Dave Kerbin

The reason for the unmanned practice landing is that I want to minimize risk to my Kerbals (I'm playing perma-death, no reverting, somewhat serious roleplay). The Duna landing is the biggest unknown with the least margin for error in this mission - if the parachutes or engines aren't enough, or something breaks, the kerbal will fall to his death. I could do a completely unmanned mission first, but that would take almost half a year from my program. Since parachutes can be repacked in space and carrying the fuel one way in my nuclear cargo ship is relatively cheap I figured I wasn't losing much to greatly improve safety.

Over in my mission thread I've got my Duna plan worked out. I've never been to Duna (except an ion probe before career mode) and I'm interested in any mistakes or oversights I might have made. This will be an expensive mission risking the lives of 3 kerbals and take longer then the rest of my program combined, so I want to get it right. Complete plan http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53159-Science-leads-to-wonderful-things?p=727072&viewfull=1#post727072 Just the plan slides http://imgur.com/a/wxQeU One thought is whether I am going too far with the command pod swapping between landers. While the command pod(s) will need to be seperated and returned anyway it might be safer if both landers have their own pod. It would provide a rescue option if something goes wrong on Ike (use the Duna lander as a rescue vehicle) and further my attempts to ensure that science is preserved at each step (the Ike surface samples would be preserved even if the Duna lander crashed). Another risk is if the fuel stack on the ship (or the lander on each end) is too unstable - I only have regular sized docking ports and while I think they should be fine during the ejection burn (I can burn at 50% or 25% thrust to reduce G forces) the aerobrake at Duna seems like it might stress the craft too much. An alternative is too pack enough fuel for a thrust only capture at Duna (I know I can do it even at low thrust because I've done a thrust only capture with an ion engine). Just a note about tech tree - I don't want any tech tree spoilers about where specific parts are. I have researched everything up until the column where nuclear engines are. It's basically a straight line, everything on the left is researched, everything on the right (nuclear engines and beyond) is not researched. I will be making at least 600 science before the Duna mission window to unlock nuclear engines and that tech in the same column that gives you seismic sensors and the last antenna.

Duna Mission Planning A manned Duna mission is planned once the data from Eve is recieved. Before that can happen there are a few technologies that need to be developed. Kerbal scientists think they are are the verge of a breakthrough in engine design, making a thruster that is nuclear. Obviously it wouldn't be a good idea to be around this engine while it is firing, at least until some kind of protection is developed, but it is still useful. Another engineering task is the development of a new heavy lifter capable of getting 30 tons onto a near orbital path, now in the early testing phase. Our largest engine, the Skipper, is still having some T/W issues but these seem like they can be worked out (one prototype did get the test article into orbit, but at a poor T/W and with too much delta-v left over). The design parameters for the lifter from the fact that a Kerbal crew transport using existing non-nuclear engines will weigh about 28.5t (this ship has already been designed and just needs to be built). As safety is important and my program doesn't have any means of attaching large parts beyond our basic docking port the crew transport needs to be one ship. Our launch window will be coming up after day 50. If everything is ready a pair of ships will head out to Duna, reach it and perform science, and then return within a week before Duna sets and the delta-v cost becomes too great, forcing the crew to wait several months at Duna for a window. I've designed a mission outline based on the requirements; 1 sheet listing the ship designs required, and a 20 slide flight plan http://imgur.com/a/wxQeU I've also started designing some of the ships. The crew ship is considered complete unless last minute changes are demanded. It features a 3 man pod for launch and return as well as living space for the long voyage (a ladder aids movement between the two). It is a clean and simple design, since it is intended only for the purpose of carrying the crew in comfort and safety and transmitting some crew reports. Ideas are still being pitched for an Ike lander, from which a general weight has been determined. No plans exist yet for the Duna lander, which leaves its weight an complete guess. The cargo ship has begun to take form though is still under heavy work (lighting needs to be installed in several places), and may need more fuel depending on if the Duna lander goes over budget. It is designed to launch on the 30t lifter with mass to spare, after which it is loaded in orbit with fuel and the 2 landers. Unlike the smooth and friendly crew ship the cargo ship is pure function over form. Here it is both unloaded and with a full fuel set. The 3 radial tanks are burned to get to Duna, while the top and bottom tank are used to refuel the crew ship. Some of the other fuel is used for the Duna lander's refuel while the rest is enough to bring it home. Not seen are the 3 science pods (same as the ones on the Ike lander) that will be attached under the nose cones. The engines seen at the moment are placeholders for the nuclear engines still in development. A refueler has also been prototyped, based on the current shape of the fuel pods. I don't have any images saved but it is basically a thin rocket with 4 RCS thrusters at each ends. 2 fuel pods are then strapped onto the sides. The dual set of RCS thrusters are balanced so that the ship can reorient and fly 'sideways' during docking, without the RCS translation controls leading to rotation. At the moment I consider the 30t lifter to be the most important project. I'll be looking to get it working and then use it to launch a Mun or Minmus mission that uses the same science pod design as the Duna mission (the prototype Ike lander might even be used) to test usage and recovery of the science pods.

