I have not played this game, but started looking up videos on youtube regarding it.

This stuff is amazing and can be downright hilarious!

DWMagus wrote:I have not played this game, but started looking up videos on youtube regarding it.

This stuff is amazing and can be downright hilarious!

Do it.... DO IT!

I'm still making interestingly shaped craters. Luckily my ability at not killing people has improved and by some fluke I managed to land Jeb on the dark side of the Mun without any broken limbs, broken landing gear or hilarious pyrotechnics.

I even got him home, somehow.

0.19's out!

Unfortunately, the servers appear a little... Clogged... At the moment.

After months of careful design & testing (trial & error plus lots of napkins).
Launch of the Duna Orbital Station/Base Lander Module the KYONORTHRUS (coming up with a name took longer)... SRB separation... Liquid booster separation... Due to the ship's massive size, asparagus staging just did not work. Every Mainsail engine is needed just to get this beast into orbit.

Circularizing orbit... Front view of the Base Lander Module... This module, once detached, will establish a permanent settlement on Duna.
Equiped with 2 single seat Duna buggies for extended range exploration.

Rear view of the business end... The 5 Mainsails used getting the KYONORTHRUS into orbit are shutdown. 20 NERVAs will fire up to complete the journey to Duna.

Refueling Tanker docked... Each tanker pilot will EVA to join the crew... It takes 6 tankers to refuel the ship. Once fueled the tankers deorbit by remote control.

Another tanker pilot transfers to the KYONORTHRUS... Total crew = 8 including the pilot & co-pilot. 2 crew members will remain onboard the station the rest will be part of the ground crew.

Meanwhile,back on Kerbin, the Ike Rover Outpost launches... A semi-permanent base with one 2 crew VTOL rover to explore Duna's satellite Ike.

After refueling, and adding one additional crew member, the IRO is on it's way to Ike... Within a day, the KYONORTHRUS takes off to rendesvous with Duna... 104 days later. Hello Duna... To conserve fuel, aerobraking in the Duna atmosphere will slow the ship down enough to be captured in orbit... 12,500m. I think we scratched the paint!

Aerobraking the IRO is not as low. They want to be captured by Ike, which you can see in the distance... IRO on intercept with Ike... I should have aerobraked a little lower on Duna. I had to burn longer than expected to capture an orbit. Those NERVA's are extremely efficient, they just don't have the thrust.

While making final descent Duna rises over Ike... Safe landing... Crew takes time for photo op.

Meanwhile, in orbit over Duna, disaster strikes... As the Base Lander Module undocks, multiple structural falures causes the Orbital Station to break apart.
2 crew members have to make an emergency EVA over to the lander. Luckily the lander is undamaged.
All the crew are safe and accounted for.

Time for the final descent to the Duna surface... After another safe landing, Duna buggies are detached... Wildon, takes a buggie for a spin. Dukes of Hazard style... This was my 4th or 5th attempt and 1st successful mission. Well mostly successful. I still have to get a space station into Duna orbit.
The previous missions were either way short on fuel, doomed to drift in deepness of space, or impacted on the surface before I new there was a save and reload button. Their sacrifices shall not be forgotten.

0.19 came out just after this mission. Can't wait to try out the new parts.

That was epic!

You've officially piqued my interest in this game.

Landge wrote:After months of careful design & testing (trial & error plus lots of napkins).
Launch of the Duna Orbital Station/Base Lander Module the KYONORTHRUS (coming up with a name took longer)...

-Snip awesome post-

Cor blimey. That was amazing!

HowSerendipitous: My hats off to you for being able to rescue your stranded kerbals. My pinpoint landing skills are lacking and I usually wind up stranding more kerbals or worse. I have quite a few kerbals on Mun that have been there over 5 game years now. The ones that are stranded in solar orbits I just end the mission.
Spaceplanes are another source of frustration. For the life of me I can't land those suckers (in one piece) And getting them into circular orbit is next to impossible for me.

