the ocean each count as a biome - so if you walk/fly to the beach there are two more opportunities to collect samples and file EVA reports.

Wait, is this for RCS on a spacecraft, or the little jetpack on a Kerbal?

Ok, after posting I can see you've added a screenshot. For one thing you don't need to lift fuel tanks full, they can be refilled in orbit. Since the top and bottom are identically I would be tempted to just stick senior docking ports on them and launch them in identical flights, to be attached to the empty or full orange tank lifted on a previous launch (keep a probe core and solar panel attached to one of those smaller docking ports for station keeping until then).

I recently built a lifter for 30 ton payloads in career mode (skipper engines, no large probe core, no orange tanks available) and after many trial and error attempts I figured out that for large payloads you really need to start with actual lift and work backwards from there, as delta-v is simply a matter of fuel tanks and staging, but thrust and balance are much harder. For instance if I use the same math and very simple staging I used for my 30t lifter to make a 54t lifter with main sails I quickly get this potential design: -Center stack consists of 1x orange tank and 2x X200-32 tanks on top of a main sail. -4 radial stacks each consisting of 3x orange tanks and 1x X200-32 tank on top of a main sail Lifter has a total of 40320 L of fuel and 49280 L of oxidizer and delta-v at ground level of around 4600m/s (actual performance would be better) and >1.25 T/W for first and second stage, last stage is >1.1 T/W. The 4 radial stacks are divided into 2 matching pairs. Fuel lines are arranged to move fuel from the first pair to the second pair and finally to the center. Staging is setup to drop the first pair once its fuel runs out, and then the second pair when its fuel runs out and run just on the center tank. I would suggest running struts between the radial tanks in both a square and X formation to make them structurally stable, and add at least one large reaction wheel in the center stack. Hopefully my math is right, the lifter would be a bit tall with 3x orange tanks. You might mount 2 orange tanks radially to each radial stack, which would result in even more delta-v if they could be dropped.

