michaelhester07

Should go for broke and make a full command module simulator. That looks awesome. What era of paneling are you going for? If its 60s make sure you get the right looking sans serif font and one of those punch label makers.

Get out of the ship and grab the data. That gets you the same return for the data as if you had returned the pod itself. There's no other workaround needed. You can store 1 packet of data from every experiment type you have for each biome you visit with that experiment. That is to say if you do a low mun orbit at 15km you can store an eva report for every biome you fly over. The only one you can't store multiples of is crew reports so bring a radio attachment to transmit them back home (I don't recommend this until you have basic solar panels though. radios will drain your batteries.)

Gettin to orbit is way easier than gettin to Laythe. I haven't even been to Jool in a legit game (balanced mods). I've only been there with a suped up nuke rocket that produced 150Gs at max thrust. I wanted to see if I could make it to light speed. Legit: I've been to duna and back, been to Eve but never returned, been to Moho but never returned. It's much harder to design missions to Jool and beyond at least in my opinion.

You at least know delta V so that's good. Heres a number you might want to know: 2500 km/s That's how much delta V I've needed to land on the mun and return from it. You need to get to the mun with more than this to guarantee a safe return. If someone did it with less dV then they can tell you how. I'll help you redesign it here. 1. Command module: 1x command pod mk1, 1x parachute, 2x stack separator, 1x 400 size tank, 1x Lv909, 3x landing gear Assembly top to bottom: parachute, command pod, stack separator, 400 tank, landing gear, lv909, stack separator Make sure the extended gear goes beyond the bottom of the 909. That engine can't take an impact like the gear can. 2. Transfer stage 1x 800 size tank, 1x Lv 30, 3x radial stack separator Assembly top to bottom: 800 tank, 3x radial stack separator, 1x lv 30 The radial separators should be near the top of this section about 1/3 of the way down the tank. Attach this stage to the bottom of the command module. 3. Orbit insertion stage 1x 400 tank, 1x 800 tank, 1x lv30, 3x radial separator Top to Bottom: 400 tank, 800 tank, radial separator, lv45 The orbit insertion stage is the first stage built out radially. The 3 radial separators should be at 90, 180, and 270 degrees from the attachment point to the transfer stage. Keep them at the same height up the rocket level with where the transfer stage's engine is. 4. Launch stage 2x 400 tank, 2x 800 tank, 2x LV45, 1x long SRB Liquid booster top to bottom 400 tank, 800 tank, lv45 Liquid booster attaches to the 90 and 180 separators from the orbit insertion stage. SRB attaches to the 180 degree separator. Setting the stages: The editor should do a good job at setting up the stages for you. see that it matches this order 0: parachute 1: top stack separator 2: lv909 3: middle stack separator 4: transfer stage lv 30 5: inner most radial separators 6: orbit insertion lv 30s 7: 90/270 separators (has the liquid engines attached) 8: 180 separator (has the srb attached) 9: launch stage lv 45s and srbs Launching/flying: Start with the liquid engines at 40% throttle. Engage SAS and launch. Let the SRBs burn out and separate them before doing your gravity turn. Once the SRBs separate throttle to full. At 10km altitude turn to heading 90 45degrees altitude. Burn here until your apoapsis is t+60 seconds then burn toward the prograde vector. When your apoapsis altitude (i like to burn to this) is at 100km cut the engines. There might be some of your launch stage left if you didn't start burning into your orbit insertion stage. Add a maneuver node at the apoapsis to establish an orbit. This should take the rest of your launch stage and most of the orbit stage. You'll use anything left in the orbit insertion stage to boost you to the moon. Plan a moon intercept node. Use the rest of the orbit insert stage and some of your transfer stage to burn this node. The rest of the transfer stage will be used to establish orbit around the moon. If you plan your moon intercept node such that you get to the moon when it is a first quarter moon you can land immediately without having to orbit it. Otherwise use the rest of the transfer stage to establish an orbit. You might have a little extra dV to start the descent. Happy landing from there! With this early of a tech try to avoid heavy turning. Once you cut lose the transfer stage you won't get any more electrical power. Tell Jeb to put an alternator in the next version of the LV909 Edit: I tried this ship out last night with a new career. By T2 of everything and without that T3 engine upgrade I was able to build the ship. I managed to get to Mun with 5000 dV but no landing gear. I got a low enough orbit that I could take EVA reports as "flying over" a biome. I could chain enough biomes to get 120 science out of the trip. If i had landing gear I could have landed. In a later version of the ship I did land.

