Fonsworth Space Exploration, Adventures so far, Screens to come

[BLFonsworth]

Hello World! Or something like that..

New here to the forums and still fairly new (compared to most of you) to KSP, I'm approaching 70 hours in game (and probably just as many watching youtube "how to" videos). I thought I would make a post about my efforts so far and ask for some helpful advice. I'm playing all-vanilla so far, with only the mechjeb add on which I have actually never used b/c I haven;t taken the time to figure out how to pre-prgram the thing since you can't pre-plan your flights (at least I don't know how) and most of my flight plans are done on the fly with only a vague end-goal in mind, like "land on the mun, however possible". I'm still pretty bad at making the most fuel efficient ships and flight patterns. I'm also not very good at guessing mission windows and I am not aware of anyway to plan flights from the space center (I feel like I just haven't figure out how, why would you NOT be able to plan a flight before launch?)

I've done a lot of missions on/around Kerbin and have sent some orbital probes and manned missions on fly-by's of the Mun and Minmus. I've landed on the Mun a few times (once getting ol' jeb stuck w/o enough fuel and had to do a few more missions to unlock the multi-Kerbal command pod and then go get him.. only to have that pod run out of fuel half-way back to Kerbin). I've also landed 2 probes on the surface of Eve (this was a major undertaking and took countless attempts and "revert to.." before I even got my first one on an encounter course).

I've managed to unlock the docking ports and have since put an orbiter into space around Kerbin with extra rockomax fuel tanks for refuel stops before burning out of Kerbin's gravitational pull. My first docking attempts, as you can imagine, didn't go so hot and it took several youtube videos before I was able to figure out exactly what I was doing. I was thinking of expanding this into a full-on space station but have yet to see the need for it since I have already exhausted most of the science I have perform on/around Kerbin. I have had 4 successful dock-and-refuel attempts now, 2 of those were my Eve probes and the other 2 were missions destined for my first Mun base.

That brings me to my current mission: Establish a useful and sustained Mun base. I started this by creating a new lander, not intended to have enough fuel to come home (but ironically probably does sine I refueled in Kerbin orbit), using the recently unlocked lander can. I then designed (not very well) a rover and a delivery system and sent it up to meet him. The Rover mission was probably one of my most interesting so far.

I only recently unlocked the basic rover parts and was anxious to try them out. Now that I had unlocked the rover I could start to build a Mun base and actually be useful. After some late-night-post-bong-rip building I had a very basic rover design and an all new rocket design to deliver it. Based roughly off the lander can I had already sent, I designed the Rover to decouple from the bottom of the lander portion of the craft. The Idea was, land on the Mun and once on the surface, decouple the rover (ideally only a few meters above the surface attached to the bottom of the lander). the mission seemed to be running smooth until I began my decent to the Mun's surface. I realized at some point during ascent and/or flight my lander legs had been blown off and only 2 (of 8) were left and they were both on the same side. It was too late to revert the mission back to launch as I had quicksaved when I began my Mun encounter. So, what to do.. think quick because the surface is coming up fast, and we can't get back into orbit and then back down again w/o running out of fuel and crashing into the Mun. So.. here we go.. down down down.. what am I going to do... then at about 10km up it hit me.. The Mun has lower gravity and I can hover there pretty easily. So, I gently slip down to the surface and somewhere between 500m and 100m I start to give quick, short bursts of thrust to bring my speed to as close to 5m/s as I can and keep it there.. once I get about 5 or 10m above the surface (about where the lander would have stopped with the legs extended) I give one more quick burst to get to 0m/s (I actually ended up and like 0.2m/s upward velocity) and I decouple the lander... Only to realize I'm not over flat ground (even though I managed to get to within 500m of my Mun base which is relatively flat) and the lander is also not very symmetrical and it 's off-balanced weight coupled with the slight grade cause it to begin rolling.... away from the Mun base.. I quickly drop the lander to the surface (no legs mind you) and switch to my Kerbal at the Mun base, EVA, press R, SPACE bar and mash W... I made it before It rolled too far and for the first time, boarded the rover and was driving around the surface of the Mun. I also realized I had put the control seat in an odd spot (to make the lander capable of attaching to the delivery system the way it did) and my kerbal now is flat on his back, looking at the stars, driving across the Mun, in a rover that is already unbalanced. In fact, I have to prop it upright to keep it from rolling around at once my Kerbal gets out.

Anyway, enough typing, I'm sure you're tired of reading. I'll have screens of my stuff later and I will be making a mission thread and/or video for my Mun base and any antics those krazy kerbals get into. Sorry for spelling or grammar errors.