My first thought on seeing the picture was that the large reaction wheel could be moved to the back, that way it balances out with the big reaction wheel inside the command pod instead of both of them being right at the front.

The 4550 gets you into orbit around Kerbin The 950 gets you into orbit around the Sun (at almost the same altitude as Kerbin, either a bit above or below but you need to zoom in to see the difference) The 965 gets you to Jool's altitude above the Sun where if your course was right you'll have a Jool encounter - just like when you get a Mun encounter and enter its SOI. You'll have a PE with Jool but no orbit, your path will terminate with an 'escape' back into Sun orbit. The 2630 turns your encounter into a 150km orbit above Jool. Keep in mind a few things. The 950+965 to get you to Jool assumes that Jool and Kerbin are in the ideal position for a transfer. If Jool is on the other side of the solar system (or worse it is 'behind' Kerbin) you'll need more. You might try the calculator to see your transfer window. It shows a color coded graph of how much delta V is required if you leave on a certain day and aim for a certain travel time: http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ The 2630 for Jool orbit is if you use thrust alone to slow down. Jool, and other planets with an atmosphere (Kerbin, Eve, Duna) can take advantage of aerobraking. Before reaching Jool (maybe just after you enter its SOI) you burn a tiny amount of delta V to nudge your course over so that you'll skim Jool's atmosphere. The atmosphere will help slow down your ship for free, though be careful not to go too low or you will unintentionally 'land' on Jool. After aerobraking you'll be in an orbit with the PE inside Jool's atmosphere. Once you swing out to the AP you perform a small burn to raise your PE to a stable orbit. This can reduce the delta V cost substantially. Jool also offers the option of using one or more of its moons for a gravity assist to brake, that's a lot more complex.

You also need to be very gentle with any parachutes. With the can on the bottom it might detach and fall to its doom when the chutes deploy.

That's good to know, I've got a mission enroute to Eve that is carrying two descent probes for the planet with the idea that one would target water and one land. I also have a Gilly probe that can hop from one place to another, since Gilly is probably one biome it may end up not doing anything useful after the first landing though it adds role playing.

I see. So even a 1 man pod could store samples from multiple biomes.

I need a clarification here. The Mk1-2 pod holds 3 Kerbals, each of whom could go on their own EVA while at a different landing zone and collect a soil sample and EVA report, with the intention of returning them to Kerbin. However up until now I've been reading that it is '1 report of each type' stored in a pod. Does this mean that when Bob re-enters the pod after collecting soil from landing site #2, it will ask to overwrite the soil sample collected by Bill at site #1? Or does a three man pod treat the reports as 'soil sample for seat 1' and 'soil sample for seat 2'?

