nadreck

In my 0.21 sandbox I named big motherships with a designation DS followed by the name of a Salsa band, I called my LKO spacestation Big Dipper. I tried to name the landers that attached to motherships after the musicians in the band with designations L and LR (lander/rovers) and I tried to name supply ships and tugs after musical instruments with the designations SS and ST, but naming stuff that docks is a real pain since whatever is the controlling part when they dock overrides the name of every other part and you have to rename stuff when you decouple/undock. In my first career mode names are descriptive and often say Mk-x after description, however I have gone for a bit of whimsy and/or pun in the names as well (see my lander called "A cupola good ideas in a lander"). I have a rocket called "Jeb's gas station" I have launched a dozen of those so far. When I start my next career mode (going for shortest elapsed game time to full tech tree, shortest EGT to probe on or in every celestial body, and shortest EGT to a Kerbal return mission to every SOI), I will try something else that relates to progress towards those goals, I may come up with a naming convention for flags that is related. By the time I finish that one, or maybe even before, 0.23 will be out. I am going to be keeping my first career mode going on as my .22 sandbox and experimental area where I can try anything I need in my 2nd career mode out without elapsing time there.

A very useful device. Not only can you have something dock perpendicular to your hull, but more importantly you can use it with the "control from here" feature that any docking port has at a right angle to your tank, very useful for certain types of landers. I made a rover/lander with fuel tanks and other times parallel to the wheel base and it was able to ascend and descend much more controllably because of this.

My first of these featured a Mk1-2 Command module with RCS, science parts, and chutes as the return module and a NERVA based reusable service module. The service module was abandoned in free Kerbal orbit in the return from EVE as the return module needed every bit of RCS to make for Kerbin. The second uses an inverted cupola module in the same spot. There are 4 atmosphere probes attached as well, each capable of landing on worlds with atmosphere and providing science readings. I have redesigned the probes and will be sending 2 to replace the ones I used on DUNA with ones with more delta-V and parachutes with the idea in mind of bringing some of them from hypersonic atmosphere analysis back to the service module. NOTE using inverted command pods means that before launch and after each IVA or return from any other ships/EVA POV you need to change control back to a docking port facing the correct direction for NAV ball markers to behave correctly. View of the good ship "A cupola good ideas in a lander" from Ike It is now waiting in orbit along for a trip to the Joolian SOI with a chemical rocket lander carrying Jeb(for Laythe since NERVA is not effective on high gravity and especially high gravity + atmosphere bodies), a fuel module with a lander can that docks at the top on the clamp-o-tron Sr carrying Bill, and a new science return core carrying Bob. A few fueling runs to top up all the tanks and they will be off.

I have 4 level 7 items left to get, and 4 level 8. I am more than 10 Kerbin years in though and am thinking of restarting once I finish career the first time and trying for speed (in Kerbin time). I am not so interested in doing it in the least amount of missions, but the least amount of Kerbin time, then continuing on until I have visited every planet's SOI and returned with at least one Kerbal from each, and having put at least a probe on (or 'in' for Jool and Kerbal) every celestial body. I am also thinking of trying to complete that goal using hyperbolic trajectories rather than Hohmann orbits in some cases.

Dock with another ship, if you right click on either the supply fuel tank or the one being filled then hold shift down and right click on the other tank you get the option of transferring fuel (and oxidizer as a separate click, note that if you don't want to transfer all the fuel possible then you probably need to figure out exactly how much of each to transfer).

Despite being a licensed private pilot I have difficulty with winged craft - particularly landing. Career mode has led me to overcome issues I had with docking and vertical landing on airless bodies by making me(ok ok my choice to do unmodded career mode) work without MechJeb. I need winged craft abilities for a a couple of the missions I envisage. So when I am ready for those I will work on those skills again. I haven't the the time to do everything I want to do - but I will prioritize a few. One challenge after I get all the way to an unlocked tech tree (currently 4 level 7 and 4 level 8 away and planning first trip to the Joolian SOI with a NERVA manned lander and 4 atmospheric probes to finish it) is to start a new career session and again go through without mods but aim for the shortest elapsed Kerban time before: A) Completing the tech tree; and flying a manned mission to each planetary SOI and putting at least a probe on (in for Jool and Kerbal) every celestial body On my first attempt at career mode I am on year 10 having only visited and returned from Mun, Minmus, Eve and Duna. Note: it was probe only on Eve and Duna, surface samples brought back from their moons.