Do you use any mods? The only ones I have loaded are "ISA Mapsat" and "Chatterer". I currently have Mapsat satellites in orbits of almost every planet and moons. Dres and Eeloo I've not yet visited and are on my "todo" list. I prefer to play "stock" but Mapsat is a natural fit with space exploration and gives probes a purpose. I just wish it would work in the background. It has to be the active mission to update the maps and you can't fast forward past either 50x or 100x. I forgot. Chatterer is just a mod that adds background radio chatter. I just use it on stations.

Just_Ice_au: KSP can be frustratingly hard at times. It's still in beta. I've learned more about orbital mechanics than I care to admit. There's a ton of video's on Youtube I recommend watching. Scott Manly, for one, has some really good ones. However the thrill of pulling off a successful mission is worth it. I don't know who's quote this is: "Any landing you can walk away from is a successful landing. Any landing that you can take off again is a great landing."

Landge wrote:HowSerendipitous: My hats off to you for being able to rescue your stranded kerbals. My pinpoint landing skills are lacking and I usually wind up stranding more kerbals or worse. I have quite a few kerbals on Mun that have been there over 5 game years now. The ones that are stranded in solar orbits I just end the mission.
Spaceplanes are another source of frustration. For the life of me I can't land those suckers (in one piece) And getting them into circular orbit is next to impossible for me.

Heheheh, thanks. It was a tricky enterprise, but it all worked out in the end. My landings weren't exactly fuel efficient, I'd literally really the point of killing my horizontal velocity and floating down vertically.

Aye, seems you're better at the whole spaceplane malarky than me. I can make them fly, but haven't actually got one into a stable orbit yet. The highest has flown... Hmmm, about 40,000 metres so far. I'll just have to keep working on them!

Landge wrote:Do you use any mods? The only ones I have loaded are "ISA Mapsat" and "Chatterer". I currently have Mapsat satellites in orbits of almost every planet and moons. Dres and Eeloo I've not yet visited and are on my "todo" list. I prefer to play "stock" but Mapsat is a natural fit with space exploration and gives probes a purpose. I just wish it would work in the background. It has to be the active mission to update the maps and you can't fast forward past either 50x or 100x. I forgot. Chatterer is just a mod that adds background radio chatter. I just use it on stations.

Must admit, I've not tried anything with mods. I'm paranoid an update'll break them and consequently my save game. Must admit, Chatterer sounds like a nice addition.

Edit - I fail at posting.

Landge wrote:Just_Ice_au: KSP can be frustratingly hard at times. It's still in beta. I've learned more about orbital mechanics than I care to admit. There's a ton of video's on Youtube I recommend watching. Steve Manly, for one, has some really good ones. However the thrill of pulling off a successful mission is worth it. I don't know who's quote this is: "Any landing you can walk away from is a successful landing. Any landing that you can take off again is a great landing."

So, I started out, and after a days worth of trial-and-error (read: so, so many Kerbal deaths. Poor little guys), managed to develop a five stage launch vehicle (1 Solid Fuel Booster, 1 Liquid Thruster Booster Stage, 1 Orbital Stage, 1 Interplanetary Stage and 1 Lander), that is capable of delivering a lander (with optional payload) to the Mun with a low failure rate.
I did find Steve Manly's Stuff more useful than the inbuilt tutorials (especially This One For Beginners).

So far I've put three Kerbals on the Mun (Alive). Landing is tricky without atmosphere (read: parachutes). Its 100% reaction thrusters all the way down. However, I've managed to crash once softly enough that Orsey Kerman was the first little green man to walk (away from his "landing") on the mun, then put a ("rescue") lander down intact (800m from Orsey), but unfortunately without enough fuel to get out again, and thirdly to put down a payload of crew quarters, but unfortunately it came down about 3 klicks out from the others, and messed up its lander coming down, so I can't move it closer.

I think my next project is going to try and throw up a mun(e) buggy to ferry everyone around.

But anyway, I've been having a lot of fun so far - I seem to find the explosions inexplicably amusing rather than frustrating.

My apologies it is SCOTT MANLEY that has the Youtube vids.
Nice design. I just started using those large axial engines (the white ones) on my VTOL rovers and spaceplanes.