I've sinned too. . I kicked jeb out the door during reentry. I've stranded several kerbals on gilly. I've tried to build a warp drive with a modded nuke rocket. It's funny what the physics engine does when you subject a kerbal to 400Gs (that laugh... also another sin)

After dragging a few asteroids to orbit I decided to see if i could recover one. I attached a ship with a boatload of parachutes to a Class B asteroid and flew it in for an ocean landing. Recovered it and... no science. Yea ok it got a little contaminated in the ocean but I should get a little bit of science for that. Thus the suggestion... Can you guys add science reward for recovering an asteroid? Depending on the size of course and it could be single time or multiple time. How to recover one IRL: attach a heat shield to it an a bunch of parachutes... fly it into the atmosphere, pop the chutes... and your science lab has a piece of ancient rock to study for years instead of fragments.

Stowaways are what you feed to the kethane kerbal deconstitutioner.

Asparagus staging works with the new liquid fuel boosters. It's a technique to consider for launching those huge rockets for asteroid captures.

The garbage collector ship (could be a probe even) sounds like the most realistic solution to the Kessler syndrome that you're trying to prevent. We may have to actually do this IRL. Take a big kevlar net up, spread it wide, attach some rockets so you can de-orbit the garbage. In KSP, this would be a probe with a LV-909 or nuke engine with the grappler on it. Latch on the debris then de orbit it just enough that it hits kerbin's atmosphere, then release and speed back up to collect more garbage.

You see that little bug labled DN on the far right of your orbit? This is the "Descending Node". Theres also an Ascending node labled AN. These are where your orbit's plane intersects the orbit plane of your target. the first thing you need to do in that image is burn a little bit right at the Apoapsis so you don't crash back into kerbin. Periapsis should be more than 70km for you to keep your orbit. Then plant a maneuver on either AN or DN and drag the purple direction until the AN switches places with the DN. Drag the purple the other way slightly so AN and DN are on perpendicular sides to where they were. Lead the burn for this maneuver by half of the burn duration and this will match your orbit plane with the target. Then you can thrust up to intercept it. As a rule of thumb establish an orbit first before trying to intercept something. This gives you time enough to do the intercept.

I didn't think to aerobrake with an asteroid. Would 50km be a safer aerobrake for the Class E rock? For me i'd rather put it at 500-1000km and launch a second craft to grab data off it. I inadvertently turned an asteroid into a refueling station on one of the grabs with 2 of my asteroid grabbers locked onto it.

