khyron42

Dogon11, for the merge - I just copied your actual craft out of your save file and added it to the one Zekes had posted, so all your debris is gone anyway. As far as getting to Lake Kostok on my turn, I plan to use an aircraft. Maybe something with a LOT of drop tanks, but I\'ll fly down without ever breaking 20 km altitude. I\'ve already got a craft that doesn\'t fall apart on the runway and MIGHT make it, planning some test flights now that I know where the base will be. This craft had already made it to the island to the northwest of base with lots of fuel left. Anyone who isn\'t sure they can land their craft at their chosen base or just wants practice - downloading the persistence file even when it\'s not your turn is a great way to pre-plan your craft and flight plan. You\'ll still have to re-download it and make sure you\'ve added any new mods when your turn comes around, but a few practice runs can make things go smoothly.

Generally speaking, orbital mechanics AREN\'T intuitive. I agree that even just adding a little arrow shape to the currently controlled craft on the map view, representing the direction the nose is currently pointing, would be nice. However, that information is already there in the nav ball, once you know what the navball is showing based on where you are in space. The real problem is always that of representing three-dimensional information in a 2-d space, and I think overall they\'ve given us enough tools. Knowing orbital mechanics and having only our current tools (navball + mapview + indicators in the camera view) it\'s possible to rendevous with another craft in orbit, and make precision landings at least as well as the Apollo missions did. --- Katalliaan - radial burns during the ascending part of the orbit increase eccentricity, and during the descending part decrease it. The opposite happens with anti-radial. It can be useful to help circularize at a specific altitude without having that altitude be your Ap or Pe, and are most useful during rendezvous maneuvers.

Somewhere, deep within minmus, is a throne room. We just haven\'t found the entrance yet. His evil plot this time is to lure thousands of rockets to the mysterious moonlet, and steal the return stage fuel to power his giant freeze ray and cover all of Kerbin with permanent ice. He\'s hit an unexpected delay due to the sheer number of arriving craft which either didn\'t bother to bring any return fuel, or exploded before he could steal it...

Dogon, unfortunately you didn\'t load all the needed mods and ended up losing a couple of other people\'s craft from your persistence file. I\'ve merged your craft into zekes persistence file and posted that to the OP, I\'ll attach it here too. Please remember to make sure you have all previously-used mods installed on any future flights. Do you want to book another flight? It\'s speedollama\'s turn!

Nice. I assume the distance away was deliberate to keep future landings from messing up your lander. I\'ll add you as signed up again for the same. luciencd, did you want to sign up for another turn? Dogon11, it\'s your turn! The mod list has been growing, make sure you have all of them installed!

Congratulations, luciencd! Zekes, it\'s your turn!

Dylan - your orbital details window hides the key part of the surface details window which would have given the latitude & longitude.

Sorry about that! fixed. Also, I decided I won\'t be adding Damned Aerospace after all & updated my planned mod to 'none'.

For most launches where I\'m trying for Kerbin orbit, my method is similar to what others have said. 5 degrees as soon as I clear the tower (more out of a wish to see first stage/wreckage not hit the base than because it\'s efficient), 20 degrees at 10 km, 30 at 20 km, 60 at 30, then switch to make view and go horizontal once my Ap is up above 70 km. Get the Ap near the intended orbit altitude, coast to Ap, and circularize. Certain very unstable rockets I stay with vertical until 30 km before turning, because tipping even slightly at 20 km causes out of control spirals. For launches towards the moon or Minmus, I launch to align the Ap to about the point where I want to do the TMI burn without worrying about what altitude the Ap ends up at, and then just do the TMI burn instead of circularize. This only works when I\'m less than half an orbit from the TMI point, though.

Luciencd - It\'s your turn! Go ahead with opening the new Munar base, we had enough scheduled to justify opening it when you scheduled it. Mincespy, if you finish your flight in the next 12 hours or so, go ahead and post the persistence file and I\'ll merge your craft in.

Ouch! Sorry to hear about that silly mistake after a successful flight, Mincespy. Are you sure you want to be removed from the list? You still have well over 24 hours left to complete the flight again!

Thrfoot\'s missed both his tries, and is off the list. Feel free to re-register - I know that it\'s the end of the school year for many people & time to play may be very limited. Mincespy - you\'re up for your second chance! Please, if you can, let us know whether you\'re going to have time to fly, so that we can move on to the next pilot if you can\'t manage it! This\'ll be the last second chance setup, we\'ll just remove people who miss their 48 hour chance and then they can sign back up if they want.

