I only ever killed the four. Completely removing all RCS and reworking the station engines did the trick. It's got housing for 34 brave souls. I actually landed it back on the 8th but I was unhappy with my landing site so I didn't bother posting it until you reminded me. The giant steel plates are rigid and can support a lander but I'm not good enough to drop anything right on the money. One of the cool things that I did on this that I hadn't done before was to run the four outboard descent engines on the base throughout the flight. It kept the arms from wobbling, upped the available thrust during all flight phases, and allowed me to burn propellant through more efficient engines throughout the flight. Part of the reason I had a shitty landing site was because one of the parallel stages took out the core Mainsail during staging early on. Fortunately, I was able to get to Mun because even after burning out all the parallel stages the four descent engines had enough thrust to drag the center first stage fuel tank stack and drain it.
Picked up this game a while ago and am enjoying it thoroughly. I've done a few landings on the moons and have orbited other planets, but may have to get started on these challenges.
There are a few good videos of how to do it on youtube. I can link the one i used later today.
Main points: 1) launch target object on a predictable heading, say 90 degrees. This way you can replicate that heading with your second vehicle, and have fewer adjustments in orbit.
2) Time your launch so you are just behind our ahead of target object. Same reason as above, takes less time to correct orbits.
3) if are ahead, try to make your periapsis about equal to your target orbit, and have a higher apoapsis than your target. Thus will slow you down relative to your target.
4) make an inside orbit to catch up to a target
5) the game shows you ascension and descension nodes. Burn here to correct angular problems with your orbit. @Drasnor can give you the proper term for this.
6) the in game interface to prep a burn will help you adjust your orbit. It will also show you intercept points.
7) use the intercept points keep getting closer and closer. This may take a few attempts to get the hang of. Get to within roughly 5km before the next step. This is the second hardest step.
8) once you are close and flying at a relatively small speed relative to your target, manually burn to make your velocity vector towards your target. You will need to play with the targeting system in game and understand what this is. Video works best.
9) the closer you are to target, the smaller you should keep your relative velocity.
10) I would be willing to walk you through this with streaming / mumble.
Docking is difficult, yet rewarding. Keep with it, look for videos / tutorials, and have fun!
It depends on where your rendezvous target is. If they're right at 70-75 km then you want to go to a higher altitude orbit and let them phase up to you. Basically same instructions as @CannonFodder; if you're not in a terrible hurry:
0) Open up the orbital planner and set your target as the spacecraft you want to rendezvous with.
1) Launch to the same inclination as the target. To do that, maintain the same compass heading on launch as you did on the previous flight.
2) Launch to an altitude that's ~20 km above or below the target orbit and circularize there. This will be your phasing orbit.
3) Plan a plane change in the map view at the ascending or descending node (AN/DN in the map viewer) by dragging on the purple triangle handles until your orbit is in the same plane as the target's orbit. Execute maneuver.
4) Phase. Use the warp, try to get a feel for how much closer the target spacecraft gets with each orbit. If you're at a higher altitude then it will overtake you, if you're at a lower altitude then you'll overtake it.
5) When the target is going to overtake you/you'll overtake it on the next orbit, plan a Hohmann transfer to rendezvous. Drag the green handles until your orbit intersects with the target orbit and drag the blue handles until your minimum distance is < 2 km. Execute maneuver.
6) At minimum distance, null your relative velocities by pointing at the retro-relative velocity indicator on your nav ball and burning for 0.
7) Lots of options here, easiest is to do what CannonFodder says from 8-on. Most efficient is to burn radially away from the planet to approach if you're in front and toward the planet to approach if you're behind.
My dream is that someone makes a mod (Or possibly becomes part of the stock parts) To build a ship similar in design to Project Orion.
There seems to be no limiting politics (May be in campaign who knows) and the magnetosphere doesn't seem to be a concern a nuclear pulse powered ship would be absolutely incredible.
(It would also open the possibilities of visiting other star systems should the KSP team every consider adding the ability)
That is one of the most amazing things I've seen in this game. (Or even at all. Think about it had this thing been actually made we could've gone to Andromeda by now.)
EDIT: Nevermind not Andromeda, not without stasis capable of holding out 20 million years. Also, you know the ship, people, nukes.
Our Solar System and back in a month would've been a real thing though.
I just picked this up and started trying to figure everything out. So far I haven't done much outside of a basic liquid fuel main, and a bunch of solid fuel boosters. I don't know how to make them fall off after they are done however.
@CannonFodder: I got to Dresi. My lander had the high-ISP engines and broke up on parachute deploy though. The orbiter has enough fuel to get back to Kerbin with what was left in its tank and exhausting what was left in the big tank on the low-ISP engine but I think I'm just going to end flight because it's going to take 36 hrs of continuous warping/orbiting to get the planets aligned properly for the return burn. It doesn't have enough prop margin to go to a higher orbit and warp faster.
