I love this game but...

[asurob]

Thanks for the advice guys...raised my moral a lot. I'm not really struggling with putting vehicles in space or into orbit. It's really the rocket science behind inclinations and mission planning beyond the mun. I have probably put 50 kerbals or so in orbit around the sun trying to hit transfer windows....once in the deep dark they are lost due to anything from poor fuel planning to forgetting little things (who knew you could run out of mono ). I will poke around with some of your suggestions and get back at it. Thanks again.

[Specialist290]

I do not fear failure. Failure is data. I fear not learning from failure. Failure to learn from failure is stupidity.

I think I've just found a new signature quote.

[Pipcard]

If you can't rendezvous and dock you're going to have a lot harder time getting anywhere beyond Kerbins moons.

Almost every interplanetary mission I've done has involved building my vessel in low kerbin orbit before heading out.

Whether that means docking a lander and a fuel/engine array, or simply just topping up the tanks. You can get mech jeb to do it, but it's so much more satisfying manually docking.

Or you could just send small robotic probes.

[Alistone]

For interplanetary phase angles this site works great:

http://ksp.olex.biz/

[BostLabs]

I can throw in an actual suggestion. Docking in space is something you should master. Because then you can get to building actual transplanetary spaceships. Here's how you start. Launch a Rockomax 32 into space with six atomic engines bolted on. Add a wide battery and a CPU. Fat senior docking port on the front. Next, launch and dock an RCS / power module on there. Now you got power generation and attitude control. Then, add in a couple of stowaway cans as another module, and bingo. You gots a starship. Maybe put another port or two on the side for parasite landers.

Whack speaks truth here. Docking is the key to getting a ship to the other planets, landing and return to Kerbin.

[Agent86]

The learning curve for KSP is pretty steep, and, as I've found, once you think you've got it firgured out, you shortly realize that you totally don't. I spent days watching videos on orbital docking and rez tutorials, but they didnt seem to help, until one day, purely by accident, I worked out my own little method of doing it reliably. After building a couple of stations and flying a bunch of missions, my first attempt at an interplanetary burn was to set a target, point towards it, and burn ALL of my fuel. As you can guess, this was a woeful failure.

My advice would be to forget addons for now, I tried probably 20 times to dock with mechjeb, and it seemed to just be more complicated. With the latest updates, docking is easier, you don't need an ASAS module, so long as you get your RCS jets roughly in the right spots and the SAS won't vent all of your RCS upon approaching a station.

Interplanetary transfers are indeed a bit of a bastard, I've taken to simply adding more fuel to my ship preemptively, knowing that it might be wasted. I have an overwatch probe orbiting at about 3000km above kerbin, so after I put my interplanetary ship into orbit, I can switch to overwatch and timewarp to the max to get the planets aligned properly. I don't always try to get an encounter on my Kerbin escape burn, just try to get the Closest Approach pointers within a million kilometers, then time warp to a nice empty bit of space, and try to adjust my trajectory into an encounter.

One problem I've seen is that your interplanetary ship is huge, and that makes things much harder. My advice would be to start with a tiny probe, and use conventional chemical engines for the transfer burn. Pack extra fuel to compensate. I know a lot of people say to use nuclear engines, but I find them to be too heavy and low powered to be worth the higher efficiency in most cases. I prefer to just bring more fuel in drop tanks if necessary. So your first interplanetary ship should be a little unmanned probe with a bit of fuel and one of those tiny orange engines, an RTG and some science instruments. You can use it to practice getting encounters, adjusting your trajectory, getting a flat-plane encounter, aerobraking, and such. A small probe is going to be much easier to learn on than a big manned ship.

[lammatt]

i learned jet engines do consume a significant amount of fuel.

[Landge]

If you need a quick reference guide for planetary transfers check out the link in my sig. It should be pretty straight forward. I keep a copy by my PC at all times.

Before I tackled interplanetary travel I spent most of my time just building and testing the infrastructure of ships I would need to accomplish that task. Perhaps the most often used ship in my fleet is my refueling tanker. I have several versions of the same basic design, depending on what I need. Manned, unmanned, with or without multiple robotic rovers.

95% of my missions are spent in Kerbin's SOI testing and retesting launch and landing techniques on Kerbin. Docking in LKO, and Munar orbit. Landing and rovering on Mun and Minmus, etc. Save often. F5 before any major move. If you get in a bind, F9 is your friend.

Main thing is don't give up. There's a lot of experienced folks here willing to share their knowledge with you, as you can tell, that started out just like you.

As KSP continues to grow things will only get better.

