Hi all, another wannabe Kerbonaut checking in

[DrNoesis]

Just thought I'd post here and say hi.

First heard about KSP a couple of months ago, when I was stuck in work on a long boring shift reading a random forum. Wrote down the details so I'd remember to pick up a copy, and then lost my note and couldn't remember what it was called until a couple of days ago when some of my colleagues mentioned it being on steam.

Over a decade ago I finished a Masters degree in Astrophyics, and on finding out there were basically no jobs (besides teaching) for astrophysicists in the UK, I gave up all my dreams and idea's about space and settled down in to a long, (mostly) boring career in IT.

Yesterday morning I managed (purely by accident) to get a small satellite into a tight orbit. Sure, I forgot to put any RCS fuel onboard and the thing is spinning so fast it should, realistically, fly apart. But its up there.

Yesterday afternoon I managed to achieve a solid solar orbit with a one man space station. It's a slightly different orbit to the one originally planned (can't get the hang of orbital insertion burns) but I'm sure that the view of the sun is far more impressive than the one originally planned around Kerbin.

So anyhoo's, thanks for giving me the chance to do the kind of stuff I really wanted to do in my life, rather than the stuff I had to do to make a living. The game's fantastic, and I'm looking forward to getting good enough to be able to start exploring the solar system, instead of just peppering it with debris from various failed experiments.

Edited April 25, 2013 by DrNoesis

[Capt'n Skunky]

Happy Launching!

Arrr!

Capt'n Skunky

KSP Community Manager

[musicpenguin]

Welcome newcomer! I hope you enjoy this as much as I do! Have fun on the forums!

[XxDaSTaRXx]

Have fun with the game! Hope you enjoy it like the rest of us do. Now get out there, and fly safe.

[DrNoesis]

Attempted my first Munar landing last night, got confused by a failure for the next stage to initiate correctly, and ended up blasting another kerbal into orbit around it instead, after i messed up trying to manually trigger my descent engines.

I streamed the whole attempt, from the first 2-3 failed designs to the final lander tho, so anyone who wants to take a look thru the 2hrs of footage in the interests of offering some tips is welcome to,

not looking for channel views, I dont stream nearly often enough to worry about rubbish like that, just open to any advice I can find.

From watching other vids I know the launch platform I'm using is waaaay too big at the moment, and I'm working on scaling that back. To be honest if I'd been more patient and settled for slow ion burns in real time, it'd probably have gone a lot better...

anyhoo's, back to the drawing board

Edited April 25, 2013 by DrNoesis

[leax256]

I'll skim through it and see if I can offer some tips, I'm not an expert but I'm good. Any points of intrest I should look at?

[leax256]

I skimmed through and most of what you are doing seems correct, a bit hard to tell though due to being 360p. Your rocket is way too big for what it's lifting. seems like you need a bit of help on learning advanced staging. I'm doing a livestream saturday and if you want I can take your ship design and modify it to take advantage of advanced staging to help you. I'll need the .craft file though.

[DrNoesis]

nothing specific I'm afraid, I've only really played long enough to know I'm not being anywhere near as efficient as I need to be in order to really start plopping kerbs on different planets.

The Munar shot was really just a desperation attempt, I suspect I didn't even have enough fuel to safely land in the first place :S On other ppls vids, the ships look to have similar power and weight, but are being thrown around the solar system with far more grace and finesse than I've yet to accomplish lol.

[DrNoesis]

I skimmed through and most of what you are doing seems correct, a bit hard to tell though due to being 360p. Your rocket is way too big for what it's lifting. seems like you need a bit of help on learning advanced staging. I'm doing a livestream saturday and if you want I can take your ship design and modify it to take advantage of advanced staging to help you. I'll need the .craft file though.

Not a problem, I'll stick it online in a couple of hrs (off to dentists now) and you can have a play with it

[musicpenguin]

Welcome newcomer! I hope you enjoy this as much as I do! Have fun on the forums!

[DrNoesis]

here you go, think this is set to public and available to download..

Lander

EDIT: should mention you'll need the deep space mod from the Kerbal Spaceport for some of the parts

Edited April 25, 2013 by DrNoesis

[leax256]

so far I have it 1/2 the weight and it can land on the moon. just some more fine tuning.

[DrNoesis]

Lol, I had a feeling it was a weight problem... didnt realise till i went to upload it how many parts i'd packed onto that thing.

Suspect my first newbie mistake was finding ways of adding more and more engines/power to move it, instead of trimming things down instead.

Is there a way to bring up the overall ship spec's up in the VAB? I had a window pop up once that displayed the weight and some other data in there but I only realised it had popped up as I swapped out to the launch pad and I've never been able to find it since.

Edited April 25, 2013 by DrNoesis

[leax256]

Mech Jeb is the only way i know of how to do that, you have to set it show vehicle info in the launchpad and have a part from mechjeb on the ship.

would like to point out the lack of need for the ram intakes, they don't really help if you don't have jet engines.

I'll be posting the .craft file in a bit, need to fine tune a few parts and type instructions for flying.

Edited April 25, 2013 by leax256

[leax256]

Ok i finished editing the ship. it uses the same mods you are currently using and is capable of landing on the moon however due to trying to keep the ship simular to the origional I was unable to make it a return trip.

How to fly it:

you will need to disable the flow from the tank below the lander part then renable it once the 4 engines start fireing directly below it. also transfer all the rcs fuel from the main space booster to the lander before you release it. further you need to use the rcs to thrust your ship forward (press "h") to add to lighten the load or you will not have enough fuel to make it.

how to transfer fuel:

right click one tank then alt+right click another in/out gui is self explanitory.

how to cut off full flow:

right click tank, click small icon to right below each fuel level bar.

if you don't understand what I am saying I can make a video explaining it for you.

[leax256]

Ok i finished editing the ship. it uses the same mods you are currently using and is capable of landing on the moon however due to trying to keep the ship simular to the origional I was unable to make it a return trip.

Download link: http://www./download.php?ajsb12dqkiirw5a might need mechjeb

How to fly it:

you will need to disable the flow from the tank below the lander part then renable it once the 4 engines start fireing directly below it. also transfer all the rcs fuel from the main space booster to the lander before you release it. further you need to use the rcs to thrust your ship forward (press "h") to add to lighten the load or you will not have enough fuel to make it.

how to transfer fuel:

right click one tank then alt+right click another in/out gui is self explanitory.

how to cut off full flow:

right click tank, click small icon to right below each fuel level bar.

if you don't understand what I am saying I can make a video explaining it for you.

Edited April 26, 2013 by leax256
forgot link lol

[DrNoesis]

Thanks for taking the time to beat this one into shape for me I've had a quick peek at it and it's interesting to see what you've shifted around Stuck in the office at the mo so can't get away with taking it out for a spin at the moment

Also thanks for keeping it faithful to the original design! it probably sounds weird, but it's actually going to be a far better learning experience just being able to compare the original to the optimised version you've built, which I couldn't have done if you'd just built an entirely new delivery system for a similar payload.

Started experimenting with parallel staging last night, so no worries about the instructions, looks my novice attempts over the past few hours have been along the right lines and it'll be interesting to see how you've got it set to feed through

I REALLY appreciate the time you've spent with working on this The leap in understanding between knowing something is wrong, and knowing how to fix it can be a real impasse unless you get really lucky and find some guide/vid/tutorial/blah to point you in the right direction, so being given a blueprint to cross the gap is something I'm definitely going to make the most of

Also, I hadn't realised you could use the RCS thrusters manually like that Thats something I'm going to have to play with a lot.

Edited April 26, 2013 by DrNoesis