Mission 16 Deep Space Radiation EVA The radiation fields outside of Kerbin's SOI merit some hands on study. This is a risky mission - apart from the radiation hazards the ship will need to leave Kerbin orbit and enter orbit around the sun. If it can't make it back to Kerbin orbit the pilot will be waiting a long time. The ship is given plenty of fuel and a new light weight command pod is used with the new parachute system. Since if things go well the mission should have plenty of fuel on return to Kerbin the scientists have asked if another attempt can be made to land in the Kerbin desert and collect a soil sample on return. Outside of the regular science objectives the KSP needs to start expanding. If the planned move to 3 man pods (critical for future long term missions) is to be done the program will need a larger pool of kerbanauts, at least 6 in order to allow rotation and provide a rest break between missions. Since this was a simple yet dangerous mission it seemed perfect for a new recruit, or Bill. The pool of applicants was examined and Tomvin Kerman was welcomed to the program. He will pilot Deep Space 1 which has an advanced command pod with new innovations like a ladder. The rest of the ship is a simple design with 2 drop tanks and science instruments. The launch vehicle will as always be the Mun rocket, though it is starting to show its age. The Minmus landing program, in switching to a 3 kerbal crew, will also need to introduce a new standard launch system for heavier loads. Once in orbit the new command pod has an impressive view. We burn for deep space, a trip that will take 4 days to complete. It looks like everything is going right. Tomvin Kerman is in deep space, farther then any kerbal before him. There is some confusion over where to plant the flag. Tomvin reboards his ship and figures out how he will get home. According to this he is going to fly straight into Kerbin, and that's not what we want. But a software glitch seems to be preventing him from making any maneuver nodes*. So some visual landmarks are found to help orient the ship, after which it is rotated by 90 degrees to allow for a polar orientation burn (the direction with the least number of question marks). This gets us back to a PE of 83km on a polar orbit. Upon reaching Kerbin against we even out the orbit and begin looking for that desert. This proves a little difficult, because it is on the night side and the orbit is straddling the dawn and dusk landing zones. After a few hours it seems like the desert is about to come into view so we begin deorbiting. Unfortunately things don't go entirely as planned. An area assumed to be one big desert, as viewed just before dawn, turned out to be partially grassland. But it wouldn't have mattered, since the new pod design suffered one small malfunction that prevented any soil sample experiment - it tipped over onto the hatch right after landing. *For some reason nodes couldn't be placed anymore, and the EVA/IVA buttons wouldn't appear when mousing over the Tomvin's portrait. After getting into stable approach I exited back to KSC and then returned to the ship through the tracking station which seemed to fix it.

As long as your mothership is not going to crash or enter the atmosphere in the mean time you can use the [ and ] keys to switch to your dropped package and follow it down which ensures it does not disappear. It doesn't even need to have a probe core as long as your staging releases the parachute at the same time it decouples (you can follow debris and recover it). The mod that can increase distance is the Lazor System mod. On the space center screen use the options window. However increasing the distance can have a big impact on your computers performance, and objects being simulated very far away may suffer physics glitches (spinning out of control, being torn apart, blowing up) because of the increase in rounding errors the farther away from the craft's center you are.

I've drawn up a diagram of a ship in circular Kerbin orbit. I want to escape Kerbin's gravity and set myself on a course to a lower orbit of the Sun (like Eve and Moho). Technically I've already plotted a trip to Eve, but that was using maneuver nodes, I need to do this one with just the navball. The way I see it I should make my prograde burn when the ship is at A so that it escapes Kerbin's orbit at C. Not because C is closer to the Sun, but because if I exit at C while going 'right', my orbital velocity around the sun will be less then the body I just left (Kerbin). If I escape at A, going 'left', I think I'd be increasing my orbital velocity from that of Kerbin. First, am I correct in the assumption that I should be exiting to the 'right' if I want to reduce my orbital velocity around the Sun? And should I burn at A to do that, or does the change in angle when I burn hard to break the orbital 'circle' mean that I actually need to burn at B, since after a burn at B the opposite end of the orbit (which is now an escape node) will be pointing straight to the 'right' instead of curving 'up' as it was previously?

