Facepalm...

[superm18]

So i consider myself an above-average player i KSP, iv'e done great things, SSTO-spaceplanes, 350+ tons payload to orbit (2354 ton at launchpad) and so on...(all stock, no mods )

I've spent sooo many hours planning my mission to Jool and all the moons, manned landings, planting flags and so on, including a return to Kerbin.

So i get on my way, get a nice intercept with aerobreaking....only to discover...with no quicksave to rollback...that i am...going the wrong way around Jool...facepalm...

[Rage097]

Ouch. That sucks.

I've had problems like that. Just with fuel consumption.

[thestookem]

I find that getting my initial intercept point "inside" Jool's orbit puts me in the direction of the moon'=.

I might not have explained that clearly enough, hope everyone understands.

[OUScooby]

I've done this one before, on my first Mars & return mission, ended up orbiting the wrong way around the planet. My lander had barely had enough fuel to make an orbit in the opposite inclination and the orbiter had to rendezvous with the lander instead of the other way around.

I'm curious when you are setting up you maneuvers how do you tell which way you are entering a SOI? When I set up a maneuver I get the intercept icons but I can't see it in enough detail to know whats going on until I get there. I there a way to zoom in on you planetary encounter when you are planning maneuvers?

[ScottyDoesKnow]

I did this twice. The first time I ended up in the wrong direction. I assumed this had happened because I reached it on the inside instead of the outside and promptly did it again.

[Jaedinator]

you can double/rageclick (double doesnt work all the times) on jool and the map view will say "Focus Jool" (or sth like that) and you can see where you are heading.

[Vostok]

I once spent several hours constructing a whole station in space, it had something in the region of 9 NTRs, masses of fuel, all the things you need, several payloads (it was a rescue and return ship for duna)... Flew the whole thing there, perfect. nothing went wrong....all the orbits lined up nicely, good equatorial orbit around Duna...

Now it came time to land the rescue section with the crew module.

*detach*

"hold on... it's not responding..."

It transpired that I had forgotten to put a probe core on the lander, and so with no crew on it, it just became and empty piece of debris. I do my missions with minimal quicksaving, and last time I'd saved was when the last section of the construction was on the launch pad.

[-RanZ-]

So i consider myself an above-average player i KSP, iv'e done great things....

"I hate mods and play pure stock with skill"

ROFL... too funny

[The Destroyer]

I absoloutley cannot figure out how to orbit Jool correctly. All my missions end up going the wrong way, for some reason. Polar orbit is no good either.

[superm18]

ROFL... too funny

i see what you did there suddenly it's all okey

[AustralianFries]

...on my first Mars & return mission...

What is "Mars"?

[Brenok]

The legends say that far away, exists a system with eight planets and hundreds of moons. Mars would be one of the formers. Actually it's quite similar to Duna...

[OUScooby]

The legends say that far away, exists a system with eight planets and hundreds of moons. Mars would be one of the formers. Actually it's quite similar to Duna...

There's nine planets, damn it! I don't care what the scientists say, I'll never give into their anti-Pluto agenda!

[Mr Shifty]

There's nine planets, damn it! I don't care what the scientists say, I'll never give into their anti-Pluto agenda!

Eris is more massive and has a larger radius than Pluto. If Pluto, why not Eris?

[Spatzimaus]

I don't care what the scientists say, I'll never give into their anti-Pluto agenda!

Back when us astronomer-types demoted Pluto, I remember hearing a morning radio show where one of the hosts was starting to rant on it. At one point, he yelled "What makes the IAU think they have the right to tell us Pluto's not a planet?" His co-host then pointed out that we astronomers know quite a bit more about Pluto than he did, so who ELSE should have the right to decide it?

And yeah, Pluto's removal from "planet" status became inevitable the moment Eris was found, although Sedna, Makemake, and Haumea made it even worse. The simple fact is, we already KNEW that Pluto couldn't have formed on-site like the eight planets did, so even if it hadn't been far smaller than the others it still probably would only have been a matter of time.

