To Mech-Jeb or not to Mech-Jeb, that is the question...

[ouion]

i use it but sometimes it miss up while in gravity turn it keep decoupleing unit it reaches stage 0.

[pharoahjared]

I use mechjeb and I have no regrets.

[Tigga]

I think it depends on what type of player you are. I don't use Mechjeb as I see the game as ~50% rocket design, ~40% getting the rocket to go to where you want it to go as efficiently as possible, and 10% ~building things like munbases. Mechjeb hence removes a large part of the game for me. Other people weight these factors differently. There seem to be a lot of people who really enjoy building fun things like a satellite network, or a munbase with rovers, and I imagine for them Mechjeb removes a less fun part of the game to allow for more of the fun part. Other people want to see how efficiently they can make a rocket complete a mission, and for consistency and efficiency they use mechjeb to remove a load of variables when optimising. Again, removing the less fun part for more of the fun part.

There's no "right" or "wrong" way to play games in general, especially a sandbox game like KSP is now, so I guess it's just about working out what you find fun.

[softweir]

I used mechjeb for a while, and it was a good idea that I did so. While it isn't the most optimised spacecraft automation system one might imagine, it is good enough that I learnt a lot from it. My gravity turns are a heck of a lot more efficient these days, and I need much smaller rockets per payload!

[Ziff]

"while more thrust, fuel, etc. will be needed to transfer a larger communication satellite from low Earth orbit to geosynchronous orbit, the delta-v required is the same. "

There is a logical flaw in your argument if this is what you want to use to defend your point. More thrust/fuel is required to transfer heavier objects into orbit because as Mass of your craft increases, your T:W ratio goes down, unless you increase your engine thrust. So you increase engine thrust to get a T:W high enough for liftoff. Now your mass has increased, and as mass goes up, the amount of delta-v produced by same amount of fuel/engine Isp as you had before will decrease. So now you need to add enough fuel to have the correct delta-v required to get into orbit.

see while delta-v is the same, there is obviously lee weigh in the amount of thrust and fuel required. which means you can most certainly save on fuel by throttling, especially when you weigh less than initial takeoff and other things like drag of the atmosphere reduces the higher you go.

delta-v is the speed you need to obtain to do things like gain orbit, it is not dependent on the ships mass or fuel mass nor amount used...how efficiently you gain that speed means you can vary the amount of fuel used.

What you are saying makes no sense. Delta-v is the same, yes, because its a change in velocity required to reach orbit. The amount of Delta-v a craft can achieve is directly related to the total mass of the craft, the amount of fuel on board, and the engine Isp. A heavy object takes more fuel, but still the same delta-v, to get into orbit. If you are, as you claim, throttling down and 'saving' fuel in the upper atmosphere where the is no drag, you are seeing the fuel bug. You cannot save fuel by throttling down in the upper atmosphere. If you are doing that, and saving fuel, you are getting into orbit with more fuel in your tank. Then you have also used less delta-v than required. It doesn't work that way. All things being equal, more fuel = more delta-v. If you are somehow saving fuel, you are using less delta-v. Which as I said before, if I give you a rocket with just less than enough delta-v to reach orbit no amount of throttling down will save you that extra fuel you need and get you into orbit.

you can't call it a fuel bug when it's about throttling efficiency. I think you're on a completely different page here. I'm talking about the entire lift off from on the ground to orbit altitude, to going into orbit. you can save fuel by throttling during ascent. the delta-v may be the same for a maneuver, but the amount of fuel and throttle required can vary based on time and distance, with quite a bit in savings being possible. in essence, going 2000m/s by the time you reach your target means more fuel used than going 1000m/s instead. we can afford to lose forward momentum for a lower throttle netting us fuel savings.

It is a fuel bug. It was not like this in any previous version. It is a known bug that is already fixed for .17. There is no throttle efficiency once you pass into upper atmosphere. As I explained before, Max-Q is the only time you would have to throttle down. This is usually in the sub 10km range. Once you pass that, the atmosphere thins out tremendously. Once your craft passes the speed that matches the engine exhaust speed, you have reached maximum engine efficiency and throttle will have no effect on increasing the efficiency of the engine.

[bsalis]

It's Personal Preference.