(Day 13) Mission 15 - Phase 1 Eve Unmanned Exploration Note: This is the first mission captured with XVid encoding. This provides better gamma and uses 1/5 the disk space (2GB/hour instead of 10GB), though scanning is slow and compression artifacts might be present in the frames presented. Let me know if you think the image quality has been reduced from previous reports. The launch window information was obtained with KSP Launch Window Planner, though I can really only make use of the date, travel time and delta-v numbers. The node angles themselves are figured out by feel in game. While there are plans for more exploration in Kerbin's sphere of influence, including trips to Minmus (my Kerbals are looking to develop a ship with a crew of 3 with more fuel, to allow for a longer mission involving multiple 'hops' around Minmus instead of sending a several seperate ships for static landings), there has been a lot of desire to get out find out about the other planets. Since the engineers don't have experience with larger ships yet, and no orbital infrastructure has been built for refueling it would need to have a reasonable delta-v cost. Duna and Eve are obvious choices since they are close to Kerbin and have an atmosphere in which to brake, cutting almost half the fuel cost. Both have immediate non-optimal (but far from worst case) launch windows requiring about 1700m/s to eject, however Eve became the prime choice for a number of reasons: -Transit time to Eve would be almost half that of Duna (40 days vs 77). In fact a probe could reach Eve about a week before the prime launch window to Duna opened, providing useful engineering data on interplanetary travel ahead of the launch of a potential manned Duna mission. -Eve's thick atmosphere provides a bigger target for our first interplanetary aerobraking, increasing the likelyhood of a successful capture that is crucial to mission success. -Due to the high gravity and thick atmosphere Eve will likely not be a target for a Kerbal landing for a long time. Any trip into Eve's atmosphere will be one way. -Most of the probes instruments are useful only for atmospheric study, with nothing for geologic examination. Eve's thick atmosphere promises a wealth of scientific information if measured at all levels. The Eve Explorer is based on several existing designs with only one truely new component. Since most of it has been tested to some degree in real world conditions the changes for success are high. The launch is a base is a standard Mun launcher. The one major difference is that instead of mounting the ship on top of the orbital/transit stage, the ship replaces it. Due to the dimensions of the ship this required that an additional structural fuselage be added to lift it above the 4 launch boosters (you can see it between the T800 tank and the decoupler). Rather then a full T800 a smaller T400 was used for the central body of the ship with the same LV-909 engine. Fuel was extended with a pair of T400 drop tanks. These where mounted at the same level as a pair of Mk2 biome exploration pods. The launchers radial boosters where also reconfigured from onion staging to asparagus to make up for a 1 ton increase in weight being carried by that stage (11 tons vs 10 tons). The 2 pods are based on the same design as the biome explorer from mission 12 but with a few enhancements. The parachute system and nose cone have now been dramatically improved by the new MK16-XL parachute which replaces all the previous elements with a single lower drag part. The instrument panel seen on the right was reconfigured to better match the weight distribution of the decoupler plate it is meant to mirror. And the most important change was the addition of omni-directional solar panels with which to recharge the battery and allow data transmission. These should provide maximum power during the daytime hours if the pod can land upright. Since a water landing is intended for one pod the panels are also tilted to ensure that even on its side there should be either one or two periods each day in which the batteries can recharge for transmission. The pod underwent a low altitude drop test at KSC to validate the new parachute design against the specs from the old one, it performed exactly as expected and will replace the old design in any future missions. The top of the ship contains a 3rd and final probe. With 2000m/s of delta-v this is the Gilly Grasshopper. It is intended to fly to the captured asteroid in Eve orbit and make several hops around the surface. Like the atmospheric probe it uses Goo Containers as landing legs to protect its Rockomax 48-7S engine from damage. It carries other scientific instruments including Science Jr, and has batteries and solar panels for transmission and charging. The drive section of the ship (the T400 tank and LV-909 engine) also contains 4 more solar panels. These are angled to face the rear of the ship, to ensure that it does not lose solar tracking while in deep space (since all the probe panels are biased toward a forward oriention). A docking port is used instead of a decoupler - we don't have tiny decouplers