[Odo]

The learning curve for KSP is pretty steep

Compared to EVE Online its a cake walk

[Whackjob]

Compared to EVE Online its a cake walk

The hardest part of Eve Online is staying awake. Now ÃÂwarf Fortress...

[Starwaster]

My big, impressive victories are merely the few grains of sand scattered in between entire dunes of failure.

I do not fear failure. Failure is data. I fear not learning from failure. Failure to learn from failure is stupidity.

that's right. failure and pain don't exist to thwart us, but to force us to learn and adapt. otherwise we'd keep touching hot stoves until the charred remnants of our hands sloughed off and got eaten by the family dog.

I remember the first day I played Freedom Force (superhero game) against live opponents and routinely got my ass handed to me over and over until it was numb and bleeding from the abuse. but I learned from each mistake and failure and went back to the character creator until I learned how to create a hero for every tier that was unbeatable and unbeaten (can't prove that last but it's true)

[Bacterius]

The hardest part of Eve Online is staying awake. Now ÃÂwarf Fortress...

This, I tried very hard to enjoy that MMO but every time I play I literally fall asleep

[TUFOM]

In eve online: "I play this cause my friends play and its cool scifi mmo" In KSP: "I play this cause it is actually brilliant game, every accomplishment feels like victory."

- Says man who bought ksp 29.9 and instantly loved game.

[Epthelyn]

The hardest part of Eve Online is staying awake. Now ÃÂwarf Fortress...

No learning curve is comparable to Dwarf Fortress, not even rocket science.

-----

I've noticed people saying "Docking is key to interplanetary travel", but that's not necessarily true. It's key to reliable interplanetary travel if you wish to land on some of the more difficult planets and moon and return, but it is entirely possible to get a probe to anywhere without ever needing to dock, including the surface of Moho, provided in most cases that you don't plan to come back. Besides, I imagine very few people take their first steps into Kerbol*'s SoI and beyond with the intention of actually returning first try.

As for launch windows, well, they're also optional, especially for landings on Eve and Duna where most of the dV needed to circularise and deorbit is cut out entirely by aerobraking. That's not to say that you shouldn't try to use them, but overengineering rocket requires a little less patience and timing than making a to-the-unit rocket capable of going to somewhere and back using a specific launch window. Launch into Kerbol's orbit, make a manoeuvre node stretching out to the target and drag it around the orbit until you get a predicted encounter, adjusting where necessary. Then, just burn as the node tells you to.

*Just for reference, Kerbol is the star.

[Vertibirdo]

I love this game, but complex designs bring it to a crawl. So many projects abandoned and unfinished because of it... And keeping everything small and simple is just not enough.

[Monkeh]

If you can't rendezvous and dock you're going to have a lot harder time getting anywhere beyond Kerbins moons.

Almost every interplanetary mission I've done has involved building my vessel in low kerbin orbit before heading out.

Whether that means docking a lander and a fuel/engine array, or simply just topping up the tanks. You can get mech jeb to do it, but it's so much more satisfying manually docking.

This statement is completely untrue. I've been to Duna, Eve, Jool and most of it's moons and others all without docking or refuelling.

Type 'Asparagus Kerbal' into a search engine of your choice. That will sort you out.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Monkeh

[AllenM3]

Well first of all. What are you having issues with?

Are you having trouble leaving Kerbin?

Are you constantly running out of fuel?

Are you having trouble setting up maneuver nodes to get to another planet?

[bancika]

Use nuclear engines! (Nerva)

NEVER use Mainsail or any engines with more trust than 500 to transfers.

Protip: Use manouver nodes!

[Mr Shifty]

A few suggestions:

- You need to pack extra delta-V. I started to get bored with rocket building a couple months ago and have just been using some of the great designs in the Ship Exchange forum. It's pretty easy to find a vessel that can get to orbit with a bunch of extra delta-V for interplanetary transfers. Here are some: <link>

- For interplanetary transfers, I use alexmun's calculator (http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/). It gives you the precise prograde and normal delta-V you need to get to another planet. It usually turns out to be a little off, because you can't control your exact burn time, but you can adjust during the transfer.

- To adjust your transfer orbit for intercept, set the target planet as target, then put a maneuver node down and adjust pro/retro and normal/antinormal until either the AN or DN marker is directly on top of the target orbit. You should be able to see the closest approach markers at that point. Then, just slowly adjust pro/retro and/or normal/antinormal until you get intercept.

- Particularly for intercepting the outer planets, it's nearly essential to get a maneuver node editor, like this one: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/maneuver-node-improvement/

EDIT: Another tip. If you're doing very long interplanetary burns (2000m/s or more) consider using a Poodle or Aerospike instead of a nuclear engine. The NTR's just don't have enough thrust to get the job done. With the Poodle you get 1/2 the Isp, but almost 4 times as much thrust as an LV-N.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Mr Shifty

[Hodo]

If you want to practice the skills needed for an interplanetary mission, without waiting forever for a launch window and having to build a ship with enough deltaV to go interplanetary, you could practice transferring from the Mun to Minmus and back again.