I started using MechJeb to get a large rocket into orbit because the framerate was a slideshow. I could do it myself, but it was ASAS all the way to second stage, so that was not efficient. Since then I have learned a lot from using MechJeb. I use it mostly for ascent and orbital operations. Sometimes for transfers. Oddly, I still do all my landings manually because I really enjoy them... especially a brazen straight-in landing on the Mun doing over 800m/s as your landing site approaches in the distance! Landing a spaceplan on Kerbin is also good fun - MechJeb won't help you there.

There's nothing I have asked of MechJeb that I have not done myself manually. MechJeb does a better job of it, but sometimes messes it up! I often need to do things mixing MechJeb and manual control (eg. MechJeb to coasting-to-Ap then manual control to setup for circular orbit). I don't find launching a perfectly working rocket for the Nth time a challenge, I find it tedious.

I wonder how the view of people will change when MechJeb features are added to the game, as I fully expect they will in some form.

Edited August 19, 2012 by bsalis

[spikeyhat09]

the controls aren't all that precise in a game where you tap directional keys.

Dude, that's why you have caps lock on. and if you don't like it use a joystick

[Phoxtane]

Not every one of us has a joystick, you know.

[Candre]

I'm a purist, so no MechJeb. It's a nice plugin, I must admit.

What exactly does precision controls mode do? I don't notice a difference in handling anytime I engage it.

[trekkie_]

There is a logical flaw in your argument if this is what you want to use to defend your point. More thrust/fuel is required to transfer heavier objects into orbit because as Mass of your craft increases, your T:W ratio goes down, unless you increase your engine thrust. So you increase engine thrust to get a T:W high enough for liftoff. Now your mass has increased, and as mass goes up, the amount of delta-v produced by same amount of fuel/engine Isp as you had before will decrease. So now you need to add enough fuel to have the correct delta-v required to get into orbit.

What you are saying makes no sense. Delta-v is the same, yes, because its a change in velocity required to reach orbit. The amount of Delta-v a craft can achieve is directly related to the total mass of the craft, the amount of fuel on board, and the engine Isp. A heavy object takes more fuel, but still the same delta-v, to get into orbit. If you are, as you claim, throttling down and 'saving' fuel in the upper atmosphere where the is no drag, you are seeing the fuel bug. You cannot save fuel by throttling down in the upper atmosphere. If you are doing that, and saving fuel, you are getting into orbit with more fuel in your tank. Then you have also used less delta-v than required. It doesn't work that way. All things being equal, more fuel = more delta-v. If you are somehow saving fuel, you are using less delta-v. Which as I said before, if I give you a rocket with just less than enough delta-v to reach orbit no amount of throttling down will save you that extra fuel you need and get you into orbit.

It is a fuel bug. It was not like this in any previous version. It is a known bug that is already fixed for .17. There is no throttle efficiency once you pass into upper atmosphere. As I explained before, Max-Q is the only time you would have to throttle down. This is usually in the sub 10km range. Once you pass that, the atmosphere thins out tremendously. Once your craft passes the speed that matches the engine exhaust speed, you have reached maximum engine efficiency and throttle will have no effect on increasing the efficiency of the engine.

mass and drag reduces the higher you go, which means you need less thrust to maintain the same speed or even gain speed. it has nothing to do with a fuel bug, since it is all about thrust. even if I was suffering from the fuel bug (which I'm not) every ship I've designed so far must be suffering from it then, even down to the simplest ones. obviously using less thrust, uses less fuel. it's not that difficult to understand. your premise is even more silly when you consider that the max thrust of a ship's engines may easily surpass delta-v requirements. think of it this way, you have two ships. one with three 200 thrust lv909's, and the same design but with a 1200 thrust lv909 instead. throttling that 1200 thrust down to half, produces the same thrust as the other craft while saving fuel you would have otherwise expended very quickly in full throttle. so full thrust isn't exactly a requirement. reaching a certain speed more quickly is not necessarily as efficient.

if I'm going 1000m/s and reducing my thrust just enough for speed to keep rising at a decent rate, I will always have forward momentum. I can even allow that speed to drop for more fuel savings by throttling back further. the speed may drop by a couple m/s at most, but you're not losing enough speed to for instance, lose more than ~200 m/s over 50 seconds but by then you would have covered just below 50K meters.

by the time you reach near orbit altitude, if you get close to falling backwards you can thrust much more effectively because you don't have the drag of atmosphere and you are much lighter, even with fuel savings. your speed will rise much quicker for the same given thrust. even in space, mass plays a big role in how much fuel it takes to make a ship go a certain speed in a given time frame over a given distance. so the fuel required to reach a certain delta-v, may be different depending on the mass and drag on the ship. this is why fuel, mass, and delta-v are separate. delta-v is just how fast an object needs to be going, it's not an indicator of how much fuel a given vessel needs to use to gain that speed. lowering thrust does not necessarily mean a speed drop, nor a large enough one to matter.