yet and the big one looks silly when used with a tiny engine. The docking port fits together more pleasingly, weighs the same and could be used in future to help deorbit the drive section, should a cleanup crew ever visit Eve. Because the mission will take over 40 days to complete, most of it drifting in deep space, it has been divided into 3 phases between which mission control can be devoted to other flights. Phase 1: -Ship is launched into Kerbin orbit -Course to Eve intercept is computed -Ejection burn is made, drop tanks are ejected roughly half way through, leaving them in Kerbin orbit -Upon exiting Kerbin's SOI science readings are taken and transmitted back. This should be quick since all 3 probes can have their solar arrays pointed at the sun and there are 3 antennas available. -Course correction burn is made to either correct or improve Eve intercept -Ship is placed into optimum orientation (north/south) to maintain solar tracking during transit Phase 2 (possibly repeated) -Ship is oriented toward sun for optimum power -Deep space science readings are taken and transmitted. -Ship is placed back into transit orientation Phase 3 -Ship enters Eve's SOI -Course correction burn is made to place PE at desired altitude, currently 70km but subject to recalculation during transit -Readings are taken and transmitted while in high Eve orbit -Ship aerobrakes. Readings are taken and stored at lowest pass into atmosphere -Orbital burn is made to obtain stable Eve orbit -Readings are taken and transmitted in low Eve orbit -First pod is released, targeted at land -Pod begins descent. At 50-60km (depending on previous aerobrake pass) readings are taken on all instruments, Science Jr. readings are transmitted immediately using power from battery reserve -Pod continues descent. At 15km readings are taken using the redundent instruments, except for Science Jr. which is ready for reuse after transmitting -Pod lands on solid ground (if all went according to plan) -If required pod waits for daylight to charge batteries, begins transmitting all stored descent data as solar power allows -Pod takes full set of readings at ground level, transmits -Second pod is released, targeted at water (unless first pod hit water, or first pod encountered unusual readings that merit followup study) -Pod follows same plan as the first, except that the descent readings are taken at 30km and 5km -Same plan once landed, the descent readings are transmitted followed by ground readings being taken and transmitted -Ship in orbit now plots Gilly intercept -Delta-V from drive section is used until exhausted, then it is abandoned and Grasshopper continues the burn alone -Grasshopper enters high orbit of Gilly and takes readings, transmits them to Kerbin -Grasshopper lowers orbit to continue study -Grasshopper lands and studies the surface (hopefully gets landing right the first time, in low gravity there is a chance it might slowly tip if there is any horizontal momentum left over and become stuck. Procedure if Grasshopper is tipping is to burn hard and lift off for another attempt) -Using remaining fuel Grasshopper performs as many suborbital hops as possible to study surface of Gilly Phase 1 report Launch occurs at 2 minutes to midnight on Day 12. The asparagus staging slightly reduced the stability of the launch vehicle, resulting in a roll tendancy until all 4 radial boosters where discarded. However the intended efficiency of the asparagus staging was realized, with fuel burned to achieve orbit essentially identical to past launches with 10 tons instead of 11. The course to Eve is computed the old fashioned way - create a maneuver node and push it around until the encouter is achieved. Since inclination was not lined up at either end the burn required both prograde and anti-normal burn to create a course that would connect with Eve. Unlike a Minmus or orbital docking encounter the time to reach the descending node for a dedicated burn was far from trivial and would have added weeks to the mission. The final course involved a 6 minute burn. I knew before I started that the ejection of the drop tanks would alter the timing of the burn, since my T/W would suddenly increase. Given the length of the burn and distance to travel I didn't bother calculating any corrections for this, since a correction burn was expected and planned anyway. The actual burn revealed an odd bias, with the ship seeming to slowly nose up requiring a correction every minute. Once the drop tanks where removed the bias disappeared, though I can't tell if it was them or the weight change simply gave the overworked probe reaction wheels less to keep balanced. After the burn tracking showed an Eve near encounter at 380,000km, though that would be easily fixed in the course correction. After 10 hours of flight the explorer reached the edge of Kerbin's SOI, where a region of high radiation was detected. This area looks promising for a manned mission. Course correction is plotted, requiring another 38m/s. After burn the tracking station places final encounter at 15,000km in 38 days - day 51. Goodbye Kerbin, we won't meet again.

