Interplanetary Transfers

[Popestar]

I'm going to try asking this one last time.  I will ask that, no matter who responds, please understand that I'm frustrated and honestly need a direct answer.  Don't beat around the bush, don't give me multiple explanations, don't point me to things I've already pointed out that I've seen.  Please and thank you in advance.

With that said, I need help on interplanetary transfers.  I've seen the spreadsheet to calculate transfer windows.  I've seen the stuff about calculating dV.  I've seen the tutorials on transferring from Kerbin to the Mun and/or Minmus.  I can get from Kerbin to Minmus and back with zero issue.  I can craft rockets.  I can fly them all over Kerbin's SOI.  What I cannot do is transfer outside of Kerbin's SOI to Duna.  Or even inward towards Sol to Eve.  I cannot do it, no matter how hard I try.

This morning, I literally transferred from Kerbin to the Mun, and then from Mun to Minmus.  Why?  Because I was under the impression that this was good practice (which it is), and that to go from Kerbin to Duna (as an example) you simply go to one of Kerbin's floating rocks, create a node, zoom out to the solar system view, and do the same thing.  Well, that didn't work.  I'm orbiting Minmus, trying to create a node, and I can't even get an intercept to Duna's orbit, let alone an encounter.  All that happens is that the Ap and Pe continue to shift and move as if I'm doing something, and then the orbit actually flips around to a different direction, and then...nothing.  I even tried doing a blind Minmus escape, just throttling up until the Ap on the other side of the rock went into an escape trajectory, at which point I just found myself in orbit around Sol.  So I guess I can leave the SOI, I just can't get to anybody else's.

What I need is a simple, easy-to-follow, step-by-step explanation of how to transfer to another planet.  I don't want a video where someone has built a rocket in warp speed and doesn't explain things.  I don't want someone to say "Well, just create a node".  I don't want some convoluted answer about transfer windows or dV calculation because, once I know how to do it, I can calculate those on my own with the tools that are out there.  I don't want someone to say "Let MechJeb do it for you" because that doesn't teach me how to do it on my own.

I cannot ask this more plainly and more simply.  I'm stuck, and I need help.  If I cannot get the help I need, this game ends up going to the wayside in my "Unable to Play" pile of games.  Yeah, there's lots to do in Kerbin's SOI.  But that's not even scratching the surface of this game.  Please, someone, help.  Just give me a simple set of instructions to follow.  "Do this, then do this, then do this".  With images, if at all possible.

[HebaruSan]

11 hours ago, Popestar said:

What I need is a simple, easy-to-follow, step-by-step explanation of how to transfer to another planet. 

Hi, I guess you missed my response last time? As far as I could/can tell it was/is exactly what you were asking for. Posted again for your convenience:

1. Identify the transfer window during which you will depart, using the spreadsheets and calculators you've already found
2. Time warp to the window (within a few days or so)
3. Set your target in the map view
4. Set up a maneuver node going in approximately the right direction (planet-prograde for outer planets, planet-retrograde for inner planets)
5. Dial in the delta V specified on the spreadsheets and calculators
6. Zoom out to solar orbit; after you escape Kerbin, you should see a transfer orbit that takes you at least somewhat close to your destination, and the close approach markers should be present
7. Fine tune the maneuver till you get an encounter

As noted last time, a whole world of complications can open up at each of these steps, but I can't know in advance which ones you will encounter or what you are struggling with, so please ask follow-up questions as needed.

New note:  Don't go to Mun or Minmus as part of trying to get to Duna; it's not going to help. I think those replies were intended to suggest that you practice going back and forth between Mun and Minmus only, on the theory that it's analogous to an interplanetary transfer, which is somewhat true, but also potentially confusing and not very helpful for understanding the steps that are involved.

Edited February 15, 2021 by HebaruSan

[OhioBob]

8 minutes ago, Popestar said:

I don't want some convoluted answer about transfer windows...

If I can't talk about transfer windows, there's no answer I can give you.  The key to getting anywhere is performing the transfer at the correct time.

[Popestar]

52 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

Hi, I guess you missed my response last time? As far as I could/can tell it was/is exactly what you were asking for. Posted again for your convenience:

1. Identify the transfer window during which you will depart, using the spreadsheets and calculators you've already found
2. Time warp to the window (within a few days or so)
3. Set your target in the map view
4. Set up a maneuver node going in approximately the right direction (planet-prograde for outer planets, planet-retrograde for inner planets)
5. Dial in the delta V specified on the spreadsheets and calculators
6. Zoom out to solar orbit; after you escape Kerbin, you should see a transfer orbit that takes you at least somewhat close to your destination, and the close approach markers should be present
7. Fine tune the maneuver till you get an encounter

As noted last time, a whole world of complications can open up at each of these steps, but I can't know in advance which ones you will encounter or what you are struggling with, so please ask follow-up questions as needed.

