No pilots left, how do I get more

[jonpfl]

All,

I have no pilots left, they are all stuck in orbit, how do I get more?  All I have in my complex are scientists and engineers!  I need a pilot to help me steer my ship.

Thx
jonpfl

[Ultimate Steve]

Have you tried hiring more pilots in the complex?

If this doesn't work, you're out of money or your complex is full. If you're out of money, then (somehow) make more money or attempt to fly a rocket using a probe core or a scientist/engineer. If your complex is full, try upgrading it, or firing one astronaut so you can hire a pilot.

[bewing]

The candidates in the Astronaut Complex update slowly. So some of the engineers and scientists will go away, and some pilots will show up eventually. Alternately, you can accept and complete some rescue contracts -- lots of pilots will show up that way.

Alternately, once you have sent many ships to orbit, you should have a fair amount of tech unlocked. Probe cores do everything a pilot can do. So there's really no need to put pilots on ships after you've unlocked your first couple of probe cores.

 

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

2 hours ago, jonpfl said:

All,

I have no pilots left, they are all stuck in orbit, how do I get more?  All I have in my complex are scientists and engineers!  I need a pilot to help me steer my ship.

Thx
jonpfl

I think, rather than hiring more pilots, you need to embrace what are probably the two most important aspects of the game: Revert Flight and F5/F9.

Every failure in this game is a good learning experience, but you don't have to see those failures through to the bitter end. Just revert flight or reload and start again. I think you'll find yourself a lot less frustrated. This is a fantastic game and a lot of fun, you just have to get past the learning curve (which is steep, no doubt).

[Loren Pechtel]

5 hours ago, bewing said:

The candidates in the Astronaut Complex update slowly. So some of the engineers and scientists will go away, and some pilots will show up eventually. Alternately, you can accept and complete some rescue contracts -- lots of pilots will show up that way.

Alternately, once you have sent many ships to orbit, you should have a fair amount of tech unlocked. Probe cores do everything a pilot can do. So there's really no need to put pilots on ships after you've unlocked your first couple of probe cores.

 

He needs pilots, he can't get up there to rescue Kerbals.

I think the answer here is a probe core.  The basic core is as good as a new pilot, as you go up the tree they are like better pilots.  It doesn't take very far in the game before I no longer care about pilots at all, any I rescue get dismissed.

[Human Person]

Rescue them. And accept more rescue Missions, this way you'll get new employees for free.

[bewing]

3 hours ago, Loren Pechtel said:

He needs pilots, he can't get up there to rescue Kerbals.

He's already got a whole bunch of pilots up there to rescue other kerbals with. The problem seems to be getting them all back down again. Which can be solved by just getting one empty tourist bus up to orbit to bring everyone back down. All you need to do is a bunch of high-speed EVA rendezvous maneuvers.

 

[ManEatingApe]

@jonpfl Your situation has the potential to be turned into a fun challenge!

Would you mind uploading your save file to somewhere like Dropbox, so we could take a look

[jonpfl]

1 hour ago, ManEatingApe said:

@jonpfl Your situation has the potential to be turned into a fun challenge!

Would you mind uploading your save file to somewhere like Dropbox, so we could take a look

I can do that tonight if you would like to take a look?

Thx
jonpfl

[Zhetaan]

In fairness, he said they were stuck in orbit, which is not the same thing as saying that they were stranded in orbit; his pilots may simply be running missions and he wants to run more.

@jonpfl, would you mind clarifying?  Are your pilots stranded in orbit and you want to rescue them, or are you simply looking for more pilots so you can fly more missions at once?

[ManEatingApe]

46 minutes ago, jonpfl said:

I can do that tonight if you would like to take a look?

Thx
jonpfl

Great! Once you've uploaded drop the link here or PM me (whichever you prefer)

[swjr-swis]

The random generation of applicants in the Astronaut Complex can be an issue for early careers, especially for less experienced players: first, because statistically it generates all roles equally, even though in early career and accounting for mishaps, pilots are needed way more than the others; second, because of the RNG nature sometimes it falls well below the average and you get an abundance of other roles and almost no pilots.

The game gives us a way to resolve a deadlock though: we can generate Kerbals with specific roles in the Debug Menu (Alt-F12 by default on PC, under 'Kerbals/Create'). Consider it a form of aggressive headhunting, where you don't wait until applicants come to you, you go and snatch them up from a rival space agency. They will be added to your 'active' roster, so it is cheating in the sense that you don't have to pay for them, but you can compensate for that by removing the appropriate amount of funds through the Cheat buttons.

