jsfalconero

If you're looking for a good video tutorial I'm going to recommend one by Scott Manley (who gets a lot of love around here because he's usually pretty good about these sorts of things) that should help with the concepts and provide a decent visual walkthrough of the process. I can't remember if he says it in this video, but one bit of advice that I think is quite helpful is to try for Minimus first -it's just easier to land on than Mun. Here's the video...

That's Ok, it's a big daunting universe out there. If you can make a stable orbit, try making a flyby of the mun. The idea is that you want to get close enough to get captured by the mun's gravity well then just sail on past and collect science the whole way. To do that set up a maneuver node on your Kerbin orbit such that the angle made by mun, kerbin, and your spacecraft (With your craft at the base, Kerbin in the middle, and mun to the right) then increase the prograde vector by around 1000m/s. Your orbit should cross the mun's and as long as your planes are aligned you should get an encounter. You can fine tune it until you're happy with everything then execute the node. You'll go flying off to the mun and pick up a ton of science if you play your cards right. Then once you escape the mun you can burn retrograde to drop your periaps into the atmosphere and boom! Successful mun flyby! Good luck! Let us know how it goes!

The flameout threshold for the turbojet engines is roughly 0.01 intake air per engine. If you click on the resources indicator during flight you can watch the intake air drop toward that point. Of course, intake air is also a function of speed/altitude. Generally I allow myself a safety margin of around 0.02 when I'm at my jet service ceiling. Another trick if you have 4 or more jets (generally not a good idea, but sometimes necessary) is to toggle one set of jets off on the same action group as your rocket engine -you can sometimes gain a bit more jet they thrust that way before you need to kill the second set of engines and close your intakes. You'll need the rocket engine(s) firing though, as usually one pair of jets won't be enough to keep your TWR high enough to offset drag.

I don't think you can view them aside from modding -at least not easily. One option might be too quick-save (F5) then press your number keys to see what they do then quick-load (F9, press and hold). It's kind of silly but it would work. If you've the time you could also go back and load the craft into the VAB/SPH and have a look directly at the action groups there.

Ooh, along the lines of another moon/Magic Boulder, we could have a moon orbiting another moon... They could call it... moonception!

You know what would be an awesome Christmas present? Magic boulders for everybody! Ed: Blast! Ninja'd again! Brain, y u not be faster!

Adding to the above, they've recently included a patcher (under the main KSP folder or accessable through the launcher) that will update the game without disturbing your current saves. As long as an update doesn't break saves you can update that way and keep your saves without any added effort. Personally I like to start fresh each time, but it's another option for next time. Also, you can move individual crafts between saves by looking in the ships folder (under VAB or SPH) finding and moving the craft. That way you can build a ship in one save then launch it in another, or build a ship you like and use it in all your saves.

Yes, it's all about the atmo. When you have a craft with an orbital path that takes it within the atmosphere of any planet (or a certian radius of any airless world) the game assumes that it will be slowed down by drag (or hit something) and be destroyed, parachutes notwithstanding. Thus the wayward craft/debris are summarily deleted. The exception to this is craft that are within 2500m of the craft you are actively controlling. Within that distance the game will start calculating the actual physical forces on the craft rather that making assumptions about what it will do. So as long as you either stay within 2.5km of the 'science bombs' or follow each one down (provided the next one doesn't enter the atmosphere until the first one touches down) your idea is quite solid. Have fun with it, you should be able to rack up a LOT of science that way! Ed: curse you fat fingers! Your sloth has permitted the ninjas entry!

Congratulations Lieutenant! Same goes to all the first time planetary landers on this thread. Keep up the good work! Once you've mastered the art of interplanetary transfers the whole system opens up to you. Are you in career or sandbox mode? I'll be honest, I literally visited every moon in the game before I even tried for Duna on my career save. You're quite likely doing better than I am!

