michaelhester07

I have 3: 1. That VAB glitch when trying to duplicate custom built radial engines 2. After I dock ships it doesn't switch control to the pod whose prograde matches the largest thrust angle (I've screwed up so many burns because what I thought was the pod burning prograde for the transfer stage was something else. So much wasted delta V). 3. The information presented by Kerbal Engineer isn't available in Stock otherwise.

After some extensive research into custom radial engines (and a fairly annoying glitch) I managed to throw 500 tons of rocket into orbit on what could have been a SSTO. That album shows the end result.

If you change the max physics delta time to the shortest possible you can trade the 5 fps for slower ingame time and 30 fps. May make docking easier.

You can turn off the power in one of the components to prevent it from draining too far. That especially for probes so you can recover them after long warps. If you have the small single solar panel available stick a few of em on to avoid this issue.

My current record is my Antares Titan 2 Kethane station at just over 100 tons. I have plans (in my mind) for a 400 ton kethane station. Wanna drain one of those 400 point fields on Minmus in a single landing.

You can follow that heavy lift tutorial that was posted a little bit ago. I designed my current heavy lift mechanism based off that.

Sweet submarine kethane. I had some missions going over this weekend. They're below Procyon mission pack: Send a guy to Duna and return him. This mission included - 1 Artemis titan long range science station (4 landers total: 2 for non atmosphere, 2 for atmosphere) - 1 Antares Titan 2 kethane platform for future missions and for refueling for the trip home. - 1 Procyon 1 crew transport with 1 each non atmo and 1 atmo lander - 1 Procyon 1.5... after the P1 crashed on Duna with no survivors (only surviving wreckage). Antares Titan Kethane station Riding my new Fractal heavy lifter is the Antares Titan Kethane platform. Capacity for 80 tons of kethane and launch to orbit from a non-atmosphere world. This beast nearly drained an entire field from the Mun in one landing. The 100 ton fireball Using a modified Fractal lifter for high TWR the 100 ton fireball lives up to its name by becoming a fireball at launch (and not the explosive variety). It ends up with 5000 dV after orbit and is why my Jeb is currently on an escape trajectory from the solar system with no hope of retrieval. I plan to get him back with interstellar research... well at least his frozen corpse anyway.

My jeb is on an escape velocity out of the solar system after a failed encounter with Jool because I was off galavanting around Duna gettin science. But hey.. he has 2 other guys to keep him company/cannibalize.

Once you establish your orbit wait until the mun is at first quarter phase (prograde of kerbin's orbit aorund the sun). You can then design a burn that skips the capture phase and goes directly to landing. This saves you about 500 dV (1/5th of your lander's fuel tank) that would have been used for the capture burn. You wait for first quarter so you land in the sunlit side of the Mun and minimize the risk of a crash when using stock components.

I love the glass cockpit in that rover. Which mod is that one? My ships all have 1960s era tech in em. Retro is nice but not as cool looking. I wish there was more to do with a rover than drive across a gray desert. Maybe build a small one and get some "air"? As far as rovers for science? If you want to keep your rover: leave out the non-reusable modules or find a way to stuff the mobile science lab on it (MSL would be awesome on a rover btw). If you somehow manage to drive 1000km to the next biome you'll find out you can't recover the data from the first one. As for getting the science quick and easy: 1 ton lander probes, stick em on a mothership with a high dV lander and throw them at the surface to hit every biome on the target. That way you know where each biome is, collect the science and come back without having to carry experiments or reset them. I'm just wrapping up mun biome farming with this technique and am going to leave kerbin (in my current save... I've left kerbin a few times in other saves but this save is a permanent one).

Where did you get these mods? I want to leave the kerbin system at some point 8)

It might not be a cursed place but a cursed event... I was watching Apollo 13 while working on a space station over Minimus and it blew up.

Above are highlights from the Hermes 2 test. The Hermes 2 is named after the messenger and does just that. The mothership carries 4 Hermes 2 landers on it. Lander specs: SAS equipped, Solar power, 2500 deltav with kerbal onboard single seat open cockpit probe core for automated landings/rescue missions I designed this to solve the problem of retrieving data from the biomes of a planet or moon while being weight and cost efficient. Also shown is part of the Artemis Mini biome hunter probe system.