The probe's proper orientation is actually opposite to the probe core - the probe core is mounted upside down on the 'bottom' of the pod. In order to make a retrograde burn to deorbit I actually have to point the navball to prograde. The 2 sepratrons are fired with SAS turned on to fix any micro weight imbalance, then SAS is turned off to save power and the probe will naturally roll over to the correct landing orientation (navball faces retrograde) as it hits the thicker air thanks to the drag you mentioned. At the chosen altitude the XL parachute (the blue nose cone) is released and it lands on those impact resistant (12m/s) goo containers (in Kerbin's gravity and atmosphere landing speed is 3.9m/s with the new chute design). Here it is after its 2km test drop at KSC And here is the old mark 1 after it did a proper descent to Kerbin's tundra as part of the biome exploration mission (4 pods released from one ship, ship then makes seperate landing)

That's a fantastic way to explain it. I would have almost just stopped right there and said isp is mpg, IN SPACE! (and yes of course it's not that simple since mass factors into the equation and such, but for people new to KSP that simple analogy is great to get them started)

How far have you gotten? 1. Rocket lifts off and can return on parachute without spinning out of control and blowing up. 2. Rocket into stable orbit (PE reads 70,000m or higher) 3. Rocket reaches encounter with Mun (orbit switches to show a path relative to the Mun) 4. Rocket pulls into stable orbit around the Mun 5. Rocket descends toward Mun 6. Rocket lands on Mun without exploding. Flag is planted. 7. Rocket has enough fuel to lift off Mun 8. Rocket gets back into orbit of Mun with fuel left (you might skip this step) 9. Rocket breaks out of Mun orbit and into Kerbin orbit 10. Rocket has fuel left to return to Kerbin

No. There are actually a few issues with the big orange tanks that can be solved by either replacing them with a combination of smaller tanks or sticking a single small tank between them and the engine. The reason has to do with the Unity physic engine. I believe there where apparently some limitations with regard to distance between rigid parts when calculating heat and forces - basically the orange tank is long enough that when forces are applied at one end the other is too far away to be included in some immediate balancing calculations and this results in some force/heat not being uniformly dispersed. Increasing the distance would fix that, but only by sacrificing some decimal places which would lead to physics oddities at smaller scales (tiny probe parts would experience bigger rounding errors when interacting) and more CPU load.

Pen and a small scratch pad to figure out weights, and a scientific calculator of some kind (I use Excel 2003 to easily update my calculations, you could also use Google docs for free) for LN and EXP. Remember that except for the tiny fuel containers the fuel weight ratio is always 8:1 (8 tons of fuel for every 1 ton of dry storage). Also that 1 ton of fuel (1 + 1/8 if dry mass is included) is 80 L of fuel plus the oxydizer. The rest can be done with a bit of educated guess work and a bit of testing. This method also lets you reverse the formula - you can figure out the weight of your ship without any fuel tanks, then compute how much fuel is required to achieve a specific delta-v (I'm not sure if Engineer lets you do that, I haven't used any mods).