[jonpfl]

5 hours ago, Zhetaan said:

In fairness, he said they were stuck in orbit, which is not the same thing as saying that they were stranded in orbit; his pilots may simply be running missions and he wants to run more.

@jonpfl, would you mind clarifying?  Are your pilots stranded in orbit and you want to rescue them, or are you simply looking for more pilots so you can fly more missions at once?

Sorry, my pilots are stranded in orbit (ships ran out of fuel) and would like more pilots so I can fly other missions.  I haven't attempted to rescue them yet but I guess I could try that (after I run through the tutorial).

Thx
jonpfl

[Zhetaan]

@jonpfl:

All right, I can still help you.  While it's true that if you wait long enough, more pilots will appear in the Astronaut Complex, that doesn't address the basic issue of stranding them in the first place.  Besides, you pay good money to hire those pilots; it would be nice to use some of them more than once, especially after you've hired a number of them and hiring new staff becomes stupidly expensive.

Without knowing what kinds of missions you're trying to fly, I can't say much about your flying skills and how they are contributing to this, but even if you're a terrible orbital pilot, I will say that the root of your problem here is resource management.  Obviously, you have the basics well-in-hand and can reliably fly a rocket to orbit (otherwise, you wouldn't have been able to strand every single one of your pilots in space), which means you probably have a good grasp, or can get a good grasp, on how to get back down again.  What's happening instead is that you're not taking enough rocket to orbit to manage efficient in-orbit burns, and you're not keeping an eye on the fuel gauge, either.  Knowing how much fuel you need to de-orbit and return to Kerbin is critical, and so is cultivating the ability to say, 'I need to re-think this,' scrap the mission, and get home while you still have the fuel to do so (especially if you've saved and reloaded, which means 'Revert Flight' won't work).

For this, I say that you should take an empty probe-controlled rocket and fly it manually.  You may need an antenna to keep a link to KSC (and thus be able to use nodes) and a bottom-tier probe core with Stability Assist would be nice (so no Stayputnik), but this is perfectly doable.  Good rocket design will give you something that can reliably make orbit with a little nudge right off the pad (of about three to five degrees prograde) and no further control input from you except to touch the throttle.  Designs for these kinds of rockets are all over KerbalX but you'll get more out of it if you try it yourself--also, I don't know what tech you have unlocked, so there's no guarantee that someone else's design is something that you can even use.  Besides, given that you can reliably make orbit, this is a valid next step in developing your skill set.  Go for tall, thin rockets with fins at the bottom and with fuel flow figured so that it drains from the bottom up--you want the mass to concentrate in the tip and the drag to concentrate at the base.  Try one, and if it doesn't make orbit, revert, redesign, and try again.

Next, you need to be certain that once in orbit, you can accomplish a rescue, so that means adequate fuel.  First, this means efficiently using what you have, so take out any monopropellant--you won't need it.  Rescue in this case means rendezvous, not docking, and you can accomplish that with a Terrier and thrust limiters.  Don't take science parts, and you likely won't need more than a single OX-Stat solar panel and one small battery for power.  Take out half the ablator from the heat shield to start and be ready to take more--you may not even need a heat shield at all, if you're careful.  Keep the orbital stage short and you can use the capsule's reaction wheels; it'll be slow to turn, but it will turn.  Second, this means avoiding the problem that got you into this mess in the first place, so I'd suggest having an FL-T100 or ROUND-8 tank in your last engine stage, but with the tank locked so that you won't accidentally use up the fuel until you unlock it.  A low-mass rescue rocket should be able to reenter from any low Kerbin orbit on the contents of a ROUND-8, but the FL-T100 has the benefit of being the same diameter as the Terrier and the Mk. I capsule.  Do that until you are comfortable with the idea of leaving a de-orbiting reserve, and then you can take out that tank--and if you forget and strand that crew, you'll know how to fix it.

Finally, pick one pilot who is in a good, near-circular orbit close to Kerbin, and rescue that one.  Rendezvous with that pilot's capsule, set relative velocity to zero (or near-zero; it doesn't have to be perfect as you won't be staying for long), and EVA the pilot over to the rescue ship.  De-orbit the rescue ship and now you've got a pilot.  Do this a few times.  You may be tempted to put together some kind of massive rescue mission that will save everybody at once, but don't do it!  You need to practise bringing one pilot home before you can get on to bringing all of them home.  Additionally, if you've got your stranded ships on eccentric orbits, do your de-orbit burn at the apoapsis as this will take less fuel.

