Yet another failed day...

[kacperrutka26]

Why people always forget about jetpacks

Gravity on Duna is weaker than On Kerbin and Kerbin=Jetpacks don't work. Duna=Jetpacks are really weak. I did make him touch down on the surface but getting him back in the pod was really,really hard!

[jfx]

The Learning curve changed dramatically with the new Planets.

Achieving orbit: World of Warcraft.

Landing on Mun & return: Civilization 5, Prince Difficulty

Putting payloads >15t on another Planet and returning them: Eve Online

[vexx32]

For the transition from doing Mun/Minmus missions to interplanetary, we should (ideally) have a planet with a much larger SOI, so that it's a little easier to do the interplanetary transfer. Once we can easily get to that one, we can work on our pinpoint accuracy to be able to get to the planets with smaller SOIs (relative SOI sizes here; planets' SOIs compared to their orbital radius is tiny).

[kacperrutka26]

Wow, I have to say why did I just stay at Kerbin System all that time? I just had a though, I already made a rocket that is good at getting out of Kerbin's SoI, Why didn't I download MechJeb earlier when 0.17 came out? Well, now mission 2 is going to duna and the mission after that will be one of Jool's moons!

[-Gamah]

I can't believe you even tried to land on Jool. It is a gas giant. GAS giant. Not liquid, not solid, not landable. It is only common sense.

S'cuse me? You underestimate the skill of Jebediah

[AmpsterMan]

I haven't even ATTEMPTED getting to any of the new planets. I like to do missions only when I have enough confidence in myself and my ship to land safely and return.

[Accelerando]

So, just for future reference, the altimeter does count from ground altitude and not sea level/median. I have landed a Munar vehicle quite safely with just the navball and altimeter.

[Qumefox]

I was close to it being good this time, I always mess up at the final moment though, where I burn too much and I start ascending again and I get lots horizontal velocity which makes my lander play "Bump against the Mun until the capsule and lander separate". At that low altitude you can't really save yourself from mistakes as I found out.

It kind of sounds like your lander has way too much thrust available if it's that easy to overshoot and start climbing again.

So, just for future reference, the altimeter does count from ground altitude and not sea level/median. I have landed a Munar vehicle quite safely with just the navball and altimeter.

You can, you just have to watch the ground.. However, the altimeter at the top of the screen reads sea level/median for whatever reference body you're in the SoI of.. Most of my Munar landings have hit ground at ~800m - 1200m. If you switch to IVA view, you then get a radar altimeter as well that shows true height over the ground, but only from 0 - 2000m.

[Accelerando]

I'm talking about the radar altimeter, herp derp...

[Bluekommeh]

Man, I've been so fed up lately. Ive been trying a complicated Duna mission, using the ORDA mod, but either the game lags overly (which is unreasonable for a 20 part ship) or the ORDA mod just 'splodes all over the place when I get fed up and try to teleport.

[Vaccer]

After finally getting the full version after playing the game from version .9-.13 and playing the demo forever I decided to start slow. Knowing how the game works makes it easier to start from scratch since I know of designs that should for the most part make good 1 way trips to the mun.

So far I almost landed on Eve with a mun rocket I slingshotted out of Kerbin orbit using the Mun as an assist, but ran out of fuel trying to make orbital corrections. This actually makes me hopeful that if I plan an assist I could make a 1 way trip to Duna with a much smaller rocket than previously thought. Although currently my main focus is trying to make multiple landings on the mun within a relatively close proximity of each other. So far I stranded Jeb on the moon, then killed Bob and Bill in F5 accidents when trying to drive rovers to him. But through persistence and learning of how fast I can safely rove across the mun I managed this.

After I rescue these 2 guys with a 3rd lander and return Jeb safely home for hopefully his retirement, I plan on skipping Minmus for the time being and heading straight for Duna landers and rovers.

[samstarman5]

Figure I might share a blast from the past to help bring a bit of perspective to the KSP blues.

Adding new planets with big differences from Kerbin's norm changes the learning curve from a shallow slope to the El Capitan of ascents. It's already been shown that the stock parts we have now can get us to each of the planets. What is required a willingness to unlearn what we have learned from being spoiled to just Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus. Also a bit of faith that there are more parts coming from Squad aka Acme Co."Wiley E. Coyote, esq. is our biggest customer!"

For now we get to challenge ourselves to the point we will be ready for the hulkamania of all space missions. Oh Yeah!

Never forget that in KSP, failure is always an option! So is quicksave and quickload, installed in every Kerbin craft unlike those silly people at NASA.

And to close, something completely unrelated:

[martscht]

I had to vote for the third option, but after some (okay, a lot of) work I managed to get to Duna. I think I avoided the frustration of the .16 to .17 transition somewhat by not trying to go to Duna first. For some reason most people will make Duna their first target of interplanetary flight. IMO that's a bad idea...

