DeMatt

Your own sense of fair play. Just as it is your decision to make one satellite to fulfill multiple "orbit a satellite here" contracts.

If you have upgraded the Astronaut Complex, then you can have your pilot "get out and push" using his EVA jetpack. Right-click the pod and EVA him, press Space to let go of the capsule, then press R to activate the jetpack. W/S boosts him forwards and backwards, A/D side-to-side, and Left Shift/Left Control up and down. Have your kerbal give the pod a push to bring it into the atmosphere - just watch your EVA fuel level and don't hesitate to return to the pod if it gets too low. That said, you don't need pilot-astronauts to steer your ships. Add a Probodobodyne OKTO (or better) and it will provide SAS functionality, letting your scientists and engineers concentrate on what they do best. Remember to add solar panels to power the probe core.

At the moment, you can't. The right-click windows are "attached" to the parts they control.

The force of drag (in stock aerodynamics) from a part is the mass of the part multiplied by its drag rating. So, yes, the 0.3 tonnes of one Mk16-XL does provide twice as much drag force as the 0.15 tonnes of one Mk2-R.

RCS thrusters are unaffected by objects blocking them, so it's purely cosmetic.

You might try looking at the KSP.LOG logfile, immediately after a crash. Also, try reading over the Support sticky.

In regards to the decouplers that Streetwind and Starhawk mention... it looks like you've accidentally clipped them into the RT-10s. So the bottom of the RT-10 is connected to the bottom node of the TR-18A, when you meant to attach it via the top node. As to the "drift" problem... you have very little turn authority as-is. The winglets, especially the ones on the RT-10s, are positioned way too far forwards to provide rotational force - move them as far down the boosters as you can. The fact that you have only the Mk1 Command Pod for torque suggests to me that you're going to have problems turning once you're out of the atmosphere. Consider adding Reaction Wheels. A few more comments... I also wonder at why you have the RT-10 + BACC combos, instead of a second pair of S1 SRB-KD25k's. What're the Separatrons (the ones on the lander) for, lighting? The Poodle is probably overkill for such a lander - an LV-909 may have only a quarter the thrust, but it's a quarter the mass. You probably don't need eight LT-1 landing legs, try six or even four. BACCs in general tend to be a poor choice versus the other two solid boosters; it might actually be worth seeing how well the rocket flies without that outermost quartet of BACCs. Final thought: you can post up your .CRAFT file on a filehosting service like Dropbox; if you aren't using mods, then other players can download it and try flying it themselves.

KSP does not currently understand how to use gimballing rocket engines that are "ahead" or "above" the center of mass. If you want to do the puller approach, turn off the gimbals on the engines and rely on reaction-wheel torque to steer your rocket. That said, in order to fulfill the contract, you merely have to stage the LFB in the proper situation. The contract doesn't say anything about the LFB actually working there, or whether it's been used beforehand. So you can A) fly it up empty, use it as a fuel tank for other engines, or C) light its engines by right-clicking it and selecting "Activate Engine" (thereby saving the stage-activation for the contract).

It's something to do with the way KSP handles being alt-tabbed out and back in. Alt-tabbing out of KSP (and back in) causes the bug; alt-tabbing out (and back in) a second time fixes the bug.

...if you know what you're doing, you can do a 3-seat Mun landing with only two buildings upgraded - R&D and the Launchpad. 'Cuz that's what my Mun lander turned out to need. I'm reasonably sure you'll need one of the two upgrades for a 3-Kerbal Mun landing, either R&D for docking ports or the Launchpad for a sufficiently large rocket.Easy Mode merely reduces the amount of grinding you need to do to get those upgrades. It doesn't affect the need FOR those upgrades.

...the definition of a lightning orbit is that its periapsis barely clears the atmosphere, while its apoapsis is as high out as practical.How far will the antenna reach, that's how high your apoapsis should be.

As previously noted, the Gravioli detector doesn't work "in flight". It needs to be "in space", if not specifically "in orbit". Luckily for you, the contract is merely distinguishing between "landed" and "not-landed" when it refers to "in flight". "In orbit" is perfectly okay as far as the contract is concerned. So don't overthink it.

No mods. The phantom force (and thus the time acceleration) is all AFTER passing 70km.

I recommend putting some form of propulsion (and control) on the beacons, instead of leaving them completely powerless. Even the smallest decouplers impart SOME force to both sides, otherwise they wouldn't separate. Make such propulsion strong enough for the beacons to do their own circularization maneuver, and then the deployer doesn't need to handle that - or backing down once the beacon's released.

Build a satellite of about 0.5 tons. Put it on top of an S1 SRB-KD25k (the biggest stock SRB), using a TR-2V decoupler. Tweak the SRB's thrust down to 60%, then launch straight up (hit T, hit Space, hands off the controls). The resultant flight will have the SRB burn to about 46 kilometres altitude, with an apoapsis just above 450 kilometres. So where's the phantom force, you ask? Well, if you let it stay in normal 1x time, while clear of the atmosphere, the apoapsis of our unpropelled satellite (and its discarded booster) will tick down by about 1 metre every four to five seconds. Switching to 5x time acceleration freezes the apoapsis, but reverting to 1x time causes it to resume shrinking. This behaviour was seen on v0.90.0.705 Beta, via Steam. Yes, this doesn't sound like much, but when you use the satellite's own engine to further increase altitude (e.g. to the Mun), it interferes with the high precision needed by such a bare-bones launch.