I have 3 ways for you to do a polar orbit. 1. Launching into it: Obviously the easy one: do your gravity turn to the north or south. I recommend this method for asteroid interception. 2. Entering a system: Before you encounter a new system do some correction burns to lower your projected periapsis to the target to within 500km (50km for Minimus/Mun). Burn a small amount in each of the 6 major axes (pro grade, retrograde, left, right, up, down... as based on pro/retro trajectory) to see if it increases or decreases the projected periapsis. If it decreases keep burning until it stops decreasing or until the target altitude. Now when you enter the system you can do the blue and purple axes to adjust your orbit around the target without spending too much delta V to do so. Adjust until you have the desired axis of orbit then burn at the periapsis for system capture (or do an aerobrake if the target has an atmosphere). 3. In-orbit: If you're already in orbit of the target you can plan the burn. For whichever direction you drag the purple adjustment make sure you drag the retrograde green marker as well to maintain your orbit's shape. Drag purple and green until your orbit is the correct direction. Be wary as this type of burn can cost a bit of deltaV.

Thanks for that data transfer technique.

You do need them if you want to transmit the crew reports to gather more. Otherwise you run out of electricity to transmit with. That is unless you know how to store more than 1 crew report on a ship at a time. That would be useful info.

I worked on my new Hermes 1 lander carrier, showing above. Each lander detaches from the main ship and has a single external seat for a pilot. They also have probe cores so they can go retrieve a failed landing autonomously. The design itself popped out from what I call the Lawn Chair (below). Each Hermes 1 lander has 2500 deltaV. It can land on mun, take off, and get back to orbit for rendezvous with the mothership. Kerbal gets out of the can under the engines,climbs up, gets in the seat, and hits the button. Bill is still in orbit. A fun note... Thanks to the Hermes 1 I now know how much Bob Kerman weighs... 95 kg. The Hermes 2 will have reusable landers that can dock to the mothership for refueling.

The best use I found for probes is for marking biomes with science stations. 4x single solar panel 1x probe core 1x small round battery 2x Mystery Goo 1x Materials experiment (science jr) 1x thermometer, seismic sensor, pressure sensor, gravioli sensor (these are all minimal weight and drag, so stick em anywhere) 1x 1meter 100 size fuel tank: If you don't take the goo and materials experiment you can replace this with 2 toroid fuel tanks to reduce the weight even more. 3x probe leg 1x rocomax small single thruster (you thought you'd never use that didn't you? all my small landers use this now) The whole thing weighs 2 tons and easily attaches en masse to a mothership to travel to Mun, Minmus, or beyond. Build a mothership for Mun which has 8 of these on board. When you get to Mun setup a polar orbit (as opposed to the equatorial one you usually do). Detach one of each probe from your mothership and land each in a biome. Run all the experiments on the probe, then rename it (right click the core to rename it) and name it after the biome you landed in. Be sure to collect a surface sample and EVA report for each spot. Then send a few landers with kerbals on them to collect the data and return it home. While in EVA you can remove data from the experiments from your probe when you're close enough to the experiment. Destroy the probes after you collect the data (or leave em if you want, but rename them) so you can keep track of the biomes you collected. Lastly, return home with 2000 science from an epic farming run. For Jool I plan to use either the ion drives or nuke drives with similarly styled probes so I don't have to land manned science experiments. It saves tons on manned lander designs when I don't have to worry about carrying science experiments. You can outfit the probes with a radio if you don't think you can get a lander off the surface of what you landed on (Eve mostly).

Yea i'll admit I replaced the mainsail with the LFB. Lighter, more powerful, more efficient, and doesn't threaten to overheat. I can stack another Rocomax jumbo tank on it too, its compatible. The rest of the engines are awesome for launching huge payloads and keeping the part count low.

In a note above while Unity might only be 32 bit adding more memory and going 64 bit os would keep background tasks in Windows from interfering with it. KSP I've seen running with a 2gb footprint. If you have only 4gb it leaves you 2gb for everything else. Windows starts paging all that memory and you'll lose performance in external apps. These include your antivirus, your streaming program, anything you alt-tab for. Since you stream your missions upgrading your CPU, Motherboard, and Ram would allow you to transmit a higher resolution stream without bogging down your computer.

