Silverchain

This is the lander design I'm going to use, the Orkney-class. Coyote Man heads off to join the other ships on the Mun. It should be capable of a fully powered descent and ascent from Duna, to save me worrying about parachutes. By extension it's good for Ike, Dres, Vall and Eeloo, though not terribly efficient. The spaceplane Topsy Turvey was launched a while ago carrying a lander as cargo. Due to a design error the lander legs were on upside down, so it's remained in LKO. I thought I'd bring it to the Mun, but a series of failings during the descent led to a fatal crash. RIP Neildas Kerman, second casualty of the tour. I don't think any of the other ships were hit by debris...

Congratulations.

Or possibly your fuel lines aren't right? Do please share a pic and .cfg as relin says.

Yah, I found landing the spaceplane on Eve (upthread) to be a slow process - quite good, though, plenty of time to find a good landing spot, and the final approach speed was very low. Nothing spectacular happening at the moment - the Tour ship is still landed on the Mun, and I'm trying out and discarding a variety of impractical lander designs. I've hit a bug where I can't get Kerbals out of their ships (the EVA button doesn't appear for them) - it's easy to get round by stopping and starting the game, but it's making operations involving lots of craft a bit of a pain. Anyway, back at the Mun landing site, which seems like a worse and worse place to rendezvous with each ship I land...

Peter Rabbit.

I like that use of the swept wings, especially as lander leg mounts... even if they weren't wide enough.

I hope they fix the bug, but this is fascinating to watch... haven't had much success actually using them, though. Far Star Gonad Trevithick tragically exploded on transition to Krakendrive powered flight...

The return from Eve went smoothly; Merry Go Round left Gilly, made a Hohmann to Kerbin and aerobraked to an elliptical orbit before achieving Mun orbit. I'd originally intended to aerobrake completely to LKO and refuel there, but this worked. In Munar orbit, Merry Go Round refueled from the antique space station Munlab One, a hangover from the earliest days of the space program crewed by wizened Kerbals in orange spacesuits. Strictly speaking it refueled from the Kerbal Transfer Vehicle which had been docked to the station, which had only a small amount of fuel to spare. Merry Go Round needed to make a second rendezvous with the Ladder Structure to top up completely. At some point that ship will be broken up into its constituent fuel tanks, but for the moment it'll stay as a whole. Merry Go Round (visible in the middle distance) landed near a small Munar base in the East Crater. Not an ideal landing site but there were no problems. At this juncture crewmember Gilnie has left the ship to stay on the Mun, as a form of insurance - in case of accident, I don't want to lose the whole of this well-travelled crew! The lander visible here is a prototype of the one I intend to use later, and the rover is an extremely durable specimen I'll try to take along too.

Mental.

Good luck with everything, parachute landing on Duna is hard - the air is so thin that results are quite variable depending on exactly where you're landing.

I'm looking on in horror. Messing about with this kind of force is the sort of thing that ends up permanently removing the perpetrators from existence...

Thanks - I love thinking of names for them. After various reconfiguring of the ships at Eve - a couple of mostly empty fuel tanks were left in orbit - Merry Go Round headed for Gilly. It turned out that there was a design flaw with the way the science lab is affected by the thrust from the nuke engines on the Euryale, and it wobbled all over until undocked and redocked a couple of times. My fault for using an unrealistic puller configuration - the ship design dates back to 0.18 when senior docking ports weren't around, I just took the opportunity to slap one on the underside of the ship. Landing by the spaceplane, it dropped off the science lab (bottom right), then I got bored with Gilly's low gravity and started aggressive maneouvres to land the main ship. Gilly Base. If I'm lucky I'll be able to dock the spaceplane to the big tank that's on its side and take on enough fuel for it to make orbit. At Kerbin, refueling ship Ladder Structure launches to LKO. I'm leaving the Science / Hab module on Gilly, so I'll launch a redesigned version of those shortly. When the Merry Go Round leaves Gilly it'll aerobrake to LKO, take on fuel and the new science lab and possibly a lander, then head to the Mun and Minmus.

How bizarre! There must be a small version of this device inside the Monoliths.

While the main ships were still in LEO, spaceplane Messy Lion streaked past them aerobraking to arrive at Gilly. The spaceplane hadn't refueled since launch, and my cavalier approach left it running on fumes by the time it touched down. On the other hand, this is Gilly and has the gravitational field of a small teapot, so no worries. Hey, there was a whole 10 units of oxidiser left on landing! Franklin Kerman plants the flag. It proved very difficult to drive the rover as it kept bouncing into the sky; I'd hoped its (considerable, even empty) weight would be enough, but no luck. I have driven rovers on Gilly before with much less trouble... on the plus side, by using internal torque and bashing the wings into the ground, the whole plane is thrown gracefully a couple of metres up. Next steps will be the reconfiguring of the main ships; the Merry Go Round will head to Gilly and land for a rendezvous. Not sure whether to try landing the science lab, but it sounds like fun...