[Endeavour]

I'm a purist, so no MechJeb. It's a nice plugin, I must admit.

What exactly does precision controls mode do? I don't notice a difference in handling anytime I engage it.

I notice a huge difference in RCS thrust when I have precision mode on.

[AncientAstronaut]

mass and drag reduces the higher you go, which means you need less thrust to maintain the same speed or even gain speed. it has nothing to do with a fuel bug, since it is all about thrust. even if I was suffering from the fuel bug (which I'm not) every ship I've designed so far must be suffering from it then, even down to the simplest ones. obviously using less thrust, uses less fuel. it's not that difficult to understand. your premise is even more silly when you consider that the max thrust of a ship's engines may easily surpass delta-v requirements. think of it this way, you have two ships. one with three 200 thrust lv909's, and the same design but with a 1200 thrust lv909 instead. throttling that 1200 thrust down to half, produces the same thrust as the other craft while saving fuel you would have otherwise expended very quickly in full throttle. so full thrust isn't exactly a requirement. reaching a certain speed more quickly is not necessarily as efficient.

if I'm going 1000m/s and reducing my thrust just enough for speed to keep rising at a decent rate, I will always have forward momentum. I can even allow that speed to drop for more fuel savings by throttling back further. the speed may drop by a couple m/s at most, but you're not losing enough speed to for instance, lose more than ~200 m/s over 50 seconds but by then you would have covered just below 50K meters.

by the time you reach near orbit altitude, if you get close to falling backwards you can thrust much more effectively because you don't have the drag of atmosphere and you are much lighter, even with fuel savings. your speed will rise much quicker for the same given thrust. even in space, mass plays a big role in how much fuel it takes to make a ship go a certain speed in a given time frame over a given distance. so the fuel required to reach a certain delta-v, may be different depending on the mass and drag on the ship. this is why fuel, mass, and delta-v are separate. delta-v is just how fast an object needs to be going, it's not an indicator of how much fuel a given vessel needs to use to gain that speed. lowering thrust does not necessarily mean a speed drop, nor a large enough one to matter.

Holy Armstrong... You are so wrong in your post that I banged my head on my desk...

Anybody have that Futurama Meme handy?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

karolus10: Avoid double posting next time

EDIT1:

Oh, and to make sure I don't go off topic, I like to use MechJeb. It's nice and easy when I don't feel like piloting.

Edited August 19, 2012 by karolus10

[Kosmo-not]

mass and drag reduces the higher you go, which means you need less thrust to maintain the same speed or even gain speed. it has nothing to do with a fuel bug, since it is all about thrust. even if I was suffering from the fuel bug (which I'm not) every ship I've designed so far must be suffering from it then, even down to the simplest ones. obviously using less thrust, uses less fuel. it's not that difficult to understand. your premise is even more silly when you consider that the max thrust of a ship's engines may easily surpass delta-v requirements. think of it this way, you have two ships. one with three 200 thrust lv909's, and the same design but with a 1200 thrust lv909 instead. throttling that 1200 thrust down to half, produces the same thrust as the other craft while saving fuel you would have otherwise expended very quickly in full throttle. so full thrust isn't exactly a requirement. reaching a certain speed more quickly is not necessarily as efficient.

if I'm going 1000m/s and reducing my thrust just enough for speed to keep rising at a decent rate, I will always have forward momentum. I can even allow that speed to drop for more fuel savings by throttling back further. the speed may drop by a couple m/s at most, but you're not losing enough speed to for instance, lose more than ~200 m/s over 50 seconds but by then you would have covered just below 50K meters.

by the time you reach near orbit altitude, if you get close to falling backwards you can thrust much more effectively because you don't have the drag of atmosphere and you are much lighter, even with fuel savings. your speed will rise much quicker for the same given thrust. even in space, mass plays a big role in how much fuel it takes to make a ship go a certain speed in a given time frame over a given distance. so the fuel required to reach a certain delta-v, may be different depending on the mass and drag on the ship. this is why fuel, mass, and delta-v are separate. delta-v is just how fast an object needs to be going, it's not an indicator of how much fuel a given vessel needs to use to gain that speed. lowering thrust does not necessarily mean a speed drop, nor a large enough one to matter.

lolwut? Are you serious or trolling?

