Ascension Islander

Share your ssto secrets with me Edit: Today I learned that you can't post in all caps

Wonder if theres a way to automatically pull the data from a persistence file?

1. Download FAR 2. Try again

Thanks guy. Yes, a precision landing would have made my descent a much more hair-raising one. I was just going for an in-one-piece.

While this will pitch/roll your EVA'd kerbal, it will reset itself as soon as you try to maneuver again.

Now that I'm home, here's my completely automated unmanned eve descent with RT2, FAR, and DRE:

I'm telling you those smart parts are the way to go. Took me two tries and the only reason the first one screwed up was because I forgot to activate the smart parts

Hodo, I think you're the only other person I know to have accomplished an unmanned landing on eve with remote tech 2 and signal delay combined with deadly reentry. I'll post my pictures once I get home. Let me recommend the smart part pack that comes with the space shuttle engines pack (also available separately). I was able to just drop the probe in at ~70km pe and the smart parts did all of the parachute/landing leg/antenna/solar panel deployment and heat shield decoupling based on altitude sensors and timer delays. OP, maybe you should try installing FAR. It makes the atmospheres much less soupy, and I imagine is what allowed myself and Hodo to do it successfully.

I've found that with slight adjustments to throttle and pitch, it's not that hard to get a decent apo/per combo without cutting off the engines. The trick is to watch your time to apoapsis. Pitching down past the horizon and backing off the throttle both will decrease it. Try to get it to count down to zero at the same time as your eccentricity reaches zero.

This is kind of a big question... (Will add links when I get home) If you're going for challenge and realism, I recommend FAR and Deadly Reentry for accurate aerodynamics and reentry heating. Also RemoteTech 2 and TAC Life Support make for a good combo that gives purpose to unmanned missions. Kerbal Engineer Redeux provides much-needed informational displays. Mechjeb does as well, plus it has an unparalleled set of autopilots. KW Rocketry adds an amazing set of well-balanced rocket parts that both work well and look great. It also provides fairings that are all but essential when using FAR. The B9 aerospace pack adds some stellar (ha) spaceplane and miscellaneous structural parts, but requires some hotfixes to work in .23 I'm really just scratching the surface here. Your best bet is to browse the add-on showcase to see what interests you and is popular with the community. Just remember that these are free mods, so don't expect 100% bug-free performance.

There's gonna be a lot of people screaming at their computers when the aerodynamics model gets updated

Thanks, will confirm when I get off work

Second option. Build fly dream is the best fit so far, but it needs to showcase the construction for more than a second or two, as well as be updated for the look of .23 Edit: like the above "Science," but with a bit more polish. I might just be picky though.

Anybody else having trouble getting kerbal engineer to show delta-v with these engines?

I'd like to have a video that I could use to introduce a friend to KSP. Ideally it would be concise yet reasonably thorough while also being entertaining. If you know of such a video, please share it here.

Alt+F12 brings up the debug menu. On it is an option called 'Allow part clipping.' Click it, but be warned, strange things may happen. Also, it's technically cheating

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a... birdplane?

I'm having a little trouble building an SSTO with B9 parts and with FAR installed. Post yours here for inspiration please!

The real game-changers for me are remote tech, far, deadly reentry, kethane, and tac life support. Kerbal engineer is a can't-live-without as well. Everything else is just part packs.

Too bad I forgot to put a probe core on the satellite

1 and 2 - Yes these are right, but I think you're overthinking it. If you're within a few kilometers, just zero your relative velocity, point at the target, and thrust. Repeat until you're close enough to dock. If you're farther away, I find it easier to mess with maneuver nodes to get a close approach. 3 - The navball's prograde and retrograde markers during target mode will indicate whether you're moving towards or away from the target. For example, if you're pointing at the target with a relative velocity of 10m/s, and the prograde marker is visible, you're more-or-less moving towards the target 4 - If you're within physics range (2.3km) you can hit [ or ] to switch vessels. Otherwise, yes, you'll have to use the map or tracking station.

Modded Edition! Forgot to open/target antenna (remote tech 2) Deviated too far from prograde during launch (FAR) Set fairings to separate at SRB separation at ~5000 meters (FAR/KW) Had satellite payload stage itself while inside space shuttle cargo bay during launch (B9) Forgot a heatshield on my munar return stage (DRE) Reentry stage was aerodynamically unstable (DRE/FAR)

Why not have both? The first missions will be government-funded "for kerbalkind!" style missions, such as landing on the mun and such. Later missions will be commercially-funded, higher paying, and more specific (and therefore more challenging), such as, "we need you to map the southern pole of Bop and report back any concentrations of [resource]"

Care to give us any spoilers?