KSP Difficulty Selection planned

[Pecan]

Chapter 5 of the tutorial in my signature will give you 'Fat Sally' - a low, wide lander for Mun or even Ike (Duna's moon). The preceeding section on 'Long Tom' presents a taller, thinner lander like yours and explains in some detail the things to consider; such as why Fat Sally doesn't fall over on slopes :-)

Things to consider:

• Design backwards, with separate stages for each part of the mission: recovery, return, landing, transfer and launch.
  
• Use a deltaV map to check exactly how much deltaV you need for each stage.
  
• ONLY include the things you NEED for each stage. Mass is critical, with a huge knock-on effect on earlier mission stages. Every 100kg of payload in orbit needs a tonne of launch vehicle, for instance (roughly).
  
• For recovery (Kerbin landing) you only need a command seat or 1-man lander can and a parachute.
  
• For return you have the recovery stage + separator as payload and enough fuel and engine to get it back to Kerbin. 48-7S or LV-1® will be all the engine you need, 45 - 90 plenty of fuel. Put ONE OX-STAT solar panel on this stage and make sure it's pointing at the sun after each manoeuvre.
  
• For landing, the return stage (including recovery stage) as payload, another separator and enough fuel/engine to get it down. Three light landing legs, although you can use cubic octagonal struts to fake-it and save some mass.
  
• Transfer and launch stages are just more of the same, using the previous stages as payloads each time.
  

Anyway, Long Tom expands on this, Fat Sally shows that building wider makes a more robust and capable lander.

MJ makes a good job of precision landings when you have small, light lander like this. I'd say the learning-curve is weeks to months, depending mainly on how much you're willing to research and read, there's certainly a huge amount of information to learn from. "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." (JFK) - if it was easy we'd all be bored in a couple of weeks and move on to something else.

[Red Iron Crown]

Thread title is a bit misleading, I thought this thread was in response to an announced feature.

It is very much true that KSP is difficult at first when you haven't got much of a clue how spaceflight and orbits work, much of what you have to learn is fairly counterintuitive in that it's different than the physics we're used to on the ground. The tutorials will hopefully get a bit better as the game gets polished to help new players make those first conceptual leaps.

That said, I hope they don't make the physics adjustable for difficulty. It is very satisfying to figure out how to do something difficult; I think much of the sense of accomplishment at one's first Mun landing and return would be lost if it were easier.

My advice is to keep practicing and experimenting, if you really get stuck the forum is full of people like those in this thread to give helpful advice. As you get the hang of spacecraft design and piloting, you'll find that the Mun isn't as hard a target any more and you'll be looking for a bigger challenge.

[cantab]

Have you tried righting the original lander? A relatively light ship with plenty of torque can sometimes pick itself up on the Mun. If your original lander, like your rescue ship, has a reaction wheel you're in with a very good chance.

[John FX]

You`ll need about 280 Dv to return from Mun

About 900 to land and 900 to launch from mun

about 280 for munar orbit

872 for a FRT munar flyby

4300 to launch to LKO

Adding these up gives 7532 Dv.

Allowing for atmospheric losses and some leeway I would suggest a craft that has at least 8500 dv

I would suggest splitting your craft into

a lander that has about 2500 dv

A third stage with about 1000 dv (with the lander attached)

a second stage with about 2000 dv (with the lander and third stage attached)

a first stage with about 3000 dv (with all the rest of the craft attached)

KER has the most accurate Dv readout in the VAB AFAIK

this should give you plenty of `wriggle room` to get to the mun, land and return.

I`d like to see a `difficulty setting` so I could increase the difficulty myself.

[Mr Shifty]

All my rockets have not enough fuel to escape the SOI. I stopped using MechJeb and have been using manual calculations and maneuver nodes, etc., it just feels better to learn the process things this way. I could try the radial tanks again. My first photo has two side mounted fuel tanks for that very purpose. However I got low on fuel during the descent and had to use them to stop horizontal movement...then upon landing my fuel is down to about 20 units left out of 180 units. By the way, the more fuel I carry usually causes me great difficulty in obtaining orbit circulation. I most probably need to go back to the drawing board and recalculate everything from scratch on a whiteboard or notepad.

Thanks

EDIT: Ninja'd by John FX

If you're using MechJeb or Kerbal Engineer, you can display delta-V stats for your rocket in the VAB. Here are the approximate amounts you need to reach the Mun and return:

- 5000 m/s to achieve orbit around Kerbin. (You can do it for 4500 m/s, but it requires skilled piloting and rocket building. 5km/s is a good estimate for newer players.)

- 850 m/s to transfer from LKO to the Mun's orbit.

- 400 m/s to get captured by the Mun and circularize. (This is probably a drastic over-estimate, you might be able to do it for less than 300 m/s.)