Amazingly well done! I don\'t think I\'ve done much deep space flying since the smaller engine was added, I\'d forgotten that more efficient deep space flights were now possible since we\'re carrying less engine weight. I\'ll have to give this a try myself to see how hard it was. I\'m guessing Kerbin escape slightly past the dawn line to exit its SoI retrograde, additional adjustments as needed based on the patched conics could be made even during the initial burn... and eyeball the rough angle between sun, kerbin, and 7 million km periapsis to know the rough angle to use for timing your return burn?

It looks like there are distinct landmasses on both poles, but that may not be right. Can anyone do a north and south polar projection, to clarify just how the landmasses relate to each other near the poles?

Sign me up for a flight to the Kerbin Abandoned Launch Facility. We\'ll see how well I can manage a purely atmospheric flight there; those have been kind of hit-or-miss for me.

Actually, you successfully landed on your first try but in an unstable state. Then you waited until your second try was almost over before saying to just go ahead with the unstable landing from the first try. But yes, I was actually thinking to change it to just be 'missed your 48 hours = cancelled, re-register for a new slot.' The other option was to drop the time for both tries to 24 hours; I was waiting to see how well that worked on the safety valve thread, but that seems like it\'s been replaced with 'fly if you\'re showing as actively online, and get bumped when you go offline.'

Mincespy, it\'s been 48 hours - unless you\'re close to done with a fresh attempt, I\'ll bump you down the list. Any updates? --- (almost an hour later) Still no word from Mincespy, bumping him down one. ThrFoot, second chance!

Actually it looks like the arch is a U shaped object sitting on the Mun\'s surface, rather than a ring. Would that still require multiple colliders to have a safe pass-through area?

I\'ve run into that too. While there\'s no way to pick vessels below there from the list, you can find them in the map and click on them to select them, then 'Fly' that craft just like the ones you can pick on the list.

Two of my favorite things, combined!

Thanks for setting this up, Twinky. I know the wait times between flights is pretty high on the other base. I\'d like to remind people that they can, if they want, be on the 'flight reservation list' for all three base threads - mine, this one, and the Stock-only one. That lets you fly more often as your turns come up on the various threads.

No one person should be able to register weeks ahead of time for second slots, or decide they\'re the one who will be allowed to make the new base. Instead, whoever is registering for a new (or followup) flight can choose to make the new base when the option comes up. Regarding getting your name on the list twice or three times, that\'s not fair to other players trying to get turns too, or to people just joining us. If I was letting people say well ahead of time 'I want to make a new base, and will wait until whenever it\'s an option' our next 20 bases would already be planned out (based on how many people have said 'I\'ll make a new base when it becomes an option' instead of registering for a flight.) I\'m not going to keep track of all those requests, instead when the base option becomes available whoever isn\'t already booked can book the new base. I considered asking everyone to give you a chance at being that first booking for a new base, but I think everyone else is waiting for the same chance. It\'s fun to be the new base explorer. You\'ve already been the guy to create one of them, and giving others that fun too is part of being a community. After you fly your current reserved flight, I can try to keep track of what you\'ve already requested for a next flight - but it would be better if you just make the next flight reservation then ----- Twinky has opened a 'Safety valve' base thread. I encourage people to go ahead and register flights at both if you want. It looks like he\'s keeping mostly the same rules but shortening the flight time allowed to 1 day, so people will be able to get turns in more quickly. Also - there are no current bases there, so the first person to sign up for each planet/mun gets to make that new base they\'re itching for! People can have their names on this list, the safety valve thread\'s list, and the stock thread\'s list all at once - that will let you fly more frequent community flights. If you can\'t manage landing at a precise location without mechjeb, you can at least be on two of those lists (or try to register in the stock thread when a new base is available.)

I would try this, but I\'ve had previous bouts of fighting the kraken. Those two previous flights prove that it can be done with stock only, though.

GRAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Now you\'re just trying to mess with me by deliberately not listing which of the bases, right? Surely I don\'t need to repeat the list again, or tell you it\'s there in the OP again? I\'ll put you on the list anyway - but please, name which base, and I\'ll update your reservation. The Minmus options are Lake of Broken Landers, and Candre\'s future Minmus Base. If Candre\'s gets 3 more reservations for it, we\'d open up the option of a third minmus base for any flights after those 3. xeranes - adding you now!

Added you to the list, sss! Thanks for letting me know.