There's nothing wrong with finding the explosions amusing. It's a sign of true Kerbaldom.

I likes the design too!

HowSerendipitous wrote:There's nothing wrong with finding the explosions amusing. It's a sign of true Kerbaldom.

+1

Here is my latest spaceplane design... I have yet to make it into space with this one.

Earlier spaceplane attempt to fly in Eve's atmosphere... Before I realised the Eve's atmosphere didn't include OXYGEN!!!
(Sorry for the dark pic. The plane broke apart on the night side. I didn't have a choice where to land.

Laythe actually has oxygen in it's atmosphere but that didn't seem to matter. I was able to fly a great distance using jets and try to find a good landing spot.
Laythe is mostly water? 95% maybe? with several small islands. So finding a good landing spot is hard.
Starting to see a pattern here?

Some early in-space Refueling Tanker testing... Can I even get into orbit here?!? @#$%^&*!!! Early Base Lander testing. At least they were able to walk away form this one...

HowSerendipitous wrote:There's nothing wrong with finding the explosions amusing. It's a sign of true Kerbaldom.

I likes the design too!

Oh good, it's not just me then. I've been getting funny looks while gleefully telling my family how I finally managed to strand Astronauts on the moon with almost no hope of rescue.

But, yeah, I'm happy with the design as a first attempt.

It's pretty compact, and everything seems to stage through fine with fuel consumption to at least get to the Mun. But I really wanted a larger fuel tank in the interplanetary stage, so I could use it during landing on the Mun in addition to the Kerbin-Mun trip - I wanted to ditch it there, leaving all the lander fuel for takeoff and the burns on my way back to Kerbin. As it is, I'm cutting in the lander engines halfway through the deceleration burn to hit a stable Mun orbit. Although, I'm sure my dodgy piloting is making the fuel situation worse when I actually have to VTOL down to the Mun's surface.

Unfortunately, the larger (and longer) tank tended to make the whole thing shake a lot more on the way up (even with all the control surfaces and thrusters I could jam on there - sometimes it would shake itself to pieces), and it was much harder to get to a stable orbit (particularly hard on fuel consumption on the first couple of stages).

The shorter tank seemed like a good compromise - I was running into diminishing returns from just jamming more and more rockets on the bottom of it.

I've been away from KSP for a little while as life caught up on me, so tonight I thought I'd dip back in. Whilst I do not have a fraction of the skill of others here, I thought I would share how it went...

In keeping with my unerring ability to strand my little green friends on desolate bits of rock I thought I would once more attempt the return trip to the Mun. This time I was ready.

I had a ship with plenty of fuel, plenty of grunt and a plucky Jebediah at the helm, the perfect combination really; the target this time being the giant crater at the top of the Mun.
The trip started like many others have in the past - well. Jeb turned the key and whoosh he was off. Stable orbit was achieved at around 100Km up and good old Jeb was all smiles, as the maneuver time came around all was lined up and ready to go.

Jeb thought now was the perfect time to ditch them big ugly fuel tanks and set out in the shiny 2nd stage. This is where things started to go a bit problematic. Jeb hit go and in a rather fantastic crunching noise managed to lose two of the four tail fins... no worries, there is no air here anyway so Jeb pushed on. The 2nd stage got to the Mun nice and quickly and inserted into a lovely 10Km stable orbit. Jeb ditched stage 2 to leave the sleek agile 3rd stage for the fun bit - landing.

Unlike other dramatic landings experienced by Jeb's (mostly ex-) colleagues this one went well... until about 5 Km off the ground when the landing struts were lowered. Yes, the sharp as a pin 'Kerbal Engineers' had bolted the wrong legs to the lander. These ones were a teensy bit on the short side! Never one to let safe landing worry him, Jeb soldiered on; the new plan - softest landing ever
Miraculously, Jeb and craft touched down perfectly balancing like a ninja on the engine. Cheers were had all around Kerbin mission control, champagne was opened, good times were had . Then someone looked at the fuel reading...
Next mission: Rescue Jeb (hopefully)