New note:  Don't go to Mun or Minmus as part of trying to get to Duna; it's not going to help. I think those replies were intended to suggest that you practice going back and forth between Mun and Minmus only, on the theory that it's analogous to an interplanetary transfer, which is somewhat true, but also potentially confusing and not very helpful for understanding the steps that are involved.

I need some images please.  I'm having a hard time visualizing steps 4 and 6.  I'm not used to "approximately" or "somewhat close" in this game, with everything to this point so far having to be precise and exact.

[HebaruSan]

10 minutes ago, Popestar said:

I need some images please.  I'm having a hard time visualizing steps 4 and 6.  I'm not used to "approximately" or "somewhat close" in this game, with everything to this point so far having to be precise and exact.

OK; "planet-prograde" just means the direction the planet is moving, so if you zoom all the way out and look at Kerbin, this orange arrow would be planet prograde:

So once you zoom back in, you should be leaving Kerbin in that direction to get to Duna, Dres, Jool, or Eeloo.

Planet-retrograde is the opposite direction, backwards along the planet's orbit at that point. You should leave Kerbin in that direction to get to Moho or Eve.

[Popestar]

@HebaruSan

Ok, so, to make sure I understand...I should travel in the same direction my target is traveling when going to planets further away from the sun, but the opposite direction when my target is closer to the sun.  Ok, that I understand, assuming I said that right.

And we are talking about an escape trajectory...but that doesn't explain how to do an intercept once I'm in a solar orbit.  And by images, I was hoping to get actual in game screen shots.

Edited February 14, 2021 by Popestar

[HebaruSan]

1 minute ago, Popestar said:

Ok, so, to make sure I understand...I should travel in the same direction my target is traveling when going to planets further away from the sun, but the opposite direction when my target is closer to the sun.

Close; not your target, but Kerbin, your starting body. To go farther away from the Sun, you want to go faster in the same direction Kerbin is already traveling, which means leaving it in its current forward direction. It's analogous to burning prograde to get to Mun or Minmus. To go closer to the Sun you want to do the opposite.

1 minute ago, Popestar said:

And we are talking about an escape trajectory...but that doesn't explain how to do an intercept once I'm in a solar orbit. 

The idea of the instructions I gave is to have an encounter before you leave Kerbin.

[Popestar]

6 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

The idea of the instructions I gave is to have an encounter before you leave Kerbin.

Ok, this is where I'm struggling.  Escape trajectory prograde (assume I'm aiming for Duna)...without having an intercept before I leave Kerbin...is confusing.  Goes against tverything the game teaches you to this point.  Hence, my ask for in game images.  I need to see this in action.

[Snark]

10 minutes ago, Popestar said:

Ok, this is where I'm struggling.  Escape trajectory prograde (assume I'm aiming for Duna)...without having an intercept before I leave Kerbin...is confusing.  Goes against tverything the game teaches you to this point.  Hence, my ask for in game images.  I need to see this in action.

Does this help?

This is not exactly an in-game image... but it's basically the same thing you'd see in-game if you went into map view and adjusted the camera so that it's l ooking down on Kerbin's north pole.

This image is taken from my own personal favorite transfer tool, http://ksp.olex.biz.  I like it precisely because it's not fancy.  It's simple to use and presents these easy-to-understand diagrams as the output.

To use it,

1. pick your departure body from a drop-down (Kerbin in this case)
2. pick your destination body from a drop-down (Duna in this case)
3. fill in a little text box to tell it the height of your parking orbit around your departure body (e.g. "100 km" or whatever)

It then will tell you three very important things:

1. How the planets should line up when you depart (the left image above)
2. The size of your ejection burn (in text off to the side, not shown above)
3. The direction from which you eject from the origin planet (the right image shown above).

So in your case, what you'd do would be to first timewarp until Duna and Kerbin are in the positions shown above.  Then get to LKO.  Then use the tool to see the size and direction of your burn.  You'd plop down a maneuver node at the location designated by "Ship" on the right-hand image above, and give it an amount of burn equal to what the tool tells you.