I've gone through grabbing a few asteroids. I'll share how i've done it. I've grabbed a Class C so far and put it into kerbin orbit. 1. Build big... really big This is why SQUAD gave us all those big rockets. In order to successfully grab an asteroid and bring it back home to Kerbin you have to deliver some serious firepower to it. This especially goes for anything Class C or bigger. While you're building big... those liquid rocket boosters are amazing at getting your big rocket into orbit. My second attempt to move an asteroid was on a class E that was going to hit kerbin (oh noes it's Deep Impact/Armageddon). I tried to use the Skipper rocket but it was woefully under-powered for the task. Use of RCS is recommended but not necessary. 1b: The liquid rocket boosters will probably be the last engine you ever need to unlock 2. Plan your launch This comes in 2 steps... A. Track the asteroid you want to grab B. Line up your launch with the direction it will pass kerbin When you see an asteroid in the tracking station you can tell the station to track it. This lets you know when the asteroid will intercept Kerbin's SOI. Now on a spacecraft you have in orbit target the asteroid. You'll be able to see how it is going to pass by kerbin. This is important to let you align your ship with the orbit of the asteroid when you take off. You'll save a lot of delta-V doing this. You need all the dV you can get when you get to the asteroid. You'll be launching in directions you've never thought of before. I've had one launch going due south. This is also a good way to intercept a spacecraft at an odd angle or to go to Minimus without doing the phase correction burn. 3. Launch You want your interceptor to be in orbit before the asteroid enters kerbin's SOI. This is especially true for shallow passes where the asteroid is beyond the orbit of Minimus. 4. Intercepting the asteroid Before you can intercept you need to match the phase. Plan a maneuver at the ascending or descending node. Adjust this maneuver so that the node's angle reads 0.0. If it's dancing around a lot then you've got it. Now you can plan the intercept burn. Place this burn on the exact opposite side of your orbit from the asteroid's periapsis to start. Expand the prograde marker so you get the intercept bugs to appear. Now project several orbits ahead until the target position bugs are past the Periapsis. This is where you look to intercept. Move the position and strength of your intercept burn to get one of your position and the target position bugs to line up. For shallow intercepts you can be off by a few hundred km. 5. Shallow intercept course correction burn Half way to the intercept you may need to do a course correction burn. Stick to purple or blue direction and get your intercept within 100km. You have ample time to get the burn right. 6. Intercept time. When you're within 300 km of the asteroid switch to "target mode" on the navball by clicking the spot where your velocity reading is. It defaulted to "orbit". There's "surface" and "target". You want "target". Now find the retrograde vector (green x marker) and burn towards it till your velocity is under 200m/s. (highest this has ever been for me was 1200) There should be a pink asteroid retrograde marker. Burn on the opposite side of that marker to make your retrograde marker line up. Keep 100m/s until you're within 15km then drop it to 50m/s. Keep the markers lined up so you can use the velocity you have. Within 2 km drop the speed to 5m/s. When you set the trust limiter on your engine you can get finer control over the throttle. That big Kerbodyne rocket can be as accurate as the 909. 7. Capture. You brought the grappling hook with you didn't you? Arm it. Right click the asteroid and select "target center of mass". You're going to dock with the asteroid now. RCS helps here but you're not docking with a docking port. Aim doesn't have to be too precise. Keep your speed under 4m/s. 8. Aligning the center of mass. Now that you've hooked onto the asteroid you have to align the center of mass so that you can drive it. Right click the hook and choose "free pivot". Turn off RCS and use reaction wheels for this: align the spacecraft such that the center of the navball marker is centered on the asteroid's center of mass purple marker. If you don't do this when you throttle up you'll induce spin on the asteroid. If you do this then you can fly straight. Once aligned right click the hook and choose "lock pivot". Now you can fly striaght. The angle of incidence for your hook doesn't matter, only that the center of mass is lined up. 9. Bring it home: Switch to orbit mode on the navball and burn retrograde until you have a periapsis. Put the Periapsis around 1 million meters or a little lower. Park your asteroid as you would a normal spacecraft. I recommend doing this with a probe so you don't have to inadvertantly sacrifice kerbals when you find out your rocket ended up with 30 deltaV attached to the asteroid. This is also why you built big in step 1. My class C asteroid grabber has 5000 delta V before it latches on but only 900 when it's attached (depending on the size of the rock). Class A and B asteroids can be handled by smaller craft.

1. Learn how to move indicators on the navball. This is one that saves me a lot of frustration. Lets start with the Prograde and Retrograde vectors. When you burn the prograde indicator will move toward the center of where you burn on the navball. The rate it does this depends on your current velocity. The lower your velocity the faster it moves. The retrograde indicator will move away from your thrust location. The rate it moves also depends on velocity. If you keep the velocity indicator within 50m/s you can move the indicators pretty much at will. - Making a perfect soft landing with the indicators: while you're landing you'll want to line up your retrograde indicator with the zenith indicator on the navball. Make sure you do this in "surface" mode. Thrust on the opposite side of the retrograde mark to move it towards the zenith. Keep your velocity over 10 m/s as you descend. When the indicator is lined up with the zenith you can thrust towards zenith to keep it there while dropping your velocity to 5 m/s. This gives you a nice straight landing. When you target something you get new indicators for that. The purple indicators tell the vector to your target. - fast and easy intercepts: This is after you plotted to intercept the target. Once you're within 50km of your target the navball switches to target mode. You can now intercept the target. Burn retrograde to reduce your velocity to the target to less than 50m/s. Then burn toward the prograde marker of the target to start headin towards it. Burn on the opposite side of the target prograde from your own prograde (remember the green one) to line up your prograde with the target prograde. Keep these markers lined up as you approach the target. When you're within 2km of the target it loads up. If your velocity is over 50m/s burn your retrograde to reduce it to 10 m/s. You can use RCS to dock with the target now. 2. Docking navball indicator mod Docking entirely with the navball! To dock with only the navball you'll need a docking navball indicator. This also tells you how to move your target's vectors. The target prograde vector will try to move away from your prograde (green) vector. To perform a dock with the navball: - Set yourself up 100 meters from the target port in the general direction of this port. - Target the port. This activates the navball indicator for the port - RCS to thrust toward the port (target prograde indicator) up to 1 m/s. - Angle toward the docking indicator (mine is red). - Use strafe RCS to move your prograde vector to the opposite side of the target prograde from the location of the docking indicator. The target prograde will start drifting towards the docking indicator. Keep your prograde vector out until the target vector lines up to the docking vector, then strafe to align your prograde to the docking indicator. Let your ship drift, keeping all 3 vectors aligned by strafing your prograde vector to any side. 3. Kerbal engineer I can't design a rocket without this anymore. It lets me configure the engines I need for a payload efficently. So far my space program has an unlimited budget. The efficency is for game performance. If i can make a more efficient rocket to complete a mission I should. It makes the game run better. 4. Asparagus staging I never got why this is used until I started using it and setting it up. An asparagus staged rocket is more efficient than a standard staged rocket at least for the purpose of this game. It seems that rockets downstream from the fuel line will not actually increase the burn rate on rockets upstream. That is if you tied 2 tanks together and have a rocket on each the upstream tank drains as if it has only one rocket on it instead of 2. Yes it's counter intuitive to how you would think it happens. You get the thrust of the engines in the center without actually using the fuel tanks above them until the outer stages are completed.