Blast! Forgot the Kraken! Thus... To the tune of Jingle Bells: Kraken strikes, Kraken strikes, sometimes people whine Sitting on the launching pad and everything's on fire, oh 666 666 altimeter reads Now I'm at the speed of light on an impact course for Eve

To the tune of "Oh Come Oh Come Emanuel" Oh come oh come recovery crew And save me from this desolate moon I really want to make it home 'Cause all my snacks are now gone Chorus: Rejoice, Rejoice, Jebediah's on his way With chips and salsa I will eat today Oh come and bring your extra delta-V And land within 1km from me If need be I'll extreme EVA To get the snacks you've toted all this way Chorus I probably could make it home from here I've been sitting here for over a year I could try to throttle up and leave But Alas I'm not Scott Manley Chorus Oh Jebediah how did you crash too? All that I saw was your can of Goo Go flying past at escape velocity Now Where's the snacks 'cause I'm hungry

There's something weird going on with the brakes at the moment to where they don't fully work unless you click on them (bottom right of the altimeter). Time was that you could press B and toggle the brakes but now I think it's just a momentary pulse of break power. Typically you should be able to stop within a few hundred meters of the point where you touch down. The other option is to have an intentional crash, but one that's survivable. What does it matter if the plane is destroyed (at least at this point) at least you get to see the Easter Eggs! Good job on getting to the island runway. Keep it up and you'll be flying to other spac... other Easter Eggs.

Everyone's given good advice. I'm by no means an expert pilot, but I've mucked around enough with SSTO's and Seaplanes to figure out a thing or two. SAS was one thing I'd forgotten. It's immensely helpful, but don't forget that when you make a major attitude adjustment you probably want to hit "f" to reset it, otherwise it will tend to drift back toward your original heading. That's in the air. When it comes to landing, I wouldn't try for the landing strips straightaway. Instead get the feel of landing by shooting for the plains around KSC. The first thing to master is just 'hitting the ground without HITTING the ground." Once you can reliably land on a flat(ish) plain then it's time to try lining up with the runway and coming in for a landing. Start at KSC (make a short flight out, maybe 15km, then turn around and come back the way you came), try to land from about 1km in altitude (the runway is at around 80km, so bear that in mind) and once you can do that, THEN try for the island runway. The island is rough because it has hills around it, and the strip is about half the length of the KSC runway. I still have trouble with it and I can land a plane on the KSC runway from about 1km out and 30km in altitude (going 1200m/s) but that was foolish to try and I don't recommend doing it.

Yeah, crashing planes is easy, flying them is a little harder. The thing is that engineering plays a role as well. If your airframe is not well balanced you can easily turn too quickly and lose control. It can even happen in stable aircraft like the Aeris (as the wreckage scattered all over my spaceport can testify) but happens less frequently. One suggestion I have is to try using fine controls (bound to the Caps Lock key) -you can still oversteer using it, but it should lead to less "instant death" incidents. The other thing I suggest is the banking turns that have been suggested elsewhere. Roll to between 45 and 90 degrees (I'm going to assume 90 since I tend to be a little aggressive with my rolls and always wind up at or past 90) then pull up. Your nose is at 90 deg to the horizon, so up is actually sideways. If you find that your nose is dropping you can turn left or right (with the tail... a or d depending on the direction of the turn) which when rolled 90 degrees becomes up and down. Airplanes love to move the nose up and down relative to themselves since they have the wings to really help move along that axis. When flying it helps to remember that and try to steer by making "up" move you in the direction you really want to go. Hope that helps! Also, I would avoid trying to land until you're confident in your ability to steer in flight. But that's a lesson for another day

I just had a go at reverse engineering it. My center of lift wasn't too far forward. My first attempt had too little dV -had to circularize with RCS, but it made it. Fun little plane, but it is a tad tricky to fly, and it can't glide to save your life (RIP Jeb, lol)

lol, I suppose it's sort of like suggesting a 'proper' ascent profile for a rocket. There are lots of things people agree on (Gravity turn... it's a good thing), but heaven help you if you think you're going to get away with posting the 'best' ascent profile (don't try, trust me on this, that's a can of worms right there). On the flip side to what I said before, looking at the ship Brofessional posted earlier makes me yearn for the days when my SSTO's weren't stupidly overcomplicated and delicate. I've never built one quite that simple, but I seem to have forgotten the rule of maximum parsimony in favor of, "if I do it this way, I can do THIS thing that SSTO's weren't meant to do."

Piloting alone is seldom sufficient to cover for bad engineering. It IS possible to build an SSTO with only four intakes, but it needs to be both built and flown differently. You're probably looking at a smaller craft, one jet engine, higher TWR on the rocket and more dV in the rocket stage, correct? Different SSTO concepts are going to require markedly different construction styles to be viable regardless of how they're piloted. I wind up airhogging (to my shame) because it allows me to build larger craft which adds versatility. I don't know how the SABRE engines will change that for my play style, but I know I'm looking forward to it.