Something I think MechJeb needs is a delta-v stopwatch so you can keep track of how much you use while flying.

[AncientAstronaut]

I think he's probably just trolling...

[Vanamonde]

Let me see if I'm following the argument correctly.

mass and drag reduces the higher you go, which means you need less thrust to maintain the same speed or even gain speed

I'm not clear about what you mean by the mass decreasing at altitude. Are you talking about the expended fuel? If that's what you mean, it's true, but will you also be accumulating velocity at a lower rate if you reduce the throttle, which means the ultimate total speed you can reach isn't getting any higher by getting to it slower, you're just taking longer to reach it. And burning the engine longer means burning fuel longer, cancelling out any savings from burning it at a lower rate.

reaching a certain speed more quickly is not necessarily as efficient.

But reaching a certain speed less quickly is also no more efficient. In fact, it means you're fighting gravity drag and air resistence longer.

lowering thrust does not necessarily mean a speed drop, nor a large enough one to matter.

I don't see what you mean by that. F=ma, and if you're lowering F, you must necessarily be lowering a as well. If you mean that the net speed isn't reduced by a thrust reduction, that's true, but neither is the total speed increased by a thrust reduction.

If you throttle down in order to use less fuel to reach a certain altitude, you will also have less velocity when you get there, and just fall back down again because you haven't accumulated the velocity you need to orbit at that height. You can stay there, but only by burning whatever fuel you may have saved on the way up to close the gap between your current speed and orbital velocity for that altitude. There's no savings in taking longer to reach the altitude, because that's not the only factor involved.

As I understand it, the fuel has a certain amount of potential energy, which the engine converts to kinetic energy with an efficiency specified as the Isp. And I'm told that Isp does not vary with the throttle setting, which means the throttle setting is not a factor when considering the total velocity the rocket can reach. In short, you can't increase the total potential energy of the fuel by burning it more slowly.

Edited August 19, 2012 by Vanamonde

[jfx]

Holy Armstrong... You are so wrong in your post that I banged my head on my desk...

Anybody have that Futurama Meme handy?

I think the fuel bug is extremely confusing for newer players. But then it'll be fun to see how all those supposedly "eco" designs will work out one 0.17 is out

Also: I use MechJeb all the time. I have much more fun building stuff and doing finetuning (staging, landing, etc.)

[Ziff]

mass and drag reduces the higher you go, which means you need less thrust to maintain the same speed or even gain speed.

I totally agree with this statement. If you reduce your throttle 50% you cut your acceleration 50% therefore it takes twice as long to get to the same speed. At no point do you somehow magically increase the specific impulse efficiency of an engine allowing you to somehow travel farther on less fuel.

it has nothing to do with a fuel bug, since it is all about thrust. even if I was suffering from the fuel bug (which I'm not) every ship I've designed so far must be suffering from it then, even down to the simplest ones.

Any craft made in version .16, unless you downloaded the hacky fuel consumption fix posted somewhere around here, is experiencing a fuel throttle bug. They all are. Any throttle less than 100% is abusing the bug, and the lower the throttle the more you gain from it, because of the code that was accidentally left in place, as stated by the Devs.

obviously using less thrust, uses less fuel. it's not that difficult to understand. your premise is even more silly when you consider that the max thrust of a ship's engines may easily surpass delta-v requirements.

You say my premise is silly, but you obviously have a misunderstanding of how specific impulse, thrust, and delta-v all relate to each other. Because thrust has nothing to do with delta-v requirements. At all. Specific impulse is the engines efficiency rating and that is what is used in delta-v calculations.(with fuel amount and total mass) Thrust only tells you if your craft has enough thrust to push the mass it is carrying to escape the affects of atmospheric drag and gravity. That is all. As long as you have a T:W above 1.5, you can then forget about thrust unless you need to know how long to burn your engine for a particular maneuver.

think of it this way, you have two ships. one with three 200 thrust lv909's, and the same design but with a 1200 thrust lv909 instead. throttling that 1200 thrust down to half, produces the same thrust as the other craft while saving fuel you would have otherwise expended very quickly in full throttle. so full thrust isn't exactly a requirement. reaching a certain speed more quickly is not necessarily as efficient.