- 1500 m/s to land on the Mun, then take off and achieve orbit again. (You can do this for ~1200 m/s when you're a skilled pilot.)

- 300 m/s to escape Munar orbit and send you back to Kerbin. (You have time your escape burn so that you escape going parallel to the Mun's orbit around Kerbin, and in a retrograde direction. This allows you to use the Mun's gravity to slow down your Kerbin transfer, saving you about 550 m/s.

Total: 8050 m/s

This is easiest to achieve if you set it up like an Apollo mission, with a detachable lander.

[LoganMalone]

Have you tried righting the original lander? A relatively light ship with plenty of torque can sometimes pick itself up on the Mun. If your original lander, like your rescue ship, has a reaction wheel you're in with a very good chance.

It's impossible, I only have 23.36 units of fuel left. Friction on the surface of the Mun when using rockets to gain momentum caused many explosions. I've tried everything so far. Here is the first stranded kerbal.

[LoganMalone]

The other thing I'd add is that precision landing to arrange a rescue really is a lot harder than it sounds. Personally I find it easier to build a working rover, land it somewhere nearby and rove on over. If that sounds quite advanced - that's because I see rescues as advanced.

In other words, have a try at simply managing a land and return of a new rocket, before concerning yourself with the rescue. He won't die if he's left there while you skill up.

Finally, you mentioned having very little fuel, but you might surprise yourself with how little can actually return to orbit from the Mun. Once there, the option to rendezvous in space might be an easier than trying to meet up on the ground.

I think attempted to do something more advanced than I'm ready for. Lesson learned, LOL

[LoganMalone]

Chapter 5 of the tutorial in my signature will give you 'Fat Sally' - a low, wide lander for Mun or even Ike (Duna's moon). The preceeding section on 'Long Tom' presents a taller, thinner lander like yours and explains in some detail the things to consider; such as why Fat Sally doesn't fall over on slopes :-)

Things to consider:

• Design backwards, with separate stages for each part of the mission: recovery, return, landing, transfer and launch.
  
• Use a deltaV map to check exactly how much deltaV you need for each stage.
  
• ONLY include the things you NEED for each stage. Mass is critical, with a huge knock-on effect on earlier mission stages. Every 100kg of payload in orbit needs a tonne of launch vehicle, for instance (roughly).
  
• For recovery (Kerbin landing) you only need a command seat or 1-man lander can and a parachute.
  
• For return you have the recovery stage + separator as payload and enough fuel and engine to get it back to Kerbin. 48-7S or LV-1® will be all the engine you need, 45 - 90 plenty of fuel. Put ONE OX-STAT solar panel on this stage and make sure it's pointing at the sun after each manoeuvre.
  
• For landing, the return stage (including recovery stage) as payload, another separator and enough fuel/engine to get it down. Three light landing legs, although you can use cubic octagonal struts to fake-it and save some mass.
  
• Transfer and launch stages are just more of the same, using the previous stages as payloads each time.
  

Anyway, Long Tom expands on this, Fat Sally shows that building wider makes a more robust and capable lander.

MJ makes a good job of precision landings when you have small, light lander like this. I'd say the learning-curve is weeks to months, depending mainly on how much you're willing to research and read, there's certainly a huge amount of information to learn from. "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." (JFK) - if it was easy we'd all be bored in a couple of weeks and move on to something else.

I'm going to re-do the tutorial over again especially what you posted in your signature. I'll just stick to staying on Kermin and within it's atmosphere for a month or so until I re-do everything from scratch. My focus in career mode got off track with my target being on obtaining science to get more parts instead of having a goal of learning to implement my math calculations, design, execution, and then changing things in order for greater success. Most likely I'll edit my rocket designs or delete them and start over. Great quote from JFK by the way.

Edited July 5, 2014 by LoganMalone

[Pecan]

Note that my tutorial is for sandbox, not career mode. That's for two reasons; i) I think the mission structure I have makes more sense (eg; unmanned first) than current career grind-for-science, ii) career mode is about to get a BIG change in 0.24.

The biggest lesson is: Start Small. Experiment and learn with smaller, easier craft and missions. You'll get experience and confidence from that and will be more willing and able to handle harder things as they come. Patience and practice. Beyond that ... Stay Small ... less is often more. Use a Kerbal on EVA to collect data from experiments so you can leave the science equipment behind, for instance, and only need to bring the Kerbal back alive (so command pod and parachute). Only take what you really need to enable that - you can drop the science stuff as a separate drone mission then get MJ to land your Kerbal next to it. At every stage don't take anything that isn't really necessary. Think through how you can use and jettison as much mass as possible as soon as possible throughout the mission - what's left is smaller so fits the lesson :-)

MJ is also great for its deltaV, TWR and other data displays, by the way.