That right there should give you pretty darn close to a Duna encounter.  You can then zoom out to the solar system view, and should either have a Duna intercept already, or else some closest-approach markers that are pretty close in the ballpark.

At that point you can either do some fine-tuning of the ejection burn to get your intercept before you do the burn, or else you can just go ahead and do the burn and then do some fine tuning later on with a second burn after you've left Kerbin's SOI.  The second burn will likely be pretty small.

[HebaruSan]

30 minutes ago, Popestar said:

Hence, my ask for in game images.  I need to see this in action.

OK, here's an example showing Kerbin, Mun, Minmus, my maneuver and escape, the Sun, and my Duna encounter (ignore the precise delta V value as this test ship is unusually high over Kerbin):

As you can see from the relative positions of Kerbin and the Sun, the burn puts me on a path to escape Kerbin going counter-clockwise around the Sun when viewed from above, which is also the direction in which Kerbin travels.

[Popestar]

25 minutes ago, Snark said:

This is not exactly an in-game image... but it's basically the same thing you'd see in-game if you went into map view and adjusted the camera so that it's l ooking down on Kerbin's north pole.

So, unless Duna is way out in front or way behind, I can swing the camera until it looks like the above image.  How then do I know if I'm right or not?

I'm sorry if I sound frustrated or stupid, but I'm still not getting it.  And I'm not even sure where I'm getting lost.  Burn prograde to escape traveling the same direction as Duna....from behind Kerbin?  This is why I asked for on game shots; I gotta see this in action or I will never get it.

[Echo__3]

Transfer windows are the key.

This tutorial demonstrates the use of Alexmoon's transfer planner

 

[Snark]

1 hour ago, Popestar said:

So, unless Duna is way out in front or way behind, I can swing the camera until it looks like the above image.  How then do I know if I'm right or not?

I'm going to guess that you're talking about the launch window here, i.e. the part where you wait for days or weeks until the planets line up, and you want to know if you've got that right so you know when to launch.

Basically, what you do is, go into map view, rotate it until you're looking straight down at Kerbin's north pole, then zoom out until you can see both Kerbin and Duna in the picture.  (It may help to re-center the map view on the sun.)

Think of Kerbin and Duna as being two hands on a clock, with the sun at the center of the dial.  Rotate it around until Kerbin is at the 3-oclock position when you're looking straight down at the Sun's north pole.  Where is Duna?

You want Duna to be roughly 44 degrees ahead of Kerbin, per the above picture.  In other words, if Kerbin is at the 3 o'clock position, you want Duna to be about halfway between 1 o'clock and 2 o'clock.  Basically, positioned as shown in the left-hand picture above.

If Duna is not in that spot, then it means you're not in the launch window, so timewarp ahead until it is.

Once you get the two planets in the correct position, i.e. so it looks like the left-hand picture above, then it's time for you to launch to LKO and set up your ejection burn.

Does this make sense?  Specifically,

• does the part up to this point make sense, or should we talk about it some more?
• if you've got this part down and need advice about the launch-to-orbit-and-set-up-ejection part, let us know?

 

1 hour ago, Popestar said:

I'm sorry if I sound frustrated or stupid, but I'm still not getting it.

You do sound frustrated, which is totally understandable because this stuff is complicated and we've all felt frustrated with it at some point.  You have plenty of company, including Randall Munro.  (That particular strip, by the way, was the one that finally convinced me to try playing KSP...)

You don't sound even a little bit stupid, because this is literal rocket science and you're just working through the same stuff that we all had to at one point or another.  Stay the course, you're doing fine. 

1 hour ago, Popestar said:

Burn prograde to escape traveling the same direction as Duna....from behind Kerbin?

Yeah, that part is because when you eject from Kerbin, the escape burn is only slightly more than escape velocity.  This means that after you do your burn, your path will curve a lot (from Kerbin's gravity) before you leave Kerbin's SOI.

You need your ejection from Kerbin to be moving in the "Kerbin prograde" direction (i.e. same direction Kerbin is going) at the point that you leave the SOI.  So you need to do your burn while you're still kinda on Kerbin's "backside" to account for that.

Basically, "trust the tool"-- try doing it just as the tool shows, and when you set up your ejection burn, then it'll make more visual sense to you.

[Popestar]

56 minutes ago, Snark said:

does the part up to this point make sense, or should we talk about it some more?

Yes, that finally makes sense.  Now I get how to set it up.  I'm still fuzzy on when to do the actual burn, though.  Not "what is the transfer window" but "at what point in my orbit am I supposed to burn, and at what angle".