My biome explorer pod faced the same issue in design. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53159-Science-leads-to-wonderful-things?p=713889&viewfull=1#post713889 Ultimately I had a solution - remove the landing legs and use a pair of goo containers instead. They have an impact rating of 12 (same as legs) and are very wide when mounted horizontally so they work quite well. I'm planning an unmanned Eve mission that will use an upgraded version of them. Edit: here is a sneak peak from the VAB showing the mark 2 interplanetary science pod (attached to side of Eve Explorer), now with rechargable batteries, a better parachute system and a reorganized instrument panel on the side. The 2nd goo container, thermometer and barometer serve 2 purposes: To balance weight for the single burn deorbit boosters and to store extra data during descent so that it can be sent at a more relaxed pace on the ground where the batteries can recharge between transmissions. The extra goo container also forms the landing legs.

It means that once your ship is in orbit (it won't work on the ground or suborbital, except maybe on Gilly with a really small craft and a huge amount of skill) you point you ship in the direction you need to move (and get rid of extra weight like useless engines and empty fuel tanks), you get your Kerbal to go on EVA and using his jetpack fly around to the back of the spaceship and literally 'push' the ship by bumping into the bottom and then thrusting. When jetpack fuel gets low you reboard the ship which causes the jetpack to refuel. On even a small ship the amount of force a Kerbal's jetpack can apply is small, but in orbit you have all the time you need.

This seems to be a limitation of the current tree based build system. The root of the tree is your core, the first part you placed down, and everything must branch out from that without looping back. If you detach a group of parts (for example a T400 stacked on a T800) you'll notice you can't rejoin it to the craft except by the root most part of the group, the T400. Because when you start a new ship you always start with a trunk you can't load an assembly that has a trunk itself, and so the game prevents you from saving one like that either. The way around it is to start with a dummy core. For example if you want to build a lander (which you will reuse as a subassembly) composed of a Mk1 pod, T400 fuel tank and LV-909 engine which will mount onto various rockets with a decoupler then start with a dummy probe core. Place a decoupler on top of the probe core, then the engine the fuel tank and pod. Detach the group at the decoupler and save it as a subassembly. Keep in mind that when you start your rocket that you will later attach this subassembly to you don't need to start with a command pod anymore, most non-radial parts are now accepted as the ships 'core'. So just drop down an orange tank (your 'core'), attach a mainsail and then drag your lander subassembly and stick it on the top.

If you intend to land somewhere specific (or even general, like the day side of a planet), then a circular orbit makes that a lot easier.

