psyper

Its before the target it over head - pretty much before it comes over the horizon. 450km away from your rocket - if its in a 80km orbit - I'm sure my maths teacher is having a field day when I said when would I ever need Pythagoras theorem in real life!! I'm sure it makes a triangle somewhere that you could work it out. I think if you go in to map view and look down over the north pole with KSC at the 6 o'clock position I think your target needs to be about 9-8 o'clock position. It does matter how long your ship takes to get in to orbit of course so theres that to factor in. Its always best to launch too soon than too late as you can go above your targets orbit and wait for it to catch up to you. Just do a launch when the target is about 8:30 position and when you reach 10km do your gravity turn as normal. If you don't use mechjeb switch to map view until your rendezvous markers start to show up. The should start to show you the distance at closest approach from one of the markers - once it comes to about 20km you can go back out of map view and then switch your navball to target mode. You need to push your retrograde marker towards the retrograde marker or your target this will close the gap between your closest approach - keep them on top of each other and you will automatically circularise in line with the target - switch back to map view every now and then to check your closest approach time - you want it to be about 2minutes away - if its less keep burning full throttle and once it starts increasing start to drop off your thrust (remember dropping tanks will also drop your twr!). this is how I normally do it if I'm not doing a direct approach. Especially handy if your target it in LKO as you don't have to go in to the atmosphere to chase it down! If its too far ahead you can do a Hohmann Transfer where you circularise 10-20km outside your targets orbit - this will allow it to catch up with you. If you're able to - drop a manoeuvre node on your path and pull retrograde until the predicted path hits your targets path - then click on the node and move it around until your closest approach markers meet - thats where to drop down on to the targets orbit (DEATH FROM ABOVE) and dock with it.

Just came here to say the exact same thing!!

It should say how it needs to be 'triggered' in the contract details - normally it'll say that the part needs to be staged (hitting spacebar) for the test to run or you need to right click on it and choose run test as Xazh suggested. That way you'll know what avenue you have to look down to diagnose the issue. If its staging make sure that its the next stage to fire when all the boxes are ticked then activate it by pressing spacebar. If its right click-> run test - as Xazh suggested - right click on the part itself and there should be a run test option. Also double check that its the right part (some are named very similar).

For all of my different craft I name them after towns and villages in the UK. I have Avon, Bedford, Cambridge, Dover, Exeter etc (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/94911-Interplanetary-Mining-Corporation-Craft-Transporters-SSTO-s-and-more) /shameless plug. For each space station or outpost (mun or planetary base) I've used the surnames of the astronauts, Cosmonauts etc that have expeditions to the ISS - Shepherd, Krikalev, Gidzenko, Usachev, Voss, Helms, Culbertson, Tyurin, Dezhurov, Onufrienko & Waltz so far. I've also contemplated river names, large cities around the world, bridges etc etc. Its also worth noting that when europe colonised the new world they called a lot of their settlements after the towns they left behind which is why you have so many english town names in new england and the eastern seaboard. It stands to reason that you could do the same when colonising the kerbal system.

I've seen people fly planes in formation with the unfocused planes keeping their heading towards the target (the one they have focused) so it sounds like this is possible

I use mechjeb for its readouts rather than letting it fly - if my target is about 80km in orbit I use the distance from target to get it about 450Km away from my craft and then launch - do a normal launch, drop tanks and do a gravity turn at 10km - I also have closest distance to target and time to closest distance set up on a readout too so as I come in I watch my closest distant slowly drop as I speed up and get my ap close to 80km - at around 10km closest distance from the target I switch the navball to target mode and start to push my retrograde close to the retrograde of the target doing any inclination corrections along with this - keep your time to redezvous about two minutes - if its increasing, throttle down. Then when you're about 2km and physics kick in then its just a straight redezvous - I've done all this in about 8 minutes in game time. Your launch window does depend on how slow your launch is and how high the target is so you might need to revert and try a different distance to get it just right.

tapping the keys rather than holding them down is the thrust limit on eva controls - you shouldn't be holding them down unless you're taking off from minmus or trying to reach a ladder from duna. just tap once will get you very slowly moving in that direction tap the opposite to stop - i find eva is too fine sometimes and have to double tap just to get my kerbal going where I need him to go. Its like you're saying 'everytime I slam my foot on the brake pedal of my car the car just suddenly stops and I keep smacking my head on the windscreen - what I want is a control stick by the steering wheel where I can set how hard the brake is when I slam my foot down on the pedal' - just a light tap on the pedal is enough and you don't have the risk of having it set really low when all the cars in front of you stop and you really need to stop the car. right. now!

It was my intention to have one greenhouse to feed 2 and a bit kerbals - did I do it wrong??