Be sure to check your rescue rocket before launch; the VAB likes to auto-crew your rockets and that is a problem if you need a free seat.

 

P.S.:  This all assumes that you're stuck in Kerbin orbit.  If you've managed to throw your pilots into solar orbit, you may be better off starting with a clean slate.

Edited May 25, 2017 by Zhetaan

[ManEatingApe]

Good news - the situation is not that bad, and it'll be fun to rescue each craft.

TL;DR We can use each pilot's EVA thrusters to help their situation.

 

So let's triage, we have 3 ships in a variety of stable, sub-orbital and escape trajectories, each drifting out of fuel.

 

Valentina ("Untitled Space Craft") - currently in Mun's SOI but on a escape trajectory of both the Mun and Kerbin.

If we let Valentina escape Kerbin's SOI it will be a real nuisance to go rescue her from Solar orbit.

Solution:

• Go on EVA
• Engage RCS and thrust retrograde
• Either capture into Kerbin orbit or Mun orbit.  Kerbin orbit will make future rescue easier but make sure your PE is outside the Mun's influence - you don't want to get ejected later.
• We'll go rescue Valentina later - she can float happily in her suit until then

Jedtrey ("Untitled Space Craft") - in a 73km x 176km Kerbin orbit with no fuel.

Solution:

• Wait until the ship is at AP
• Go on EVA with Jedtrey
• Let go of the ladder and engage RCS
• Headbutt ..erm nudge the pod retrograde until your PE is below 70km (anything < 70km will do but the lower you can manage the faster it will be)
• Warp until you're in the atmosphere, then point retrograde (the blunt end of your ship first for maximum drag)
• Use 4 x phsyics warp to speed up the process
• Each pass through the atmosphere will gradually lower your AP and PE - eventually you'll re-enter - this will take many many passes so be patient

Macbert (Passenger 1) - on a 66 km x 659 km sub-orbital trajectory.

Hmm...since we're sub-orbital our orbit will eventually decay and we'll re-enter - however your craft looks like its COM is too far forward - it will be stable pointy end first and this could cause problems (exploding).

If Passenger1 keeps exploding then go on EVA and nudge into a stable orbit (PE > 70km).

 

The order I'd suggest is:

1. Stabilise Valentina's orbit
2. Stabilise Macbert's orbit (or re-enter)
3. Rescue Jedtrey - he in turn can then go rescue Valentina and Macbert.

Edited May 26, 2017 by ManEatingApe

[jonpfl]

5 hours ago, ManEatingApe said:

Good news - the situation is not that bad, and it'll be fun to rescue each craft.

TL;DR We can use each pilot's EVA thrusters to help their situation.

 

So let's triage, we have 3 ships in a variety of stable, sub-orbital and escape trajectories, each drifting out of fuel.

 

Valentina ("Untitled Space Craft") - currently in Mun's SOI but on a escape trajectory of both the Mun and Kerbin.

If we let Valentina escape Kerbin's SOI it will be a real nuisance to go rescue her from Solar orbit.

Solution:

• Go on EVA
• Engage RCS and thrust retrograde
• Either capture into Kerbin orbit or Mun orbit.  Kerbin orbit will make future rescue easier but make sure your PE is outside the Mun's influence - you don't want to get ejected later.
• We'll go rescue Valentina later - she can float happily in her suit until then

Jedtrey ("Untitled Space Craft") - in a 73km x 176km Kerbin orbit with no fuel.

Solution:

• Wait until the ship is at AP
• Go on EVA with Jedtrey
• Let go of the ladder and engage RCS
• Headbutt ..erm nudge the pod retrograde until your PE is below 70km (anything < 70km will do but the lower you can manage the faster it will be)
• Warp until you're in the atmosphere, then point retrograde (the blunt end of your ship first for maximum drag)
• Use 4 x phsyics warp to speed up the process
• Each pass through the atmosphere will gradually lower your AP and PE - eventually you'll re-enter - this will take many many passes so be patient

Macbert (Passenger 1) - on a 66 km x 659 km sub-orbital trajectory.

Hmm...since we're sub-orbital our orbit will eventually decay and we'll re-enter - however your craft looks like its COM is too far forward - it will be stable pointy end first and this could cause problems (exploding).

If Passenger1 keeps exploding then go on EVA and nudge into a stable orbit (PE > 70km).

 

The order I'd suggest is:

1. Stabilise Valentina's orbit
2. Stabilise Macbert's orbit (or re-enter)
3. Rescue Jedtrey - he in turn can then go rescue Valentina and Macbert.