Thought I'd start a proper coherent thread rather than posting to General's "What Did You Do Today?" thread each time. This is my Lacklustre Tour, in which brave Kerbals will visit everywhere they can get to except Eve and Tylo, which are being saved for last. I've recovered Kerbals from Tylo before, but it was scary. The primary touring ship is the Euryale-class* Merry Go Round, which is being supported by a variety of other ships and spaceplanes. Orbert, Hadbly and Gilnie are its initial crew. The story so far: the Merry Go Round has visited Moho and engaged in spaceplane operations, supporting the spaceplane Frustration which landed on the surface but was regrettably destroyed trying to launch. RIP Ludlock Kerman, first casualty of the tour. The Merry Go Round was refueled by fellow Euryale Let There Be Light and both ships headed independently to Eve. At Eve the Merry Go Round was joined by a third Euryale, Journey of the Sorceror, which brought a science and hab module. Skurj-class spaceplane/rover Gobstopper adjusts orbit for rendezvous with the Merry Go Round, science module and Journey of the Sorceror over Eve. Intrepid Kellie Kerman left the rover to board the hab section after flying round the docked ships. The uncrewed rover transferred most of its fuel off to the Euryales and entered Eve's atmosphere. Rover away! Driving on Eve is easier than driving on Kerbin; you slow faster, the rover is less prone to tipping over and getting up to high speed is easy. Kinda paradoxical that the heavier planets are generally the easiest ones to drive on. Unfortunately after climbing up a mountain the Gobstopper flipped uncontrollably and was blown to bits... oh well, that's what uncrewed rovers are for. *eagle-eyed observers might note a striking resemblance to the preceding Brigantia, Selene, Macha, Neman, Hecate, Morrigan, Badb and al-Lat classes. Not big on originality.

Cool. Nice rover.

But why, Sax, why?

Reaction wheels affect the whole ship they are attached to, so if you have extra reaction wheels added as part of your first stage, they will help you turn up until you drop the first stage. I often add a reaction wheel to each stack in a stage, the extra mass is negligible by comparison with the extra torque.

Euryale Let There Be Light arrives at Eve from Moho after refueling the Merry Go Round at Eve. By sending this ship first I got an idea of the aerobraking height I'd need on the Moho - Eve transfer; hit 70km and that wasn't enough. Merry Go Round docks with Journey of the Sorceror above Eve to collect the Science lab segment. I encountered a strange bug here - controlling one ship was producing an effect on the other as if the torque wheels on both ships were running off the same input. I'd been switching between the two ships quite freely aligning them to dock. After switching out to another ship far away and then switching back, the problem stopped. Anyhoo, next step is to pick up the pilot of the spaceplane that's also in Eve orbit, drop the spaceplane to the surface then land the Merry Go Round on Gilly. Probably fly out another spaceplane or two to meet up at Gilly. Then back to Kerbin, take on more fuel and perhaps a lander then off to Duna.

Prototype crew shuttle carrying tourists to the realms of the boreal pole. Lenfred, did you lose the port turbojet again?

Kinda depends; you could have an ejector that simultaneously fired small fast projectiles at whatever rearwards angle would allow them to miss the ship. Or dumped water or sand or something like some rocket launchers do...

I was, because I like having it as a reminder, but I've got too much stuff going round in LKO already and the area near KSC was piling up with smashed bits of plane and rocket so I've turned permanent debris off.

Cute! Getting the hang of landing was tricky... I was aiming for one of the hangars, but ended up at the end of the runway. It landed surprisingly well, but on takeoff one of the landing legs seemed to be stuck in the ground and the whole thing flipped over. I'll choose to believe there were pesky Kerbal resistance and a laser-gun technical involved somewhere. The control bit on the underside where the canards are attached is quite wobbly and could use some struts, and maybe take some of the oxidiser and monoprop out with tweakables to lighten it... 'side from that it's cool, and as you say it flies like it should from the film. (ETA: That's flown stock, by the way, no problems.)

I've been testing hardware and continuing preparations for my Touring ship, the Euryale-class Merry Go Round. Merry Go Round has carried out spaceplane operations on Moho, although its spaceplane was unfortunately trashed trying to take off from a mountain. It's been refueled by another Euryale-class, the Let There Be Light. On the Mun, a Cowley-class heavy lander, Blue Toga Plus rover and Skurj-class spaceplane/rover rendezvous at night near the rim of the East Crater. The Cowley should in principle be capable of single stage descent and ascent from anywhere less than Laythe, carrying a reasonable payload. The Blue Toga is more-or-less indestructible in normal operation* and can flip itself upright using its internal gyro on any world apart from Eve. The Skurj planes are descent-and-return capable from anywhere except Tylo and Eve, but much more fragile. In Kerbin orbit, the Euryale-class Journey of the Sorceror collects a Science and Hab module. Journey of the Sorceror arrives at Eve, where it's waiting in a parking orbit for the Merry Go Round and Let There Be Light to arrive from Moho. There's a Skurj in orbit around Eve whose pilot will transfer to the Hab module before the spaceplane attempts a landing on remote control. *warranty not valid for external command seats.

Fah. Tell that to my poor spaceplane pilot who tried to take off from there the other day... (no prizes for guessing; turned out the LV-N was too weak to get the plane above the hills in time due to the angle) A refueling tanker makes a rendezvous with the Euryale 23-D Merry Go Round in orbit above Moho. The plan is for the Merry Go Round to head to Gilly, then back to Kerbin orbit where it'll pick up a Science Module / Hab, a heavy lander and an extra fuel tank before zooming off for a not-so-Grand Tour.