Mission 18 Crew Ship Test / Mun Landing Themepark ride This report is going to be missing a few parts. I had a weird hard crash while trying to return to an object from the tracking station. When I started back up I forgot to record video because I was too preoccupied on whether my save was damaged. The save was fine but I never got footage for the last section of the mission, and I found out the crash gave me a partially corrupted video for the middle part. Copying video headers with a hex editor and letting virtualdub manually rekey recovered some footage, and I eventually remembered I had a safety save (they have been used before - in Bob's mission I turned on 2x physics warp to walk faster to that piece of debris, which caused the lander to spontaneously explode!). Using the safety save I was able to replay the last portion of the mission, so after we get back into Kerbal orbit with a 70km PE you're actually seeing screenshots from a second run through. It went roughly the same as the first (since it was just a pair of tiny deorbit burns, seperations and parachute openings), though the bigger crew pod came in a bit shorter and touched down on land instead of water. The main goal of this mission is a shakedown cruise for the crew ship that will fly to Duna. It will hopefully identify any mistakes made in design (did we forget solar panels? Is there enough battery life?) and provide data on real flight charactistics - for example this flight will include the crew ship docking with a stationary target using the reaction wheel and RCS systems. When it arrives at Duna such a docking will be required in order to get the fuel needed to come home. I also want to test a more advanced science pod recovery system. While I thought they where really neat the individual recovery drones revealed themselves to be exhausting, since the kerbal physics system required following each one down in real time. Since the Duna lander already passed low altitude shock tests with 3 science pods attached I decided I would try out a recovery system based on that shape. We'll be flying to the Mun with a crew of 3 in the Duna Crew Ship. Before leaving orbit the ship will dock with a Mun landing rig consisting of a refuel tank/recovery system, 3 science pods and a micro lander. The lander is not as small as it could be (replacing the T400 with a T200+T100 would provide enough delta-v for a landing) but the extra fuel provides a safety margin for little cost. In the image the lander is on the bottom, with the recovery system (a T800 tank with parachutes and docking ports) above it. The crew ship has been seen before and hasn't undergone any change other then being mounted on the same 30t lifter as the Mun rig. Bill is being given a chance to prove himself on this mission (of course it means he won't be on the Duna mission due to crew rotation). He will be taking rookies Lanfield and Dudvey along with him. I already have Bob, Lemgun and Tomvin selected for Duna, and I'm hesitant to put Geofmin in any danger, I need his brains for the design of future missions. The rookies look promising and if they survive a mission with Bill they should make good additions to the program. After the rig is launched into orbit the crew ship is launched and things look good. Lanfield shows no issues with space flight, though I don't think that Dudvey realized he would be going into space on the same day he applied for a job at KSC. Lanfield has a bit of trouble docking at first, the ship's tanks are almost full right now making it a bit heavy to turn. Some advice from the ground is given - 'just do it by the numbers' - and he gets things sorted out, pulling off a beautiful straight on dock (no wiggle on capture) complete with a 10 second long drift at the end with no additional corrections needed. Despite burning a lot of RCS at first trying to move the fuel heavy ship there is still half a tank left (and at Duna only the one docking will be needed). The first mission goal has been completed and the crew ship is ready for docking at Duna. The Mun rig is detached from the lifter stage (which had been providing power and control in case they where needed) and we get ready for a burn to the Mun. One small hitch is that there is a lot of torque on the rig when turning - the center of mass is well inside the crew ship and there is a 5 ton lander docked on the other end, putting the docking ports under a lot of stress with noticible wobble. Mission control advices that the crew minimize SAS usage while changing orientation to minimize the amount of rotational acceleration being applied. We have LM extraction. After deorbiting the lifter stage we burn for the Mun and then the crew (minus Bill who stays in the flight pod) can move into the habitat module by ladder for a comfortable ride. It's a field trip to the Mun! It wasn't planned for the Mun to be in the window, I only discovered this while reviewing the footage for a good shot of the cabin interior. We arrive at the Mun and settle into a 24x47km orbit, with the PE over the light side (the higher AP is somewhat intentional, to help speed up the arrival of intercept windows for docking). Lanfield is the first out to transfer over to the lander. He needs to undock and then pickup a science pod before he can deorbit and land on the Mun. A big unexplored crater is his target. Lanfield descends, 9000m and closing. At 6000m power conservation becomes important, SAS use will need to be conserved until landing. With 40 units of juice left in the battery we set down, with some RCS helping to correct a small tip. Lanfield on the Mun at the Northwest Crater. Ascent and orbit is normal, with the sun appearing again for power. We dock the science pod back in its port and Lanfield returns to the crew ship. We refuel the lander (the tank was about 30/180) from the rig tank and Dudvey transfers over. He undocks the lander and moves over to grab the next science pod. Dudvey flies to the next and only remaining large crater near the Mun's equater. Dudvey lands at the Mun's Farside Crater. I have up to Dudvey returning to the ship and docking, transfering over to the crew ship and then some hypothetical maneuvers to put the ship on an inclined orbit, followed by about 10 minutes of the pause menu while I went and thought about the merits of using fuel to try and get one of the big polar craters or try my luck on one of the smaller ones. Unfortunately this is where the lost footage of my mission is. From here Bill went down to one of the smaller craters just below the equater. From the science recovery at the end I can identify it as the Midlands Crater. He actually made the best landing of the three in terms of flat landing site and minimal horizontal velocity at touchdown. Bill's science instruments where also able to detect an earthquake on the Mun (thanks to the new seismic sensor being carried on this mission) After he returned mission control asked Bill to move the lander back to its original position, then asked Lanfield pilot the crew ship out of Mun orbit and back into Kerbin orbit with Bill still in the lander (without a probe core the recovery system would need a pilot, they just didn't tell Bill that before the mission). Once in Kerbin orbit at the AP a burn was made to lower PE to just above 70km. From here I have footage from the redo, which differs only partially from the original. Bill's part played out almost identically since it involved a simple burn right at the beginning followed by coasting. Bill seperates from the crew ship, carrying with him the entire science rig attached to the lander. 83 fuel is left over from the 3 Mun landings (the rig carried enough fuel to refill the lander twice) which is more then enough for a deorbit burn. After time warp Bill finds himself at 69km and falling over the desert where Bob landed on the last mission. Of course Bill has a lot of velocity to bleed off and is coming in on a shallow approach, so it looks like this for a long while as he flys past the desert and out to the ocean. The lander body is ejected and the chutes are opened. All the elements for recovery reach the water safely. 1285 science from 3 landings. The crew ship is brought back the same way. The solar panels are ripped off during reentry and in this redo the crew module comes a bit short, landing in the mountains instead of the water. It seems we aren't too far from Bob's desert landing (about 80km away). Despite landing on the side of the hill instead of the nice valley everything seems to go okay, we don't get any sliding or worse tumbling. So the mission was a success in game, though with some technical problems outside. The crew ship is ready for use and a more efficient recovery option is available.