I have a few but i'll post my best one here: Science probes When you unlock all those science parts it can be a real pain to fly a ship with them to Mun or Minmus to use them to cover all of the biomes. This is where your probe making skills will come in really handy! Make one way landing science probes! Small probes using that tiny rocomax thruster can be used to carry all the science modules down to a surface. Attach them to a mothership which handles flying out to the target system, drop em off, and land them in each of the possible biomes. Then send a kerbal to go pick up the science. Since they can remove the data from the modules you don't have to return the science stations home. Your kerbal's lander gets more efficient that way. Don't forget to grab a surface sample, eva report, and crew report. And don't forget to transmit the crew report so you can grab another later on. This is the best way to farm Minmus for science in my opinion. Low altitude biome farming If you lack the science for landing on the mun safely and returning from it you can still orbit it to grab some biome data. For Mun, Minmus, and even Kerbin you can setup a low altitude orbit. As you pass what looks like a biome, do an EVA and grab an EVA report. If your altitude is low enough you get "Eva report while flying over [biome name]". If you have access to solar panels you can transmit a crew report for the same biomes.

Upgrading CPU, Memory, Motherboard would get you the biggest boost in speed. You have a 32 bit OS so you can't utilize more memory than 4gb. Your processor could use more cores, your motherboard will have to be able to support it. I've been using an Intel i7 3.5 ghz with 8gb ram and a Geforce GTX 760 and those let me build ridiculous part count rockets without dropping framerate. Your video card is probably fine.

Today I rode the missile.

As much as I agree with the don't read tutorials thing there are some things you'll want to grab eventually: 1. A Rendezvous tutorial 2. Some kind of mod that displays the delta velocity on your ship when built and while flying (I use kerbal engineer). If you want to you can hold off on the dV display mod for as long as you want to but when it comes to the later missions you'll want to have something like that. It will help you build more efficient rockets.

I voted for biomes but I want more to do when collecting science: With the addition of biomes I should have to work to get full samples out of them. Right now it's land, grab a scoop of dirt, and take off. I want to have a need to carry a rover with me. - Rover storage bay: Store surface samples and rocks I collected. It should have a limited capacity so I have to bring the info back to the ship. - Surface samples should have to be taken from locations no closer than 50 meters apart. If I need 10 samples I'd have to find 10 spots that are 50 meters apart (like a circle around my landing site). - Multiple samples are needed to fill up the science return for a particular biome. If I land in mun's highlands I should have to take 100 samples to fill up the science for it. For a small crater biome it would be 10 or fewer. - Collectible rocks. Let me find some rocks I want to pick up and store. Rock composition can be analyzed at the mobile lab. I'd also like to have unmanned rovers and probes do some work. - Rover sample arm: A small scoop that has sensors on it to analyze a sample my rover picks up. It can't store the sample but it will allow me to gather the transmit value for the sample. Should also work on asteroids. - Rover laser composition scanner: Like the laser they put on Curiosity: activate and fire a laser to sample a rock. Randomly distributed rocks can have different compositions and each new composition adds to science transmission. Should also work on asteroids. Discover a rare asteroid composition (ice cream or something like that) for a bonus science. - Gravioli detector works in orbit. Collect samples at various points in an orbit to determine the mass of a planet or moon. An accurate determination adds bonus science. - Seismic sensor works when attached to an asteroid: determine the exact mass of the asteroid or its composition. Accurate determination adds science. - Barometric pressure detector works in orbit: piece together samples from high altitude atmosphere grazes or exo atmosphere to determine the altitude where a planet's atmosphere ends. The number of samples you need depends on the planet. - Add a camera for my rover with animations. Why should I have to send kerbals on one way trips when I can send a machine whose family doesn't sue me when it doesn't come back. Let the camera provide information similar to an EVA or crew report. That would make my trip to mun more involved than before. The rock composition thing would be a reason for a base. That and if reputation and budget get implemented having a mun base discover things would lead to a higher rep and a bigger budget.