Try it with a ship and see if you stay at 0 orbital velocity. Realistically you shouldn't be able to but Kerbal physics might allow it. I had a ship in a game on an escape trajectory out of the solar system but when that ship isn't focused there is a line indicating it would come back in toward the sun (like a comet's orbit).

If you have access to probe technology you can build a ship that deploys several lander probes to mark biomes. Pretty much every large crater is a biome.

Every kerbal I've launched so far across like 8 careers is a man so... no chance at reconstruction of the species. Need to be able to throw some girls into orbit at some point. Poor Jeb all alone.

I've had a non-asparagus recipe for ships like that. Off your science lab put 4 radial decouplers, and attach the 2 meter strut to each of that. Now you can build downward for the rockets you need to insert that into orbit. That stage would be 4x skippers each with a 32 size rocomax fuel tank. The stage below that would have 5 skippers with the 16 and 32 tank stacked on them. bottom total of 20 rockets. Use the struts to tie everything together.

The hardest thing is remembering not to invest in the aerodynamics line too much early on.

The science lab does 2 things: 1. Reset experiments on the ship it is attached to which are not resettable otherwise (goo, materials kit). 2. Increases the transmit value of experiments processed in it. Part 2 applies to all experiments other than crew reports and eva reports, which get 100% transmit value. IMO the science lab should be able to increase transmit value up to 70% or more. Otherwise it is only really good for resetting the goo and material experiments. That makes it useful to have 1 lander on a ship with those experiments that you can reset for trips to other planets or biomes. You'll have to return data to Kerbin to get full value off it. I haven't finished planning my first Jool mission but it will probably have a science lab and lander probes for the experiments. Lets me save fuel for manned landings.

Lol and all this time I thought Jeb was a cross between a zombie and Q from Star Trek. I left him on Gilly only to find him sitting on the next ship I sent up.

I've used this method to dock transfer stages together. It saves a lot of time that I would have used to align one ship to another without spinning the second ship. I especially use it when I'm out of RCS fuel (or forgot to equip a ship with it). Ps: as of .23 all the pods have RCS fuel built in so you don't need a tank, just the thrusters. Ps2: If you put 2 sets of thrusters on your ship, one set on the bow and one on the aft, you don't have to worry about getting them aligned to your ship's center of mass. The thrusters will fire proportionate to keep your ship from tumbling automatically. Ps3: You'll need more thrusters for a heavier ship to move it in any decent amount of time.

You can use it to launch transfer stages or to control parts of a space craft that you want to keep for later use. I ended up trying to make a mod part which attaches to a probe and allows "crew reports". It's basically a camera like the ones we attach to every probe in real life. I didn't understand why there wasn't a stock camera I could strap to a probe to get that information. Maybe a little quip about it "They'll be wondering where the security camera in the break room went until they see the video from Duna." Things I've used the putnik and other cores for: * Transfer stage control * Crew reports on my camera mod * Markers for biomes - This one is actually more realistic than anything else: I made a ship with 8 small identical probes which detached from it and landed on the Mun at various locations. Each probe had a science experiment and when one discovered a new biome I renamed it to match. Then I knew where to send the manned mission to pick up data. The landed probes let me track which biomes are done. biome hunter probe recipe: 4x toroidal fuel tank 4x rocomax orange radial engine 1x Stayputnik or octo core 4x small probe lander leg 4x small solar panel 1x circular battery (the Z200 i think it is) 1x Reaction wheels 1x thermometer (or in my case the camera mod I made) 2x Clampotron Jr 1x antenna (any kind) Put the clampotrons on the top of the stayputnik near the center. The thermometer attaches to the side. Attach the 4 solar panels to the putnik too and an antenna. Now stack below the putnik the battery,reaction wheels, and the 4 toroidal tanks. Put the legs and the rocomax thrusters on the bottom tank. This probe should come in at half a ton max with about 1500 delta-v. The clampotron head attaches to your mothership in a place where the probe can detach without hitting anything. The probe has enough fuel for a 1 way trip down to the mun without any course corrections. The mothership should do the course corrections. If you have a landing mod then the probe will come out with fuel to spare. Once the probe is landed check the thermometer to see if the location name is different from a spot you landed before. If it is, rename the probe after that spot.