Well the lander worked on Gilly, and Bill and Bob got back without needing a rescue from Jeb, but the reusable lander was sacrificed to get them back using RCS on the science return command pod. I left a lot of science points on the table though the flight netted 2594 science points. There were some major screw ups and cluster chucks and some great saves and awesome luck. Here is a kind of ÃŽâ€-V chronicle of the flight: [TABLE=width: 800] <tbody>[TR] [TD]Maneuver ÃŽâ€-V (m/s)[/TD] [TD]Flight time D:H:M [/TD] [TD]Events [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]1040.4[/TD] [TD]0[/TD] [TD]Ignition in LKO when I thought everything was ready to go [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]425.9[/TD] [TD]10:02:18[/TD] [TD]change plane by 2.0° at node, now we have Eve intercept[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]15.4[/TD] [TD]15:14:47[/TD] [TD]fine tune Eve periapsis to 60km[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]0.6[/TD] [TD]36:13:38[/TD] [TD]decouple atmospheric probe adjust lander periapsis to 75km as safety Aerobrake since attention will be on the probe Probe parachutes to a safe landing, I discover that I had forgotten the batteries on the probe and the 10 units of charge in the probe control module didn't cut it to transmit anything! oops, had plenty of solar cells just no storage[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]560.0[/TD] [TD]43:04:42[/TD] [TD]Tried to fly by the seat of Bob and Bill's pants to intersect Gilly from a just barely escape path near the edge of Eve SOI after insufficient aerobraking to achieve orbit. [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD] 165.0 [/TD] [TD]44:02:20[/TD] [TD]Missed Gilly by more than 2,000 km so I admitted my error adjusted the Eve escape course down to a grazing orbit to do more Aerobreaking[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]12.3[/TD] [TD]44:16:33[/TD] [TD]Raise periapsis post aerobreaking[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]117.6[/TD] [TD]44:21:13[/TD] [TD]Kerbin we have a problem! We are more than 90° off the plane we want Raise PE again starting to plan out inclination changes[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]399.7[/TD] [TD]45:02:27[/TD] [TD]first node inclination change fuel is starting to be a serious concern wasted seat of pants may cost mission Bob and Bill consult with Jeb who is confident that he can mount a rescue mission if needed, so they decide to go ahead with the Gilly landing[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]346.8[/TD] [TD]47:06:24[/TD] [TD]Matched planes with Gilly[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]4.1[/TD] [TD]58:05:25[/TD] [TD]To be most efficient waited until a tiny course correction would bring the craft into the Gilly SOI[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]202[/TD] [TD]61:00:36[/TD] [TD]Initial orbit of Gilly[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]4.4[/TD] [TD]61:04:52[/TD] [TD]Circularize Gilly Orbit at 13Km[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]17.5[/TD] [TD]61:06:41[/TD] [TD]Kill all orbital velocity to drop straight to Gilly[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD] ~20 (based on fuel use) [/TD] [TD]61:07:03[/TD] [TD]Land do science Bill gets the EVA (bob did the eva's over Gilly and Eve) [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD] ~12 (as above) [/TD] [TD]61:07:20[/TD] [TD]Take off to 8km Apoapsis ballistic trajectory[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]12.2[/TD] [TD]61:07:31[/TD] [TD]Establish Gilly orbit[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]1.1[/TD] [TD]61:08:46[/TD] [TD]Circularize at 15km Look for easter egg on equator (but it isn't obvious from equatorial 15km orbit)[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]5.2[/TD] [TD]61:19:28[/TD] [TD]Escape Gilly SOI but now things are really tight for fuel Bill and Bob decide to wait until the return window to alter their near Gilly orbit[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]696.2[/TD] [TD]170:11:41[/TD] [TD]Establish grazing orbit (150km) to maximize hyberbolic velocity (Oberth effect) orbit needs to have its ascending leg roughly along vector for Kerbin Hohmann orbit Fuel situation critical, there is definitely going to be a problem by the time orbital plane adjustments will have to be made[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]179.3[/TD] [TD]170:17:44[/TD] [TD]Bill and Bob have all their digits crossed and recrossed this course looks like it will work, but after this burn they are down to just over 200 litres reaction mass and the next maneuver is the 2° plane change, no matter how they slice it they are not going to make it with the fuel left[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]362.5[/TD] [TD]180:11:45[/TD] [TD]Burn all the reaction mass, then switch to RCS and use 235 litres of RCS fuel to get the last 70m/s now down to 332 litres of RCS left The debates rage between Bill and Bob and via a high latency link with Jeb. The next maneuver would take 175.3 m/s but at that rate of RCS burn they wouldn't make it and that maneuver only establishes the cross into the Kerbin SOI. However there is a plan, building a new lander will be significantly cheaper than a rescue mission, if they transfer all the RCS to the 320 litres of tanking ringing the crew and science return capsule and block those tanks off from the systemic cross feed they have 12 litres left for the lander. They then could disconnect from it and go the rest of the way in the capsule. That lander's technology was out of date anyway, so many new developments since it was built.[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]175.3[/TD] [TD]182:02:30[/TD] [TD]After this burn the capsule just barely will cross into the Kerbin SOI and there is 196 litres of RCS left[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]60.1[/TD] [TD]182:06:53[/TD] [TD]A very carefully calculated and monitored burn that put the capsule on course for an 8km periapsis at Kerbin[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD]211:19:17[/TD] [TD]Landed on the grasslands at Kerbin with 148 litres of RCS remaining[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD=align: right]Total: ~4655[/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [/TR] </tbody>[/TABLE]

I really want trojan asteroids of Jool, including some small icy ones that we can move with a Jool gravity assist, and maybe an Eve and Mun one as well into Kerbal orbit to score big in a resource modelling future implementation.