I think of it like this: I'm driving on the freeway and throw a tic-tac at the guy sleeping in the passenger seat (going to the Mun). Now if I go to Jool it's like throwing the tic-tac out the window and hitting the back of an open pick-up-truck. Going to Duna is more like hitting the open window of a guy constantly changing lanes and accelerating and breaking in his Ford Fiesta. So to me it was sort of natural going for the easier target first and then gradually increasing the difficulty level.

[Grand Lander]

O wow what a fail.

But what I see you still could of made it to Duna/MARS with the amount of resources with your rocket.

[Fredonia]

Pretty good at landing wherever I want to, getting back to Kerbin is the problem. I can never quite get it... Getting to Mun and back or Minmus and back is easy, I have no problems. Everywhere else is a major headache.

In about 100 tries, I have yet to get a rover mission to Mun and return the crew. I landed a rover, and sent the second crew that would bring Jeb back. Get to Mun and Jeb+ the rover are GONE. The lander is fine, Jeb and the DEMV vanished. Go, out start new game to try again... both craft files are gone. I saved them, and they're gone. Every lander that even looked like it would work just vanishes when I start a new game. I got so frustrated I finally just quit and am going back to getting a crew to Duna and back since I find it easier to get there than any of the other planets.

[Matokage]

S'cuse me? You underestimate the skill of Jebediah

What Science has done?!

[MrPwner]

I haven't had any trouble getting to the planets and their moons.

In the beginning I had one mission where I found out my ion engine wasn't working (my fault for not having correct plugins) to continually harass Jool's moons.

And I had some interplanetary transfers that flew through the SOI of the moon. Because my amount of patched conics is 3, I couldn't really see if I had intercepted the planet or not. But that didn't pose a real problem.

So, only small hiccups that were easily worked around

[MonkeyFuzz]

In 0.17, I initially skipped trying to visit Mun and Minmus since I'd managed that in 0.16 and the prior versions. I had the fortune of finding the interplanetary calculator at http://ksp.olex.biz/ before 0.17 released so I had immediate access to that.

I fiddled around with slowly building up a basic one-Kerbal orbiter. After achieving that I started dropping in the NERVA engine in place of the last stage's motor. That little Mercury-like ship could fly to Duna (made it on the second try), orbit, and land with its parachute. It had no way to return, so I figured it a Viking-esque mission.

I had a diving Galileo-style mission to Jool after that, plunging into the gas giant.

Finally, I started playing with mods and found the topographical mapper and started launching orbiter missions to all the planets and moons. This is the reason that brought me back to Mun and Minmus. So far I've succeeded in mapping M&M, Duna and Ike, and Eve and Gilly. The mapper part broke while aerobraking at Moho. I haven't mounted a successful mission back to Jool yet since I want it to have enough Delta-v to orbit each of that planet's moon along the way.

My other soaring failure has been in trying for gravity assists. I wanted to pull of a Duna-Jool assist flight or a Mun-Duna-Jool flight, but my timing has been horrendous and I end up being either far early or long too late to make any use of the SOI.

[Tim_Barrett]

Any planet/moon that I have landed only needed one try, with the Mun and Minmus including a way back, again on the first try.

Tbh it's not very fun...

[jfx]

But fun enough that you have 3600 posts in this forum?

[mustwinfull]

But fun enough that you have 3600 posts in this forum?

Maybe he has more fun on the forums than in game?

On Topic: I still haven't gotten to land on the Mun but I've installed MechJeb for next time so I know the real altitude without going in IVA move as I can't control things properly in IVA because I'm rubbish.

[HockeyToad28]

My luck well has not been the best with the new planets. I've tried for Duna multiple times but no luck although I have managed to smash into it once. Kerbin's moons are easy for me and now I'm mining kethane from the Mun to help with my trip to Duna.

[Vanamonde]

There are good days and bad. I spent most of yesterday wildly missing/ running out of gas before reaching/ exploding on the way to Jool. My best effort is a ship that has a pretty good chance of achieving an intercept, in about 89 game years.

[Gamergull]

For me, I get by, sometimes after several restarts. Some days are definitely better than others. List of recent issues:

- Missed The Mun (bad angle burn)

- Missed Minmus 3 times

- Capture by Duna's SOI took me way too long

- Glitched blowout on Gilly

- Rocket explodes a minute after launch

- Rocket spins out of control after stage separation

- Various spaceplane failures (because I fly like an idiot)

[Vanamonde]

What a difference a day makes. The closest I got to Laythe yesterday:

And the closest I've gotten to Laythe so far today: