HavelockVetinari

I installed the "quantum struts revisited" mod and then went looking in the Parts to find the strut gun, nothing there so thought I'd sort out my wobbly ship issue with KAS. Checked on the map do discover my Lander, rover and planetary Tug had disappeared from LKO. Seems the Kraken has come visiting while I was away. Luckily I had a quicksave and F9 brought Jeb and Bob back with ship intact. Had another look at it and decided that I needed to rethink my strategy so I deorbited the tug followed by the lander and went through a practice landing back at Kerbal space center. Good thing too because for some reason the staging of my parachutes was messed up so I had to separate the capsule and manually deploy my chutes seconds from impact. Bob and Jeb got back in one piece but if I had tried to land on Duna the boys would now be stuck. Tried to build an even larger launcher to get the lander and enough fuel up in one go. This is proving to be a challenge to get into orbit because my middle stage just doesn't have enough power. I am trying to put up a large lander, rover and a lot of fuel. I think it's about 238 tons Now thinking that I maybe I should send a few science probes ahead first, get enough science and then send the boys when I have heavy rocketry on the Tech tree. or maybe I should just burn the fuel in the transfer stage launching it and refuel in orbit before pushing on to Duna. Decisions, decisions.

That is a monster. When you said a single tank of Gas what you should have said was a really REALLY large tank of gas. Good effort, Haven't yet managed to land a spaceplane successfully. But I did produce a rather nifty ejection system for Jeb for when things went wrong. So far he's survived with his grin still intact. 15+ g flat spins don't seem to bother him.

My initial post should say working my way up the v0.23 Tech tree NOT the 0.24 tech tree. I haven't yet managed to get my hands on a dodgy copy of 0.24.

I won't be returning the lander to Kerbin but the Kerbal will "Hopefully" be coming back. Your two tiny rovers on the Mun are great and have given me some inspiration for some more far flung missions. Haven't got any atomic power packs yet so it will have to be solar panels for now.

Well I started trying to make a small rover and it was a bit too big to fit under my lander so I sort of cheated and used the Bobcat MkV Ant as my rover. I love the excellent models with full IVA that Bobcat has made. It's really small and adding a few solar panels, a battery and an Antenna is all I had to do to it. I figured it's only cheating "a bit" because I plan on manually getting the lander to Duna and returning it to Kerbin. I like the rover you have built But I wanted something that I could fit a Kerbal on rather than a robotic rover which is why I used the Ant. I have got a folding 6 wheel lander "Using Infernal Robotics" but it's a bit big and I have to wait until I'm a bit further up the tech tree with bigger rocket parts before I can start launching large rovers and Habitats to the outer planets.

After landing on the Mun and Minmus without a hitch I thought I'd have a go at getting a lander, 2 Kerbanauts and a rover on Duna. Built the lander with the rover attached to the bottom and practiced flying the thing and landing it safely at home. Tried to get it into orbit, not enough DV so added some more solid boosters. Now it almost makes it to Low kerbin Orbit. I landed in the Desert without using the Parachutes and went on a drive in the rover, took some samples and Jeb and Bob took a dip in an Oasis. Got a fair bit of science for the Desert Biome. Next built a launch vehicle which I thought would get me to Duna but I don't think I have enough fuel, so I left it in Orbit. Meanwhile I built a larger planetary tug which definitely has enough juice to get to Duna and back. After launching that docked in orbit, made the calculation for the burn to Duna and waited for the correct planetary alignment. Started my burn and the docked ship started wobbling alarmingly and the DV actually went up rather than down. Tried ramping up the thrust slowly but the oscillation just got worse and worse and then I ran out of fuel and my engine shut down where I noticed the fatal flaw in my design. My fuel pipes from the 4 big radial tanks were not connected, this must have happened while I was tweaking the design. So all stop and I started looking through the mods for a solution. Docking struts or Quantum struts would solve the wobble and KAS could be used to solve the fuel issue. So last night I started trying to get a repair mission started but decided to do something else so spent a few hours building planes and a flying bedstead and trying to land on the nearby island. I will hopefully get Jeb and Bob off to Duna today.

Hi folks I've been hooked on KSP since I started playing with V0.18. Actually I started on the demo version which at the time was pre 0.14 but within an few hours I decided that I had to have the full version which was mainly because of Mods. Stopped playing for a while and recently picked it up again and it's taking over my spare time, which is fine when you are away from home working. I use quite a few mods though mainly those that provide aesthetic improvements, extra information. I don't use anything that is too overpowered or cheats though Mechjeb is good for working out your DV and planning interplanetary manoeuvre nodes. So far I'm working my way up the 0.24 tech tree, Landed on the Mun and Minmus manually and made it home with fuel to spare. My landings on Minmus was the best I've done so far as I landed almost exactly where I wanted, though I suppose the lack of atmosphere and low gravity helped a lot. In V0.22 I made 2 landings on Minmus, one on the Mun and also made it to Eve and landed a couple of robotic probes, but I've since started again with V0.23. Been working on a lander & Rover combination for Duna, the lander with the Rover attached can almost make Low Kerbin orbit on it's own so it should be good to get me back from Duna. Built a space tug, launched the lander, docked another bigger space tug in orbit and can't get it on an escape trajectory because the docked lander is too wobbly. Planning to rectify this with a repair mission using KAS to add struts and some missing fuel lines and then Jeb and Bob will be on their way to the red planet. This is such a fun game and much better than simply killing things. Happy flying folks and may the Kraken never get you. Cheers HV.

Thanks a lot. Seems this can also release the kraken. Well it's the chance I'll have to take. Either that or deorbit, rebuild. I may still do that anyway because I've missed this Duna Launch window.

Thanks, i was was wondering if it was possible to use KAS but the description of the strut connector states that it can only be used for connecting together parts of the same ship and I wasn't sure if two ships docked counts as a single ship. I've also seen several posts from people claiming that KAS struts have caused their vessels to spontaneously explode. KAS it seems has the ability to release the Kraken. Still I will give it a go. I also noticed that I had forgotten to put fuel pipes between the 4 side mounted tanks to the main tank on my Planetary tug. Doh, they were there when I built the thing but when tweaking the design I moved the tanks and the pipes didn't reattach. So a small repair ship will be sent up with Some KAS parts and Bob can finally get out and make himself useful. He is supposed to be ships engineer.

Hi folks I've been trying to locate the docking strut plugin or failing that the Quantum strut plugin for days but every link I have tried takes me to the spaceport which now automatically directs me to Curse. Curse has very few mods on it yet and of course no docking strut or quantum strut plugin. I really want to take my ship and lander to Duna without the thing folding in two every time I try and thrust. The last thing I want to do is have to deorbit, redesign the thing, relaunch all the bits and re dock them in orbit. It probably wouldn't work anyway because I haven't got any docking struts. Still I suppose the docking practice is useful.