Doing that uses the same concepts as traveling from Kerbin to another planet in the system, in that you have to account for changes in inclination, and you are transferring between two bodies that orbit the same parent object.

This is what I have been doing. Spending time building useful space planes, like my SVO line of VTOL SSTO/planes. That can fly from Kerbin to the Mun, mine and refine kethane then return to Kerbin and land at the KSC. My first attempt the SVO-1 couldn't even leave Kerbins atmosphere let alone fly, but once it was in space it worked fine and mined like a slow champ. So I refined the design and made SVO-2, which was a complete and utter failure. Scrapped that design and made SVO-3, which is currently in route to the Mun for its test mining mission. Works great, some minor issues, like its CoT is above the CoM by a hair... so it is a bit of a handful to control at full throttle in space. The next design the SVO-4 is great, but is designed to crew shuttle for the new station KerSta-2 which is a more streamlined station with less parts to reduce lag. And the SVO-4 has made my Jackal crew shuttle obsolete, even though the Jackal can make it to orbit in under 6 minutes.

But the SVO-4 can load 6 Kerbanaughts and a crew of 2 into orbit and possibly to the Mun in a single launch and return to KSC and land vertically. Granted, it doesn't land vertically in non-air atmospheres... that maybe a SVO-4A model.

[vetrox]

EDIT: Note to self. Read more than the first 2 pages

[Monkeh]

EDIT: Another tip. If you're doing very long interplanetary burns (2000m/s or more) consider using a Poodle or Aerospike instead of a nuclear engine. The NTR's just don't have enough thrust to get the job done. With the Poodle you get 1/2 the Isp, but almost 4 times as much thrust as an LV-N.

Sorry but that is just plain wrong. They have enough thrust to get the job done. A thrust to weight of 0.1 will get the job done once in orbit, just very slowly. Ever heard of the Ion drive? it works at silly low thrust but it works.

If you have an engine with half the ISP but four times the thrust, you'll burn twice as much fuel to achieve the same delta v but it will happen four times faster. (Those numbers are only an approximation as the weight of the engines and what you're pushing will have some effect but it's about right.)

Basically the nukes let you take much less fuel with you, at the expense of longer burns. Yes, to get out to Jool you'll be burning for 12 minutes or more but they will get you there and they will use half the fuel, (or so), of a poodle. Saving all that weight is really useful for obvious reasons.

For long burns you should start the burn at half the total burn time away from the node, so you do half the delta v in front of the node and half behind. The nodes assume an instant change in velocity at that point, doing half in front and half behind averages out quite nicely and keeps the burn accurate enough for your interceptions.

So yeah, the most efficient ways to get places takes nuke engines and a lot of patience for those long burns. If you don't want to wait for the long burns then yeah, you'll need some beastly lifter to get more fuel up for those less efficient engines to burn through. The choice is yours, but don't think the nukes are useless as they're not, they're actually totally overpowered as long as you can put up with those double digit minute burns.

[Lazro]

Or even hour-long burns for massive ships...

[Mr Shifty]

For long burns you should start the burn at half the total burn time away from the node, so you do half the delta v in front of the node and half behind. The nodes assume an instant change in velocity at that point, doing half in front and half behind averages out quite nicely and keeps the burn accurate enough for your interceptions.

Nukes aren't useless. Very useful for closer burns: Duna, Eve, even Jool, depending on your weight. If you have a burn time longer than 15-20 minutes, you can't do it in one go; you'll push your periapsis down into the atmosphere and de-orbit your vessel during the first half of the burn. You have to do orbit pumping for double digit burns, which makes calculating transfers pretty tricky. I guess it's a matter of taste and patience. I find a TWR below about 0.2 (8.3 minutes per km/s) pretty intolerable for those long burns.

Note also that I've lately been going far out past Eeloo to new planets, which require 2.5km/s or more for the transfer burn.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/51893-Journey-to-Sentar-Other-Worlds

Edited October 9, 2013 by Mr Shifty

[Dispatcher]

Preceding advice is good. I really don't know how far I'm gonna get with this, but I know it will get past the moons. I'm just starting to venture out past the Kerbin (not Kerbol) system and I've been having fun with it, most of the time, and learning. Its not even the most efficient design and there is redundancy, but it works. Its a lander and orbiter combo. You'll succeed if you keep at it and take the good advice from this thread.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Dispatcher
Clarification.