Asteroids act more like "an experiment you can do", rather than "a place to do experiments". Thus they do not affect other experiments. Can't answer your other question, but I suspect that they would not overwrite each other.

Have you A) provided fuel for your RCS blocks, in the form of Monopropellant tanks like the FL-R25, and turned them on using the R key (there's a green light on the upper-left side of the Navball that will light up)?

Imagine a top. Yes, the children's toy. Specifically, imagine a top like the one from Inception - with a thin but wide disc, and narrow handle. Imagine a dot of paint on one edge of the disc, so that when you spin the top, the dot goes around in a circle. This is a very simplistic way of imagining a circular orbit, with the dot of paint playing the role of your satellite. Hold the top straight up. This is a flat equatorial orbit. Now tilt it on its side. This is an inclined orbit. Tilt it further, more inclination. Where the inclined orbit crosses the equatorial orbit (or more precisely, the equatorial plane), is where the ascending and descending nodes are. Which one's which, you ask? Well, where's the satellite crossing going "up" and where's it crossing "down"? Now we get to the "longitude of ascending node". You know where the ascending node is on our top-model, yes? Where it is, along the equatorial orbit, is defined as the "longitude". For the obvious reason that "longitude" measures east-to-west angles and that is exactly what we're measuring here. It's just not referring to Greenwich or the Prime Meridian as the zero longitude. The "argument of periapsis" is essentially the same as the "longitude of ascending node", except that instead of defining where the ascending node is, we're defining where the periapsis is. If you've already visually matched the orbit pretty precisely, then you've also matched the "longitude of ascending node" (LAN) and "argument of periapsis" (LPE) "pretty precisely". A wildly incorrect LAN would certainly result in your orbit being improperly inclined relative to the target orbit, and a wildly incorrect LPE would have your periapsis being located far from the requested periapsis.

You see the fuel-tank icon in the upper-right corner of the screen? That's the Resources panel. You can hover your mouse over it to pop the panel open momentarily, or click on it to keep the panel open.Reminding you to open your solar panels is, unfortunately, beyond its capabilities. Assigning them to an action group in the VAB is generally a good idea.

...so what exactly isn't accurate and/or is flawed? I did a little testing and the only bug I found was that <1° latitudes registered as "North", regardless of whether they were actually north or south of the equator. You don't need the FCC calculator, just an understanding of how to convert from "degrees-arcminutes-arcseconds" to "degrees-decimals". Specifically:Read the DDD°MM'SS" number and split it into its three components. Divide the SS" number by 60 and add it to the MM' number. Divide the new MM.mmmmm' number by 60 and add it to the DDD° number. You now have a DDD.ddddd° number. As Heimdall5008 notes, you can just subtract the 360>longitude>180 number from 360, instead of this two-step calculation. If for some reason the longitude is greater than 360°, then you can subtract 360 degrees instead. This is wrong. To put it in perspective:270 degrees 20 arcminutes East is 20 arcminutes eastwards from 270 degrees East, 40 arcminutes westwards from 271 degrees East, and 40 arcminutes westwards from 89 degrees West. By your formula, we convert the displayed 270°20'0"E to 90°20'0"W, instead of the 89°40'0"W it actually is - a difference, on Kerbin, of almost 14 kilometres. I'm not sure what kind of three-dimensional surface lets you walk one more degree of latitude north, and end up eighty-nine degrees south, but it sure ain't a sphere. And I'm reasonably sure KSP doesn't flub up the latitude the way it does the longitude.

"Prograde", while in orbit, is a constantly changing vector. Jeb was therefore continually correcting the ship's heading. Although if you're actually burning 3-5 electric charge per second, I suspect you've piled too many reaction wheels onto your ship.

Was any part of the station launched before you accepted the contract? Also, you should take a screenshot of the Contracts tab while in-flight - it updates more promptly than the Mission Control screen.

KSP automatically assumes everything that A) isn't being piloted, isn't within 2.5 kilometres of the ship that IS being piloted, and C) is within at least 0.01 atmospheres (about 22 km altitude on Kerbin), crashes. Putting parachutes on your booster stages is therefore a waste of money and payload capacity. There are a couple mods which change this behaviour - StageRecovery comes to mind. You can then use a calculator to figure out just how much parachute your empty booster needs to land gently.

You're talking about this thread, right? The difference between apoapsis and periapsis (your "allowable variation of 2 meters") is not the same as the leeway you get for achieving said apoapsis and achieving said periapsis.Without looking at the save in question myself, I can't say what isn't properly triggering, since he says that the satellite is indeed orbiting in the right direction. My guess would be that the "undefined" Argument of Periapsis is incorrectly being required, given that his periapsis happens to be 180 degrees away from the designated periapsis.

To the best of my knowledge, no. I think that, if anything, the company is selected based on what's being tested, e.g. if it asks for you to test a Mainsail, then the game will set Rockomax as the company. But I'm probably wrong.