You would not be 'saving' fuel, you would be halving the fuel rate. There is a difference. The second craft at 50% throttle would merely be consuming fuel at the same rate as the first craft, yet they would travel the exact same distance on the same amount of fuel (all other things being equal). What you are saying is that somehow throttling down increases your fuel efficiency, and it doesn't. Throttling down would just increase the time it takes to perform the maneuver, yet it would still use the exact same amount of fuel.

if I'm going 1000m/s and reducing my thrust just enough for speed to keep rising at a decent rate, I will always have forward momentum. I can even allow that speed to drop for more fuel savings by throttling back further. the speed may drop by a couple m/s at most, but you're not losing enough speed to for instance, lose more than ~200 m/s over 50 seconds but by then you would have covered just below 50K meters.

by the time you reach near orbit altitude, if you get close to falling backwards you can thrust much more effectively because you don't have the drag of atmosphere and you are much lighter, even with fuel savings. your speed will rise much quicker for the same given thrust.

You keep talking about 'saving' fuel. You aren't saving fuel. You are reducing thrust, which increases the length of your burn time, which is all proportional. It doesn't matter it still takes the same amount of fuel to get a specific mass amount into orbit. You can waste fuel by trying to accelerate too fast against the much thicker atmosphere, but once you pass Max-Q it doesn't matter. You can accelerate fast, or slow, as long as you maintain momentum to reach orbital velocity it will use the same amount of fuel.

even in space, mass plays a big role in how much fuel it takes to make a ship go a certain speed in a given time frame over a given distance. so the fuel required to reach a certain delta-v, may be different depending on the mass and drag on the ship. this is why fuel, mass, and delta-v are separate. delta-v is just how fast an object needs to be going, it's not an indicator of how much fuel a given vessel needs to use to gain that speed. lowering thrust does not necessarily mean a speed drop, nor a large enough one to matter.

I don't even know why you are trying to explain this. I completely understand how delta-v, mass, amount of fuel, and specific impulse all relate to each other. They aren't separate, they're all tied to each other. Changing one affects the other. Decreasing mass, Increasing amount of fuel or Isp, increases the delta-v a craft can achieve. Increasing mass, decreasing fuel, decreasing Isp, all decrease the delta-v a craft can achieve. You can muck about with the amount of thrust all you want but it won't ever change the delta-v a craft can achieve, because that is based on total mass, fuel, and Isp.

Edited August 19, 2012 by Ziff
Fixed Quote

[karolus10]

Problem about throttling down in higher atmo isn't connected with efficiency, but with acceleration we need at this moment - if accelerate faster, we loosing some energy (small amount but still) because of drag and we get orbital velocity before ending gravity turn and overshoot target apogee.

MechJeb and many people use 2 burns during ascent (burn to desired apogee, cut the engines, coasting to apogee and circulation burn just before apogee).

I prefer decrease the throttle but keep accelerating all the way to orbit, so when i cut the throttle I need only some minor correction that could be handled even by RCS.

Personally I don't use MechJeb for piloting ship (but I must admit, it gives pilots descent instrumentation with him), I simple can make same maneuvers slightly less precise but much more smother and gently than MechJeb (if fuzzy logic will be used for autopilot/ASAS logic could minimize this difference).

Also I'm against "Full Auto" avionics implemented ingame: Autopilot should execute pilot (player) will, helping pilot made maneuvers he wants to do in way he wants... MechJeb for me appears to me working like washing-machine program dial: You setting one of programs, push start and thats it.

Of course adding programmable computers into game will be an other story: if player insert script with program (made by ourself) and then launch the rocket and watch how it's execute his own program .

This type of automation allow making unmanned spacecrafts (direct control by remote operator also allowed) or design some automated actions like escape sequence, where player can do whole procedure by pushing a button (it was executed too fast for player) or pre-set behavior of jettisoned stages, allowing them perform deorbit burn after separation.

Same story with navigation computer and aids: allowing player planning maneuvers and then help player execute them, telling player what he should do in this moment (markers and bugs on instruments, so u can line-up with planned trajectory).

Also NAV CMP could be source of imput for main (programmable) computer.

Edited August 19, 2012 by karolus10

[Bandock]

I have not used MechJeb yet to this day since I like to do things manually. However, I have thought about using it to obtain orbital information, but still pilot the rocket by hand.