[Snark]

8 minutes ago, Popestar said:

Yes, that finally makes sense.  Now I get how to set it up.  I'm still fuzzy on when to do the actual burn, though.  Not "what is the transfer window" but "at what point in my orbit am I supposed to burn, and at what angle".

That's what the right-hand picture is for.  The place where you put your maneuver node (i.e. for the burn) is at the point labeled "Ship" on the drawing.  Rotate the map view so that you're looking  straight down at Kerbin's north pole, and adjust it so that the direction Kerbin is orbiting the sun is straight up (i.e. at the 12 o'clock position).

Put your maneuver node at the place indicated in the right-hand drawing, and give it enough to match the size of the burn that the tool tells you (likely around 1050 m/s for this, depending on the height of your parking orbit).

[paul_c]

I've never worried about the precise "ejection angle", instead adding a node to burn xxxx m/s dV at roughly the right place as per the graphic from https://ksp.olex.biz/ then tweaking both amount; and ejection angle/point in orbit. Unless you get the transfer window exactly spot-on then its never actually that precise (at least its not been for me anyway). Setting Duna as the target and seeing the target markers close up helps too - tells you if you're getting closer or further away from an encounter.

It helps to have a "racy" motor, eg TWR ~ 1.5 or so, so the burn isn't too long and the approximation which comes from having one point to burn at; but an engine that needs a half-minute or so to burn, isn't way off. And if its eg 1040m/s, I'll burn to 1030 then do the last few m/s at min throttle and keep looking at Duna on the map so as not to 'miss' an encounter if it did connect.

Oh, and don't be afraid to immediately turn retrograde and burn a puff or two of fuel to make a correction - it is the most efficient time to, if you can see you've gone past.

If it doesn't give an encounter on the map then don't worry. Try a correction maneouvre later on, eg just outside of Kerbin's orbit; then 1/3, 2/3 the way there.

The margins are slim so often one "mouse pixel" of movement can be the difference.

[Popestar]

10 hours ago, OhioBob said:

If I can't talk about transfer windows, there's no answer I can give you.  The key to getting anywhere is performing the transfer at the correct time.

The issue I have with this answer is that while the actual window is important, knowing when to perform the move means nothing if I don't know how to do it.  Which is why I said that I didn't want to get into that; I want to learn this in steps.  First what to do, then when.

[king of nowhere]

35 minutes ago, Popestar said:

The issue I have with this answer is that while the actual window is important, knowing when to perform the move means nothing if I don't know how to do it.  Which is why I said that I didn't want to get into that; I want to learn this in steps.  First what to do, then when.

Is the step-by-step answer i tried to give you here inadequate? if so, how?

well, let's try with pictures. Here i will demonstrate an Eve transfer, for the simple reason that I had a save ready on an eve launch window so it was more convenient.

start: a probe in low kerbin orbit. eve targeted

since eve is closer to the sun, i must exit kerbin behind. i know from the deltaV maps that i will need around 1000 m/s to reach eve, so i will try with that. At first i make a manuever node in the general direction of leaving kerbin from behind. it's unlikely to be accurate, but i will refine it later

so, this was the first try. and it's not good (actually, by now i am good enough at eyeballing those that my first try was spot on. but i changed it to a bad one for the sake of demonstrating). how do i know? because when the manuever is done right, the solar periapsis (or apoapsis if moving away from kerbol) is right behind the sun. also, see that the point where you exit kerbin's SoI is not behind kerbin but more lateral? either way, now we try to move the manuever node around until we find the lowest solar periapsis. this will be the most efficient time to burn. i keep the 1000 m/s, but i move the manuever node.

here i moved the node a bit forward, and periapsis was lower. let's keep moving the node (by very small increments) until we find the minimum

and see, the minimum is indeed when the solar periapsis is behind the sun. but that is 9.9 million km. eve orbit is at 9.6 million km. so i must burn prograde a bit more. this time the manuever node stands still, and i'm changing the amount of burn

done. it's only a minor change, so i won't try to move around the manuever node to improve it. i would if the change in the burn was large.

so now my periapsis goes closer to the sun than eve, but still i see no close approach marker. that's because i'm not crossing eve's orbit, but rather i am passing above or below it. so it's time to work on orbital planes. let's make a manuever on a node

here i am using the descending node, which i will meet on my way to eve. let's try to equalize orbital planes

and there, just as the angle got close enough to 0, i got a close approach marker! now i will go back to the first node, and tweak it a bit to turn it into an actual encounter. this can only be done by trial and error at this point.