I am at work, but in regards to Macbert, what did I do wrong when building ship?  How would I lower the COM?

Thx
jonpfl

15 hours ago, Zhetaan said:

@jonpfl:

All right, I can still help you.  While it's true that if you wait long enough, more pilots will appear in the Astronaut Complex, that doesn't address the basic issue of stranding them in the first place.  Besides, you pay good money to hire those pilots; it would be nice to use some of them more than once, especially after you've hired a number of them and hiring new staff becomes stupidly expensive.

Without knowing what kinds of missions you're trying to fly, I can't say much about your flying skills and how they are contributing to this, but even if you're a terrible orbital pilot, I will say that the root of your problem here is resource management.  Obviously, you have the basics well-in-hand and can reliably fly a rocket to orbit (otherwise, you wouldn't have been able to strand every single one of your pilots in space), which means you probably have a good grasp, or can get a good grasp, on how to get back down again.  What's happening instead is that you're not taking enough rocket to orbit to manage efficient in-orbit burns, and you're not keeping an eye on the fuel gauge, either.  Knowing how much fuel you need to de-orbit and return to Kerbin is critical, and so is cultivating the ability to say, 'I need to re-think this,' scrap the mission, and get home while you still have the fuel to do so (especially if you've saved and reloaded, which means 'Revert Flight' won't work).

For this, I say that you should take an empty probe-controlled rocket and fly it manually.  You may need an antenna to keep a link to KSC (and thus be able to use nodes) and a bottom-tier probe core with Stability Assist would be nice (so no Stayputnik), but this is perfectly doable.  Good rocket design will give you something that can reliably make orbit with a little nudge right off the pad (of about three to five degrees prograde) and no further control input from you except to touch the throttle.  Designs for these kinds of rockets are all over KerbalX but you'll get more out of it if you try it yourself--also, I don't know what tech you have unlocked, so there's no guarantee that someone else's design is something that you can even use.  Besides, given that you can reliably make orbit, this is a valid next step in developing your skill set.  Go for tall, thin rockets with fins at the bottom and with fuel flow figured so that it drains from the bottom up--you want the mass to concentrate in the tip and the drag to concentrate at the base.  Try one, and if it doesn't make orbit, revert, redesign, and try again.

Next, you need to be certain that once in orbit, you can accomplish a rescue, so that means adequate fuel.  First, this means efficiently using what you have, so take out any monopropellant--you won't need it.  Rescue in this case means rendezvous, not docking, and you can accomplish that with a Terrier and thrust limiters.  Don't take science parts, and you likely won't need more than a single OX-Stat solar panel and one small battery for power.  Take out half the ablator from the heat shield to start and be ready to take more--you may not even need a heat shield at all, if you're careful.  Keep the orbital stage short and you can use the capsule's reaction wheels; it'll be slow to turn, but it will turn.  Second, this means avoiding the problem that got you into this mess in the first place, so I'd suggest having an FL-T100 or ROUND-8 tank in your last engine stage, but with the tank locked so that you won't accidentally use up the fuel until you unlock it.  A low-mass rescue rocket should be able to reenter from any low Kerbin orbit on the contents of a ROUND-8, but the FL-T100 has the benefit of being the same diameter as the Terrier and the Mk. I capsule.  Do that until you are comfortable with the idea of leaving a de-orbiting reserve, and then you can take out that tank--and if you forget and strand that crew, you'll know how to fix it.

Finally, pick one pilot who is in a good, near-circular orbit close to Kerbin, and rescue that one.  Rendezvous with that pilot's capsule, set relative velocity to zero (or near-zero; it doesn't have to be perfect as you won't be staying for long), and EVA the pilot over to the rescue ship.  De-orbit the rescue ship and now you've got a pilot.  Do this a few times.  You may be tempted to put together some kind of massive rescue mission that will save everybody at once, but don't do it!  You need to practise bringing one pilot home before you can get on to bringing all of them home.  Additionally, if you've got your stranded ships on eccentric orbits, do your de-orbit burn at the apoapsis as this will take less fuel.

Be sure to check your rescue rocket before launch; the VAB likes to auto-crew your rockets and that is a problem if you need a free seat.

 

P.S.:  This all assumes that you're stuck in Kerbin orbit.  If you've managed to throw your pilots into solar orbit, you may be better off starting with a clean slate.

How do you make fuel drain from the bottom up?

Thx
jonpfl

[ManEatingApe]

 

Quote

...in regards to Macbert, what did I do wrong when building ship?  How would I lower the COM?