Thanks for that - I'll certainly take a look and see if they have updated it to be compatible with the new TACLS rates

Theres some inline batteries, seperator and decouplers on curse. Think these are fan created though rather than porkjet or squads http://kerbal.curseforge.com/ksp-mods/225706-mk2-essentials

Close to the planet gives you an effect known as the oberth effect where you'll get a lot more 'bang for your buck' but I think that only counts for retro and prograde manoeuvres (anyone care to back me up or contradict me on this?) - normal and anti-normal (up and down) isn't really affected by how far away you are - so whatever orbit you're in it doesn't matter where you make the 90 degree turn - I choose periapsis (close to the planet) so that you have less chance of getting pulled in to the planet while making the manouver (when you perform it you should see your path go in to then back out of the planet as it turns around). Tutorials: Scott Manley is pretty much the go-to guy in ksp - any of his videos are pretty good - for moon rendezvous go for this one: That should link to the video with the whole tutorial series as a playlist so use them as much as you like.

The stock 6x1 panels are pretty close to this if you want to remain stock though (I know op wants mods but someone else might be interested in doing this solely in stock)

This. Once you get an encounter left click on where the target planet or moon is and choose 'focus view' on the context menu - this will change your view to the planet or moon itself and will show you where your orbit will come in at. If you want to go counter-clockwise (normal prograde orbit) you want to come in on the right hand side when looking top down outside of kerbins orbit (behind the planet or moon) or the left hand side when coming inside of kerbins orbit (in front of the planet). If you reach the planet or moon's SOI and you're on the wrong side then its easier to correct your direction there by placing a manoeuvre node a couple of minutes in front of your craft and then either pulling retrograde (backwards) which will slow your ships speed toward the target so it moves across your path or pull the radial out maker to pull your direction to the right (reverse this when heading in to the inner solar system). This will use up little dv compared to doing this once in orbit. However, if you finally do find yourself in a orbit opposite to what you want or you need to change your orbit for whatever reason you use far less dv / fuel if you do the change in two manoeuvres - set a node down at your periapsis and pull the anit-normal or normal markers (pink ones) until your orbit is in a polar orbit (90 degress to your path) - this will also have the effect of sending your apoapsis out away from the planet/moon - don't worry about this unless its out side its SOI - if this is the case just pull on the retrograde marker until it drops back in - once you have a 90 degree orbit execute it and then put a manouver node in at your ap marker and do a similar thing there too to bring your orbit going the opposite way - you can now use the retrograde marker to bring your orbit in to your desired orbit and then circularize as normal - although you're doing several manouvers they will use less dv than just turning around and gunning it until you're going in the opposite direction. Edit: left click will give you the menu to focus view on the planet or moon you click on them - not right

DON'T DOOOO IT!! - send a rescue mission with more fuel and an empty seat in the module and rescue him - if you don't have life support mods then congratulations you've just started up a Mun colony - you can rescue him whenever you get the right skills, parts, funds!

Dear Squad - now that we have the 2nd batch of porkjet's mk3 parts to be added please please please can we have a plane icon added? my ssto's need some love and looking like lander or craft icons aren't cutting it for them - they feel cheated out of the respect they deserve.

What mods are you using?

34 Craft KSP 32bit Pentium G620 2.60 Ghz 8 Gb Ram 64bit Windows 7 GeForce GTX 660 I'd have a lot less craft but using the fineprint mod puts a lot of satellites and stations in your game. Gonna start decommissioning the old sats and merging the stations is to a couple of big ones around each body.

I'm creating a basic greenhouse to replace all of the converters so it converts carbon dioxide in to oxygen, waste water in to water and waste in to food. I don't want it to be 100% conversion of course which i think the converters do anyway. Its basically all the converters and their weight and electricity needs in one single part (using the defunct lacuna greenhouse parts). I googled around but can only find conversions for the old TACLS so I took the latest version converter files and 'mashed' all the values together - I think I basically got them all down but need someone to help check the maths: MODULE { name = LacunaGreenhouseConverter ShutterAnimationName = door // Number of units to convert per day (24 hours) ConversionRate = 2.1 // A comma separated list of resources to use as inputs. // For each resource, list the resource name and the amount (which // is multiplied by the conversionRate) CelssInputResources = CarbonDioxide, 261.78, WasteWater, 1.98, Waste, 0.56, ElectricCharge, 12960 // A comma separated list of resources to output. Same as above // but also specify whether it should keep converting if the // resource is full (generating excess that will be thrown away). CelssOutputResources = Oxygen, 273.843, true, Water, 1.6182, true, Food, 0.288, true } // Resource stores // Each greenhouse can theoretically hold one week of LS stores and/or waste, // rounded off. Comes half-full. RESOURCE { name = CarbonDioxide amount = 0 maxAmount = 1800 } RESOURCE { name = WasteWater amount = 0 maxAmount = 10 } RESOURCE { name = Waste amount = 0 maxAmount = 4 } RESOURCE { name = Oxygen amount = 1100 maxAmount = 2200 } RESOURCE { name = Water amount = 6 maxAmount = 12 } RESOURCE { name = Food amount = 1.5 maxAmount = 3 }