"Jebediah was a Kerbal, Was a good friend of mine, Never understood a single word he said, but I helped him a drink his wine. And he always had some mighty fine wine!" Well Jebediah crashed in his space suit flying 53m/s into the rim of a crater within the Farside Crater. He had been waiting a couple of days for rescue and didn't want to walk 10Km so he elected to fly using his manuvering pack. As he would have run out of fuel at the 6 or 7 km mark going a survivable speed, he elected to exceed his suit tolerences. It was not his smartest move. His accelerated clone made a later mission to the Polar Crater and returned unscathed. He is currently standing in reserve for a potential rescue mission in case Bill and Bob have trouble at Gilly.

Personally I find the Kerbals remind me most of the Moties from Larry Niven's "The Mote in God's Eye"

Yup Kromey you have it in perfect detail. However while I did use RCS on the latest mission for the de-orbit burn, if you are a Heller for efficiency you can aerobrake the whole thing into an elliptical orbit, disconnect, then put the command module in permanent orbit while leaving the sample and personnel return vehicle to re-enter at the next periapsis. Oh and PS. the objective with this lander was to have as low a CG and wide a base as possible for landings on slopes.

So, having pushed to get the NERVA engine, I built and launched the lander pictured below, it is reusable in part because the Mk 1-2 command pod and it's science instruments and Jeb, Bill, and Bob return for maximum science points with their reports, while the lander (equipped with a Probodyne OKTO) waits in orbit. It made a maiden voyage and proof of concept flight to land in the Polar crater on Mun and brought back 600 tech points (enough for the last two science instruments which will be on board the next science core and will be used for my first interplanetary mission (Eve and Gilly), I won't get a surface sample or EVA report from Eve, but I will equip my refuelling ship for my lander with a probe that it can leave docked to the refuelling docking port to get atmospheric, gravitational, seismic, pressure, temperature, goo, and materials data from Eve's surface and do EVA and sample return from Gilly. So to send it out to Eve I will send up two rendezvousing vehicles one with mainly fuel and a parachuting probe with everything it needs to do the best possible unmanned science on Eve. And a revamped science and kerbal carrying Mk1-2 command module that will dock and eventually land back on Kerbal. Probably I will just send Bill and Bob, just in case there is trouble and I have to mount a rescue mission with the same class of craft. Note the ships name is "the NERVA that darn science lander"

I put maybe 100 hours in on 0.21.1 from when I discovered it and I am probably at 30 or so in 0.22 Oh and I unlocked the last level (8) of science so I can get more points on my next flight, I still have several areas at level 6 & 7 to unlock and a couple at 5 even.

I think rescuing your guy from a crashed and no long space worthy lander should be worth some thing too (and it turns out it is - you get as many points as you lost for crashing him in the first place ;-) )

Here is my current "science lander" and "flying gas station" the later gets into low Kerban orbit with about 200L of Oxidizer left in the bottom centre stage, while the lander made orbit with about half it's upper stage fuel left. Have been sending the upper stage of the "flying gas station" to Munar orbit to dock with the lander between landings and refill it.

Hmm, I finally landed a successful rescue mission on Mün however, with the rescue craft 10km away from Jeb in a 3km across sub-crater of the Farside Crater, and 6 km from Bill, Bill made it most of the way using his reaction pack with a couple of tumbles as the crater sloped up quicker than I realized. However, Jeb, confronted with a jet pack that would have run dry about 3 or 4 km from the rescue craft elected to exceed safe speeds rather than walk for 4km. Unfortunately I lost him in an 53m/s impact against the sub crater rim. So close to surviving too. However I know he would have wanted Bill and Bob to continue on with the science mission, and they are busy sampling and testing various regions of the Münar surface. If all goes well they should return with enough science to unlock a few more scientific instruments and maybe the NERVA engine to improve the efficiency of the scientific work. So far I sent 3 tankers flying to Münar orbit to support Bill and Bob in their mission. Though I think after one more landing they should return to Kerbin and cash in their science.

See my flag in my signature block below.