Unfortunately the power system had long since died, and since it used a decoupler to seperate from its original mothership (I didn't have docking ports yet) there was no way to give it a jump once I recaptured it.

I also use this method, both in the VAB and even before to plan out a basic part list. However it can lead to the weight sometimes being more then it actually is; there are a few parts (the strut connector and fuel line to start, but a few surprising ones like the octagonal strut) that have no weight despite one being listed in the tooltip. In fact they not only have no weight they have no drag either as for performance reasons they have been marked as insignificant in the physics engine. However they are already light to begin with, and are usually used in such a way that their total weight is a very small fraction of the crafts total weight. I usually check my final weight on the launchpad.

Little Clean Up That biome probe that got stuck in polar orbit has been bugging me, this is a short little mission to go and deorbit it. Our ship is some girders, a size adapter for the metal plate at the bottom and landing gear that locks the cage closed. It has RCS and a small drive unit of its own, but will be mounted to the 30t lander where it can use its big skipper engine and fuel tank for some fast orbital movements. We launch into a low polar orbit of our own and go through about an orbit and a half before we've got a reasonable window to intercept that junk. The course change to intercept is on all 3 axis which requires a bit too keep track of - got to be careful you don't accidently plot a course through the planet which was why we didn't have a window 1.5 orbits ago. The only complication was that with all that crazy polar orbit I got mixed up over which direction the ship was going, and so while the course didn't go through the planet, it did take the ship to 52km PE on the way to the intercept. I turned this into an advantage, as the mighty skipper engine let me easily keep orbit during my dip in the upper atmosphere (the solar panels on the second stage where closed just in case) and I was able to reduce the distance of the intercept. Aligning their courses is easy, as we close on the intercept point the relative velocity is only 800m/s - the skipper engine can handle this. Courses are aligned with 10m/s relative velocity left, enough that stage 2 can easily catch up and capture now. Capture is a little more challenging. As it turns out the dimensions for the cage are very, very close to the probe. In fact the probe can only fit in if inserted almost perfectly straight. After almost two and a half minutes of pushing it around I finally get a nice clean capture, it tumbles perfectly into the waiting jaws. The cage is closed and the probe is trapped. And we turn around and deorbit the whole thing. Of physics warp doesn't simulate individual parts, just single bodies so when we return to 1x the probe is now a good 300m away but it's already falling into the atmosphere so it's ok.

If I'm not mistaken you look at the orbit of the inner planet and draw a line perpendicular to its orbit - basically an imaginary line showing which direction the planet would go if the sun suddenly disappeared and it just kept flying in the direction it had been moving at that instant. You want that imaginary line to line up with your target planet to achieve the optimum transfer window (assuming you don't have a window that makes use of gravity assists from other planets). Anyway, I think that was the way you figure it out manually. Quick picture

