Louella

Today, I built a rescue vehicle to rescue a Kerbal who had somehow become trapped in low orbit (presumably from a rival space program). After much confusion regarding how to make a rendesvous and several attempts to match orbits with sufficiently low approach speed... Jack Kerman has now joined our space program and is on a return to Kerbin.

Today, I have been making money and science through aeroplane surveys of Kerbin. I now have a two seat aeroplane capable of a fair long distance flight, and of making ground surveys, through having parachutes on it, so if the landing zone is a bit small, I can parachute the plane in. The 2nd crewman is an engineer, so he can repack the chutes, so if there's room to take off, we can go survey other zones. And then, I got a parts test contract, to test a Kerbodyne KR-2L rocket engine on a sub orbital trajectory. The funds advance was 226k funds and completion reward was 695k funds, and I did it with a 65k test ship, most of which survived to be recovered ! So I really made a big profit today

I got it to work today. I deleted all the parts from the KSP folder, and then used the patcher to restore them. Might have been something to do with that. Even though my ship I was using was made after I accepted the contracts, I built a new one, so it might have been that as well. Either way, it works now, so \o/

there's the screenshots of the contract, and the ship I built in flight. as far as I can tell, it's the right engine, and it meets the height and speed requirements, but it doesn't fulfil the contract, and I don't know why ?

I've started playing again after nearly a year, and am finding it difficult and I don't know why.

I've been having problems trying to complete a few contracts, one for testing a Seperatron, another for the lvt-45 engine. All the requirements are green, I activate the engine, it doesn't register as completing the contract, and I don't know why. The parts are in their own stage, I get the craft to a point where altitude and speed requirements are met, I activate them, and it doesn't work.

Today, I did the scenario mission, where the Kerbal 11 is in munar orbit, and the lander undocks, lands, takes off and docks with the command module, transfers the crew, then the command module undocks from the lander to return to Kerbin. First time I've ever done a successful undock, land, rendesvous, redock mission \o/

Hello Something I feel, is that there doesn't seem to be much reason to build small things. Like, if I wanted to build a space probe to fly past Duna, then I'd have the probe core and the antenna, a girder segment to stick some solar panels on, the batteries, the instruments, and then a small fuel tank and small engine. Launch it into space with first stage to get out of atmosphere, second to set course towards Duna, and the probe's own engine for any course corrections, to maximise mission time over Duna. But, looking at the various craft other people have flown, it seems like it's easier to build a colossal deep space probe, with all sorts of extra doodadery on it. Multiple science modules, huge batteries, all that sort of thing. Like, in my thread about mun rovers, my rover seemed to be a lot smaller than the other things people had built. e.g. for rovers, does anyone even use the smallest wheels ?

Made some progress with things. Here's a pic of a 100% successful deployment of a rover to Minmus http://i.imgur.com/V7VUjzd.png You can see the little rocket pack to lift the rover off the landing stage. It's still a bit easy to roll the rover, especially in the lower gravity... http://i.imgur.com/dYkRkA4.png And here's the end result. Landing a crewed mission to drive around performing Science! http://i.imgur.com/4aUJ9jq.png Success \o/

if the surface is too cratery, it limits the purpose of mun rovers, unless the biome map is going to become a lot more complex. that is, if a rover cannot exit the crater it lands in, and is thus trapped in the same biome, then, what is the purpose of a rover mission, instead of a simpler static probe lander?

I haven't yet unlocked a great many parts, and this was my first ever rover project in KSP As you might be able to guess from my first pic, landing it right-side-up on the Mun took a bit of doing. Underside of the rover had a tiny fuel tank with 4 tiny rockets to lift it off the rest of the lander (assuming falling over counts as "landing") "but the engineers in the vehicle assembly building said 20 m/s was the maximum speed!" was the test driver's report, I think... I wonder... is there a celestial body that you can land on, that has such weak gravity that it's possible to accidentally drive a rover into low orbit ?

Hello I have landed an autonomous (but crewable) rover on the Mun. http://i.imgur.com/6eCXbg0.png The idea being to send an unpiloted mission carrying the rover, and later crewed missions to do more Science, with the rover. However, I have found the rover to be somewhat... difficult to drive on the Mun... http://i.imgur.com/ij92wwt.png I didn't think it was going all that fast... maybe 5 m/s Ground testing of the rover was also somewhat dangerous, as a Kerbal who was testing the accessibility of the seat and the other controls of the rover, managed to roll the machine over while attempting to turn. I thought he was dead, as he was lying flat out on the runway, but "recover craft" seems like he was OK. The aeroplane the Kerbal was using also rolled into the sea, I think he left the brakes off, but that's another story. So, is it something that I need to change with the Rover design ? is the centre of mass too high ? Or is the munar surface just hazardous and more care and attention is necessary ? would it be the reaction wheels in the probe core that are making it unsafe to turn ? I've noticed the lights don't reflect off the munar surface all the time, not sure why. Any amusing rover/autonomous rover stories of your own ?