[Echostatic]

Perhaps if we bring all of Pluto's moons to it's surface, that'll give it enough size and mass to be loved again...

[Sirrobert]

Perhaps if we bring all of Pluto's moons to it's surface, that'll give it enough size and mass to be loved again...

Like proto-earth and what is now our moon?

That'd probably be a wet dream for astronomers

[Tex_NL]

Pluto is a dog. If you don't believe me just ask Mickey.

[Spatzimaus]

Perhaps if we bring all of Pluto's moons to it's surface, that'll give it enough size and mass to be loved again...

Other than Charon, Pluto's moons aren't worth mentioning. Also, even if you crashed all of Pluto's moons into it, it still would be slightly smaller than Eris (assuming our size estimates of Eris are accurate). It's hard to picture just how tiny Pluto really is; five Plutos stuck together would be a bit smaller than our own moon. For that matter, if you mashed every one of the 30ish biggest trans-neptunian dwarfs/moons into a single mass, that mass would STILL be slightly smaller than Earth's moon.

For comparison, Mercury is about four times the mass of our moon, and Earth is 80 times its mass.

[Navypilot1046]

I did the same thing in .19. I designed a rover that theoretically could land on any of Jool's muns and docked them to a mother ship in Kerbin orbit. The development process took weeks between classes. The monstrosity (with 6 of these rovers docked) slowed my computer to 6 fps, and I had quicksaved just before I discovered my retrograde orbit. I never started that game save again.

[OUScooby]

Back when us astronomer-types demoted Pluto, I remember hearing a morning radio show where one of the hosts was starting to rant on it. At one point, he yelled "What makes the IAU think they have the right to tell us Pluto's not a planet?" His co-host then pointed out that we astronomers know quite a bit more about Pluto than he did, so who ELSE should have the right to decide it?

And yeah, Pluto's removal from "planet" status became inevitable the moment Eris was found, although Sedna, Makemake, and Haumea made it even worse. The simple fact is, we already KNEW that Pluto couldn't have formed on-site like the eight planets did, so even if it hadn't been far smaller than the others it still probably would only have been a matter of time.

Pluto will always be a planet in my heart, if not in the science textbooks.

[bigdad84]

You could always change your direction of orbit. With the cost of a little fuel of course just wait until your at the highest point of AP and burn retrograde

[Spatzimaus]

and I had quicksaved just before I discovered my retrograde orbit. I never started that game save again.

Meh. That's the point where you hit Alt-F12, turn on infinite fuel, reverse your orbit, then go back to playing as normal. Functionally that's no different from quickloading to an earlier point and doing a different insertion. This is a beta of a game; besides the fact that wasting all of that time for nothing isn't "fun", you've found some valuable feedback you could have given the developers ("We need better information about the kind of orbit we'll be in once we arrive").

[OUScooby]

^^^

Alt-F12 for infinite fuel? How come this is the first I'm hearing of this!?!

[Spatzimaus]

Alt-F12 for infinite fuel?

Alt-F12 brings up the game's debug menu. It's got a half-dozen options you can toggle on or off, like infinite fuel (including intake air, but not RCS fuel), Infinite RCS, no crash damage, joints cannot break, parts can clip in the VAB/SPH, and so on. Just be careful with the "Hack Gravity" option, which basically gives every planet the weak gravity of Gilly; turning it on is easy, turning it back off again, not so much.

You really shouldn't abuse this sort of thing; it IS a cheat menu, basically. Having infinite fuel at all times makes pretty much any mission trivial. But there are a few specific cases where it'd be justified, and this seems to be one of them. I've also used the clipping hack for times where the SPH can't handle symmetry correctly. (That is, times where there's no reason an object CAN'T be placed at a certain position on both sides, but for some reason the SPH won't let you place it anyway.) But that's just a workaround for a known bug, it doesn't result in anything that the game wouldn't normally allow.