@drasnor: The waiting in this game is the primary reason I stopped doing long distance missions. Especially with those low thrust, high efficient engines. Sure you could go all the places.... but you can't warp while you are actively accelerating (unless you are in atmosphere, which seems more difficult to calculate.)
@CannonFodder: I ate the mass fraction penalty of having a lot of nuclear engines on my larger interplanetary spacecraft and it's not so bad. It helps to not go crazy with the configurations.
Comments
But this thing is now on the moon. Given a proper nearby parking orbit of 5 shuttle flights for passengers, this thing has housing for 22 kerbals.
Its a single flight operation to the moon, with 3 stages (2nd stage is 4x asparagus staging.)
Now all I need to do is freight in some kerbals. I wonder if their suits will allow them to land from a lunar parking orbit.
It's got housing for 34 brave souls. I actually landed it back on the 8th but I was unhappy with my landing site so I didn't bother posting it until you reminded me. The giant steel plates are rigid and can support a lander but I'm not good enough to drop anything right on the money.
One of the cool things that I did on this that I hadn't done before was to run the four outboard descent engines on the base throughout the flight. It kept the arms from wobbling, upped the available thrust during all flight phases, and allowed me to burn propellant through more efficient engines throughout the flight. Part of the reason I had a shitty landing site was because one of the parallel stages took out the core Mainsail during staging early on. Fortunately, I was able to get to Mun because even after burning out all the parallel stages the four descent engines had enough thrust to drag the center first stage fuel tank stack and drain it.
Also, some people are just amazing at this game.
(Edit: How do I YouTube? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPRxyv3CED8)
First landing.
My first space station, Station 1.
I need to dock a ship at my new space station but I'm unsure when I need to launch the ship and how I can align the orbits.
Main points:
1) launch target object on a predictable heading, say 90 degrees. This way you can replicate that heading with your second vehicle, and have fewer adjustments in orbit.
2) Time your launch so you are just behind our ahead of target object. Same reason as above, takes less time to correct orbits.
3) if are ahead, try to make your periapsis about equal to your target orbit, and have a higher apoapsis than your target. Thus will slow you down relative to your target.
4) make an inside orbit to catch up to a target
5) the game shows you ascension and descension nodes. Burn here to correct angular problems with your orbit. @Drasnor can give you the proper term for this.
6) the in game interface to prep a burn will help you adjust your orbit. It will also show you intercept points.
7) use the intercept points keep getting closer and closer. This may take a few attempts to get the hang of. Get to within roughly 5km before the next step. This is the second hardest step.
8) once you are close and flying at a relatively small speed relative to your target, manually burn to make your velocity vector towards your target. You will need to play with the targeting system in game and understand what this is. Video works best.
9) the closer you are to target, the smaller you should keep your relative velocity.
10) I would be willing to walk you through this with streaming / mumble.
Docking is difficult, yet rewarding. Keep with it, look for videos / tutorials, and have fun!
0) Open up the orbital planner and set your target as the spacecraft you want to rendezvous with.
1) Launch to the same inclination as the target. To do that, maintain the same compass heading on launch as you did on the previous flight.
2) Launch to an altitude that's ~20 km above or below the target orbit and circularize there. This will be your phasing orbit.
3) Plan a plane change in the map view at the ascending or descending node (AN/DN in the map viewer) by dragging on the purple triangle handles until your orbit is in the same plane as the target's orbit. Execute maneuver.
4) Phase. Use the warp, try to get a feel for how much closer the target spacecraft gets with each orbit. If you're at a higher altitude then it will overtake you, if you're at a lower altitude then you'll overtake it.
5) When the target is going to overtake you/you'll overtake it on the next orbit, plan a Hohmann transfer to rendezvous. Drag the green handles until your orbit intersects with the target orbit and drag the blue handles until your minimum distance is < 2 km. Execute maneuver.
6) At minimum distance, null your relative velocities by pointing at the retro-relative velocity indicator on your nav ball and burning for 0.
7) Lots of options here, easiest is to do what CannonFodder says from 8-on. Most efficient is to burn radially away from the planet to approach if you're in front and toward the planet to approach if you're behind.
Also, note that the 4-way hub in your picture doesn't have docking ports on it. You'll need those in place to dock.
1781 m/s in steady level flight. Gotta go fast!
EDIT: Nevermind not Andromeda, not without stasis capable of holding out 20 million years. Also, you know the ship, people, nukes.
Our Solar System and back in a month would've been a real thing though.
@d3k0y: I ran it with a 360 controller with very little issue.
While sleepy, I accidentally slammed into the munar surface at about 70 m/s. Surprisingly, Jebediah lived.
Today, we went back with Explorer 2, but we had a critical design flaw.... we didn't bring any additional crew space. Oops.
At least the rescue mission didn't create more kerbals to rescue. Also, proved that the redocking was a success.