Mission 17 Minmus and Duna systems proving We need to start testing some of the Duna equipment under real conditions. I had originally envisioned the Minmus landing to involve 3 kerbals, as prep for the Duna mission, but that has been pushed back to a later mission in favor of trying out the Duna lander. I will also be testing the science pod recovery system designed for the Duna mission - rather then carry the parachutes all the way from Kerbal to the surface of Duna/Ike, the parachutes are kept in Kerbal orbit and only attached on return (this also gets around any issues with the pods becoming seperated during descent, I can send them one at a time). The actual flight to Minmus requires a bit more delta-v then a flight to Ike, so I've attached a drop tank to the top of the lander which is probably enough. After the burn for Minmus this tank will be released and the mission will go on with the lander. Choosing who to pilot the mission was a bit tricky. I still need to expand my program by at least 1 kerbal before Duna, but I wasn't sure about giving the first Minmus landing to a rookie. I eventually figured out the perfect kerbal for the job, Bob. Bob Kerman was the very first kerbonaut chosen for the Duna flight, to act as commander of the Crew Ship thanks to his skills in navigation. However this means Bob will be the only one to remain in orbit of Duna while 2 other crew members make a trip to Duna's surface and Ike. To make it up to Bob, and since it will help ensure a rested crew is available for Duna, I've chosen him as the pilot for my first Minmus mission. This will be both the first flyby and first landing, so the large science capabilty of the Duna lander will be put to use. The flight plan involves launch into orbit using the upper stage of the 30t lifter, which has been outfitted with a docking structure (if you look carefully it's not fuel, it's an empty fuselage) and 3 recovery pods. The lander will seperate and perform a burn toward Minmus after which the drop tank will be released. On approach to Minmus 2 science pods will be used and crew and EVA reports will be done in high and low orbit before landing, where the final science pod will be used and a surface EVA and sample collection will be performed. The lander will then ascend to Minmus orbit and return to Kerbin, where it will dock with the lifter to allow the recovery pods to pickup each science pod and return it to Kerbin. After that the 30t lifter will push itself and the lander into a deorbit vector aimed at the desert. The lander will seperate and aim for a soft landing there in the hopes of sample collection. The night launch goes smoothly into a 132x137km orbit, the 30t lifter proves itself a very stable launch platform. The only hitch was that the attachment setup resulted in the lifter draining fuel from the lander, fuel had to be transfered before it could begin its mission. The entire rig is placed on a inclined orbit like Minus, with the Mun getting into the photo again (this keeps happening throughout this mission) The burn to Minmus is made and then we get rid of the fuel tank. Since the fuel tank is also on a course to Minmus I put some serious distance by tossing it instead of just releasing - turn off SAS, give the ship a little push to start it spinning, then release the tank when the ship is facing retrograde. The fuel tank is flung off behind (into a slightly lower orbit) and I use RCS to make a minor course correction (equal and opposite reactions - releasing the tank also pushed the ship slightly prograde). The 3 day trip to Minmus starts. At Minmus we begin our science observations and settle into a 30km orbit. Bob picks out a landing site. Bob begins his descent to Minmus. Outside Kerbin and the Mun slowly drop below the horizon. The radio blackout starts as he drops below 10km of the surface. Bob lands and prepares to step off the lander. Bob is on Minmus. This is a very different world from Kerbin. The flag is planted and science is done. Science makes Bob hungry. Bob begins the trip home though on getting to Kerbin orbit and lowering his PE to the desired level he runs into a problem, he is very tight on fuel. It seems like he would just barely have enough to make the correct orbit, but he needs to dock and that burn can't be predicted down to the m/s yet. For safety reasons mission control chooses to override this part of the mission - Bob will burn a small amount in order to line up his next PE pass to come within 1.7km of the docking rig. The docking rig will then perform a burn to raise its AP to 444km to match Bob, since it has plenty of fuel. With the rig now in range the lander performs the RCS docking, passing around to the back side of the rig and bolting on. The rig now brings the orbit back down. The mission is a little more then half way done. We still need to recover the science pods. The recovery pods are undocked one by one and attached to science pods until all 3 are ready. Each pod seperates and performs a deorbit burn using RCS. Reentry follows and the chute is opened for a soft landing. All 3 pods are recovered in this way, it takes a while since there are limits on time warping. A course is plotted for the desert and the rig is used to make the burn (lander would be more efficient on fuel, but the rig has much more thrust for a shorter and more accurate burn). They seperate and descend. You can see the solar panels breaking off the rig. The chutes on the lander open and it comes in for a gentle landing, while the rig smashes into the surface. After attempts by many other kerbals and probes, Bob has landed in the desert. And it looks like some part of the rig survived too. Bob takes a sample and plants the flag, then goes off to examine that debris before the recovery. About 1000 science is returned overall, allowing advances in nuclear propulsion and science instruments for measuring earthquakes. It also put us within reach of an instrument that can measure gravity, we'll want that before we leave for Duna. The Crew Ship still needs a shake down and we still need to run a 3 kerbal mission, so I'll probably plan a return to the Mun with a 3 kerbal party - a new recruit, Bill and Tomvin. None of them have landed on the Mun.

Toward the blue maneuver node. If you know how long the burn will take then it is suggested to start it half way before the listed time - so a 5 minute burn would be started at T-2:30 and end at T+2:30.

Look at his hands, are they holding controls? If not press R to have him grip the jetpack controls.

? Has there been a change in .22 that prevents them from being used? Here is my Mk2 Lander Can based rover from .21, it successfully drove 24km on the Mun (driven in both IVA mode and external). I don't remember encountering any specific issues.

