technion

I found it easier to land a rover on Eve, drive to a stranded kerbal, pick him up, drive 40km to an ascent vehicle, rendezvous in orbit anf perform a rescue, than to pick up a kerbal from the surface of Duna

Thanks, that's what I've done. As above though, in the VAB, the requirements were met because I had a tug with solar panels. I watched electricity drain to 0 as it left eeloo and sit on 0 all the way until it was inside dres' orbit before it ramped up to full. It's more than clear that it wasn't sane to refer to as "generating power".

The problem with that is that the tug has solar panels, so I had a "tick" at launch, and all the way to orbit.

Not at the time of taking the screenshot, but I turned then both on and nothing happened. Rage inducing. It appears you are correct, and as far as I'm concerned that makes it a bugged contract. The nuclear tug floating in orbit has a series of solar panels for use at the parts of the mission closer to Kerbin, but since this is Eeloo, I don't think it's fair to claim they are "generating power".

I made it all the way to Eeloo for this and for some reason it's decided I don't meet the criteria. I built this rocket and launched it after taking the contract. You can see the docking port. You can't see the antenna, but it's on the back and I just used it to make sure. There are two fuel cells on board and plenty of fuel. (meanwhile, the nuclear tug floats idle in orbit, with solar panels on the verge of overheating for no reason at all)

Well I can confirm it - I've used his craft and it's definitely capable of orbit. I had several failed attempts after I swapped for nosecones - but I won't argue if he says he's done it. It's certainly a great place to start though - so thanks Forster for putting that together! It also does surprisingly easily with the re-entry heat, so long as you do it gently. I really prefer to this to the large mammoth type arrangement. Those huge landers just don't reflect my playstyle.

I'm having a hard time with that, for two reasons. * Eve has to be the worst place ever to not have nosecones on the top of those tanks. * That's not far off my current design.. and I've added a few more stages to make it successfully pull off the mission.

I generally prefer much more lightweight options than what I'm seeing here... but the lowered thrust of the small engines in an atmosphere is a real issue. I'm doing some testing now to try and overcome it.

And just to add to this, one of the reasons for this is that strcmp() will return as soon as a character doesn't match, so passwords with the first character correct will take longer to check. I can refer you at my Constant time implementation.

Well for the record, SAS is entirely capable of holding a probe stable even when firing such an offset ion engine. I've basically gone and completed the rest of the mission, and poor pol never got a probe because it was engineless.

Mods: Kerbal engineer Kerbal alarm clock It's a 99% vanilla install, and I haven't manually edited anything. I guess I can't rule out a build problem but I placed those probes with 4 x symmetry, and two of them launched just fine. Craft file below: https://lolware.net/kerbal/Probe delivery.craft If you can advise how I check these issues you referred to I'd be happy to review and advise.

Hi, Have a look here. This mothership had four radially mounted probes. Two have already left. I decouple one and.. it takes the engine from an adjacent tank with it. Well this I wasn't expecting.. with a gap from my probe, it actually thrusts when I run the engine. Yep, if I quickload and launch the other probe instead, it just takes off without an engine. Is there a hope in the world of fixing this?

Thanks everyone. To answer all the questions.. It looks like you're correct that the engine is still running. It feels absurd to me that it would shutdown a probe core and keep an engine running, but that's it. I can't kill it in any way without a running core, which also seems silly. The core is definitely there, the advise to shutdown the tank does actually seem correct. It just seemed very glitched because I tried it a dozen times before it worked. Thanks all! I've got a mission report coming on this.

Thanks. The antenna is doing anything, the sensors aren't deployed. The wheel and tank don't give me the option to disable. Don't I need a running core to do so?

I would have thought the draw of one probe core was a lot less than four panels

Hi, I've been experimenting with fuel cell powered ion probes. This one ran out of electricity and the probe shut down. As you can see, there are solar panels on this unit that are getting light. It's not enough to run the ion engine, but I was expecting I could restart the fuel cell when these kicked in. Instead, the probe remains uncontrollable, electricity never comes in.

Yeah - the problem there is either using 1.25m parts jet fuel parts, or the Mk2/3 parts which are a totally different shape and have a hugely negative impact when I attempt to use them as one stage on a rocket built from round tanks.

Great mission - those patches look like a lot of work too!

The bigger issue with nukes that I ran into was the new fuel. A large grey tank drained oxidiser with two radial nukes doesn't have a significant improvement over a large grey tank with a poodle on the bottom.

imo, that fairing is bugged. I've used it several times .. and at some point in my mission, it always ends up gone, and my command module has a heat shield then a gap that you can see right through to the next tank.

Sounds like the perfect mod!

The trick here is.. Kerbal Alarm Clock. Just set an alarm for that window, and time warp until it happens. Eve is one thing, but you'll be in for a very bad time attempting to hit Moho without waiting until it's just right.

For what it's worth, in my current save, I have been everywhere except Laythe, and I haven't even started building spaceplane. I just ignored the Kerbin surface contracts because I've always felt they were out of place. Once I've done Laythe I might try and circumnavigate Kerbin in a plane. I'll get nothing from it from a contract point of view and that doesn't really matter. Rewards for contracts and science escalates dramatically once you leave Kerbin. I know it feels like a grind visiting the mun 5-6 times and trying to pick contracts you can efficiently do to get cash for building upgrades, and get enough science to progress, but you'll visit Duna and Ike, and money be such a thing after that.

Well, and the IRSU, which is another power hungry device. My point is, general flight operations and keeping probe cores alive isn't a useful case.

With the exception of powering power-hungry ion engines, there is no reason in the game to use a cell over an RTG. If you got RTGs early, there'd be no point the cells existing.