snepel

Yup, that worked (had to do a small burn, probably using HyperEdit causes a division by zero somewhere). Thanks for the workaround!

Hi all, When I did a HyperEdit (v 1.5) jump from Kerbin orbit to Laythe, I can not create maneuver nodes anymore. Right-click gives be the regular delta-v gauge next to the navigation ball, but it reads "NaN m/s". There is no node drawn in the orbital trajectory, and using MechJeb2 maneuver editor also gives no change. My KSP is version 1.1.2.1260, MJ2 is 2.5.7.0 from Sarbian's release Jenkins repo. Also, F5/F9 doesn't help. Anyone encounter this before? Any workaround? Should I not be using HE or MJ2, or should I report the bug to their forums? Kind regards, Snepel

Hi all, nice to see there's such a lively thread for this plugin. I just discovered it this afternoon and have been reading up on the docs and seen some YT tutorials / streams with pretty impressive stuff going on! I've playing for a while (~18 months) using MechJeb, as my personal focus is on designing craft that can fly reproducible missions (and thus rely as little as possible on Kerbal / human interaction during the mission). So obviously scripting and automation would be the next step for me to take things to a higher level. When seeing the detailed tutorials and the code that floats around, things seem to be programmed pretty close to the metal so to speak. I see mostly speed and orientation read outs, followed by complex calculations to obtain values on which new actions can be based. I can imagine this presents a pretty steep learning curve for the uninitiated (myself included of course). When I see how kOS is able to co-operate with other mods like KAC, RT and IR, I can't help wondering whether there might be plans to do the same with MechJeb2? This would greatly improve the ease of adopting kOS for me and allow me to get impressive (moon rover landing etc.) results more quickly. I expect it's also possible to implement some of MJ's functionality in kOS script, and possibly there are already some libraries available that do so? Anyway, it's great to see how much is going on here. I've followed some of you on Twitch / YouTube to keep up with developments. Keep up the good work! Regards, Snepel

Hi all, Just wanted to share my progress on redoing the single launch Eve return mission in 1.0.4 Before you all start getting disappointed, I do use MechJeb for piloting, mainly because the design aspect of the game is most important to me. Also I like craft that deliver reproducible results, so flukes and genius piloting are no factor in my gameplay. And I use MJ for keeping track of delta-V and measuring transfer windows, which also comes in very handy. Yesterday I was able to build a lander that has enough delta-V and TWR to take-off from Eve near sea level (400 meters or so) and reach a circularized orbit of 100km. I tried this using HyperEdit, so by no means near a complete mission, I'm just testing the lander for now. Today, I added a new landing gear, parachutes and figured out how to fix the heat shields so my lander is now able to drop freely from a circularized 80km orbit (just enough for the atmosphere to take hold and slowly drag it in), land safely, do EVA and board the craft to launch it back up to a 100km orbit again. Here's the some pics, hopefully they can be helpful/inspiring to you: http://imgur.com/a/FWLHp Main problems in 1.0.4 I've encountered compared to previous version are: - overheating in Eve's atmosphere when coming down - engines at lower altitudes have lost a lot of power/efficiency - stability of the craft when launching to orbit - part count drags down game performance (had to simplify my craft enormously to even get it running) Next steps are to build an interplanetary stage around this lander and somehow get everything to launch in a single go from Kerbin.

After 14 months and 653 hours of KSP, of which 12 months of obsessively trying to return safely from Eve in a single launch no refueling mission, I finally did it I used XSplit to record the entire effort, edited back down to ~50 minutes. Details of the mission and craft file are in the YT description:

Just finished my first round of play in 0.24 (using the Win64 version). I must say using all that more memory of my machine makes it load and behave *waaaay* smoother, faster and it feels a lot more stable too. It also solved a bug I had since 0.23 where exiting would freeze the process for me. I can now safely exit KSP again without any trouble at all. I'm overjoyed.

I think using the broomstick analogy might help you out: Consider a broom that you try to balance on the palm of your hand. The palm of your hand being the engines of your craft. If the broom brush is at the top, it's easy to balance: so the center of mass must be far away from the center of propulsion. Other way around, it will start to wobble. This is a very helpful analogy and in my experience it really does behave this way in KSP. Hope it helps! source: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:Intermediate_Rocket_Design

Haha SpacedCowboy, you're quite welcome! That's also why I made an effort to include all the attempts: for the great fireworks :-) It's not the destination but the journey that counts, isn't it? LOL

Okay Mufasa, that does sounds like it makes sense. As it breaks, it's likely to behave irrationally (explaining the clipping), so to solve this I must prevent the legs from breaking. I'll do some tests along that avenue, see if I can get better results. Thanks for the tips guys!