And about the less throttle meaning less fuel deal, it is definitely a bug. Unfortunately, it is unavoidable until the 0.17 update comes along as some people use less throttle to be more precise at orbiting. Mainly, I'm still trying to perfect orbit rendezvous with another rocket (skill will be necessary in the near future or now if you're doing rescues). Of course RCS is handy for that sort of thing also.

And want a good example of the bug; look at some people reaching Kerbol's Sun with very little fuel.

[schwarzwolf]

I personally haven't used MechJeb for now, but have seen some videos and heard a lot. Indeed for the actually game i don't see a huge reason for a MechJeb. Donno even if the Apollo guys had some autopilot in their capsule. The technology wasn't so advanced to this time and it must be developed enough to be safe to fly with some. And i was able to land on both Mun and Minmus on my own what was a good feeling. Thats personally my thinking and i am good with if players even prefered to use MechJeb for it. Its at least a game and peoples should play it how it is the most fun for them.

But for the future game, when the technology advances, i think a autopilot like MechJeb would be a good addition also as stock part. I read that somepeoples suggested that we have to develop a better becoming computer technology for flight calculation and autopiloting. I personally endorse this idea.

For the update 0.17 with new engines and the possibility to fly to other planets in the solar system i think the technology should be advanced enough for something like MechJeb and i actually planning to test it in this update.

So even i didn't tested it by myself, it gets a huge pro from me.

[CobraA1]

Donno even if the Apollo guys had some autopilot in their capsule. The technology wasn't so advanced to this time and it must be developed enough to be safe to fly with some.

Well, it was well beyond what everybody else had at the time. For that time period, it was quite advanced. We also poured an enormous amount of money into it - if you account for inflation, the mid 1960's was the most funding NASA ever had. We basically wrote them a blank check and told them to get us to the moon.

There was some automation on Apollo as I understand it. Maybe not a whole lot due to the technology at the time, but the first integrated circuit was invented about five years earlier, so we're probably talking late transistor / early IC computing devices at the time.

But, a computer is a computer, and they likely at the very least computed orbits and burn times for the maneuvers with computers at the time. The orbital information MechJeb gives you is likely on par with what a computer could do at the time.

With today's tech, we can very much automate it completely if we wanted. Heck, we just completely automated landing on Mars with a crazy "skycrane" maneuver, something that would be impossible with 1960's tech. So if you want to emulate today's tech, I'd say MechJeb would be perfectly legitimate.

Its at least a game and peoples should play it how it is the most fun for them.

Agreed - it's a game, and you should do what's fun for you .

I started out without MechJeb and got to both the Mun and Minimus, so no I didn't really "cheat" IMO. For the most part, I'm using MechJeb to perfect my designs for missions to the other planets in 0.17.

I have a feeling that MechJeb is going to pretty much be required for the other planets. I don't imagine I'll be very good at transfer orbits between major planets without it. I'd time it poorly and waste a lot of fuel. I've done a test transfer, and it does take a fair bit of ∆v to transfer to another planet. I won't want to waste a lot of fuel.

[karolus10]

Mech-Jeb comparing to Apollo guidance are very basic... heck, ALL manned spacecrafts (mercury and vostock too ;p) were fully automated.

[TheCardinal]

Automation was a bigger part of the Apollo mission than you might suspected. Take for instance the liftoff to orbit from earth. That was fully automated. No human interaction was required (in fact it would have been detrimental). The onboard computer(s) consisted mainly of electronic parts like transistors and handwoven ferrite ring memory. Afaik they didn't use IC's yet.

In my opinion using MechJeb isn't cheating, just using technology as it exists.

[EpsilonSigma]

I generally use MechJeb for testing whether or not a rocket I make can get somewhere, or for precision landing etc.

The first is pretty simple; I'm not spending time trying to get something into orbit or to the moon when it's not going to work, and I can just leave the simulation running whilst I get a drink or something, and then come back to see if it worked. Then I can replicate it manually, happy in the knowledge that the only reason it's failing is my own incompetence.

The second reason is just me being picky, and not experience enough with the game to land a craft anywhere near where I want it to land, except on Kerbin after going 1km up in the air. Coming out of lunar orbit onto the surface is something I fail at, but having things landed on the moon is satisfying in Orbital Map view.

[DayOne]

Even if you don't want the auto-pilot assists I use it because of the surface altitude which is somewhat necessary to land.