One of the things I tried to do lately was to setup a ship to orbit mun like the diagrams from the Apollo missions looked like. It seems though that the planets and moons have a finite sphere of influence outside of which their gravity doesn't effect my ship. I've gotten close to that style of orbit but never getting it like the old diagrams. This leads me to questions: Do planetary bodies have gravity influence outside of their sphere of influence? This would be crucial for finding Lagrange points (where I would like to drop space stations or probes). Do Lagrange Points (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) actually exist in this game?

I'll throw my method into the mix too. 1. Circularize your orbit at about twice the altitude of your target. It doesn't matter if the target's orbit is circular. This altitude is if you're impatient (which I am). You can go lower if you want to save fuel. 2. Set the object you want to rendezvous as your target. Your map will gain new markers on the orbits. Two of them are "AN" and "DN". 3. Match your orbital planes: Set a maneuver at the AN or the DN node (whichever comes up next) and drag the purple spike on the maneuver up or down until you get the AN and DN to flip sides. That is if you put your maneuver at the AN it switches over to DN. Then slightly drag the spike the opposite direction until the nodes are at a 90 degree angle to where they were. 4. Do the maneuver you planned in part 3. 5. Look at the planet or moon you're orbiting from top down, when you put your craft at 6 oclock and your target is at 8 oclock add a new maneuver just behind your ship in its orbit direction. Drag the retrograde spike until your orbit crosses the target's orbit. You'll see new bugs on the map: The orange ones mark when you first intercept the orbit and where the target is at that point, the purple ones mark when you second intercept the orbit. If they're pink you'll have one intercept. Each marker comes in 2 parts: where you'll intercept, and where your target is. Mouse over them to see which is which. 6. Adjust the position of the maneuver until the bugs are lined up vertical for one of the intercepts. If you mouse over them you'll see the separation. Get this to be at most 10km. If you can't get the bugs to line up advance your orbit half way (time warp) then try again. 7. Perform the maneuver from above. 8. Watch now as you approach the intercept. When you're within 50km of your target the navball speed will switch over to "target" mode. Wait a little longer until you're within 20km of your target. 9. Turn your ship to thrust towards the retrograde marker on the navball (the green one with an X in it). Thrust until target speed is less than 10m/s. 10. Turn your ship towards the target (large circular purple marker) and thrust slightly. Aim on the opposite side of this marker to line up your prograde marker (green, no X) with the toward target marker when you thrust. Once the markers are lined up thrust directly towards the target until 20m/s. Timewarp till you're within 500 meters. If the markers drift apart stop your warp and thrust to re-align them. If you're over 20m/s turn towards the retrograde side and thrust on the side of the Rg marker away from the "away from target marker" to move your retrograde vector towards it. 11. Once you're within 500 meters thrust toward retrograde to zero out your target velocity. Docking: 12. Target the docking port, and press the V key until you get the chase camera. Align the camera to the front of your ship. Now you can aim it as you were moving the navball. 13. RCS: activate docking mode and RCS. If your ship doesn't have RCS this is a little trickier but doable. Put your ship about 40 meters out from the docking port vector. If you draw a line from the center of the port directly out from it, that's where. Once you're there thrust to kill any velocity you have. 14. Aim towards the docking port: Line up the center of the navball with the target prograde marker (the same one from step 10 above). Thrust toward it with RCS. Use the "strafe mode" thrust on RCS to line up your prograde vector to the target prograde marker. You can turn your camera to the side when you're within 10 meters to see if you're gonna capture right. 15. If you're not going to get the capture thrust backward and let the ship drift to where it would capture, then thrust forward. make sure your navball progrades are lined up and you'll get the capture.

The mod I'd recommend for you is kerbal engineer. It will show you what you're getting out of that rocket for numbers. Aside from that with the first picture I imagine that your fail point is the Rocomax couplers between the first and second stage. Also if there are any SAS modules in the stack they'll also be fail points and they crush even easier than the couplers do. ( I know cause I built rockets where these were the fail point)