I've currently been working on my Reverse Rescue SSTO Station. After my third rescued kerbal I decided it was time to build a more permanent system to the contract. Instead of launching a space plane from KSC, rendezvousing with the kerbal and bringing him back down and recover the craft I created a ssto space station with enough fuel to keep my two planes topped up and a hitchicker can for the pilots to live in while they wait for their next rescue mission. When a kerbal gets stranded the next pilot on the roster Eva's out of the can (I know I can transfer but there is just a trust beam between the two craft let's be realistic here!), undocks the fully fuelled craft, does a phased orbit manoeuvre using nukes to intercepted with the stranded kerbal, deorbits and drops in to the KSC. From there he drops off the stranded kerbal who is then recovered to complete the mission and if there is a crew change this is done via buggy. The plane then launches back in to space with less liquid O2 weighing it down and use the remaining fuel to dock back with the station ready for the next stranded kerbal. The station has an engine system to either transport it to the stranded kerbal so the space plane is fully fuelled to take him home or can be sent on to laythe as a crew transporter between laythe low orbit and any future colonies. The two planes are 'Tail-sitters' as I'm rubbish at runway launches. This also has the advantage of being able to land them on a moon with no atmosphere or terrain without a suitable landing strip.

Cat: What, am I the only sane one here? Why don't we drop the defensive shields? Kryten: A superlative suggestion, sir, with just two minor flaws. One: we don't have any defensive shields. And two: we don't have any defensive shields. Now I realise that, technically speaking, that's only one flaw; but I thought it was such a big one, it was worth mentioning twice. Knew what it was from but had to google the quote

I've been getting an interesting little bug and I think I've nailed it down to this mod :/ I use this mod quite a lot with transporting fuel around the system - I have miners which has a high number so they pump to fuel transporters who has radial tanks that has the next number down, they transport to a station in low mun/minmus orbit who when docked transfer the fuel from the transporters to the station, then I have transporters which ferry that fuel to stations in low kerbin orbit and lastly they transfer the fuel to any ships that dock with them. So I have a lot of different tanks with different values and balances. Every now and then I get a craft doing various tasks suddenly spiral out of control - after checking the fuel balance is okay I noticed that one of the engines was flickering its power back and forth for no reason - if I reduce its twin down to 50% trust it would even out the flickering but wasn't a solution especially if another engine started having the same issue. The craft were built with small radial tanks with engines stowed under them - everyone assumed it was either a flame out issue (on nukes) or that I had mucked up the symmetry. I would swap out the bugged out craft and it would behalf normally. Well last night I was doing a landing and I was monitoring my fuel on one of my craft and while it was landing it started spinning out of control as soon as one of the middle tanks had depleted - this gave me a clue as to what could be causing it and after a couple of crashes and reloads I was mucking about with the fuel mix moving fuel from one tank to the other using the fuel pump settings. At one point I turned off all the auto-pump settings on all the tanks and the craft righted itself straight away. Please bear in mind that I have looked in to this in great detail and all of the radial tanks show plenty of fuel in them whether I have the balancer on or not - its just used for when the ship docks it automatically fuels up or offloads its fuel depending on the type of craft. So its not a fuel balance issue per se. I'm wondering if there is perhaps a bug in the fuel pump which zeros out the fuel for a millisecond and sputters out the engine? More details and images on this thread for it: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/100108-Nuke-engines-keep-cutting-out-now!

Spot on!! I went straight to bed after posting and as a dozed off in to blissful sleep with the back of my mind mulling over the munbase a little voice said - the lab was part of an old base you fool. Undocked it this morning and the contract completed straight away. Thanks guys!! Love this mod btw and just read that its been integrated in to stock - well done!!

Sure I'm doing something wrong here... but I can't see what it is. Landed on mun, check. land base, check, has power, check. has docking port, check. has antenna, check. supports 15 kerbals, check. neutralise controls for 10 seconds, check... nothing. Its new since I accepted the contract (is there anyway to confirm that in the persistence file?) Edit: to save anyone trailing through for the answers - one of the modules was from an older existing base - after undocking it the contract completed.

Another option is the Kerbal Alarm clock. All you then need to do is to set up an alert for the transfer (which the alarm clock will automatically calculate for you) and it will count down and alert you when its ready to transfer. Its also valuable to alert you when any of your craft enter any SOI changes or nearing manoeuvre nodes or rendezvous with other craft etc etc.

AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME!!! well done Love to see these and always expecting more - so do some more I'd like someone to do a series a cross between nassault and scott manley - have a big epic series with a goal but in this sort of style - well theres the suggestion. Also - the imgur album tag is [imgur ]album[/ imgur] (without spaces so yours is [imgur ]srtLN[/ imgur]