On the Klaw - And a neat little story

[More Boosters]

Hey there.

So I had this Solar Explorer, a medium-sized probe running on a single nuclear engine (at the uppermost stage obviously ^^)

It went to Mun, Minmus and then Eve as was asked, but I initially had no intention of bothering with a return so I took the lazy way out for the Eve fly-by and spent extra Delta-V to keep myself from looking for a better node. (who goes to 80Mm Eve orbit with 1.8k Delta V really)

But then I decided to do the return to Kerbin from Eve flyby mission, but the vessel had nothing that resembled heat shields nor did it have parachutes. I set it nicely to 43k periapsis to Kerbin, and it took a couple quickloads but I managed to aerocapture while losing only the Gigantors in turn. Rest of that is standard procedure; push your luck as much as you can with the aerocapture and then burn prograde at the Apoapsis with your tiny little Delta-V leftover to get in a stable orbit, shut off the batteries and wait for rescue.

The rescue had to come in the form of a Klaw, which was the second time I used it. Quite a lot of interesting missions became available after unlocking it too. Anyway, I did the rendezvous and after a detach and re-attach I got myself squarely on the center of mass.

Here's what I have to say about that experience:

1. I couldn't find any obvious controls for the free pivot; it would seem that it allows your target to dangle about freely which is something I can't think of a reason for. Unless it helps to maneuver when you're attached to an asteroid?

2. I had this really weird bug where if I tried to time-warp to a point, the game would say that it is time warping and make the countdown, but the probe soup doesn't move at all and your orbit becomes impossible to change; even activating your engines at full thrust will do nothing but just push the engine up a bit while the vehicle does not have any thrust applied to it at all. I solved this issue by time warping from the tracking station so it may have been an isolated incident.

3. I don't know how to transfer fuel from one tank to the other with the thing.

4. Don't drink and drive, don't warp and use Klaw. The time-warp experience, even the physics time warp experience (I read that alt does that but holding Alt doesn't force physics time warp for me in space) is nothing like the real thing. Steer clear, if you can at all with how ugly it can get if you don't nail the center of mass on a large target.

5. The thing is pretty cool.

Now how do I set a Class-E Asteroid out of the Kerbolar SOI...

[problemecium]

1. Yes. The Klaw is not motorized, so adjusting the angle using the free pivot is a bit tricky.

2. I've had this bug too. At first I suspected it was a Klaw bug, but on occasion it's affected ships without one. I've found that tiny probes survive, but a large or floppy ship will explode if I try to timewarp during this state. Timewarping in the Tracking Station is a practical workaround, but the bug doesn't "go away" until you restart KSP.

3. Right click one tank. Then hold "alt" (I think it's alt. Might be shift. I'm sleep deprived) and right-click another tank that carries at least one of the same type of fuel (e.g. a LFO tank and a LiquidFuel tank; this doesn't work with, say, a LFO tank and an RCS tank for obvious reasons) and a pair of buttons will appear on each tank enabling you to transfer fuel in or out of it. Selecting more than two tanks in this fashion will allow you to transfer into a given tank from all others, vacuuming up fuel from each roughly evenly, or transfer out and distribute it to all others roughly evenly.

4. That was a bug, probably related to issue #2. It shouldn't usually happen, so try restarting KSP and see if you get your safe timewarping back. If you look at the debug log (Alt+F2) you can see that something is throwing a NullReferenceException during the "packing for orbit" process when starting a timewarp.

5. Yes it is. I admit the Klaw has its problems, but so do regular docking ports and plenty of other parts, so IMO all the hatred of the Klaw is undeserved.

[mikegarrison]

RE 1):

Yes, exactly. This is necessary so that you can thrust through the CoM of an asteroid. When you get close to the asteroid, right clicking on it gives you an option to "target the center of mass". Do so. Next you get a good klaw grab on the asteroid somewhere nearly aimed at the CoM. Then you free the pivot. Without detaching the klaw, you rotate your ship around until your thrust vector (usually the same as your navball center) is pointed straight through the CoM. Then you (quickly) right-click to lock the pivot again. Now you can thrust the asteroid without spinning it.

[federicoaa]

Number 2 and muber 4 are being called the glue kraken IIRC

[Sharpy]

2 - yes, happens, need to restart KSP. IIRC the ship unfreezes after reload.

3 - the same as you do in a single vessel, rightclick one tank, mod-rightclick the other, select In or Out.

4 - another bug. They are moderately uncommon, you were just unlucky. Seriously, maybe one in eight uses of the Klaw triggers one of them (and often hours after the klaw was used). Also, watch for parts that start clipping and wobbling randomly. If you see any, save, quit the KSP, reload it, before the craft in question explodes.

5. Yes, it is.

I'm in final step of fulfilling a contract for a Munar surface base that

- can support 13 kerbals,

- has a laboratory

- has 5000 units of LF

- is on wheels.

The Munar Train will look epic once completed. It already has the pilot car, the habitation car, the lab car, and the ISRU car. Now it needs the two tanker cars that are still in Mun orbit, and finding a good mining spot for filling the tanks with LF.

[DancesWithSquirrels]

Notes on the pivot:

If you've used the Klaw to grab another ship, and you want to adjust so that thrust is through the CoG, turn off RCS/reaction wheels on one of the two sides of the Klaw! Otherwise both sections of the joined ship will move around with attitude inputs, making it really really hard to adjust the angle of the Klaw.

If only one side has RCS and/or reaction wheels active you can change your angle so that you're able to thrust through the C0G. Much much easier than fighting what seems to be two squirming cats wrestling a noodle.

[xtoro]

Free pivot klaw is best for pulling objects, which IMO is the best way to grab objects that dont have a docking port that lines up with CoM. The reason is that as you slowly pull, the object's CoM will eventually come to rest directly behind your ship. If you need to change directions, do it slowly, and them slowly bring up the throttle again till it stops wobbling.