I've been working on landers. My original Duna plan called for 2 landers and when I first laid out the mission in broad strokes that made sense - in theory Duna would need some big lander to safely reach the surface, while Ike was some tiny moon that only needed a little thing. However as I got an Ike lander prepared (previous shots show both the tall prototype and the more squat prototype intended to lower the center of gravity and hopefully not tip over) and put out the mission plan I got to realizing that the Ike lander actually required a good deal of delta-v, since it needed to go to Ike orbit and back to Duna orbit. In fact it was showing more delta-v then a parachute assisted Duna lander. At the same time my biggest concern about the Duna landing was that it would require lots of fuel to do it on thrust only, but a parachute landing had some major forces being applied to the spacecraft. I eventually came up with a new mission plan. A single lander would be designed for both Duna and Ike. It would land on Duna first, so that the science pods could actually be tied down with struts during the parachute landing. After ascending and docking with the mothership it would be refueled and new science pods docked with it. The Ike landing wouldn't need to science pod struts since it wouldn't be subject to the same shock stresses. My first design was biased by the pad tests of the Ike lander - I didn't like how those legs could sink in and sometimes tip over the ship if SAS wasn't on. So I borrowed an old concept of mine I call belly landing. You'll see there is no landing gear, instead there are nose cones (10 impact resistance) for the ship to set down on. I used this kind of landing system in .21 for a reusable Mun lander from a Mun station. This means there is no chance of tipping over. However I ran into 2 problems, the first being that I had to put on more fuel then I really needed in order to simply get the structual dimensions I needed for placing those nose cones below the engine. The other is that while it passed basic shock tests (and the parachute calculator showed it under 8m/s on Duna) it was failing some of the harder ones (shock tests involved strapping on a big fuel tank booster rocket, sending it up to 2000m unmanned, then using the booster to send it at the ground between 100-300m/s. The booster uses sepratrons to fly off and the chutes are opened at 500m while at high speed). To deal with the excess delta-v I designed this version which required less structural members, using a combination of parachutes to obtain the same result. This design failed all the shock tests, they would simply tear the limbs off. At this point the science requirements for the program where also being upgraded - the lander would now need 3 science pods! I went through 2 more major designs. One was a thrust only design that I put on the back burner due to both my concerns about such a landing and the huge weight of the lander and its refuel tank on the cargo ship. The other took on the idea of landing on Duna first with struts on the science pods one step further and attached parachutes on them with struts (since the chutes could be ejected later). This last design still failed some of the shock tests. I went back to the drawing board and tried to refocus. My biggest problem was that the ships kept failing the shock tests, so much like my lifter I should start a design aimed at that requirement and then try to bolt on the others. The result was a ship designed to put as much of the weight into a single part, and then attaching the parachutes directly to that part. This was the result. It passed the shock tests with flying colors. Of course it has several drawbacks. Height and landing legs mean I need to be careful about a tip over which would strand the ship. The RCS thrusters are not placed optimally (though that shouldn't be a problem for me). And the parachutes are skirting the line on drag - I will need a small amount of thrust just before landing to touch down safely on Duna. Total delta-v is very tight, it's right at the safety margin so the Ike trip will need to be flown precisely at each stage. One benefit of the design is it fixes some potential issues with the swapout of science pods - the previous up/down pod alignment posed some clearance problems when the lander was docked with the mothership, making it difficult or impossible for the RCS drone to get in there and switch them. I've also tested the recovery system on 5km drops. A full orbital docking and return test is still needed. The recovery pod undocks from a tender where it now has about 2 hours of battery power in which to dock to a science pod and then use its 200m/s delta-v to deorbit. The parachute provides a soft landing. The ship used to carry fuel pods up to the cargo ship is also designed, though it has not flown yet. The design is intended to get close to the cargo ship, then switch the navball orientation to the fuel pods docking port - at this point the dual set of RCS thrusters and reaction wheels are used to essentially fly the ship sideways for docking of the fuel pods.

Are you following them down, or are you staying focused on a ship in orbit. Even with a parachute unattended ships will just get deleted if they get too close to a planets surface, since they are not being fully simulated. If you are following them down, are the parachutes snapping (unlikely) or are one or more pods exploding when they touch the ground? To prevent them from exploding on impact you need to be aware of each parts impact resistance (it's in the tool tip). An impact resistance of 6 means the part will be destroyed if it hits the ground at 6m/s or more. Since the pods are so fragile you need enough parachutes to slow them down to below 6m/s. The speed of a falling item is based on its weight and drag. Adding more pods increases weight which increases speed. Adding more parachutes increasings drag which reduces speed.

I assume there is spaceship setup to launch somewhere inside that fuel storage depot you've got going there. Anyway the comments are right, there are a number of warning signs like the skipper engines. Another warning sign is the solid boosters - apart from the tiny little sepratrons any solid boosters you have should be getting fired in the very first stage when you take off. If they are being fired later it means you have been carry low efficiency dead weight with you the whole time. Solid boosters are basically a way to give you a little extra thrust on the launch pad, when you've still got a full load of fuel in the tanks and just want to get off the ground and through that first 1000m.