Either stick something heavy on the end you want to point forward (usually a heatshield or engine) or better yet add some fins to the back.

(You can check COM in the VAB when you're assembling a craft)

For something as small as your pod a pair of basic fins should be enough.

You want it to resemble a dart - heavy at the front, fins at the back.

 

Edited May 26, 2017 by ManEatingApe

[Zhetaan]

@jonpfl:

Without seeing your craft, I can't tell you specifically what to move in order to lower the centre of mass, but since it's already in orbit, you can't change it anyway.  For that case, I agree with @ManEatingApe in that your options are either to hope that you have enough SAS control to force your capsule retrograde and ride it down with a death-grip on the stick or else to get it into a stable orbit and rescue everyone with a more reentry-stable craft.

In general, for the part that is meant to reenter, you want to have heavier things at the bottom (such as the heat shield) and lighter things at the top (such as reaction wheels if you intend to recover them).  This by itself is reason enough to stage away your empty tanks and recover only the capsule, heat shield, and parachutes--engines are often fairly heavy, but a large, empty fuel tank shifts the centre of mass upward and can cause a lot of problems when you reenter.  Don't put a lot of electronic equipment on the capsule so that you can save or recover it, either--maybe you can do that with the lighter science experiments, but that's all.  A capsule with a heat shield and a parachute is stable with the heat shield pointing prograde and needs no electric power to keep that orientation.  If you flew a contract that paid for your rocket, then you can afford to get rid of the extra stuff anyway.  If saving every possible penny on every possible launch is important to you, fly spaceplanes.

For fuel flow, you can change the flow priority of the fuel tanks in the VAB.  It may be an advanced feature that you need to activate in the settings--I don't recall because I've always used it.  The idea is that each fuel tank is assigned a number, and fuel will flow from a tank with a higher number before it flows from a tank with a lower number.  There's a lot of room to make changes:  KSP increments stages by ten so you can make shift things around without much risk of interfering with other stages.  For bottom-draining priority, you'd want to set it up so that the bottom tank has the highest number, then the next tank up is one less, and so forth until you reach the top of the stage.

[Spricigo]

13 hours ago, ManEatingApe said:

The order I'd suggest is:

1. Stabilise Valentina's orbit
2. Stabilise Macbert's orbit (or re-enter)
3. Rescue Jedtrey - he in turn can then go rescue Valentina and Macbert.

While there is a fair amount available, worth keep an eye on the propellant fuel while EVA'ing. If I understood correct Valentina's ship will be abandoned,  but for the other there is the option to reboard to replenish fuel.

[jonpfl]

Quick question,

I thought I read about someone saying having your ship tilted east before takeoff.

Is that possible somehow?

Thx
jonpfl

[IncongruousGoat]

3 minutes ago, jonpfl said:

Quick question,

I thought I read about someone saying having your ship tilted east before takeoff.

Is that possible somehow?

Thx
jonpfl

You can tilt the entire craft on the launchpad by rotating the root part in the VAB. However, it's worth noting that tilting the rocket on the launchpad is only something you would want to do if it has little in the way of control authority on the first stage, since tilting the rocket only serves to automatically start the gravity turn without the need for any user input. A well-designed rocket will theoretically fly a gravity turn without any control input, but most players (myself included) fly the turn manually, if possible.

[swjr-swis]

2 hours ago, IncongruousGoat said:

You can tilt the entire craft on the launchpad by rotating the root part in the VAB.

I'll add one thing to this comment: my main reason for using the 'pre-tilt' is repeatability. It is much easier to reproduce a near-perfect trajectory when you minimize the one thing that causes most of the deviations - user input. I would even say that especially when your craft has a lot of control authority, it can benefit from limiting how much the user decides the final trajectory.

A pre-tilted rocket's launch profile usually looks like this:

• Set SAS stability and throttle to full
• Stage to launch
• Switch SAS to follow prograde at the prescribed speed (*)
• Stage when needed, but literally let the rocket fly itself for the rest of the way to apoapsis
• At most, all you need is to create the circularization maneuver node and perform it

(*): Finding the prescribed speed to switch SAS is practically the only variable in this profile, it can be found pretty easily by doing a few test launches, and you quickly get a 'feel' for it. In my experience, flying the turn manually tends to result in a good bit more deviation due to inevitable pilot error (which I admit could be entirely me, it may be different for others).

[bewing]

Um, I don't think these guys quite answered the main part of the question. You can't really pre-tilt a rocket that's just standing on the launchpad. To pre-tilt you have to be using launch clamps. Then you add the tilt in the VAB with the rotation gizmo.