Why stop there? We need a Kerbal Oort cloud, nearby star systems, FTLD, asteroids (including Jool Trojans) along with multi vehicle simultaneous control and multi player. If what you suggest above takes 2-3 years, then yeah, I will still play for 10 more as the implement my suggestions.

I started with KSP in 0.21.1 and after figuring enough of stuff out (including MechJeb) I started building a space station. While I've never had a Kessler type incident, I do try to stay on top of debris and get rid of it (regularly de-orbiting or terminating it), I have had three accidents worth noting. As I started construction on the space station I brought up sub-assemblies and docking them into a space station. I also brought up Fuel, Oxidizer and RCS Fuel to keep the stations tanks topped up docking the tanker then un-docking and de-orbiting. As well I would bring up ships bound for deeper space and refuel at my station. A couple of times with outbound ships I undocked, used a little RCS to start moving off, then would go into MAP to plot the next manuever (even though I used mechJeb, I found the map display useful, if fatally distracting) because not once, but twice turned on full thrust from there without checking outside MAP what was in front of my space crafts nose, this resulted in collisions, once at more than 50m/s. After I was satisfied with my LKO station I decided I wanted to build a deep space craft (a super tanker/station that could fly to Jool with a bunch of landers and rovers), so when I started building that, it was attached to my space station. Soon the complexity of the combined object had maxed out my processing power and ram and I decided to separate them. I moved them just outside the limit of the [ and ] swap keys and the processing power demanded seemed much lower. However, I still managed a collision between a tanker bound for my station under rendezvous autopilot with my deepspace craft, it did enough damage to make me relaunch half of the major core, luckily as I had made the two halves symmetrical I had kept the design of the craft in my VAB files. Here is a picture of the ship and station when they were still docked:

You try to tell that to kids today and they don't even believe you. (As a related aside I saw John Cleese live Saturday night)

The near complete deep space explorer with 16 NERVA engines, 4 NERVA powered landers (that do double duty as main engines), 1 of the 2 Rover Landers and none of the two space planes. While it has accommodations for 21 Kerbonauts I was planning to launch her As soon as I can get the rest of what I need in the 0.22 TechTree I will rebuild her, using of course the new science devices, and probes for those places where taking off again is not a possibility. I still think it is the answer for the Jool subsystem. However it could be useful for any missions outside the Kerbal/Mün/Minmus system

Hmm, I really missed docking ports and made them a priority right after solar panels. To me refueling gives me incredible flexibility, so the docking port was needed before I even landed on Mün. Obviously, RCS is needed for the docking port to be usefull, and you get the fuel duct (makes launchers more efficient, and landers with a much lower CG).

Thanks for posting that Galileo, but having got as far as I have in Career Mode I am a little reluctant to add MechJeb to it, even with this, since at this point I simply have to master landing without it. So far Bob got stuck on my first landing on Minmus, the crash was one that didn't break anything off, until I tried to use reaction wheels to right the craft and broke it into an non-navigable state. Jeb flew to the rescue in a specially designed two capsule craft (I didn't have any other command modules available yet), and brought him home. Now I have Bob and Jeb stuck on Mün, Jeb wen't first, tumbled and I thought I had a plan to take off anyway, but smashed too much vital equipment trying to slide along the regolith to the crater edge take off. Bob wanted desperately to return the favour from Minmus, but his landing was even worse! For Münar landings, I have a much better lander based on the Mk1-2 command pod (high survivability!) and Bill is flying my 3rd one with better landing gear, he is in Münar orbit waiting for a fuel delivery. For Münar landings I had waited until I could drill down to the docking port to get refueling working. Hopefully I get the hang of landing this time

BostLab I am with you, I was a big mech jeb user, but now with career mode I want to max that out before I go back to it. In just a few hours of game time I have managed two cis-Munar flybys on 'manual', would have tried landing but neither time had quite enough fuel. Maybe in the meantime before I max the tree out, there will be a mechanism to upgrade the tree to include your favourite mods at a new level 9. As a user who started at level 0.21.1 I had just gotten to the point that I had a super deep space exploration craft with multiple NERVA powered long range landers, 2 lander/rovers, and two rocket-planes ready to go off to explore Jool and its satellites (which would have been my first venture outside the Kerbin/Mun/Minmas group). However, I now want to do that within the structure of career mode. I expect that by the time I am done that, MechJeb will be mostly redundant to me. Oh and silly observation, but I am dismayed by how far out in the tree docking parts are, previously I did a lot of assembly and refueling in LKO. Can't wait to do that again and I will be rushing down the tree to that right after the solar panels (76 science away from unlocking that) and luckily can pick up RCS along the way to docking ports. I guess RCS is an absolute necessity to docking anyway, though I know, with MechJeb I often 'forced' docking with a little main engine push from time to time.