so, first i try to add some retrograde. but the distance increases. so i will try if prograde helps

yes, it helps! distance is getting smaller

until i finally reach eve's SoI.

i could still refine the trajectory, but you will probably need a small correction manuever at some point anyway. the important thing is, you got your encounter.

be very careful with your mouse during this operation: as you can see by looking at the numbers, it was a very small amount of deltaV that made the difference between an encounter an a miss. on very careful manuevers, sometimes i don't even pull on the node, but i write the numbers in the box directly, changing them by increments as small as 0.001 m/s. when i deal with mauevers so fine, i generally put thrust limiter on the engine at 1%

sometimes you lose the close approach marker. in this case don't panic. it's generally because your plane changed. maybe your increase in speed also cause the plane change manuever to be less accurate now. go back to fixing that, and you should get a close approach again, this time closer than before. with difficult targets like moho or eeloo this iterative process can take quite a long time

now, let's look at the deltaV map: it says i would need 930 m/s to escape kerbin and 90 additional to reach eve, for 1020 m/s. i used 1045, close enough. plus 340 m/s of plane change, which is within the limit of 430 by the deltaV map. so, this is a rther standard transfer to eve.

the alex moon planner instead says that i could do this transfer with a single ballistic manuever with only 1062 m/s, without plane change. indeed, it's possible, but harder. i figured out how to really optimize on plane changes only recently. for now, stick to the easy way.

 

finally, there's plenty of people here who have been trying to help you. and your gratitude amounts to getting all angry and passive-aggressive at them. frankly, after your previous thread, i had decided to ignore your questions, if you don't like our answers, good luck figuring them out yourself. but some other posters didn't give up, and that made me decide to come back here and spend 45 minutes of my evening to take screenshots and make this post. but really, you should be more tactful towards people who are trying to help, else you may eventually find in a situation that nobody would want to help you anymore.

Edited February 15, 2021 by king of nowhere

[paul_c]

Put simply, there's only 2 angles you're interested in leaving a Kerbin orbit - forwards or backwards. Forwards adds speed to your (solar) orbit, thus is the same as burning prograde if you were just in a solar orbit.

BUT because the elliptical orbit curves round; and takes time to get from the burn point to the place you leave Kerbin's SOI, its not done exactly opposite Kerbin's prograde movement, instead its done at the ejection angle.

[OhioBob]

13 hours ago, Popestar said:

The issue I have with this answer is that while the actual window is important, knowing when to perform the move means nothing if I don't know how to do it.  Which is why I said that I didn't want to get into that; I want to learn this in steps.  First what to do, then when.

Knowing when to do it is the first step in knowing how to do it.

[The Aziz]

I'll add something to it regarding "at what point in orbit I have to burn" - you launch as usual, eastwards, into equatorial orbit, just like million times before, that hasn't changed. Then, when you are in transfer window - as in, when planets are in correct positions relative to each other, which was posted earlier, or, you could use the planner, and it will tell you the exact date for transfer - where you put your maneuver node depends on where you're going. For inner planets, Moho, Eve, and anything between Kerbin and Sun, you put the node on the light side, where the sun shines on Kerbin. For the rest, from Duna to Eeloo, you put the node on the dark side. I hope that sounds easier than "forward" or "retrograde" as people kept saying. Actual ejection angle helps getting an encounter, but that's just reading the provided info, and dragging the node along the orbit one way or another, until it's there. Because I believe the game should show the current angle, once you put in the  necessary dV.

Then you can set another planet as target (or do it earlier, doesn't matter), and the encounter, or closest point should appear. If not, zoom out and see if the planned trajectory actually intersects with target orbit. It should.

[Popestar]

I'll start by saying thank you to several people in here for the help.  I've learned a lot, and I'm still trying to work through this.  Some of the responses have gotten me on the right track, and I'm getting close.  Unfortunately, MJ is the only way I have figured out how to create a node and time it right...although MJ won't auto-warp to the point in time, nor will it actually do the burn for me.  Which is odd; I can't figure out why this is happening (it's similar to the issue I have/had with MJ's Landing Guidance).  But, I did a test run in my Moderate career, and I got close.  Within 40 million km close.  Unfortunately, didn't have enough fuel left to get into orbit or return to Kerbin, but that's a design issue.  I'm pretty sure now that I might be able to crack this egg thanks to the above information.