Mission 14 Mun Canyon Lemgun is my only kerbonaut who has not flown to the Mun, and he is next in the rotation. Geofmin's flight to the Mun passed over what looked like a canyon near the equator just as he was getting ready to descend. It could be a dangerous target, but the potential for science in an exposed portion of the Mun are too good to pass up and I know the one pilot whose uncanny skill with a stick I can trust to do it safely, Mr. Lemgun Kerman. Archived image from Mission 8, with unnamed canyon like formation to the right of crater. Lemgun to the right of archived image. Launch is using the Mun 2.5 platform; The Mun 2 lander placed onto the Mun 2.5 booster stage with it's stabilizing strut enhancement. The launch is perfect, this platform has been tested and tuned to perform well. I never get tired of this part though. A minor glitch comes up with Munar insertion. Lemgun is a stick man but barely literate, the navball and the position of the dials in the cockpit are the only thing he understands. Numbers are just funny marks to him and books taste funny. Not entirely understanding what the Est. Burn Time in the mission plan meant he just kept on the throttle until he saw the green thing start to refill and stopped to ask mission control why it was doing that. Bob was called in and after reviewing the situation got on the line and told Lemgun he just needed to turn around and then burn for a few more seconds. Bob reviewed the telemetry and concluded that he was back on course for the Mun at the correct encounter altitude, but that due to the delay he was now in line to pass on the other side of the Mun - orbiting opposite its rotation. Bob didn't think this was a problem for landing and that on take off he could just fly into the correct orbit, but it posed a danger if Lemgun didn't make his orbital burn at the Mun. Without any input the spacecraft would fly past and be ejected from Kerbin's SOI instead of simply coming back on a high elliptical orbit. Upon arrival at the Mun one other small problem presented itself. The intended landing zone, the canyon, had just passed into the dark side of the Mun. Landing there was going to be a challenge in the light and impossible in the dark. An alternate landing high above the equator was planned and it was passed onto Lemgun The new landing posed it's own challenges. Unlike previous landings which enjoyed the very large safety margin afforded by using the orbital stage for a long deorbit burn followed by using the landers engine for a slow controlled and mostly vertical descent, this landing used the orbit engine for the orbit adjustment and only a minimal deorbit burn. While the lander could have begun slowing down immediately (it was designed with enough fuel to make a deorbit and landing from 30km, then ascend and return to Kerbin with a few drops to spare) this would have wasted fuel and resulted in a landing closer to the equator. Instead a 'suicide burn' was selected. A suicide burn is a landing in which the ship descends in free fall for most of the trip, then suddenly goes into full engine burn close to the ground with the hopes of killing all the velocity at once and leaving little time for gravity to add any back before touchdown. If the burn is started too early fuel will be wasted because a second burn will be needed to cancel out the velocity accumulated during the second period of free fall. If the burn is started too late the kerbonaut goes splat. That would be the last of the Mun seen from outside the ship until touchdown. The rest of the descent is handled from the cockpit view, the only place with the instruments needed to pull off this landing. Lemgun knows no fear as he makes his burn, rapidly slowing down. The needle stops its advancement just after passing 200m when less then 10 seconds earlier it had been at 1km. A few more puffs are used to set the ship down gently. Posing for the camera is not one of Lemgun's strong points though and his one speech is cut short. Take off is straightforward. With mind of the limited fuel a low 10km orbit is set by taking off, immediately turning 45 degrees and then burning till a 10km AP is achieved. Bob helps time the circulation burn. Return is easy with the safety reserve (14L) still in the tank. Full aerobraking is used so that we don't need to burn any fuel or come around for another orbit, though once again we overshoot KSC and land in the ocean east of it. The service module issue encountered in mission 11, Bob's trip to the Mun, repeats itself with more severe consequences. Aftering ejecting the service module with its own chutes and then releasing the command modules chutes the service module catches up and this time strikes the command module quite hard, momentarly locking them together until the chutes fully deploy. The impact is strong enough to break the engine off the service module. Thankfully the science container was not damaged in the accident. A new landing procedure is needed to fix this problem. The command pod and damaged service module settle down less then a meter apart. The LV-909 engine has been lost thanks to its rapid impact with the water. The mission is otherwise a success, returning 371 science. We will have to wait for a later window to explore the canyon. While this mission didn't have too many shots hampered by gamma issues I have continued to work the problem. The latest version of Afterburner is now installed which can use XVid for encoding. I've configured it to record with enough quality to match MJPEG. Framerate doesn't seem to suffer much and my brightness tests (by observing the lost biome pod on the night side of Kerbin) are showing improvement.

They got in because they only need to be positioned within a certain distance to be valid for boarding. However exiting puts them in a very specific spot and if that spot is blocked the game will refuse to spawn them, saying the hatch it blocked. If you want to get them out without any file editing or debugging menu you could try physically knocking the RCS thruster off. I'd really save first since the RCS thruster has almost three times the impact resistance, so you'll need to take it off with a glancing blow rather then just flying something straight at it.

The mod you are looking for is the Lazor system mod by Romfarer, though I don't know for certain changing distance works in 0.22 yet. You'd need to install it then on the space center screen there should be a new settings window. Bear in mind that Lazor adds a lot of other parts and windows, if you like stock it might not be for you. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/lazor-system/ The alternative is doing it from orbit and following each package down. Here is my biome mission which uses this method. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53159-Science-leads-to-wonderful-things?p=713889#post713889