The dV maps assume that you are using transfer windows -times when the planets are aligned such that the minimum amount of fuel is needed to reach the target. I sometimes ignore them but the result is that it can take stupid large amounts of dV to make the transfer. It takes patience to wait for the windows but you CAN make it to Duna for 130 dV. I don't know if it's equally efficient to burn out of Kerbin's SOI then time warp to the window, but that might be a way to cut down on the waiting.

What Scrog said. Personally I think SQUAD can do what they want with their company and they don't owe me one whit. I suppose it speaks to their credit that the community cares enough about the team to wonder about that sort of thing, but we need to be careful not to demand so much that the team fails to function properly because of it. As for the moderators, I'm fairly certain they are kept plenty busy with all the threads in need of moving and necro threads to kill (and who doesn't appreciate someone skilled at killing zombies?) to do a bunch of posting not related to that. I know I couldn't keep up with what they do and still talk as much as I do. So basically, it's OK, the Devs are working feverishly to bring you 0.23, and the Mods are real people just like you (I think at least, maybe SQUAD unlocked MechMod in their programming tech tree... lol... *don't ban me*)

I believe you are looking for ISP not dV. Typically dV is directly related to the mass of your ship (since most of its early mass is fuel), but if you're looking for a small ship that still has a lot of dV that's a question of efficiency -given as Specific Impulse. In the rocket equation your dV comes from tossing a lot of high energy particles out the back of your ship as quickly as possible. The change in weight part of the equation serves to determine how much dV you get for the force you just created (by tossing things out the back), but also to determines the total mass of fuel that gets tossed. Where ISP comes in is how efficiently your engine can take fuel and turn it into force. Two equal rockets with different engines will have different dV based on each engine's ISP. If you're going for efficiency you might have a look at the NERVA for your circularization/transfer burns.

Then there was the time I tried to imitate something I saw someone do on YouTube. Again, the results are predictable. No one important died. Personally, I still call that a win.

This was a long time ago now (notice the "End Flight" button...) but I once had some hijinks in the VAB and decided to go with it. This was the result. Jeb did not go to space that day.

They have that, I believe. Check in the list when you recover a flight. It should say something like: Recovered a flight from X place -then list out some science gains.

Welcome to KSP then iMA! May all your launches begin and end with fiery explosions. Personally I'm looking forward to how they will refine the tech tree. The good news is that as it stands the tech tree may need a lot of improvement but it's going to get them too. I like your thoughts on it and I certianly hope the Devs keep them in mind. I too can't hardly wait until we get 'missions' to run, "We choose to go to Minimus in this decade and to do the other things, not because we want cheesecake (Ed. Note: it is heavily implied that Kerbals initially believed Minimus to be made of a sugary confection) but because it is hard!" The game's certianly come a long way since I started playing (around 0.18), and even longer before then. As you noted there will be several game changing additions as they improve career mode -money, missions, constructible/destructible buildings (I'm hoping that goes for the second space center and the island runway), possibly the addition of teloscopy. A LOT of fun stuff is coming down the pipeline, so you picked a fun time to join. Now get out there and blow some stuff up... I mean, launch safely and conduct all your missions in a professional manner

I think you're probably not being ambitious enough. Try taking your 104 on a Mun flyby. You don't need to land, or try for science spam, just fly by, read the materials bay and the goo can, take a crew report and an EVA report then fly home. Without batteries it's not worth the risk trying to transmit all that data anyway, so just point at the Mun (at the right time naturally) and do your burn (maybe do some science transmission during the burn) then turn everything off and coast... Maybe you even set up a free return from the Mun. That should be well within the capabilities of a ship at this point in the tech tree. If that mission doesn't net you at least 100 science I'll be shocked. Then maybe a Minimus flyby, or pick up solar panels and go for a landing somewhere or send out satellites or probe landers or probe landers on Duna or Eve or who knows where. You can do it, you've just got to be willing to take that first giant leap (and then not forget about space exploration entirely, the Mun may not be made of cheese but it's probably worth going back anyway, but that's entirely off topic )