Start small. Really small. Build a simple rocket with nothing but a command pod, parachute, single fuel tank and liquid fuel engine. Fly up as high as your fuel will take you and then right click the pod to record a crew report (your Kerbal will write down important science data about a rocket flying through the air). Deploy the chute and land safely. For extra science have your Kerbal get out of the ship (hover over his portrait and click EVA) and take a walk around. Right click the kerbal to take a soil sample and to file an EVA report. If you can get back in your ship and in either case move your mouse to the top center of the screen (where the altitude thing is) to reveal a green 'Recover' button. Recover your kerbal or kerbal+ship to get science. If your just recovered your kerbal then go to the tracking station (the one on the right side of the space center that shows a map) and select your ship from the list on the left side. At the bottom click the green recover button to recover the ship and get the crew report you left inside. You should now have enough science to unlock the first tech. This will give you some new parts, including the decoupler. The decoupler can be placed between stages on a spaceship, so that you can get rid of stuff when it is no longer useful. As a starting point you might build a ship with a lot more fuel tanks, but place a decoupler between the command pod and the top fuel tank. Make sure your staging on the right is setup so that the decoupler and the parachute are together and the engine is seperate. When it comes time to land your decoupler will let you detach from the heavy fuel tanks and engine, leaving just the pod and your parachute to safely descend.

I'm still working on combined Duna+Ike lander designs, complicated by a desire to now carry 3 science pods to gather every possible bit of data during the trip. Parachute stress tests haven't been promising and I'm leaning toward trying to build a ship that lands on pure thrust though that means a lot of fuel (though so far it has only just got to the amount of lander fuel already budgeted for the cargo ship). On a more productive front the 30t lifter problem has mostly solved itself. I've been using the Kerbal design method to try lifting a 30t dummy payload without much success. I got it up once with plenty of each delta-v but the flight was not good with serious T/W problems. Structural stability became more and more of a problem until I literally had a lifter that would drop a solid booster or 2 before I had even lifted off. The solution, as always, was just math. Only 2 minutes was needed in Excel to come up with a starting point for a lifter design that worked immediately. I completely threw out any delta-v equations and instead focused on T/W entirely. Assuming that I could build a lifter with 5 skipper engines without losing structural integrity, and assuming a staging that dropped 2 engines at a time, what was the approximate amount of fuel that could be carried at each stage while maintaining delta-v. Working backwards from the final stage (1 engine) was just a matter of plugging in some fuel tank numbers until T/W was above 1 (for the bigger stages I actually went for a little higher then 1 for air resistance). About the only real revelation this made was just how small I should make the center stack. Previously there had been 2 stages for the center stack. The only small hicup is that after the first stage is released the second stage struggles for about 10 seconds to get enough power - instead of speeding up it is losing about 0.5m/s. I could make some further refinements to the fuel levels to fix this but due to how stable it flies I'm reluctant to do that. Give that I have enough thrust I could also reduce the overall fuel by adding more staging - each stack of 3 fuel tanks could become a single tank with 2 tanks (or rather less) tanks attached radially so they can be dumped and reduce weight. But again that would increase complexity and reduce stability. The heaviest payload this is likely to carry for the Duna mission is the 28.5t crew module which will have a crew in it at the time. I can't afford to have a lifter with a lot of stability question marks. On the total delta-v I could actually take the payload all the way to orbit with 400 fuel left, enough to circularize and then deorbit the last lifter stage. For that I'll need to figure out a stategy for attaching a probe core, since I don't have the large core (or even the regular radial) core yet, just some of the small ones. I will most likely build a tiny symetrical radial attachment for more then one probe core, that way I can get one pointing in the right direction for navigation.

As for parachutes I was planning some kind of Duna mission before my career mode reset and used that calculator. Here is the rover I was going to send with the mission: 4 Drogues 8 Radials 4 Lithobrakes to protect the wheels (you can't tell but they are off the ground, and the structure is non-rigid so it has some bounce to absorb impact) And driving away

Another option that I haven't yet explored yet is using a single lander for both the Ike and Duna landings. It would use the same pair detachable science pods, so that it could exchange them with the cargo ship between two missions. The advantages would be fewer structural questions about the cargo ship and less weight to carry. Since the Ike lander is carrying a lot of delta-v anyway (2500m/s) that could be translated into a Duna lander with some structural changes, possibly more T/W, and parachutes.