The down side to all this is that I still feel stupid.  I don't play games to get halfway and then have things be so hard that I cannot complete them.  That's not why I play games.  And the longer it takes, the more frustrated I get, and the easier it becomes to say "I quit".  I won't get into why I feel this way other than to say that some of the responses were not what I asked for, nor were they framed in a way that makes me feel people were trying to help.  All I can do is ask that if you aren't going to answer in the way I asked, or answer in a way that I can understand and then explain why you had to go into topics I didn't ask for, then please don't respond.

[HebaruSan]

1 hour ago, Popestar said:

The down side to all this is that I still feel stupid.  I don't play games to get halfway and then have things be so hard that I cannot complete them.  That's not why I play games.  And the longer it takes, the more frustrated I get, and the easier it becomes to say "I quit". 

I see a silver lining: unlike some games, it's hard for a good reason. You're trying to do something that's objectively difficult to grasp and that requires what can only be called "studying" and practice to master, and it's based on things in the real world that work similarly. There's no shame in having some unsuccessful attempts at that; I'm certainly no exception to the rule that everyone finds transfers and rendezvous challenging early on.

1 hour ago, Popestar said:

some of the responses were not what I asked for, nor were they framed in a way that makes me feel people were trying to help.  All I can do is ask that if you aren't going to answer in the way I asked, or answer in a way that I can understand and then explain why you had to go into topics I didn't ask for, then please don't respond.

It's hard to find a good way to put this, but... no one here is responsible for any of that, other than you. You know what you currently understand and don't understand. We don't and can't know that; we can only guess based on what you say. You know what you have tried so far and what problems you encountered with it; again, we can only guess based on what we read here, unless you spell it out. If you ask for simple, step by step instructions, you're probably going to get at least some attempts to list steps in a simply stated way. Ultimately the goal is to help you reach the "Eureka!" moment of getting it, and sometimes even a misunderstanding can be fruitful in getting to that point.

And now that it's released, I can suggest that you might find my new Planning Node mod helpful. It lets you find, plan, and execute transfers using the familiar stock maneuver node planning tools; the transfer window times, angles, and delta V requirements from traditional tools are replaced with more intuitive visual representations. A planned transfer is shown as a bullseye painted on your starting body's sphere of influence along with its time and velocity requirements, so you can more readily see the links between escape trajectories and the orbits they establish. It's very early days for this mod, so bugs are likely, but it's intended to help with pretty much exactly the subject that motivated this thread.

[king of nowhere]

2 hours ago, Popestar said:

 All I can do is ask that if you aren't going to answer in the way I asked, or answer in a way that I can understand and then explain why you had to go into topics I didn't ask for, then please don't respond.

it's kinda hard to tell what you ask, or how you wanted to get an answer.

the thing is, this game is so complex, there are so many things that you could be getting wrong; without very accurate instructions on your part, we won't know your issue. we can only shoot blind for the most common problem. and the topic is complex. we must try to guess what you know and what you don't know, and you must try to guess what we are taking for granted and what we shouldn't take for granted. and in any forum conversation there will be someone misunderstanding the question; I can't even remember it ever happening that in a complex question there wasn't anyone misunderstanding the question or giving unwanted advice to stuff i already knew.

you should try to help us figure out your problems. you said that some of the posts were helpful, but you don't tell which ones. I mean, i think i understood your issue, and i tried twice to give a good answer to that. but you never replied, so i have no idea if i actually got it right or not.

 All we can do is ask that if you aren't going to answer to our requests of details and clarifications, or ask in a way that we can understand what you are actually asking for, then please don't ask.

[Spricigo]

3 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

 All we can do is ask that if you aren't going to answer to our requests of details and clarifications, or ask in a way that we can understand what you are actually asking for, then please don't ask.

Sorry, I can't agree with that. 

I understand that you put a lot of effort in answering the question and don't want to feel that was for nothing. But telling him to not ask is not a solution, you are just asking for a fellow player to move away. Would you like to be asked that? Well, I didn't. 

I don't want anyone moving away, I rather want that we understand each other.

7 hours ago, Popestar said:

I don't play games to get halfway and then have things be so hard that I cannot complete them.  That's not why I play games.  And the longer it takes, the more frustrated I get, and the easier it becomes to say "I quit". 

Unfortunately there are many things in KSP that may seem impossible when you first try, yet you find veterans that have it so ingrained that they don't even remember why it was difficult in the first place. More likely than not you will have trouble understanding them and they will have trouble understand you.

We don't know how many of this things are ahead of you, we don't know if will be better to stick around or say "I quit" now. You can only decide by yourself with limited information. I hope you find what is better for you.