> I can't tell how much your lander weighs Check the MJ window bottom right. It says about 160 tons And 12 struts. > lock your suspension Yeah, first thing in my checklist ;-) Edit: btw, thanks for thinking along. I'm not really looking for design tips, I'm just trying to ascertain whether we're dealing with a glitch or not.

Thanks for the pic of the lander, but those landing gear struts don't clip into the surface at all... If you look closely at my vid, you see the struts disappear at least halfway into the surface. I'm not convinced that more landing gear will actually help, wouldn't they all sink into the surface?

Okay, I've been working on a single launch return mission to Eve. I'm ever so close, but my lander sinks so deep into Eve's surface that all engine pop off. Checklist: - landing struts suspension is rigid - Kerbin test landing was successful - texture + 3D settings maximized (I maxed everything as I have a brand new gaming laptop) Sooo, I'm kind of running out of options. I could rebuild the lander from scratch and try another type of gear, but that's not only a pain in the kerbal, it also seems like the surface clipping (which is what I attribute the sinking to) is buggy behavior. I composed this video clip of my failed landing attempt for closer inspection: http://youtu.be/VxEV0ec-MI0 Is there anything you can derive from the clip or from my description that I am doing wrong? Or is this a known problem with v0.23.0.395 and should I simply be patient and wait for a fix? Kind regards

Ok, I just checked. With 'good' terrain settings the problem doesn't occur anymore :-) Thanks for the help!

This one helped me a lot, it seems up to date: http://www.kerbalmaps.com/

I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this, but it works quite neatly. For lack of sepatrons, I spin my lander just before decoupling my interplanetary stage, like a sort of 'pirouette decoupling'. This allows the boosters to drift quite a distance away and prevents them from slamming into the craft when entering the atmosphere:

Ok, I think it must be the low terrain settings (I did set them to lowest because of the gigantic craft I built), so I'll try again with higher settings (I have a quick save from orbit so I guess that'll be early enough to switch to high detail). I case you're curious, here are some screenshots from the mountain, and the subsequent failure to deploy the chutes:

Ok, I'm afraid this might well be my problem. I tuned down the terrain settings to the lowest, because of my gigantic spacecraft for this mission. I have a quick save from before entering the atmosphere, so I'll try landing with higher settings. Thanks for the info guys!

Hi all, I've been trying to do a single launch, stock parts only return mission to Eve (trying for the past month or so, getting closer every day :-) and I noticed something rather unpleasant. To keep my delta-v needs for ascent from Eve as low as possible, I'm trying to land at Mount Useful (25 S, 158.5 W) giving me about a 7,000 m launch altitude. But almost every time I descend over this mountain range, the chutes won't open properly, resulting in a smash into the surface at about 80 m/s. I did manage to land it properly on top the mountain once, but the craft sinks deeply (until about half its own height) into a clipping surface and even almost toppled over. EVA-ing my Kerbal lead to an almost instant explosion as he apparently fell off a hidden cliff or something. I was wondering if these two problems may be connected. Is it possible the chutes (that should open at 2,500 and 500 m above surface) misread the altitude, for the same reason that causes the craft to 'sink' and the Kerbals to fall down? I've never had chutes not opening before, and if I land a few kms away from the mountain, they open normally. Trying to land on top of the mountain resulted in 3 consecutive crashes because of this, so my guess it's not a fluke, but something related to the environment. After about 30 successful landings on Eve I've gotten to know that particular craft inside out and I'm sure there is no construction or deployment failure. The chutes are semi-deployed by staging at around 20,000 m with speeds between 100 and 200 m/s, they're properly animated in semi-deployed state, all chute icons are yellow as if awaiting their automated deployment, but as we near the surface they simply remain semi-deployed until the crash into the surface of the mountain. But this happens only on or very near to Mt. Useful. Has anyone else experienced this? As there have been similar surface problems with the Mün and other bodies, is this something that may be a more general issue with the surfaces of bodies since .21?